How We Decide: Jonah Lehrer

In his latest book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer explores how the unexpected discoveries of neuroscience can help us make better everyday decisions.

Amazon has a nice Q&A with Lehrer on the book page, in which he addresses everything from neuroscience to how he handles the cereal aisle.

4 Good reasons you do NOT want to buy a Kindle Fire

Before you rush out and spend your hard-earned cash, here are 4 good reasons why caution would be a good thing.

Reason 1: It's an Out-of-date Android
The single biggest reason you might not want to buy a new Kindle Fire is because it’s most likely going to be running the old 2.1 Eclair version of Android. For those keeping track, that’s actually ten revs behind the current tablet Android release, 3.2 Honeycomb. There was 2.2 Froyo, 2.3 Gingerbread, 2.3.3, 2.3.4, 2.3.5, 2.3.6, 2.3.7, 3.0 Honeycomb, 3.1, and, finally, 3.2.

All indications are that Amazon has customized their version of Android, but still, that means you’re essentially running something almost two years out of date.

Reason 2: It’s not really Android
If you’re interested in the Kindle Fire because it’s an Android tablet made by Amazon, think again. Because Amazon is likely to be hacking it up and making it their own, anything you want to run from the real Android world may or may not run on the Fire.

Plus, from a more geopolitical point of view, Amazon is adding one more fork in the already twisted road of Android distributions.

On one hand, they’re taking advantage of an open environment, which is what open is all about. On the other hand, they’re specifically not working and playing well with others, to the harm of the entire ecosystem.

Reason 3: It’s a BlackBerry PlayBook hand-me-down

The “new” Kindle Fire is really just a BlackBerry PlayBook with some new software. The Fire was apparently designed opportunistically by the same company, Quanta, that did the PlayBook — and it’s essentially the same hardware.

Now, I have to say I like the form-factor of the PlayBook, but we know the device hasn’t really resonated with consumers.

Do you really want to buy hand-me-down hardware that’s already failed in the marketplace once?

Reason 4: No Access to the Android App store
While you’ll probably be able to get all the apps you want from Amazon’s Appstore, you will not be able to get apps from the canonical Google Android App store that should be available to all Android users.

That also means you’re going to be getting special or custom or possibly nerfed versions of apps, because they’re specifically meant for the Fire and not for the wider Android ecosystem.

Conclusion

There are many many more reasons you should not be in a hurry to buy this device but the bottom-line is, if you like the Amazon services and pretty much want to be tied down to just that suite of services, you’re fine with the Fire.

Otherwise, you might want to 'wait and see' how other users in the market like or dislike the device.

Kindle Tablet is coming, what it means to consumers

The Amazon tablet has been the topic of rumours for months. Amazon is expected to release the Kindle Tablet into the world this week at a press event to be held on Wednesday.

The tech world is understandably buzzing about how this tablet from Amazon will compete with the top selling iPad, but the reality is Amazon doesn’t care about competing with any tablet on the market.

What we think we know about the Kindle Tablet
It will be a 7-inch multitouch tablet, running a special Amazon-produced interface that sits on an Android kernel. This interface will not look like Android, nor will it run like Android tablets. It will be an Amazon effort through and through, with the kernel the only thing in common with Android.

The Kindle Tablet will be deeply integrated with Amazon’s content sales, with ebooks, music, and videos easily purchased and consumed on the tablet. It will be focused on this objective, not on becoming yet another Android tablet. Techies may not like this locked-down system, but they are not the intended audience.

The Kindle Tablet will sell for $250, much cheaper than competing tablets. It will come with an Amazon Prime membership which provides free shipping on some Amazon purchases, a $79 value. Amazon will likely tie other purchase incentives to the Tablet, and will likely integrate Amazon’s Kindle library book service.

What this means
While those of us involved in the tech space understandably look to the Kindle Tablet to compete with Android tablets and the iPad, Amazon has no intention to do so. The Kindle Tablet is designed by Amazon to appeal to mainstream consumers, the Kindle market, and to facilitate selling that market goods from the Amazon store.

While the initial objective of the Kindle Tablet will be to sell consumers digital goods from the Amazon store, it will quickly branch out from that to include all retail goods. Incentives will make this easy for Amazon, with discounts offered for purchases made from the Kindle Tablet, to free shipping on such purchases.

Make no mistake, Amazon doesn’t want to sell you a tablet, it wants to sell you more stuff. The Kindle Tablet will make this easy to do, and easy to enjoy the digital goods purchased on the tablet. Competing with Apple and Android tablets will be a natural side effect of the Kindle Tablet, but it’s not Amazon’s objective.

It wants to expose millions of buyers to the benefits of buying stuff from the Amazon store. Don’t overlook the fact that the bulk of Amazon’s digital content for sale can already be used on both the iPad and Android tablets. They are in fact vehicles driving Amazon sales, not strictly tablet competitors.

Amazon Rainforest victim in bribery battle between Chevron and Ecuador Officials

CARACAS, Venezuela — The oil giant Chevron said Monday that it had obtained video recordings of meetings in Ecuador this year that appear to reveal a bribery scheme connected to a $27 billion lawsuit the company faces over environmental damage at oil fields it operated in remote areas of the Amazon forest in Ecuador.

The undercover videos, together with audio recordings, obtained by businessmen using watches and pens implanted with bugging devices, appear to implicate Ecuadoran officials and political operatives, including possibly Juan Núñez, the judge overseeing the lawsuit, and Pierina Correa, the sister of Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa.

The recordings indicate that an Ecuadoran political operative was working to obtain $3 million in bribes related to environmental cleanup contracts to be awarded in the event of a ruling against Chevron.