Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet

I heard about the announcement Amazon was making about a potential new tablet--one that might rival the iPad--and started following all the rumors and updates. I'm pretty excited about this because it has some great features and the price is right.

Aside from some changes to the kindles we're already familiar with (things like a touch screen model), Amazon announced the release of the Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire is essentially a small tablet that offers a lot. It's like the Kindle in the sense that it supports electronic reading, but it also offers many other features/benefits.

Overview

• An impressive color touchscreen
• Super detailed color displays of magazines
• User-friendly interface
• Ultra-fast mobile browsing through Amazon's new Amazon Silk Browser in addition to Amazon Web Services cloud
• FREE cloud storage! Meaning you don't have to rely on your device for all of your storage!
• Super durable screen (a special material that's supposed to prevent some of the typical bumps and scratches)
• Amazon Whispersync provides automatic backup of your data 
• Email app that combines all of your accounts
• Document support of documents including PDFs, new and older versions of Word, etc.
• Free month of Amazon Prime (unlimited streaming of movies and videos as well as free 2-day shipping on qualified items--love this! I did a trial a few months ago and was impressed)
• Access to 100,000 movies and tv shoes (not new, but a great feature)
• A dual-core processor (so excited about this!)
• Access to all of your favorite apps and games
• Millions of electronic books (again, nothing new, but great all the same)
• Children's e-books (nothing new, but great for families)
• 17 million songs (impressive and a good iPad competitor)

Price
This goes for $199 with free shipping. It can be pre-ordered now and will begin to ship Nov 15th.

Where to Buy
This can only be purchased through Amazon. Pre-order HERE. 

Final Thoughts
I have gotta get one of these!

Review: Jack Black Double-Duty Face Moisturizer SPF 20

I have been using the Jack Black Double-Duty Face Moisturizer with SPF 20 for about a week now, so here are my thoughts on it.

The first time I used it I was impressed with how well it worked.  My face felt great hours later, even though I didn't have to use much of the moisturizer. I had the same results on day 2 and 3--a well moisturized face. I didn't have any irritation of any kind and I tend to have combination skin that leans towards dry.  

Men’s Skin Care Product	Scent Appeal	Greasiness	Overall Effectiveness	Skin Irritation  After Use	Overall Score (Highest Being 5)
Jack Black – Double-Duty Face Moisturizer SPF 20	4 – very light smell	0	4	0	4

On a scale of 1-5 (1 being a little, 5 being a lot). 0 means it did not do this at all.

 
My final thoughts on this product is that it works very well. There was a very subtle scent, but nothing that lasts on your skin. The only thing I did notice was that if I used slightly too much, it was very hard to rub completely into my skin.  Just don't overdo it.


Price
Jack Black Double-Duty Face Moisturizer comes in a few different sizes:

• 1.5 oz - $17
• 3.3 oz - $27
• 8.5 oz - $48

Where to Buy
You can purchase this directly on the Jack Black website HERE or at other stores that carry men's skin care like Sephora, Ulta, etc.   

On a side note, my wife is excited that it has sunscreen in it. She's always on me about protecting my skin for the sun, so this makes it easy.

September Black Box Review

I got my Black Box for September a few days ago and wanted to go over what I got. For anyone that doesn't know what Black Box is, it's a subscription service that sends 4 or 5 deluxe samples of men's products to you every month for $12 per month. It's similar to some of the subscription services like Birchbox for women, but it's geared 100% towards men. It's interesting because you can try products you wouldn't otherwise know about or purchase on your own. You can see what I got in my August Black Box HERE.

Inside this month's Black Box:

Every month the box includes a postcard-sized note that explains the inspiration for the products chose. Semptember's Black Box theme was "green" and/or health-conscious products.

On the reverse side of every message there's a list of the products included in the box along with brief explanations.

A first glance at the products in my Black Box.

I got the Billy Jealousy White Knight Facial Cleanser in my August Black Box, so I'm definitely up for trying their shave cream.

I've never tried Menscience products, so it'll be interested to see how this works for me. I also have combination skin that tends to dry out because my work environment is kept so dry (picture one room with more computers than people).

This is a facial cleaner by Bread & Butter. I've never used any of their products, but I'm definitely wiling to give this a try. Finding a great cleanser can be tough.

I've heard a lot of things about pre-shave oils being really great, so I was very happy to see this in my Black Box. I've used other Anthony products in the past, but never this one.

  
Price
Black Box is a month-to-month subscription that costs $12/month.

Where to Buy
You can subscribe to Black Box on their site http://www.hisblackbox.com


Final Thoughts
Overall, I'm looking forward to reviewing the products I received in my Black Box, but I seemed to get products that were very similar to each and to the products I received last month. I'd like to get a bit more variety in my future boxes. I emailed Black Box to see if there's any way to make sure the options I chose when I created my account were diverse. Check back soon because I'll be posting reviews on each of these products in the near future.

Call Of Duty Black Ops Elite Beta

I signed up for the opportunity to beta test Elite a month or two ago and just received an email earlier today letting me know that Elite Beta was available for a test drive. I just finished filling out all the info and connecting my Xbox console to the beta and wanted to share some of what I've seen so far. I tried to take screenshots of some of the features mentioned below, but had difficulty converting them to JPEGs, so for now you're going to have to settle with reading about everything until I can fix this problem.  

Overall, there are some pretty cool features in this beta like tacking your own stats or following certain player stats online.

Screenshot of stats as shown on the Call of Duty Elite Beta site.

There are some pretty cool features in this beta like tacking your own stats or following certain player stats online.  

If you play COD on Xbox360 feel free to friend me. I'm not on that often, but when I get a chance I like to play once in a while. Even my wife plays sometimes.

Some Benefits to Elite

•  There's a calculator on the Elite site that allows you to calculate how long it will take you to prestige based on your current level and how many hours you play each day. Pretty cool.
  
• You can view your Custom Classes on the site as well. if you click on each icon you can read detailed stats about each weapon and their benefits.
  
• There's a page dedicated specifically to maps, weapons, etc. By clicking on the map icons you can view detailed information on each map including spawn points, flag locations, etc. based on the mission type you choose (Demotion, Search & Destroy, etc.)
• Through Elite you can create Group tags. Others can join your group and you can search for your friends if you know their gamer tags.

Final Thoughts

That's all I've had time to check out so far. I'm going to try to play around with this in the next few days and see what else it has to offer. It's definitely worth checking out if you have the opportunity. It's free and you get an inside peak into an upcoming release inspired by the soon-to-be-released Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, which will be released in November 2011.