Kindle Fire: Post Here

haven

Expedition Leader
The Amazon Kindle Fire is popular enough that it should have its own thread separate from the e-readers and the Android tablets. The Fire is both these things, and more.

So post up your Kindle Fire notes and discoveries here.
 

haven

Expedition Leader
enable apps from unknown sources

Kindle Fire owners should download and install apps from the Amazon Appstore. The programs in the Appstore are tested and verified to be free of malware and other funny business. If you install an app from an unverified source, you run the risk of installing malware. So Fire owners should stick to the Appstore wherever possible.

That said, here's a tip for Fire owners who want to load software from sources other than the Appstore.

Go to the Settings icon in the upper right corner of the home screen
Tap the "More" button
Tap "Device" near the bottom of the screen
Find the switch labeled "Allow installation of applications from unknown sources"
Slide this switch to the "On" position

Now you can download any APK format application installation program. Or you can copy the APK file from your computer via the USB port.

More details here:

http://liliputing.com/2011/11/how-t...android-market-on-the-amazon-kindle-fire.html

It's possible to set permissions to gain access to the full Android Market that Google manages, but that involves gaining root access to the Fire. Read on...
 

haven

Expedition Leader
gaining root access to the Kindle Fire

http://liliputing.com/2011/11/how-to-root-an-amazon-kindle-fire.html

Here are instructions that will allow you to gain root access on your Kindle Fire. Once rooted, your Fire can be set up to access the full Android Market, including the Google apps.

The downside is that Amazon's Instant Video streaming won't work with a rooted tablet. Perhaps the hacker community will address this shortcoming in future exploits.
 
Be careful with the silk browser and do not use it to access financial accounts as it uses transcoding in its browser. THis means Amazon has engineered a man in the middle proxy and can legally cache authentication information. Also any SSL session issued between your device and a server does not have full end to end encryption.
 

kjp1969

Explorer
A little bird told me that I'll be getting one for my birthday next week. I guess that makes me the guinea pig. :sombrero:
 

HumphreyBear

Adventurer
At the moment it is US only - most disappointing - as they do not have content distribution rights for most of their content here (Kindle books excepted). By the time they sort that out Android tablets will have moved on considerably. A shame as I was very excited about getting one, too.
 

haven

Expedition Leader
"Amazon has engineered a man in the middle proxy and can legally cache authentication information."

Very true. Then there's this:

"You can also choose to operate Amazon Silk in basic or “off-cloud” mode. Off-cloud mode allows web pages generally to go directly to your computer rather than pass through our servers."

Amazon Terms and Conditions, paragraph 5
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200775270

I guess we'll have to get clarification about the word "generally" in that paragraph.
 

HumphreyBear

Adventurer
Also any SSL session issued between your device and a server does not have full end to end encryption.

This is actually fairly common. We routinely design hardware load balancing solutions (the devices which sit in front of web pages/servers and manage traffic according to a set of rules) which decrypt SSL traffic on the switch with special SSL Offload chips. This is sometimes the only way to perform fancy manipulation of the data stream, and may also be done to (sometimes dramatically) reduce the CPU load on the web/backend server. Financial institutions use this technology extensively, as do retailers, governments and, well, most major web sites.
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Once this processing has taken place the datastream can either be re-encrypted and sent to the target server or sent clear to the web server. Usually if it is re-encrypted it is encrypted using a lower strength cipher - again to reduce the load on the server. After the web server has done its thing and the data stream is on its way back to your browser it is often the load balancer which encrypts it back to full strength before it sends it back across t'Internet.
.
There are some regulations and financial industry standards on how to deal with this datastream, but this much of this relates only if there is credit card data involved (called the PCI DSS (standard)). I've personally never seen a compromised load balancing switch or heard of the switch-server traffic being impersonated, though.
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Having said that the idea of Amazon caching unrelated data on its servers from a web browser that is not looking at an Amazon site is highly disconcerting. That is more egregious an act than even Google or Facebook would try - and they *really* want your data and activity. As Haven said, the definition of "generally" becomes pretty important. So does the originating country's national law - for example if they store my Australia-originated data in the US and that data identifies me or someone else (phone numbers, addresses, email addresses) without my or the affected parties' approval then they have breached my understanding of the Australian 1998 Privacy Act and National Privacy Provisions. I'm not sure it's been tested but doubt a EULA couldn't arbitrate that right away.
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Interesting!
Humphrey
 

haven

Expedition Leader
Kindle Fire sales were very strong over the Thanksgiving holiday. The Fire was best selling electronic device on Amazon.com, no big surprise. And BestBuy.com reports that the Fire was its best selling tablet online, easily surpassing the iPad 2. It will be a long time until total Fire sales catch up with the iPad. But this initial success vindicates Amazon's decision to offer a more expensive general computing device.
 

haven

Expedition Leader
Here's a Kindle Fire review that includes 13 applications to help get stuff done
http://www.carrypad.com/2011/12/05/...ressions-and-13-apps-for-getting-things-done/

There are reports that some Fire owners are having difficulty establishing a WiFi connection to their home networks. Anyone here experiencing that issue?

Here's a report that claims that Silk, the Fire web browser, actually works faster when you set it to skip the acceleration via Amazon's EC2 cloud computing server farm.
http://blog.laptopmag.com/kindle-fires-silk-browser-25-percent-slower-with-cloud-acceleration-on
 

haven

Expedition Leader
Now there's a way to replace Amazon's operating system, which is a custom version of Android 2.x, with the generic Android 2.3. This is of interest mostly to folks who want to experiment with Android, since there already are ways to load just about any Android app onto the stock Kindle Fire. But for those with an interest, take a look here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1368012
 

locrwln

Expedition Leader
There are reports that some Fire owners are having difficulty establishing a WiFi connection to their home networks. Anyone here experiencing that issue?

My wife's hooks right up, no problems with hers at all.

Jack
 

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