Sweet!

• Longer battery life for Kindle (Global Wireless): You can now read for up to 1 week on a single charge with wireless on. Turn wireless off and read for up to 2 weeks.
• Built-in PDF reader: Your Kindle can now display PDF documents without losing the formatting of the original file. Send PDF documents directly to your Kindle (via your @Kindle address) or drag and drop PDF files from your computer to your Kindle (when connected via USB). Learn more.
• and a few other things …

Get it here manually, or wait for the auto update.

Kindle 2.3 Update

I immediately added a few manuals for cameras, etc. – things that I take on vacations with me that I occasionally wish I had the manual for. I had converted them using their free service before, but it left them a mangled mess too often. The Nikon D300 manual for instance, is very readble now on the Kindle.

Thanks Amazon for this upgrade!

My wife and I decided to switch our cell phone service to Verizon, to join the USA’s most awesomest network. We bought 2 new Android phones, figured out what plans to get … it took about an hour and half in the store.

Having learned our lesson last time we tried to switch wireless carriers, we declined the automatic number port and got new numbers instead. We confirmed that we could port the numbers later and cancel our existing AT&T service ourselves.

On her Droid phone (the Eris), she got maybe one bar of service, if she stood in the right place, and faced the proper direction, with her arms at the proper height.

On my Motorola DROID, it was about 1 to 2 bars of service. A call between the two phones sounded absolutely terrible, with cut outs and so much vocal digitization that it was a very unpleasant experience.

Yes, there was “3G” service at our house, but making a phone call seemed to be a challenge – so, sorry Verizon. I can’t hear you now.

(And I’m aware of the Wireless Network Extender, but it has a bunch of caveats about size of house, network bandwidth, etc., that we can’t necessarily adapt to).

Phones will be returned.

AT&T didn’t even know we temporarily considered other options. :)

Oxo Good Grips Food Scale with Pull-Out Display

I’ll be honest, but I don’t own one of those yet. Our digital scale is functional, but not nearly as fun or useful as this awesome scale from Oxo. I saw it reviewed recently on America’s Test Kitchen last week and nearly walked over to our existing scale and accidentally knocked it into the garbage (whoops!). Amazon has it for $49 and it’s gotten awesome reviews. (49 people have given it nearly a perfect 5.0 rating!). As soon as our digital scale needs replacement (or a little earlier than that!), this is the scale I’ll buy (or an even better version!)

If you don’t see what’s cool about this – it’s the fact that you can actually read the measurement even with a large plate sitting on top of the scale! Oxo has some cool products – you can tell their designers actually think about how people cook, and how just repeating what other companies are doing often isn’t the right answer.

Back to (un)regularly scheduled blogging.