Will Amazon Take a Bite Out of Apple?

Last week's announcements from Amazon absolutely rocked the tablet world. But it wasn't because they introduced 2 new e-readers, or because they dropped the prices of their other e-reader, or even the release of their new Kindle Fire tablet.

The reason Amazon's announcement was so huge is that the 7" Kindle Fire will retail for just $199.

This led to a firestorm (pun intended) of activity as companies like HTC and Blackberry slashed the prices of their 7" tablets, the Flyer and Playbook respectively, by hundreds of dollars. Other companies like Samsung and Toshiba, who have similarly-sized tablets set to debut before the end of the year, are rumored to be adjusting their prices as well because of what Amazon did.

So, even though not one Kindle Fire has been shipped yet, it has already shaken the Android tablet market to its core...and rightfully so. We haven't seen any Android tablet claim that mythic "iPad killer" title, mostly due to the fact that none of the premium tablets undercut the iPad on price.

The Kindle Fire takes a different approach. Instead of trying to beat the iPad on local storage size or unique design, Amazon made a physically different device (7" versus the iPad's 10") with a different purpose (heavy cloud streaming versus heavy app usage) aimed at a different consumer (casual media consumption versus heavy media consumption and mobile computing).

While it's a different strategy, Amazon is going with the basically the same approach as Apple when it comes to tablets. Both Apple and Amazon have spent years building up services like iTunes and Amazon Cloud Services before releasing their tablets.

This means that while existing Android tablets continue to deal with a fledgling OS in Honeycomb, Amazon will have an extensive media library at its disposal.

More importantly, while those other tablets continue to appeal to more technically-inclined people who don't want to be "stuck" in the Apple world, Amazon will appeal to those who like the ecosystem approach that has made Apple successful.

The end result is that Amazon, regardless of intent, may have put itself in line to go head-to-head with Tim Cook and company.

Video Post: Amazon Sets the Tablet Market on Fire

Amazon just unveiled its 7" tablet device called the Kindle Fire. Steve walks us through why this tablet might be a "hot" ticket item by the year's end.

Share Mobile Videos with Klip

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Alain Rossman has another hit on his hands. In the mid '90s, he predicted that people would eventually use their phones for e-mail. As chairman of Vudu, he developed and commercialized a TV set-top box that streamed HD movies over the internet, which sold to Wal-Mart in 2010.

The latest hit from Rossman's Palo Alto-based firm is called Klip, which just released an iPhone app designed for organizing, searching and sharing video. The app is interesting, and offers one of the best user experiences out there. A swipe of your finger enables you to preview the video thumbnails. A shake of your iPhone enables you to fast-forward. It's easy to record footage from Klip, add video from another app, trim, and share via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or email. Klip also enables you to geotag the video and add hashtags.

For those who need a quick and easy way to shorten and upload videos for blogs or news stories, Klip is sure to please. Klip is available free of charge at the app store.

YouTube Takes a Bite of Something "Delicious"

Youtube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are interested in more than just viral video sensations. They are now the proud owners of the social bookmarking site, Delicious.com. However, they certainly have made a few changes, and by that I mean rebuilt the entire site from scratch. The rebooted Delicious is still focused on bookmarking and sharing among Delicious users, but with a whole new look. "The result is a new homepage, interface and back-end architecture designed to make Delicious easier to use," the team behind the new Delicious said in a blog post.

Other site renovations include the addition of "stacks," which is a user-created list of links which can be centered on any topic a user chooses. Stacks are easily created and customizable, and published only to the public when a user wants them to be. "Our goal with stacks is to add more value to all the links being collected by the Delicious community," the team said. "Each new stack presents an opportunity to introduce the rest of the world to cool Web content they haven't seen before."

So, can the masterminds behind Youtube bring back some flavor to Delicious? Or will the popularity of linking directly via social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) cause it to fall like a souffle in a loud and already-crowded room?

Facebook Friday: Timeline to be a Major Profile Overhaul

People have not stopped talking about the changes Facebook unveiled at yesterday's f8 conference. Granted, even the smallest announcement from the social networking giant spurs plenty of conversation, but the features Mark Zuckerberg revealed are definitely worth the buzz.

I covered the initial changes (the Ticker and Top News feed) Facebook already leaked in yesterday's post, but the most noteworthy announcement from yesterday was the Timeline feature.

The Timeline will eventually replace the current profile page, and is both a visual and conceptual overhaul.

The idea is that the Timeline would curate all of your past Facebook activity into a scrapbook of the most important moments. It's still in developer mode and not open to the public yet, but I took a screenshot of my profile so you can see what it would be like:

As you can see, the profile picture setup has changed. Instead of the 180x540 pixel size, you now have the square thumbnail picture and the giant Cover Photo. Also, the two column approach to the main section is also a big departure from the old profile setup.

Visually, there is a lot more real estate to work with, which is great news for designers and the artistically-inclined. It'll be a while until these new changes go into affect for everyone, but it'll be a dramatic change for the 800 million Facebook users.