Saturday, June 14, 2014

Amazon Launch Annoucement Guesses for June 18th

I think its going to be some sort of color Kindle.  Possibly all in one, phone + kindle using a color epaper or similar technology screen such as one from the Pixel Qi.  I perused the source for the announcement page looking for hints, like ice wine and things like that.

I'm going to guess the name will be Kindle Fireflies or Kindle Firefly in reference to the multiple camera's following the users face/eyes which will be used to control the 3d interface of the device.  I'm also guessing next page/previous page will be an area at the bottom of the page on the left and right edges of the screen where the user looks for a second.  My guess is eye tracking and delay are the touchless features of the new OS/Kindle.  You move your eyes naturally while reading from top left to bottom right, so why not have 'next page' be at the end of the last line?  You could prop up the device and not even have to hold it!

To further my hunch on a new updated reader, Amazon sent out a children's book [Mr. Pine's Purple House] to invitees to the event with this note from Bezos:

We’re excited that you’ll be joining us next week in Seattle. Enclosed is my favorite childhood book – Mr Pine’s Purple House. I think you’ll agree that the world is a better place when things are a little bit different.

From Amazon’s description of the book:
“Mr. Pine lived on Vine Street in a little white house.” That’s all fine and dandy, but there are 50 white houses on Vine Street, all in a line, and Mr. Pine can’t tell which one is his! To distinguish his own abode, he decides to plant a little pine tree in front, but his neighbors like that idea so much, they do it, too. Even when he plants a bush next to his tree, everyone follows suit. Finally, Mr. Pine paints his house purple–and to his delight, no one else wants a purple house. His neighbors are inspired, however, to paint their own houses all different colors, their first break with conformity. “‘Yellow for me,’ said Mrs. Green. ‘Green for me,’ said Mrs. Brown.”

Since it was a book, and one that has color imagery, I'm guessing this is referencing all prior e-readers are very very similar and there hasn't really been any major progress since the first kindle.  I think the end pretty much sums up my guess since it references colors for the houses, which used to be all white (e-paper background color).  The fact that the book happens to be on Vine street (amazon's vine program invites the most trusted reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make informed purchase decisions) and of course the connection to Ice Wine, which is made from grapes off of vines.  Don't worry I know its crazy talk.

In the source for the announcement page in css and js, I found the following text items:
fireflies  (i'm thinking the multiple cameras and play with words like kindle, fire etc)
na-kindle (https://dnvfwibzuuif0.cloudfront.net/na-kindle/customer_tease_0603.mp4)
beacon
rumor
hero
sizzle (bad name probably just css fadeout)
airy (apparently its just a video player but it could fit into a name for a touchless interface name)

One of the other things I noticed was the teaser video has "0603" at the end.  I'm guessing that is the dimensions of the device or its screen in inches.  Notice the top of the device in this photo:


Which also corroborates my guess of a phone/kindle hybrid device.  Its kind of silly if that is the case because they are not showing the video on the new device, so it would basically just be an Easter egg for someone like me to find and guess about.  However, the fact that the top of the device looks to be about the size of a larger phone makes it more obvious.  Unfortunately the glasses reflection looks like a normal LCD screen, but hopefully its a sort of frontlight like the paperwhite on a screen like the Pixel Qi.

Also in the announcement page if you download the background image its much larger than its cropped to be in the page: