Etsy.com is selling a pretty cool skin. The skin will bring back fond memories of playing on the original Gameboy.

You can buy it for $14.95 (plus $3.25 shipping) on Etsy.com. It will protect your device from scratches and scuffs.

The Kindle Fire 2 is rumored to come out just in time for holiday shopping this year. The rumors indicate that there will be two models, a 7 inch and a 8.9 inch. Amazon will likely sell the Kindle Fire at a loss again and make the money back through their digital offerings. The two versions are said to cost $249 for the 7 inch and $299 for the 8.9 inch. The price increase gives me hope for a quad-core CPU and a higher resolution screen. Both tablets should run the latest version of Android as well, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Amazon will have to create something special in order to compete with the rumored iPad Mini.

Source: T3.com

Sharing: Customers will be able to easily share favorite passages and notes from their books directly from Kindle Fire, without even leaving the book. Customers simply highlight a passage and select “Share” or choose the “Share” option from the toolbar within a book, write a note if they choose, and select which social network to share with. Passages or notes a customer chooses to share will be displayed to other Kindle readers viewing the same book, and customers can also choose to share via Facebook and Twitter. Amazon already has a vibrant community of readers who choose to share favorite passages and notes from their reading through Kindle.amazon.com. This update brings these notes and highlights to Kindle Fire, so a reader can easily see what other readers are saying about their books.

Book Extras: Powered by Shelfari, Amazon’s community of book lovers, Book Extras make it easy for customers to see supplemental material about the book they are reading, without even leaving the book. Customers can view descriptions of characters, a glossary of common terms used in the book, information on the authors and common locations referenced in the book, and more. To view Book Extras from within a book, customers simply tap the top of the screen to bring up the toolbar, tap the menu button and select “Book Extras.”

Archive of Personal Documents: Customers’ personal documents will be stored in the Amazon Cloud and available for re-download at any time from the Documents tab on Kindle Fire. Just as with Kindle books, Whispersync will automatically sync notes, highlights and last page read for personal documents.

Print Replica Textbooks: Students can buy thousands of print replica textbooks to read on their Kindle Fire and save up to 60% off the list price of the print textbook. Print replica textbooks maintain the rich formatting, color and layout of the print editions, with features including notes and highlights, zoom and pan, linked table of contents, real page numbers and Whispersync of notes, highlights and last page read.

Reading View for Amazon Silk: There is a seemingly endless array of interesting and engaging content available on the Internet. Sometimes, unfortunately, that business article, blog post, or sports recap you clicked on is surrounded by a host of competing material. With Reading View on Silk, the content that you’re interested in is elevated above the clutter. When invoked by the customer, Silk will load the body of the page in a reading-optimized, single screen view (even for multi-page articles). The full page is still available in the background, allowing the reader to easily toggle back to a traditional view to see other interesting features on the page.

Movie Rentals: The rental period for movie rentals that are downloaded to Kindle Fire now starts when a customer starts watching the movie, rather than when a customer starts downloading the movie.

Additional Enhancements: This update will also bring some of the features customers have requested, including faster re-connect of Wi-Fi after Kindle Fire has been asleep, and general performance enhancements.

Source: Amazon via The Verge

This is definitely not the first Ice Cream Sandwich ROM for the Kindle Fire, but it is the first MIUI Kindle Fire ROM. As you can see from the screenshots above, it is quite the attractive ROM.

Not everything in the ROM works though. There is no tethering via USB, hardware accelerated graphics, static wallpaper, or themes.

Source: MIUI.us via The Verge

This week Walmart is offering a $50 giftcard when you purchase a Kindle Fire for $200. This is a great deal and will definitely convince some on the fence to go ahead and buy!

You can check out the ad on Slickdeals.net or Walmart.com.

Source: The Verge

This will be the largest update for the Kindle Fire to date. It will be coming out in about two weeks. Some of the updates include the ability to delete items from the list of recently used applications, books, videos, ect. There will also be improvements to the Silk browser.

Source: New York Times via The Verge

So far the Kindle Fire has been a US-only device. The latest rumors indicate that the Fire might leave the borders of the United States and head across the pond to the UK.

What other countries would you like to see the Kindle Fire in?

Source: Know Your Mobile via The Verge

XDA member g1011999 has uploaded a video of his progress with porting the latest version of Android to the Kindle Fire. He actually got it to boot up on the Fire with both the touchscreen working and hardware acceleration.

A lot of vital things still do not work though like Wi-Fi, audio, accelerometer, and the light sensor.

Soon enough we will see a viable port for Ice Cream Sandwich for the Kindle Fire. Until then, watch this video of the progress so far.

Source: moooom.dyndns.info via XDA

Today, Amazon released a software update for the Kindle Fire. It has been reported that the update installs automatically without any permission. This is a problem for rooted users because it removes root.

There is not a changelog available, nor is there any obvious changes. I still have not gotten the update, but I will let you know anything I notice.

You can manually apply the update via the source link below.

Source: Amazon