Amazon has begun selling its newest device under the Kindle name that it adopted a few years back for its line of “e-book” reading devices. Because of its size and clout, Amazon really took the whole idea of electronic books from a niche concept to a mass market success.

But as the Kindle began really taking off, Apple came along and changed the game with the wildly successful iPad.

Its not the first time that Apple has come along and disrupted a market, it did much the same thing with electronic music players when it launched the iPod back in 2001. The iPad comes with its own iBooks software to allow for the purchase and reading of ebooks on Apple’s tablet device. Sound familiar?

To its credit, Amazon played the game and released an app that allows iPad users to buy and access ebooks from Amazon directly, rather than having to use iBooks. But Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is not the kind of guy to see a growing market and not want more of it for his online shopping behemoth. And he doesn’t miss the idea that the biggest reason we all shop at Amazon is because we can usually get things cheaper there.

So how do you compete with the huge success of the iPad?

You build a cheaper mousetrap.

Amazon did just that with its new “Kindle Fire”. As in when you “kindle”, you start a fire.

(Ah the joys of clever branding to give us the sense that we are doing something monumental like discovering fire. In 2011? Right.)

Right up front, I will tell you that I’m not smart enough to know if this new device will set the world on fire. But after using one for a few days, I believe that Mr. Bezos and company will sell a lot of them.

The Fire is smaller in every meaningful way than the iPad. The screen is 7 inches, vs. nearly 10 inches for the iPad. The memory–how much the device can store–is smaller in the Fire (half of the smallest iPad model). And most importantly for many folks, the price is much smaller: $200 vs. $450, the latter figure is likely to be cheapest iPad price you see this holiday shopping season for the least featured model.

But it would be short-sighted to dismiss the Fire on the size questions alone.

The physicality of the thing is more useful than I expected. Kind of the same way that an edition of Reader’s Digest is a bit more portable and somehow friendlier than the size of a typical consumer magazine like People or Time. The Fire is easy to hold with one hand, and while it won’t fit in your pocket, it will fit easily into a small bag, backpack, or those sherpa-like handbags that every woman carries and seems to be able to produce any randomly-needed item from at anytime.

From a technology standpoint, the color screen is good and usuable for its intended use. Video looks good on it, and books are readable–though the limitation that doing either of those things outside on a bright, sunny day won’t really work. But that’s true of the iPad and every other color screen device out there, including most cell phones. One other note about the quality of the screens–aside from its bigger size, the iPad is a markedly better quality screen than the Fire to my eyes, but that may be one of the explanations as to the difference in pricing.

What Amazon has done right is make the Fire a one stop shop for entertainment.

You can buy (or rent) Movies, TV Shows, Music, Books, Magazines and just about any kind of content that Amazon sells. If you are a member of Amazon’s Prime service, which will set you back 79 bucks a year, you’ll get access to some content for free–which makes the Prime membership that gives you free 2-day shipping on anything you buy from Amazon and some other benefits–an even better deal for regular Amazon customers.

The Fire does need a wireless internet connection (Wi-Fi) to download your stuff, and because the Kindle doesn’t have a huge memory inside of it, Amazon wants you to use their “cloud service” to store the stuff you aren’t reading or watching this very moment (but might want at some point in the future.) This is similar to Apple’s “iCloud” take on how to store your personal media library.

Like everything electronic, the Fire is battery powered and comes with a charger. In my early testing, the battery life is solid, and Amazon claims you can use Fire for up to 8 hours without needing to recharge it. As always with any claim from a manufacturer for such things, your mileage may certainly vary.

Yet underneath its easy to use, and well-designed interface, the Kindle Fire is actually a tablet powered by Google’s popular Android software. This means that aside from being a hand-held entertainment center that can go with you anywhere, the Fire can also fetch your Email, browse the Web, log onto Facebook, play some games and most other things that tablet devices are known for. There is an “app store” where you can buy software that will let your Fire do different things, but its Amazon’s own app store–so not every Android app is available, as it is from Google’s app store.

As all tablets do, the Fire fits in the space between lugging a laptop computer with you anywhere you go, and being on a small smartphone screen that is very portable–but not always big enough to be comfortable to read a book or watch a movie on for a longer period of time.

Would I tell you to buy a Kindle Fire? The answer is probably yes.

If the idea of having a device that lets you take a lot of entertainment with you wherever you go (or at least wherever you can get to a WiFi “Hot Spot” to download new stuff) then you are going to want to have a tablet device. To be clear, I still think the iPad is still the best device in this fast growing category of marvelous devices. The price tag on an iPad is significantly more than the Fire, and there is some degree of “you get what you pay for” in many aspects of comparing the two.

But if you can’t swing the extra cash for the iPad, the Fire is a really good smaller alternative, both in size and scope. You can probably think of a lot of people who would to get one under the Christmas tree this year, including the person who is reading this right now.

For more information, I’ve included a link to Amazon’s webpage for the Kindle in the comments below.

I’ve just finished about two weeks with a new iPhone 4S.  Can’t give you a full review because of constraints on my time.  So let me answer the most frequently asked questions I have gotten about this thing:

“Is it better than the iPhone 4?”- The short answer is – yes it is.  But its better in the same way that a new model year Mercedes Benz that looks just like the previous model year, usually is.  There are changes under the hood, and maybe a few to the dashboard.  But the styling and performance remain true to the classic standards of well…Mercedes Benz.  Can you get a cheaper car that will get you where you want to go?  Of course you can, but if you want the best there is and you can afford it – you aren’t really going to be happy with a lesser car–now are you?

“Do I need to rush out to buy it if I have an iPhone?” – That’s harder to answer.  If you have an iPhone 4, you don’t have to upgrade.  If you have an iPhone 3GS or earlier, yes you will want to upgrade.  If you have any other phone, except for the very latest Android models maybe, then you should rush out and buy an iPhone 4S as soon as you can.  If you have a Blackberry, you are likely in serious denial or you have a company that won’t let you have an iPhone 4S as your work phone and are still in serious denial.  Sorry about that.

“What’s so great about the iPhone 4S?” – Everything that was already really great about the iPhone 4, but souped up a bit.  Faster in most respects.  Better quality camera built in, in all respects.  Some other smaller bells and whistles.  The fact that you can get an iPhone now on Sprint, in addition to Verizon and AT&T. (If you live in a place that is dominated by Sprint, or its your company’s preferred cell phone company, this is no small deal.  Plus, Sprint still offers unlimited data plans that really are unlimited.  Also no small deal.)

And there is the woman named Siri that is living inside every iPhone 4S.

“Yeah, I’ve seen the ads–does that Siri thing really work?” – Consider my answer as one coming from someone who has always dreamed of when computers would recognize the human voice and interact with us without keyboards.  Like every computer in every science fiction work since the 1950s.  And as someone who has been pretty disappointed with voice recognition technology over the past decades, despite trying every new version that has come along.

And the surprising answer, with only small qualifications, is yes.  Yes, “Siri” does work pretty much as advertised.  Sometimes a little slower than the television commercials (they do put in very small type that “sequences shortened” disclaimer).  But not that key premise that you push one button, the iPhone 4S beeps and then you ask it….er, rather..her what it is you want.

Apple bills Siri as a virtual assistant.  And she can sometimes be more helpful than a warm-blooded one.  At least when it comes to information and answering many questions, not all of them seriously.  Siri can’t go get you a cup of coffee or tell you how to get something done. But the ability to analyze a sentence like “Move my two o’clock meeting to three o’clock” and then actually carry out that action is pretty magical.  The only big caveat I’ve found is that you have to have internet service available on your phone (either via cellular connection or Wi-Fi) for Siri to operate.

The fact that she will actually attempt to any answer pretty much any question put to her, led this writer to ask:

“What is the meaning of life?”

Siri had the good sense to answer, “I’m not sure about that…what do you think it is?”
Normally, you’d pay about $125 an hour for that kind of advice in a therapist’s office.  A new iPhone 4S costs less than two hour-long visits.

It might not be the iPhone 5 that everyone was waiting for, but it is a very smart smartphone.