Amazon Officially Announces The New Kindle Paperwhite: “Paperwhite” Display, Frontlighting, 8 Week Battery, And 212 PPI
There’s plenty to talk about here at Amazon’s Los Angeles press conference. The Kindle Fire 2 is obviously a hot topic of discussion, but lest you forget the product that started it all: The Kindle. As expected, new models of the E-Ink ereader have been officially announced, and one (the Kindle Paperwhite) follows in the steps of Barnes & Noble’s Nook with Glow.
The new Kindle Paperwhite features frontlighting for the very first time, allowing readers to enjoy their Twilight fan fiction in the dark, perhaps sleeping next to their partner without disturbing them. It will also come with a “Paperwhite” display, which offers more contrast and brightness.
The location of the USB port and power switch haven’t changed much from previous generations of the device, but the design language has. There is no longer a home button at the bottom, and the casing has gone from light to dark grey — nearly black.
The display has 62 percent more pixels, and it’s super sharp with excellent contrast. It’s 9.1mm thin, with a very thin bezel, and you can adjust the level (25 in total) of the display with your finger. A new feature called “Time to Read” offers a glimpse at how long it’ll take you to get to the next chapter. Biographies are available for characters in books from the Amazon store, as well as author info, bios and lists of works. The Paperwhite also boasts 8-week battery life, even with the light on.
The basic Kindle Paperwhite is $119, can be ordered today on Amazon.com and ships Oct. 1. The $179 model includes 3G for free free, and it’s available in over 100 countries worldwide.
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If you like programming and fine art, you will love Raven Kwok’s work made with Processing
The recent work of Chinese artist and programmer Raven Kwok is an exceptional example of code as art, where complex mathematics are leveraged to create something surprisingly beautiful.
These pieces, surfaced by Processing‘s own exhibition curator Creative Applications Network, are embedded below and showcase the growing field of creative coding, which is empowered by the likes of Processing, the open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions, and openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding.
Check out the work below:
A recursive transforming triangle
A recursive transforming object
A recursive transforming hexagon
These calmer projects, contrast the vibrant piece shown above, which was “inspired by Matt Pearson’s Sutcliffe Pentagons on AbandonedArt.org.”
For more, click here to see all of The Next Web’s favorite experimental apps and projects.
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Wood Camera: yet another iPhone camera app, but with some unique twists
Entering the saturated iOS camera app space is not something for the faint of heart. But brand new iPhone camera application Wood Camera may just have a couple of unique selling points working in its favour.
Priced at $1.99, the app was cooked up by former TwitPic Media Director John Barnett. He decided to go ahead and create Wood Camera because, he says, he couldn’t find a single app that addressed all of his needs.
Getting started with Wood Camera
Wood Camera comes with a few simple settings. You can choose to toggle geotagging on and off, and can also choose between launching the app in capture mode or in lightbox mode. The last setting allows you to automatically add photos from your camera roll to Wood Camera’s lightbox.
You can also drop pictures you’ve previously taken straight from your photo library into the lightbox to take advantage of its editing features.
One of our only complaints when it came to using Wood Camera is how tedious it is to import photos to the lightbox – there is currently no other way than importing them one by one.
Shooting photos
One of Wood Camera’s biggest selling points is how fast it loads. Camera+ users often complain about how long it takes to fire up the app, but in the case of Wood Camera, the loading time is roughly 3 seconds.
Another great feature that Wood Camera offers is the ability to preview filters as you take the photo.
Wood Camera has all the features we’ve come to expect from an app of this kind – toggling between the front and back cameras, adjusting the flash and selecting the focal point of the image.
For actually shooting a picture, the app is a little slower than we would like. Much like Camera Awesome, it stays in shooting mode after taking a photo, rather than displaying the image you’ve just taken.
Camera+ does one-up both apps by allowing the user to choose what they want to view after taking a photo.
Editing photos
Once you’ve got some images in your lightbox, you can give Wood Camera’s extensive editing features a try. This is where the app really shines.
In addition to the 22 available filters, Wood Camera comes with basic editing features such as rotating, flipping and cropping images. The crop feature is pretty extensive, with a variety of aspect ratios and dimensions pre-loaded into the app. You can also use Wood Camera to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and hue of images.
One feature that certainly sets Wood Camera apart is the ability to add textures to your images, with 17 options to choose from. Wood Camera also comes packed with 12 frames, and the ability to add a bit of tilt-shift and vignetting magic to your pictures.
Once you’ve got your image exactly the way you want it, you can share it on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, send it to friends via email, or open the image in other photo-related apps you have installed on your phone, including the must-have option of Instagram.
Our Verdict
As mentioned before, the market for iPhone photography apps is saturated with a ton of free and paid alternative, but Wood Camera certainly holds its own against the competition.
Its fast loading time, coupled with its live preview feature are certain welcome additions and are enough to put the app in the running against Camera+ and Camera Awesome.
The UI is slick, and we’re big fans of being able to swipe between various editing features such as brightness and contrast, leaving more screen real estate for the image itself.
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