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President Obama:

An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life. By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.

“Net neutrality” has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation — but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted. We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas. That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to answer the call of almost 4 million public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality.

This is a great step in the right direction, but I hope Obama’s lack of popularity in Washington doesn’t fog the issue.

Internet access should be classified as a public broadband utility. Period.

Told you it was a business model move:

Evernote announced today that it has raised $20 million in new capital from Nikkei, the Japanese media conglomerate that publishes the influential financial newspaper Nikkei, as well English-language Nikkei Asian Review. In addition, the Nikkei will also start feeding articles into Evernote’s Context feature, which launched last month.

Greg Kumparak:

The Apple II may be one of the most important systems in the history of personal computing — but that doesn’t mean it was perfect. Nearly 40 years later, Steve Wozniak is still coming up with ways he could have done it better.

Yesterday, Amazon announced Echo, a device that could be best summed up as Siri in a can.

The $199 cylinder plugs into the wall, and when activated with a “wake word.” Once it’s listening, it can handle all sorts of requests according to Amazon:

• News, weather, and information: Hear up-to-the-minute weather and news from a variety of sources, including local radio stations, NPR, and ESPN from TuneIn.
• Music: Listen to your Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio.
• Alarms, timers, and lists: Stay on time and organized with voice-controlled alarms, timers, shopping and to-do lists.
• Questions and answers: Get information from Wikipedia, definitions, answers to common questions, and more.

The introduction video, although a little hokey, shows the device in action, in the daily lives of a family:

In some ways, a device like — or bringing Siri to the TV — this feels like an inevitable move from Apple, but as Siri is still bound to iOS devices, it’s hard to predict when it’ll happen. In hindsight, Yosemite seems like the perfect time to bring Siri to the Mac, but it didn’t happen.

David Mark on The Loop is bullish on the device for this very reason:

I think Amazon will sell a ton of these. Why? Because they are filling a niche that is completely unserved right now. The butler robot is coming, but it is not here yet. And your cell phone is in your pocket and requires some amount of effort to access. Like that butler robot, Echo will be forever waiting for your command, waiting to serve you up some cloud-based information, assist you with a reminder, or help make an Amazon purchase, perhaps.

One key here is that Echo does not require a subscription fee. If you do not have a Siri-like capability on your cell phone, this adds that capability, and in a form that works well in your home.

There’s a problem with the butler robot idea, however, as John Gruber points out:

First, I think it’s problematic that Echo is anchored in a room. How will anyone get in the habit of using this instead of Siri or Google Now when they can only use it in one room? In their demo video, the family seemingly bought three or four of these things, because they have one in their living room, kitchen, and bedroom. Your phone is in your pocket all the time.

In the perfect world, Siri — or Amazon Echo, or Google Now or Microsoft Cortana — would be context-aware, able to take requests no matter the circumstance or location.

However, flexibility in reachability is only part of the equation. Any virtual assistant needs to be smart and powerful. Currently, all of the major services are more or less locked into the ecosystem of their creator, and that’s going to hurt Amazon the most, as the company’s devices are basically islands.

In many ways, that’s sort of Amazon’s modus operandi, as Dustin Curtis points out:

It’s extremely hard for me to understand Amazon’s consumer hardware strategy. Usually, when a company has a strategy I don’t understand, I can look deeper, ask employees, or analyze the greater market to get a faint idea of what is driving the company’s behavior. But with Amazon, I can’t. There is simply no rational explanation for its products. The only thing I can come up with is this: Amazon continues to make hardware because it doesn’t know that it sucks, and it has a fundamentally flawed understanding of media. With Amazon.com, it can heavily and successfully promote and sell its products, giving it false indicators of success.

Amazon’s smartphone support is the most telling sign of this:

Echo doesn’t stop working when you’re away from home. With the free companion app on Fire OS and Android, plus desktop and iOS browsers, you can easily manage your alarms, music, shopping lists, and more.

Any Internet-of-Things device needs better integration an iOS app. Period. Amazon’s unwillingness or inability to see past their own fork of Android is going to deeply hurt this product.

I don’t think Echo is going to be a run-away success. I think only Google or Apple are big enough to make something like this work, but even then, there are flaws.

Perhaps the largest one is the creepiness factor. While the Echo isn’t always listening, anything that’s just verbally activated feels more intrusive than a device the relies on a button press. I think that’s one reason — besides battery life — that the “Hey Siri” feature of iOS 8 only works when a device is plugged into power. It’s not going to be activated when you’re walking around.

Voice-based technology that’s helpful in everyday life isn’t here yet, and Amazon Echo isn’t the answer, but I think it does kick the can a little further down the road, despite its shortcomings.

Say what you will about how Chrysler ended up, the Pentastar logo is a part of American history. I’ll miss seeing it on buildings and tractor trailers driving down the highway.

File this away for the complaining we’ll all hear later this month.

I missed recording yesterday, but episode 12 of Connected is a good one:

This week Federico and Myke talk a little about photo storage solutions, before discussing the widgets in their Today Views, what’s on Federico’s iPad home screen and his impressions of the iPad Air 2.

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These days, it’s hard to argue in favor of dedicated devices.

Smartphones have taken the place of consumer video recorders, point-n-shoot cameras and even the iPod.

Fitness bands — despite several recent product announcements from Jawbone, Fitbit and Microsoft — will seem silly once the Apple Watch hits shelves early next year.

In this world, Amazon continues to release e-ink Kindles each year, despite themselves making an entire line of iPad-style tablets.

The iPod-vs-iPhone comparison is impossible not to make. Apple’s venerable music player slowly faded away because the iPhone was simply a better way to enjoy music on the go. It did video better, had a built-in connection to the iTunes Store and was already in everyone’s pocket. Carrying a dedicated music player in the other pocket stopped make sense to the vast majority of consumers, so the iPod went away.

I don’t think that’s the case for the e-ink Kindle quite yet. Reading on a Kindle Fire or iPad Air is a fine enough experience, but it lacks in something only the e-ink Kindles can provide: a tactile experience while reading.

E-ink does its best to mimic honest-to-goodness, made-from-dead-trees paper. There’s a quality to reading on these displays that’s just better than reading on an LCD, no matter the resolution.

There’s also the fact that no matter how much stuff Amazon crams into the OS that runs on their e-ink devices, a Kindle isn’t going to chime with an incoming email or Slack notification.

However, is that experience enough to save keep the e-ink Kindle line alive? How does the new Kindle Voyage stack up to previous generations?

Hardware

I’ve reviewed two previous Kindles: the 2011 base model and the first-generation Kindle Paperwhite.

The Voyage is much less of a leap forward than that original Paperwhite was, but the collection of improvements leads to a better experience.

Screen

The Voyage retains the front-lit screen from the Paperwhite, but there’s no hint of dark spots or uneven lighting that plagued early models.

The backlight is far less yellow tinted than the Paperwhite. The LEDs are cooler in appearance, but not so much that the lighting is harsh. I actually prefer the color temperature on the Voyage, as it helps things feel more crisp.

The biggest improvement to the backlight on the new Kindle, however, is its ability to auto-adjust based on ambient brightness. While the manual controls are still present, I haven’t had the need to adjust things myself. Amazon’s gotten auto-adjust right.

The screen itself is now flush with the bezel around it, making the depression seen on previous models a thing of the past.

That’s not to say the text on the screen appears on the surface of the display, like on the laminated displays Apple uses on the iPhone and iPad Air 2. There is an air gap between the screen and the cover, but it’s miles better than the sunken-in displays of Kindles past.

The screen is now 300 ppi, up from the 212 ppi found on the still-for-sale Paperwhite. While the increase in pixel density may not dramatic on paper, in practice, the Voyage is far more pleasant to read. Letterforms are clearer, curves are less jagged, and everything is just more crisp.

The Voyage’s screen is now covered in micro-etched glass, which Amazon says reduces glare and more closely matches the feel of paper than previous screens.

Glare is better on the Voyage, but I wasn’t complaining about it on my Paperwhite. The texture can be felt if you rub your fingers across the display, but unless you have a stack of old Kindles at your disposal, it’s hard to tell the difference from memory.

Buttons!

In my Paperwhite review, I wrote this, regarding the touch screen:

Touches are precise and register quickly, but in my brief time using the device, I haven’t gotten used to poking the screen. But that’s not the fault of the Kindle, but rather my own years of use.

Two years with the Paperwhite were enough for me to get used to touching the screen to change pages, but not enough for me to like touching the screen to change pages.

It’s too easy to fire some other interaction on the touch screen, and if you’re in bed, jockeying your hands around to be able to hold the device comfortably and tap the screen is annoying.

Thankfully, the Kindle Voyage sort of brings back the page-turn buttons of old.

I say sort of because the page control mechanism isn’t a physical button like before, but instead, a set of force sensors that turn the page when the side bezel is squeezed. Amazon calls this “PagePress” and it’s not nearly as awkward as it seems on paper:

PagePress is a custom-designed force sensor made of carbon and silver, which reacts to a subtle increase of pressure, triggers a page-turn, and provides a haptic response only your thumb can perceive. Because PagePress has no moving parts, the haptics provide you with the most minimal indication that you have pressed the button, to reduce distraction from reading.

In practice, this is the best page-turning mechanism Amazon’s shipped on a Kindle. It takes just enough force where it’s intentional, but not tiring, and like previous generation-Kindles, both forward and back controls are present on each side.

The Kindle’s software lets you fine-tune the pressure needed to trigger a page turn and the amount of haptic feedback that’s given from the device. Additionally, the whole thing can be turned off, giving users the biggest range of options ever presented on a Kindle for page control.

Body

Size-wise, the Voyage is slightly shorter and noticeably thinner than the Paperwhite. The Kindle logo on the front is more subdued, but the back of the device is radically different.

The soft-touch material is still present, but it’s now neighbors with a hard plastic section at the top, and the whole thing is divided into angled sections. This makes the Kindle Voyage feel thinner than it actually is, but I prefer the look of the Paperwhite’s back.

(As before, the back is a fingerprint magnet. Human grease is gross.)

The power button has been moved from the bottom lip of the device to the back, ending our long national nightmare of accidentally putting our Kindles to sleep by bumping them against something. The micro USB port is still present at the bottom, as is the LED showing charging status.

The Case

Amazon’s $59 case for the Kindle Voyage — dubbed the Leather Origami Cover, but named “Amazon Protective Leather Cover for Kindle Voyage” on Amazon’s webpage is the weirdest case for any device I’ve ever used.

The Kindle snaps onto the back part of the case using magnets, and the cover comes in from the top — not the side — like an old reporter’s notebook.

The cover itself is divided into five sections, making it look like Batman-style body armor. These panels can be folded into a stand when flipped backwards, making the Origami case a type of mini-easel for the Kindle.

While I like the idea of this, in practice, it’s far too fiddly. I can’t ever seem to remember which way to manipulate the case to make it stay together, and the contact point created by the cover-turned-tripod-foot is far too small, allowing the Kindle to tip over if used on a soft surface like a bed.

The relative uselessness of the case, coupled with the fact that it’s just plain bulky is too much for me. I’ve been using it to house my Kindle in while stashed in my messenger bag, but if I’m reading, I flip back the cover and pry the Kindle off the case’s magnetic back. My desire for a naked robotic core — a device that’s best used without adornment, but can be transported in something bigger — has never been true for a Kindle before now.

Software

The Kindle Voyage does a lot of things I ignore. While an occasional trip to the dictionary is nice, I don’t take advantage of most of the software features Amazon has packed into this thing. X-Ray is mostly a novelty to me, as I can keep up with references in a book without an issue, I don’t share on Goodreads and I don’t take notes as I read.

Thankfully, the Kindle’s core experience of just reading can be enjoyed without worrying about these services and features.

Conclusion

At $199 (or $289 if you spring for 3G and no ads) the Kindle Voyage is expensive compared to the $119 Kindle Paperwhite or $79 Kindle. There’s no real way around that.

The question at hand is this: is the extra dough for the Voyage worth it? In my experience — coming from a first-generation Paperwhite — the answer is yes, if you use your Kindle heavily. If you don’t, or if you don’t mind the display you’ve already got, the Voyage may be worth skipping.

I view this sort of like the iPad upgrade problem. Year-over-year improvements may not be worth the money for most people, but there compelling reasons to upgrade every few years for almost everyone.

As far as the future of dedicated devices, I think the Kindle is safe for now. I still prefer reading on my Kindle over my Retina iPad mini and I enjoy using and care about the Kindle, but I can’t help but think I’m in a shrinking minority.

If you have a nerd on your shopping list this year, start with this post.

Three years ago, I wrote this.

It may be one of the best things I’ve ever published on this site. I honestly don’t know, as I haven’t read it in quite some time.

It’s been a weird three years since publishing that letter.

If the first three years of Josiah’s life were marked by white-knuckle panic and the fear of the unknown, the most recent three have been marked by periods of normalcy punctured with reminders of how serious his condition — and how fragile his life — really is.

The symmetry isn’t lost on me. Today, Josiah turns six; he was six months old when diagnosed. My wife and I have been together for 12 years; I remarked yesterday that we’ve had Josiah for half of our entire relationship.

In April 2013, Josiah was awarded his Make-A-Wish trip — a week spent at Disney World and Give Kids the World. It was an unforgettable gift, and one whose memories we will always treasure.

The rest of 2013 wasn’t as relaxing as that trip, unfortunately. Over the summer and into the fall, Josiah’s seizure activity — which had been kept at bay for years by medication — skyrocketed. We descended into a circular pattern of seizure-caused trips to the local children’s hospital (usually by ambulance) and ever-increasing doses of seizure medication.

Almost exactly a year ago, Josiah spent nearly a week in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, hooked up to an EEG around the clock. As the week went on, doctors weaned Josiah off his meds, trying to induce a seizure so they could catch on with the computer. That ultimately didn’t take place, but Josiah’s doctors still recommended an operation to ease his seizures. In many patients, a temporal lobectomy can ease seizures like the one Josiah was having.

In the run up to his resection surgery, an MRI showed what looked like tumor growth in the region in question. The operation, it was decided, would kill two birds with one stone: help with the seizures and provide sample to test for cancer cells.

The news of potential tumor growth is what Merri and I had been dreading since Josiah came off chemotherapy in 2010. It was a whirlwind of additional tests and procedures, including putting a new port in Josiah’s chest to receive chemo as soon as he was strong enough post-surgery.

In hindsight, it’s amazing we handled it so well. Perhaps it was the time spent in therapy after falling apart at the end of 2010, but I felt relatively calm and in control of my emotions and thoughts. We were both afraid as Josiah’s December 18 surgery date rushed down upon us, but we were all in the moment, together, without the haze of my depression fogging my mind.

Two days before his surgery, I had to buzz Josiah’s head. We had not given him a haircut since his hair had come back after treatment, and it just about broke my wife’s heart. Josiah wasn’t happy about it, but after I let him help Merri do my head as well, he was a little more on board.

Josiah’s surgery went very well. He woke up aware of his surroundings, and didn’t take too large of a hit in his physical and occupational therapy.

Most remarkably, the tissue samples showed no clear signs of tumor growth. We had geared up for chemo, walking up to the threshold of everything it entails, but didn’t have to step back into that world. We felt relieved, but it took a while for the adrenaline and the fight to drain away.

We were home for Christmas, and enjoyed a quiet holiday. It was a sweet time with the four of us.

As time has moved on, we’ve seen the effects of this operation unfold over time. It didn’t end Josiah’s seizures, but it did help. Over the last 9 months or so, however, they have creeped back in, and while things aren’t as serious as they were a year ago, Josiah’s still on a lot of anti-seizure medication.

Several months ago, Josiah’s oncologist — the man who has guided Josiah’s care for five and a half years — reminded my wife and I that increased seizure activity didn’t mean increased tumor involvement. It’s a conversation I hang on to every time we deal with it.

Earlier this year, my wife started homeschooling Josiah for kindergarten. It’s been challenging; between the medicine and the short-term memory issues, Josiah has good days and bad days in the classroom.

When I think about this, it breaks my heart. I don’t know what Josiah’s future holds, but I know that it will include challenges and hardships caused by his cancer. It’s unfair, and it makes me angry, but Josiah’s the kindest, funniest person I know, which helps offset my fear.

Josiah’s sweet spirit has never been so clear as it is when he interacts with his siblings. He and Allison, our 4-year-old daughter are best friends. They spend all day together, often in their own world.

Six weeks ago, my wife gave birth to our third child and Josiah now has a little sister and a little brother. Jude Stephen’s namesake should be clear. Many times, I’ve caught Josiah standing next to Jude’s bed, singing to him as he sleeps. He sang “Happy Birthday” to Jude the first time he saw him in the hospital.

That picture — of my six-year old son singing to my newborn — is everything you need to know about Josiah. The universe has been unbelievably cruel to him with a rare, aggressive cancer diagnosis, but his life is full of love and hope and music.

Happy birthday, buddy. I need to hear your voice as long as I possibly can.

Keep singing.

Automate your bookkeeping tasks for your small business, setup takes 10 minutes. Join the tens of thousands of business owners that gave up on spreadsheets and quickbooks and decided to give LessAccounting a try. Let us show you a less stressful way to handle bookkeeping and make your accountant happy. 14 day trial, 30 day money back promise, stop wasting time with bookkeeping and get back to being a badass.