From a Chip Chick post. The QOOQ tablet really shines with a subscription to QOOQ’s services, though. A subscription will net users 3,500 interactive recipes from some of the world’s top chefs, 1,200 of which include video instructions. Those recipes are accompanied by a comprehensive and detailed wine list and suggestions for each meal. There are also 100 featured chefs that offer up video tutorials for individual cooking techniques, in addition to whole recipes. That by itself isn’t overwhelmingly impressive – those kinds of resources can be found with a little poking around the Internet. The QOOQ tablet does have some...

That's the title of an article in PC World.  Here's a snippet: I am not suggesting that you ditch your laptop and just use the Kindle Fire as your primary mobile computing device (although I have argued in the past that you could conceivably get away with that with the iPad). However, if you are traveling and you only want to take one device, it is nice to know that the Kindle Fire is capable of meeting your needs at least in the short term. Although Amazon targets the Kindle Fire as a consumer device, it does come pre-loaded with the QuickOffice app. QuickOffice...

Changewave Research has just released a new report on the Kindle Fire. From the press release: Survey of New Kindle Fire Owners Since the mid-November launch of the Kindle Fire, consumer demand for the tablet has been nothing less than explosive. In the January survey 6% of respondents reported they own a Kindle Fire – double the percentage of a month ago. ChangeWave asked 254 new Kindle Fire owners a series of questions regarding their overall satisfaction and key likes and dislikes, to gauge their reaction to the new tablet device. Customer Satisfaction. When asked how satisfied they are...

Wow, Notion Ink is still around. After a promising buildup for its “Adam” Pixel Qi-display Android tablet, followed by lackluster reviews of the finished product, the company kind of faded into the background. Notion Ink is moving forward with plans for an Adam 2, powered by a TI OMAP processor rather than NVidia’s Tegra. The company feels it will be able to get more performance out of an Omap than it could a Tegra. On Notion Ink’s “Designing Adam 2” blog, Rohan Shravan promises: Unlike last time where we banked on Tegra without possibly...

Check out Woot! This is a great price for a full-sized tablet - if you are willing to tackle webOS.  It's refurbished.  HP has announced that webOS will be made open source later this year, so this might be a good bet for the more technically inclined among us....

My aging laptop, a trusty and wonderful device–on which I’ve composed five novels, countless articles, poems and pieces—is nearing the end of its existence. I extended its life expectancy substantially by replacing various components as they wore out, namely the hard drive and battery pack, but still the Time Has Come to replace the device altogether. Recently, while standing in line at a coffee-shop, I observed an individual place a roll-out rubberized keyboard on a small bistro table and then plug it into his smartphone. He put the android device on a small stand and began typing away like mad. This...

From a MocoNews Article by Laura Hazard Owen: Last year was widely perceived to be a year of outrageous e-book growth, but some new research suggests otherwise. According to new data from Bowker and the Book Industry Study Group, the number of book buyers who also purchased an e-book increased by 17 percent in 2011, compared to 9 percent in 2010 – well below the 25 to 30 percent growth that some had hoped for. E-books now make up 26 percent of adult fiction purchases, compared to 11 percent of children’s book purchases and 3 percent...

The Kingston WiDrive could be very useful to anyone who has an iPad, Fire or other tablet.  According to the reviewer it works really well: The Kingston Wi-Drive happens to work really well. It couldn’t be easier to get data on to the device since it’s recognized as a regular flash drive and requires no extra software. Over USB 2.0, it took about 65 seconds to add a gigabyte of music (140 songs), which was nice and fast. Over the Wi-Drive Wi-Fi it only took about 2-3 seconds to transfer a song to my phone. For the entire gigabyte it took...

Another ruling from a European court on the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuits over the Galaxy Tab’s design has come in, and it doesn’t bode well for Apple. An appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands dismissed Apple’s patent-infringement attempt to get the Galaxy Tab banned from sale in the country, following up on Apple’s appeal after a lower court’s similar decision in August. The court made its decision based on at least two pieces of prior art for each of Apple’s claims, determining that Apple’s claims were therefore narrow enough that they had not been infringed. Next week, a German...

On CNet, Scott Stein writes about why a $79 Kindle has replaced his iPad as his e-book-reading device of choice. The reasons aren’t really new, and indeed have popped up any time anyone has ever compared e-ink devices to tablets for reading: eyestrain-reducing e-ink screens, less potential for distraction, longer battery life, and less potential for being stolen (and less of a loss if it is). It’s going to be interesting to see what happens as screen display technology gets better and lets tablets steal some of the screen-readability and battery life benefits of e-readers. Will dedicated e-readers...

From their report: The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period. The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January. These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets...

From the Kindle Forums comes this post by Kindle Customer Service about the latest Kindle Fire update: We wanted to let you know that we've released a new, over-the-air software update for Kindle Fire. As with all of our free software updates, this will be delivered automatically to your Kindle Fire.This update contains several performance improvements and additional features. First, we've made improvements to the graphics system. You will notice smoother rendering when performing common operations like pinching and zooming, panning and scrolling. Second, you will notice a new icon (four...