Before the Kindle Fire was made official, sources for TechCrunch and gdgt said the tablet was taking inspiration from the BlackBerry PlayBook. The Kindle Fire was designed by Quanta, which is the same company that designed the BlackBerry PlayBook. What’s interesting is this isn’t the first time a Kindle product was designed using a BlackBerry product as a template. The original Kindle contained traces of BlackBerry as well.

Nokia is going through some big changes. The company just isn’t what it used to be. There was a time when Nokia phones were the talk of the town. When smartphones started to take over, Nokia steadily fell from grace. Through its partnership with Microsoft, Nokia will ditch its Symbian OS for smartphones in favor of the Windows Phone 7 OS. Along with that dramatic shift comes a new company-wide typeface.

HP may have purchased Palm for its best asset, the WebOS operating system, but the company isn’t doing much to stem the departure of people involved in its creation. Palm has lost several high profile members this year, including the lead of the user interface design team, the man responsible for its webOS notification system, more »

The Alex eReader from Spring Design was made available for pre-order back in mid-March, and now it looks like those orders will begin shipping. The news comes by way of an official, albeit short press release that confirmed the good news. In short, anyone that was willing to place a pre-order should begin to keep more »

Adobe Creative Suite 4 has been out for a while now, and has come to dominate all creative computer programs on the market. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks are all examples of programs that you will see in CS4 and what you will see on just about every computer that a web designer, artist, and photographer’s more »

It looks like those March 16 rumors were true, because Spring Design has announced that the Alex ereader is now available for pre-order. Of course, a quick visit to the website is still referring users to check back, but I am sure that will, or may have already changed. In terms of price, those interested more »

Here we have yet another ebook reader and yet another rumored launch date. This time the rumor is in regards to the Alex ebook reader from Spring Design and suggests that it will soon be available. Well maybe soon is an understatement here, according to the rumor it will be available as of March 16 more »

Looking at the above image it is hard not to see the similarities between the Barnes & Noble Nook and the other ebook reader which comes courtesy of Spring Design. That other ebook reader is called the Alex reader, and although many initially thought it was a copycat of the Nook, it seems that is more »

One of the thing about Google is that it is very consistent. Going to Google.com hardly ever leads to confusion (unless there’s a Googlefail going on). Google has actually made aesthetic changes to its pages. Revised logos are now part of Google properties like maps, news, and docs. While it’s not a huge change, I’d more »

Sure, television is going digital eventually, but that doesn’t mean that all content will be in the 16:9 aspect ratio. If you have a 16:9 television, you’ve surely noticed pillar bars on 4:3 content. If you’ve got a 4:3 television, you’ve probably noticed letterboxing of movies and some newer television programs. Sure, you could zoom or stretch the image, but then everyone looks strange and out or proportion on your television.

Studio FRST has an interesting take on the whole thing called 16943. Maybe the current design for televisions is broken. Take a look at this asymmetrical design. When either 4:3 or 16:9 content is on this screen, you will not notice bars on each side of the screen. You’ll only have a bar on one side of the screen.