Lincoln: Not Gone, But Somewhat Forgotten

Since I haven't posted any entries here for awhile, I thought I would talk about our 16th U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, since today is what would have been his 203rd birthday if he were still alive.

Even though it is his birthday today, he is mostly forgotten today. Special editions of Good Morning America and Today this morning focused their broadcasts almost entirely on the passing of singer Whitney Houston.

But what I really want to talk about today is the United States penny which has a portrait of President Lincoln on the heads side of the coin. I want to try to give my opinions to some important questions: Why is the penny still around and should the penny still be manufactured today? I also want to mention how the outcome of this year's Presidential race could somewhat determine the fate of the penny.

Since we currently pretty much have the technology to do away with the penny, what are the main reasons why we still have it?

1. President Obama: He is from Illinois which is where President Lincoln is from. Even though they are from opposite political parties, Pres. Lincoln is still popular among many Democrats.

2. Lincoln's 200th birthday: In order to celebrate what would have been his 200th birthday, the U.S. Mint came up with the idea to release new designs for the tails side of the penny which is likely prolonging the penny's lifespan.

3. General public and politicians not open to change: It is rather strange how politicians and the general public seem to be OK with making changes these days from everything to Postal Service operations, definitions of marriage, and the legalization of certain controlled substances to make them fit with our modern times. But the penny seems to be ignored when making changes to modernize our currency.

Now should the penny still be manufactured today? Well it sort of depends on whether you are rich or poor. It also sort of depends on whether this country wants to be technologically advanced and globally competitive from other countries.

If President Obama wants to live up to his State of the Union address comments when he talked about being ahead of the other countries' technology and being competitive with them, one of the moves he should make is to eliminate the penny. Mitt Romney, who could be running against President Obama this year and is extremely wealthy compared to most Americans probably didn't make his fortune from the penny. The penny is becoming less important as inflation continues to dwindle the value of the penny.

In conclusion, my opinion is that the Lincoln Penny should probably be phased out sometime this century. With President Obama re-elected it will likely happen at a somewhat slower pace than it would with a potential Mitt Romney Administration since a rich guy like Mitt has practically no need for the Lincoln one cent piece, and our current president is likely to keep alive a piece of currency that shows the image of one of his political idols.

Amazon.com opening Washington State Retail Location???

There is a story floating around since this morning that Amazon.COM is planning to open a retail store right here in the State of Washington. The retail store is supposedly going to be a small store that carries mostly e-reader related items such as Kindle devices and accessories.

What does this mean?

The answer is we don't know yet what this means exactly.

If they do open a store here in Washington State, they will be facing a lot of competition: Walmart, K-Mart, Target, Fred Meyer, and Best Buy to name a few.

The only advantages to having a physical location to purchase from would likely be Black Friday promotions and sales to draw more interest to the Amazon and Kindle brands and the ability to shop for last minute gifts where even one day shipping would be too late to get to the buyer on time.

My first reaction would be that this doesn't sound like a great idea to open a physical store. But with the U.S. Postal Service's new slower delivery times coming very soon, this might actually be a good idea.

It should be interesting to see if this retail store idea makes it past the planning stages. We will all have to just stay tuned for now!

Kindle Fire News and WDTV Live Update

Since it is a new month already, I thought I would comment again on the long awaited WDTV Live Plus firmware. Sadly, we are still waiting (been about 6 months now) for a new and likely final firmware update from Western Digital for the older generation of the WDTV Live and Live Plus machines. It was revealed by Western Digital that they did intend to put out this likely final update around the beginning of the year. So once again it appears that Western Digital cannot keep up with putting out firmwares.

Now Archos, on the other hand, has been a rather different story when it comes to firmware updates. They put out one like every other month or so for their Gen8 tablets it seems. It is really too bad Western Digital doesn't try to put out firmware updates on a consistent basis like Archos does with their tablets.

Now I wanted to briefly talk about the Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet. There is a lot of talk going around that Walmart is going to give purchasers of the Kindle Fire this weekend a $50 Walmart gift card. It sounds like a good deal, but I am not sure I would take advantage of it since a newer version of Kindle Fire is likely going to be out by the end of this year. If you really need a cheap tablet right at this moment, that might be a really good deal. If you are wanting a newer version of the Fire that has better features, this might be a deal you will probably want to skip.

And finally I should mention today's Amazon Free Paid App of the Day available here in the United States. Today's offering is called Gravilux. It is quite a unique type app. It is hard to describe what it is like. It may not be for everyone, but it is way better than that rather cheap looking Tic Tac Toe game that was the free app yesterday in my opinon. If you are a creative person, chances are you will like the Gravilux app.

Hopefully, I will be back again soon!