The Insomniac Coder

310: 5 O'clock (Photo credit: pvera ) Background : I have owned multiple copies of the first three generations of the Amazon Kindle , and the first generation of the $79 Kindle with offers. I have also owned three copies of the first generation Kindle Fire for about a year. The good : Almost everything that was changed in the Kindle Fire was an improvement. The screen is much better, the battery life is much better, and the device is faster. The OS changed a tiny little bit, which is of no concern to users that haven't experienced the first generation. The speakers are a lot better. The wireless wakes up much faster. If you put the device down it will go to sleep on its own unless you are playing video or audio. Pick it up and it wakes up again. The charging port is now on the side, which sucks if you want to prop it up in landscape mode with the official case. You can flip it of course, but then you lose the benefit of using the case as a prop stand. The ads are not ...

Image via CrunchBase It wasn't obvious from my first experiments, but the service allows you to receive phone calls, at least as long as you have a Google Voice number assigned. You will need to enable Google Talk in your Google Voice preferences, then you can assign your Google Talk as a target line for your phone contact groups. When I called my Google Voice number from my work phone, I got a pop up in Gmail that let me answer the call. Pretty damn nifty, and the price is right. Related articles by Zemanta Use Gmail to make VoIP calls: Hands-on review (news.cnet.com)