Portable audio

Will the Kindle Fire be worth rooting?

The average consumer probably isn't thinking right now about installing custom firmware on Amazon's Kindle Fire, but I know the first thing a bunch of you wondered was, "Wow, a $199 Android tablet with a dual-core processor; is this thing rootable?"

Well, at least according to one Amazon rep I spoke to at the launch event, it is--and apparently Amazon isn't putting up any measures to stop people from doing it.

Call it confidence (or arrogance), but Amazon seems to feel that it's giving consumers--and even more hard-core Android enthusiasts--enough attractive features to keep … Read more

What to expect from Wednesday's Amazon event

In case you missed it, Amazon.com is having a big press event this Wednesday in New York to roll out something new. OK, maybe it's not Apple kind of big. But it's big enough, especially with the smart money on Jeff Bezos unveiling Amazon's much-anticipated Android tablet (leaks suggest it may be called the Kindle Fire), which a lot of anti-Apple folks hope can slow down the iPad juggernaut.

Will we see two tablets--a 7-incher and a 10-incher--or just one? If it is a tablet, will it really be branded the "Kindle Fire" or something else? Will there be a new e-ink Kindle? After all, it's been over a year since Amazon introduced the Kindle 3--isn't it time for a new model?

Lots of questions remain, so with that in mind, here's a short preview of what we could see on Wednesday and the odds of each option actually coming to fruition. … Read more

Case of the bad firmware upgrade: Jambox

I admit it. I enjoy a good firmware upgrade.

There's nothing like a software fix to make you feel better about your device, especially if it adds new features while eliminating bugs. But not every firmware upgrade is good. Sometimes things go horribly wrong. Which is what happened recently when I updated Jawbone's little Jambox Bluetooth speaker to version 2.0.

The update gave me something called LiveAudio, a "technological breakthrough" that would let me experience my music, games, video "like never before"--as if I was, "on stage, in the action, hearing it live." Furthermore, this immersive, three-dimensional listening experience brought "incredible depth, detail, and unprecedented spatial realism to everything from mp3s to special binaural recordings."

Based on the promo material, I expected a lot; I wanted in on the 2.0 LiveAudio action. Wanted it bad. … Read more

Why do my headphones keep breaking?

The other day we got an e-mail from Jim, a reader in LA, who wrote:

"My question regards the care and feeding of headphones. From the coconut-halves sets of my youth to the in-ear sets of today, I've never failed to kill a set of 'phones within a few months. Even the two Shure sets I bought in the past year (E2C and SE110) and have tried to treat very carefully, have developed cracks and shorts where they loop over the ear."

Ah, Jim, I share your pain. A few weeks ago, my trusty Shure E4Cs developed … Read more

Apple to shift to voice interface for iPods, iPhones?

I recently trashed the third-generation Shuffle in a blog post, saying it was "a disaster."

Well, I meant it. A buttonless, tiny, entry-level MP3 with special "VoiceOver" features just seems so unnecessary. But then a reader made an interesting point to me. What if the lead got buried in Apple's Shuffle announcement?

While everyone was harping about how the thing's really small (I say too small), requires an adapter for you to use your own headphones, and has a voice-over feature that doesn't seem to really add much (we know what our favorite … Read more