Well, today I received my Kindle Fire.  I pre-ordered this on Sep 28 when they were announced.  I’ve been eagerly awaiting to see if there is anything that can be a better-priced tablet-like consumption device like iPad.  I absolutely love my existing Kindle reading device.  Love it.  If you are looking for an e-reader device only, you should look no further than the Kindle reading-specific devices.  They are priced so good now that there is no excuse if you are an avid reader and have always wanted one.

Before I get to my “review” I wanted to share a little bit about myself, my usage and my reality with these types of things.  I hesitate to even call this a review because I’m not a gadget reviewer, paid jaded journalist or a fanboy of any kind when it comes to these things.  My allegiance is to awesome products that are practical for me.

I currently own an iPhone 4, iPad 2, MacBook, Lenovo, Roku, XBOXen and a Windows Phone.  In the past I’ve also had an Google Nexus One device but no longer have that (or other Android device) in my possession…until now.  I use my devices for personal use mostly, but as a super nerd…it is hard to say that I don’t use my phone as my communication device for work either.  My usage is mostly consumption.  I look at my calendar/contacts, watch movies, listen to music, read books, take pictures, play some casual games, watch television shows and other Internet TV and read/compose email content.  I am not creating large content, movie trailers, etc. with any of my devices.  I like when things work, are easy to use (or easy to figure out how to work around things when they aren’t easy to actually use) and are responsive to my needs.  I don’t care/know about any clock-speed benchmarks on performance stuff between any devices that I’ve ever owned/used because, frankly, it doesn’t matter.  What matters to me in performance is my perception and expectations…now what a high-speed camera says. 

With all that said, here are my initial impressions after a few hours (not an exhaustive use, agreed) with the device from opening to writing this.  Forgive the thoughts if they seem random…they are in order of my thoughts and usage.  Also forgive some of the Apple comparisons…but I trust you’ll understand them to be valid as they are the king of user experience.

Packaging

I friggin’ love Amazon packaging.  It is industrial but easy to use, no tools required, and just ‘get to the product’ fast.  I’ve often said I’d love to sit in a focus group and watch all the executives from cereal companies open their product boxes.  The Kindle Fire packaging is just what you’d expect from amazon and with a pull of the cardboard ‘zipper’ I was at my Fire.

I pulled it out and my gut reaction was huh, this feels heavier than I’d expect for the size.  The size also struck me as small initially…even knowing what the dimensions were.  It is just a bit smaller than my Moleskine that I use…which, in fact, is kind of an advantage as I can carry the two together (surely someone will latch onto this and make an awesome case). 

 

The one thing that disappointed me was the power cord.  The current Kindle’s that I own have a well-designed power cord.  It has personality, compact and just has that just here to give you power kind of attitude.  The Kindle Fire one feels like I just bought a ThinkPad laptop.  Disappointing.  But I realize this is a power cord…still, just feels like a step back in product design when compared to their existing platform.

First power-on experience

Sorry Amazon, you colossally failed here.  Now I’m not complaining about the speed because my iOS devices take forever from a cold boot.  But I could sense the Android-ness of the boot here.  The logo flashed a few times rather than a consistent image on screen.  This just made it feel unpolished a bit.

But that’s not the part that bothered me.  Immediately upon getting to the first screen, I was greeted with a list of wireless networks.  Very nice start.  I selected the one for my house which is WPA-2 protected and I have a long passphrase.  I was prompted quickly to enter the phrase and presented with a keyboard in portrait orientation (more on orientation in a minute).  The keyboard really felt comfortable in the portrait orientation and I could use it quickly. 

Once I entered my password and clicked next, it immediately recognized me…as the Kindle owner.  And by this I mean it said “Welcome TIm Heuer” and connected to my Amazon account.  I suspect they associated my serial number with my account pre-ship and this was a good touch.  I had the immediate impression that my library of content would be immediately available (more on that in a bit too).  However, this is where it went downhill…fast.

The screen then said it was downloading updates.  W.T.F.?! 

My first impression of a brand new device that hadn’t been on the market was that an update was already needed?  Big time un-polish.  I was not even able to get to any user screen and this update is in my face.  I figured it wouldn’t take that long though…after all, what could need updating already.

I was wrong.

I didn’t clock-time it but I was able to complete the following before the 100% mark was hit: eat a bowl of cereal (already poured), wash my bowl, vacuum my kitchen wood floor with a quick sweeper, go upstairs to take off my shoes and put some slippers on (yes, I wear slippers when I get home…don’t be jealous), come back downstairs, get a drink, get a pad of paper to start taking some notes, and then sit down in the living room.  There are a lot of factors here that could be in play like WiFi strength, bandwidth, etc. but the bottom-line for me was that this was a horrible first impression.

All that aside I figured it was done.  After all, I hadn’t even got to a real user screen yet.  Nope, it rebooted.  Ok, fine let it reboot.  After the reboot I was then presented with an Installing Updates screen.  Seriously?  Man, this was frustrating.

It applied the updates and brought me to the start screen.

Start screen organization

FIrst a note on the lock screen.  This appears to be a portrait-only orientation thing.  This seems odd, but not a deal-breaker by any means…just odd.

After a quick little walk-through on-screen of where things were, I got presented with the start screen.  There wasn’t a ton there but the Facebook logo was prominent as was some simple navigation that was obvious: Music, Video, Docs, Books, Apps, Web. 

Your 'recently used’ items are presented in sort of a bookshelf flip view thing.  Then there is another ‘shelf’ of where you can put favorites.  Fine.

The device doesn’t seem to respond fluidly to orientation changes and the change is abrupt feeling.  There were times I did the shake it a bit because that is supposed to wake up the gyro move to get it to flip.  This is slightly annoying.

The presentation of items in the shelf-flipper-thingy is pretty responsive to navigation in touch, although I felt the number of items it scrolled on a small touch gesture was too much.

Navigation

I didn’t think I’d mind not having any hardware buttons, but I do.  The lack of a ‘home’ button is kind of annoying especially since the device itself is hard to distinguish the top of it.  Having a hardware home button I think is key.  It is the eject button to get you back home no matter where you are in the device.  Kindle Fire doesn’t have one.

Instead they maintain navigation through a toolbar on the bottom, which does have a home button.  When in apps it can be visible or will be subtly hidden and you have to tap it to bring it up.  It isn’t always obvious, but it is there.  Still a hardware home would be nice.

There are also no volume hardware buttons.  This bothers me less actually.  Most of the time when needing to change volume I’ll be in an app that has these controls or me.  It’s one of those nice-to-have features but I don’t think it degrades the experience too much.

The picture presented here in this section shows you my touch points on the screen used after a few hours…this should give you an idea of all the places I had to touch to navigate in different areas.

Mail, calendar, contacts

I quickly went to configure mail.  Colossal fail #2 for the Kindle Fire.

I was presented with a screen asking what type of account I had.  Sweet, I picked Gmail.  I was then asked my login information, which I provided.  Then I was presented with What kind of account is this? screen and asked to choose POP or IMAP.

W.T.F.?!

I am currently awaiting a phone call from my relatives who bought one of these to have me help walk them through this phase.

This is horrible.  POP/IMAP is not user-friendly things to put in front of users unless you absolutely have to.  I’m not convinced for the major email providers they present as options this is at all necessary.  The problem is clearly that I use Google Apps for my domain and Fire doesn’t understand that.  This is a shame.  I was unable to complete my email setup without looking up settings.  Fail.  Fail.

I then also noticed explicitly on the mail screen that it calls out that you will not be able to connect to a Microsoft Exchange account without buying an app separate for this.  Fail #3 in the mail experience.  Seriously, I realize that they may not cater to Exchange, but iOS supports this as well in their platform!  My suspicion here is licensing…but that is just a guess that Amazon just didn’t want to do work here and rely on the Android app ecosystem…which will fail them.

So in the end I did not set up mail…it is just too cumbersome and is not going to fit my needs.  This is a minor problem as I can use web mail, but still annoying.

There doesn’t appear to be a calendar app at all.  Not just to sync with my actual calendar (which won’t work anyways since I use Exchange), but not a calendar to even look at.  This seems odd.

Contacts is there, but again, no sync. 

Basically this will not be a mail, calendar, contacts device for me.  This is a problem for my usage.

Media content

I do use Amazon media content and am a Prime member.  I have a set of music in Amazon Cloud player and also regularly rent/view movies from Amazon.  The video and music experiences are acceptable to me here for the Amazon-based content.  I have no real complaints.

As I noted earlier when I turned on my device it automatically recognized me as the user.  These media areas are tightly integrated with your account so I didn’t have to “log in” anymore to use them.

There is a Pandora app that came pre-installed and I configured it with my account.  The interesting thing is that when I launched it I was warned about data usage fees.  I realize this is because this is an Android app that is used elsewhere, but it shows the lack of customization tailored to the device.  This is a WiFI only device right now…I shouldn’t have seen that warning.

Hulu and Netflix were my next tries.  I had to go to the Store to download these apps first.  These both installed fine and I was able to configure my accounts quickly.  I actually like the Hulu app.  I think it feels right from a UX perspective and the playback was fine.

Netflix app needs some work.  Frankly it feels like they are wrapping their web site.  It sucks.  It most closely resembles their Roku app, which sucks just as equally.  Part of me suspects it actually is the same app.  The input controls, etc. just didn’t feel like they belong.  Regardless I was able to watch movies.  That’s what counts I guess.

Store

If you’ve never used Android before, then the store will appear unfamiliar in some ways.  I’ve seen this before and was able to quickly navigate, understand how purchases are queued in the background, etc.  I had no real problems here.

What I find interesting is the lack of consistency that Amazon is enforcing in the Fire.  The Facebook, Pandora, Hulu and Netflix app icons are all different sizes.  The Netflix one is clearly their iOS one…as does the Pandora one feels the same.  When these are all next to each other on the home screens in the ‘shelves’ they really do look inconsistent (size, rounded, square, etc.) and some are just blurry.  No attention to detail here.

The other thing I didn’t like about the store was the amount of email receipts in my inbox!  Amazon hasn’t figured out how to batch things.  This is only slightly annoying but after getting used to the fact I can make 10 purchases over the course of 2-3 days on iOS and get a unified one-receipt mail, this is another lack of attention to detail.  Not a show-stopper, just an observation.

Reading experience

This is a Kindle after all, right?!  I’m not an avid reader, but have been reading a lot lately.  My Kindle 3 works great for reading and is easy on the eyes.  I don’t think you can really beat e-ink.  The reading experience on the Fire is much like the iPad.  It’s a glossy screen, very bright, and for long reading intervals probably won’t be great.  I have changed my colors and font sizes to adapt to this.

Other than that the reading experience is fine.  Touch to page flip, etc.  No complaints here.

Be sure to protect your Kindle Fire with a case. Caseable allows you to create a custom case for your Kindle

“Other” category of feedback

Here are just some thoughts on some other areas of feedback

• touch performance seems inconsistent from app to app and even within the Kindle’s own apps
• Keyboard doesn’t auto-dismiss in areas where it should for me
• auto-complete/correct are annoying – this is not a Kindle-specific problem as I realize every system needs to be trained
• since the speakers are on the ‘top’ of the device, when lying on a desk to listen to music I prefer the landscape orientation and the music app actually looks better in that view, IMO
• web browsing seems fine. it doesn’t feel as fast as they keep talking about, but so far frankly no browser seems fast to me. I wait for pages to load and deal with it. The Fire browser isn’t fast to me, but doesn’t feel terribly slow either when compared to my real use on iOS Safari as well.
  • Note that YouTube defaults to their mobile site, which royally sucks (unless iOS)
• Web pages as apps – Facebook and Twitter actually give you icons as “apps” but really just launch the web browser to their mobile site views…nothing special as an app.  If you want a better Facebook/Twitter app experience I recommend the Seesmic app as it will do both in one app quite well
• The Amazon settings seem to be broken on my device
  • It gave me the option to name my device, which I did, but despite that the upper left corner of my device still reads “Tim’s 3rd kindle” which was the default name…and yes I’ve rebooted a few times.
  • The app has a “Your Account” tab on the top that no matter how much I stare at it or tap it, does nothing.  No idea.
• No opinion of battery life yet
• The lack of camera, microphone don’t bother me.  My iPad has these and the camera sucks and I don’t use it anyway.

Overall impression

The thing that frustrates me is that Amazon cut corners here.  They have one Kindle Fire device.  They aren’t saying that Kindle Fire is available on Android tablets…they made one.  Because of this I expected a really tailored experience…and am not seeing it.  You had one platform to optimize perfomance, you owned the implementation of certain things, etc…and you took advantage of little of that.  You put a good start screen on content…but didn’t tailor the other portions…this is a shame.

If you also want to be a serious contender there are also areas you shouldn’t rely on the app ecosystem to fix for you.  I am primarily talking about the ‘work’ side of things.  Seriously, invest in a good Microsoft Exchange story here.  Get the mail client to work with it, make it better than 3rd party apps and create a calendar app too.  Give me, the user, the integration that feels right.  Don’t make me install 2 apps to get mail/calendar and then I have 3 separate apps that don’t integrate with each other *at all* – not good for the user.

For the price point, this feels like a good device for those who want to consume media and books but don’t want to shell out for an iPad.  After using it I am liking the size a bit more.  I think all the arguments of the amount of apps available for the Kindle Fire is a bunch of BS.  It isn’t about the number of apps…it is about the amount of apps that matter.  They big name casual games are there, the big media apps are there, etc.  So far there is only a few niche things that I “miss” but can still live without. 

Will I keep this device?  Not sure yet.  The mail/calendar/contacts thing bothers the heck out of me.  I’ll use it for a few weeks on my normal consumption to determine the realism of if I’ll use it.  I think I will, but need some more real-world usage on may day-to-day life to determine.

If you only want an e-reader, don’t get this.  Get the $79 Kindle or Kindle Touch.  This will be over-kill, confusing and not great on the eyes for *lots* of reading (neither is the iPad).  If you use Amazon services already and want an Amazon-driven experience for that content (books, Amazon MP3/Cloud Player, Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant Video) then this device seems reasonable to acquire for the price.

Hope this helps!

I was searching my archives for sending something to my team this morning after looking at various bugs logged from customers, internal partner teams and ourselves.  I had an old post from 2005 but it unfortunately used a Shrinkster URL that appears not to be working.  So here’s the mail I sent to my team this morning.  This is purely my opinion but things that I think make a great bug report for fastest resolution:

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As we triage and such I know that there are likely times that you are frustrated with not enough detail to even determine if this is a bug or needs investigation. This leads to feature teams spending time doing unnecessary things getting more data…and the cycle of time eventually delays product quality. To that end, when *we* log bugs I’d ask that you take into account my opinion of the “anatomy of a good bug”:

• Title: Required. This is obvious. The title should be concise but describe the problem in one line so that someone can quickly glance at it and get a feel of the issue immediately. Something like “control doesn’t work” is not helpful. Something like “TreeView shows blank nodes when binding to hierarchical data” is much more descriptive, yet concise.
• Path: Required. Almost every bug system requires and area/path assignment. You should do your best to assign this to where you think appropriate. If you are crystal clear, select the specific path. If you aren’t, then don’t guess too deep. Putting something at Product\Feature-Team\Feature-Area\Functional-Area\Control-Name might be too “deep” of a guess and would get bounced around. When in doubt, get up to the feature level and let triage teams who likely know the right path put it deeper or re-assign.
• Keywords: Optional. This is helpful for you usually. If there is a place to set keywords, you should consider putting some that might be helpful for searchers or yourself. However don’t spackle keywords all over titles/descriptions.
• Assigned: This usually defaults in bug systems to something like “Active” or “Not Assigned” – unless you know the specific person it should be assigned to, don’t guess.
• Priority/Severity: Optional. This usually defaults in systems as well. If you think the default is not correct for your issue, then change it. But if you are changing it to a higher (read: must fix ASAP) then you owe it to someone to send an email out. Logging high-pri bugs without an email is usually not a good idea.
• Build/Branch/Version: Required. Systems call these things different, and sometimes they are individually separated as well. However, this should be seen as required information. When someone looks at a bug they should know on what version of software you are using. They may immediately know “oh that was version 4.12, cool I know we fixed that in 4.2” and add that information to you back. Absent that information the investigator is left guessing on which build/version you were using and they may be flailing for a while with various versions. Even if there are fields for this in the system I usually always put this at the top of the repro steps as well for greater visibility.
• Description: Required. Yes you put a title, but you still owe it to the investigator/triage to provide a bit more depth. The description should re-iterate the title, but also provide the scenario and other supporting detail. Things like “it worked in version XYZ” or “works on competitor platform Z and adds significant value to customer” are some additional data points that help understanding why you are logging it. Descriptions maintain history of the bug so pasting emails for context, etc. are entirely appropriate IMO.
  • NOTE: I used an example of “worked on version XYZ” – some systems have specific indicators whether this is a Regression or not. Even if they do I would indicate regression data in the description.
• Repro Steps: Required. Perhaps the absolute most critical portion of your bug log. IMO this should include:
  • Version/Build/Branch
  • Steps – verbatim – yes I usually write these out with numbered lists:
    • 1. Open VS
    • 2. Create new C# Application
    • 3. Open designer and write this code
    • …
  • Once you hit the issue at hand break into Expected/Actual statements. This is where you would note what you Expected (i.e., “Control would render on UI surface”) and what was the Actual (i.e., “UnhandledException of type foo shown and crashed VS”).  In the Actual section would be a good place to paste call stacks, exception messages, etc. in addition to any simple error seen.

Here’s a template I use for the “repro steps” area of a bug report to remind me:

Repro on Version XYZ

Repro Steps:

1. Step 1
2. Step 2

Expected:

What did you expect to happen

Actual:

What actually happened

I find this has been helpful to continue to remind me of what is required and helpful.  Most systems allow you to create bug templates.  I have a bug template that includes this primer data in the repro steps for me.

• Sample Repro: Required. In my opinion, this is required. There is no greater path to resolution or understanding of a given bug then by having your specific issue immediately available. Without it the repro steps are helpful but may not be detailed enough in the code that you are using as well. This sample repro should be isolated to the issue at hand and should be simple to get up and running. If you send me a zip of your ERP system and expect me to fix why text is right-aligned incorrectly, that’s a colossal waste of my time getting a huge app set up trying to find the one issue. Often this exercise of narrowing the repro also identifies some issues where it might be user code. Regardless, provide a repro and keep it simple.
  • Sometimes attaching screenshots of what you are seeing is appropriate as well to help with an issue that might be a visual one and leads to faster understanding than setting up the repro.
• Close Bugs: When bugs are resolved back to you as fixed do your diligence to verify your bug quickly and close it out. Historically up to 15% of resolved bugs are re-activated. If we re-activate too late, we run the risk of missing key quality points in that area where you logged the bug. If you cannot verify it (because of time, out on vacation, etc.) then reach out to a test lead and indicate you cannot verify soon enough and request assistance to re-assign the Resolved bug to close.

Following these principles helps drive quality into our products. It does this by leading to faster times to get to understood, agreed-upon bugs. Please make sure we help our own team and partner teams when we log bugs to ensure we’re providing good information to help them fix what we think are issues.

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I hope this helps perhaps as some guiding principles when you log bugs against products that you use and/or within your own team.

My family and I do not have traditional television in our homes (see My move to free HDTV Part 1 and Part 2).  In our home for “live” TV (which of course we have none) we rely on services like Hulu (which has been working perfectly fine and we haven’t felt we’ve missed anything).  We get Hulu, Netflix and Amazon media through our XBOX.  It works for our needs for things that are mainstream.

This weekend we wanted to watch a conference that wasn’t on any of these outlets and the stream provided wasn’t working on their website.  A friend pointed out to me that they did, however, have a channel on Roku.  I had been wanting to try out a Roku for a while but never really pushed over the edge because the main content I cared about I was already getting through my other devices.  This gave me a good excuse to try it out and the content was convincing enough for the wife to not wince at the purchase.

First impression and setup

The box itself states “Plug it in.  Add to home network.  Enjoy” in a 3-step instruction on the box.  It also states “no PC required.”  Both of these statements actually couldn’t be further from the truth. 

First, I got the Roku XS because I wanted the wired network option (call me silly).  I also have an HDTV so I was pleased to see that it had HDMI.  I thought I read that it came with an HDMI cable, but it doesn’t.  For something that touts a feature for 1080p streaming, they should really own up to that and provide one.  It comes with standard (not even composite) a/v cables only.  No worries there, but just kinda lame in this digital age.  I mean, ship a cheap HDMI cable and make customers happy.

The “plug it in” was just as it sounded.  There is no power button for Roku, it’s like a little smart box…goes in and out of standby mode.  The “add to home network” step was, in fact, easy.  But I had a wired network, so no brainer there.  I tried the wireless just to make sure and if you are going that route be ready to be annoyed to type that long passphrase of yours using a remote with no keyboard (this is one thing that annoys me about XBOX as well).  Easy enough though and I was connected to my network.

The “enjoy” step took longer to get to.  And requires a browser.  You need to activate your box.  You can’t do anything until you do so.  I needed to create a Roku account and provide payment information.  What?! you may be asking is the payment information for?  It is for in-device purchases.  Roku is set up with “channels” and some are premium that you can pay for straight from the box.  Nothing gets charged during payment info setup, they are just trying to provide a seamless experience.  Whatever, I’m not bothered by this but did catch me off guard.

The physical size of the device is appealing but honestly I chuckled that after plugging in my Ethernet cable and a decent quality HDMI cable, the cables tipped the box up.  It’s almost too light and small.  But it definitely doesn’t take up space nor does it have any noise emitting.

Channel setup

The next thing you have to do is set up some channels.  This is offered during your account set up on their website pointing to the free apps like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, etc.  Notice I didn’t say free “services” – these are just their channel apps.  You don’t get Netflix for free here if that is what you were thinking.  I set up my most popular and figured I’d do the others later.  I was off and started.  The Roku device started downloading some updates and I took the time to figure I’d add my custom channel we got the device for.

Turns out, this is not intuitive IMO.  Since it let me set up the Hulu, Netflix, Amazon during my account creation I thought I’d be able to add other channels via the website and my profile.  Nope.  You can browse all the channels but there is no “add to my device” option.  In fact, I had to search the help FAQ to even find out how to do that.  It would have been at least nice to have that prompt in the areas where you’d expect to add a channel.  I found this to be incredibly lame and my first area where I think Roku can improve.

Nonetheless I searched for the channel on the device and added it no problems afterwards.

For the other channels that required authentication (i.e., Netflix, Hulu) it was a mixed bag.  With Netflix I had to log into my account on the device.  Again, “typing” with a remote is extremely annoying.  The others pointed me to a website with a code.  While I needed a PC, it was much quicker to set up than things like Netflix.  I went to the site, logged in, entered the code on screen, then the screen realized I was linked and proceeded. 

Games

One quick word here.  I think games on these types of devices is quite lame.  But take that from someone who isn’t a gamer.  The Roku XS came with Angry Birds and I just found it lame to play on the remote.  Casual games are for casual use, not my big HD screen…that’s for “real” games.

Bottom line: don’t let the games thing sway you.  In fact if you don’t care about games or don’t care about wired Ethernet access, then you should get the Roku XD for less money.

Content Quality

Impressive.  Of course this depends on the source of the content but my quality was very good HD quality and no buffering experienced.  I have no complaints here.

Content Acquisition

“Acquisition” is the best word I can think of for this experience – that of finding and the start point of your desired content.  The Netflix interface is horrible.  For an avid Netflix user (on XBOX) this needs to be improved, seriously.  Same with Hulu Plus actually.  I don’t have solutions other than “make it more like XBOX” because that is what I’m used to.

The Amazon app is a welcome one to me because, while I can get my Amazon content on XBOX it isn’t the greatest experience I’ve set up…and I can’t get my rentals easily without an extra step.  The Amazon app gives me direct access to my purchased and Instant Video content (for Amazon Prime members) on the device.  I anticipate I will like this feature the most for my Roku usage.

Pandora is a welcome app.  Although admittedly it seems lame to “listen” to music through your TV, it’s nice to have that option.  I think Pandora can step it up as well on their UI for their app…at least make it a bit more engaging to me.

Parental Controls

Stop looking, there isn’t any.  The FAQ points to the fact you can set up a PIN to prevent anyone from purchasing in-device content.  Um, that’s not parental controls at all.  I don’t consider myself a prude but I also don’t think my daughter needs to browse through Netflix and see movie covers with gore or half-dressed folks on them.  She’s 9.  And same for my son browsing his Inspector Gadget videos…he doesn’t need the occasional NC-17 cover passing him by.

Seriously, if Roku wants to be a serious family device, give me *some* throttles.  XBOX does this well and it flows through their apps.  I set permissions on the device and the apps flow.  I can set a limit of PG movies/content and anything above that isn’t showing pictures (it still lists the titles) and requires a PIN to play.  That’s all I’m asking.

Developer story

One of the things that bothered me about TiVo was the lack of an initial (and even later) good developer story.  Roku puts a developer link on their home page and has a whole section complete with SDK, design guidelines, Photoshop templates for screen designs, etc.  I’m just now digging into this to play around, but it is pretty cool to see the company encourage this.  There is a free and premium developer account and I suspect the free allows very basic RSS type feed insertion where the premium allows you to be more of an app.  I’m still checking it out, but while deep it appears not to be entirely intuitive as well.  Some searches showed some Roku/C# forum posts so I’ll be checking those out.

Overall

Good purchase so far.  Annoyances exist for me as does any product but nothing I can’t get over for my specific use case.  I’ll be looking at the developer platform, but I think for now the inexpensive purchase for our immediate need paid off and we’ll see how much I use the little thing over the XBOX for the mainstream content we already get.  I suspect that I’ll be more annoyed by the apps’ user interfaces and revert to XBOX, but we’ll see.

If you’re in the market for a single device to get things like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, etc., etc. and don’t have an XBOX, Playstation or a TV that has those built in, then the Roku might be for you and at $79 or $99 it’s well worth the investigation at least in my opinion.

By now hopefully you’ve seen a lot of the revealing of what the next version of Windows has in store for developers.  Trust me there is a LOT to absorb as the week continues and you should absolutely keep your eye on the BUILD conference site where session information will likely start to appear.

I know that a lot of readers here will be interested in the XAML-specific sessions so I thought I’d iterate them here real quick. 

NOTE: Anything on the agenda with a “C” after the session number is a chalk talk and is not recorded.  These are more interactive sessions for QA with attendees.

Again, there is a lot to cover so be sure to spelunk the sessions on the site for more things that might interest you, but here are the XAML-specific ones from our team and some ones I felt relevant to my readers:

• [APP-737T] WED 11:30 AM (Joe Stegman) Metro style apps using XAML: what you need to know
• [APP-741T] WED 02:00 PM (Marco Matos): Metro style apps using XAML: Make your app shine
• [TOOL-479T] WED 02:00 PM (Vikas Bhatia, Joanna Mason): A lap around Visual Studio 11 Express for Metro style apps using C++
• [APP-494T] WED 03:30 PM (John Papa): Stand out with styling and animation in your XAML app
• [APP-517T] WED 05:00 PM (Hamid Mahmood): Build polished collection and list apps using XAML
• [APP-503T] THU 09:00 AM (Alnur Ismail): Make great touch apps using XAML
• [APP-847T] THU 10:30 AM (Tim Heuer): Reach all your customer’s devices with one beautiful XAML user interface
• [TOOL-834T] THU 10:30 AM (Joshua Goodman): What’s new in .NET Framework 4.5
• [APP-912T] THU 01:00 PM (Laurence Moroney): Build data-driven collection and list apps using XAML
• [TOOL-790C] THU 01:00 PM (Daniel Plaisted): Bringing existing managed code into Metro style apps
• [APP-542C] THU 02:30 PM (Alnur Ismail): Building accessible Metro style apps using XAML
• [APP-788T] THU 02:30 PM (Marco Matos): Integrating stunning media experiences in XAML
• [APP-914T] THU 04:00 PM (Chipalo Street): The lifetime of XAML text: from input to display through printing
• [TOOL-515T] FRI 09:00 AM (Tim Heuer): Tips and tricks for developing Metro style apps using XAML
• [TOOL-810T] FRI 09:00 AM (Mads Torgersen, Alex Turner): Async made simple in Windows 8, with C# and Visual Basic
• [TOOL-529T] FRI 10:30 AM (Peter Provost): Unit testing your Metro style apps built using XAML
• FRI 10:30 AM (Krzysztof Cwalina): A .NET developer’s view of Windows 8 app development
• [APP-528C] FRI 02:00 PM (Tim Heuer): Build world-ready Metro style apps using XAML

It will be a great week (I’ll try to be diligent and update the above with video links if they come available).  If you are here at BUILD be sure to look our team up in the expo hall area if you have XAML-specific questions.

The Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) is now available for developers to download.  As with previous preview releases, this is a developer-focused release, which means no production releases, no go-live license, etc.  This is made available for you to test your apps, upgrade to get latest features and to deal with the changes from beta to RC.

The beta was a great release and preview of what the team had introduced as new features.  You can read back on my Silverlight 5 guide to new features post regarding if you haven’t understood the latest and greatest additions.  However there are now some new available features in the RC including:

• P/Invoke for calling native methods
• 64-bit support for the plugin
• Vector printing
• Capabilities to support remote controls (for media)
• In-browser trusted apps
• PivotViewer now a part of Silverlight (with new features)

Some things have changed from beta to RC, to be sure to take a look at your code, references, namespaces, etc.

Pete Brown has a great announcement post on his blog with links to his (updated for RC) tutorials and videos for Silverlight 5. Be sure to go on over there and read and get the links.