Tag: technology

$35 Tablet PC

The cheapest iPad is $500 and received good ratings on price since its pretty cheap for an Apple device but an Indian company has just made a $35 tablet device that they hope to get down to $10, getting use closer to my prediction that cheap tablets will be sold by magazine makers, become menus/ordering forms in high end restaurants and tour guides in museums. This thing is planned to go on sale in 2011.

Volcano causes chaos, ash-trandedness

Volcanic ash from Iceland left a bunch of people unable to travel since I guess planes can’t fly through thick smokey earth-dust that gets shot up into the sky (pussies). The leader of Norway was one of those people stranded in NY by Iceland’s volcano but it was cool cuz he ran the country with his iPad. In other news–You can run Norway without multi-tasking


nice. and almost as good as this horrible non-pun headline from FoxNews.com that doesnt make any sense:

Ash-tranded?… the f#ck?… it doesnt meaning anything, it doesnt sound like “stranded”. its not a vernacular slang. its just, like my foreplay, fkkn weird and awkward, leaving others disappointed and confused.

The iPad Approacheth

With availability of the iPad, just weeks away, millions of people like me CAN’T WAIT till it hits stores!…so we can go to our local Apple store to play with it for free and then go home without buying one…

Tens of thousands of others, however, are excited about actually OWNING one though. I would be too if it had half the features it should, and I each one of their absence (no multi-tasking, no camera and less functionality of a real computer at above-Netbook price) is a deal breaker for me, especially considering how easy their inclusion would be. The purposeful holding-back so the 2.0 and beyond versions have lots of room for improvement is obnoxious.

Almost as obnoxious as the device’s absence of Flash…

This official commercials from HP Computers Youtube account touts their new device’s superiority to the iPad (without mentioning the iPad by name of course) because it has Flash. The video is titled “NEW! Web, Flash & Air on Slate Device from HP” in a non-specific slam on the iPad’s frustrating lack of Flash, going on to say in the description “Access the full web and not just a part of it!“.

That’s the short version. The teaser with the one line touting. But HP went further with this 5 minute long demonstration of just how Flashy this Flash enabled Flash Player device is. What was subtle in the first video is pounded hard in the following video that translates to “Wanna watch MTV on your tablet device? stay away from the iPad. Apple loyalist? have fun playing your Spongebob maze games on it, SUCKER!”


Alan Tam from Adobe Flash Product Marketing walks us through Adobe Flash and Adobe Air functionalities on HP’s upcoming slate device. Learn how you can access the full web, and not just a part of it.

Indeed, if the device is price-compatible or even competitive with the iPad, has all the same features and has the added advantage of not banning the thing that makes watching videos on sites like Hulu possible, its hard to see why anyone would view the Apple product as superior – EXCEPT for the inevitable situation an HP Tablet user will find themselves in where someone see’s them holding the interactive tablet device and says “oh cool, is that the iPad?” and when the awkward reply of “no.. its an HP Slate Device…” comes, the significantly less impressed “…oh…cool..[i guess]”. The deep burn of that negative wow-factor may just be the thing that keeps Apple on top of this market. After all, isn’t that the business model of the iPod and the iPhone?…

Apple deserves credit for pushing this market forward though. While these things should be commonplace by now, it was Apples announcement that has brought the others to the surface. Being first deserves kudos, but it comes with ridicule as we saw with the endless “iPad sounds like a feminine hygiene product” cracks. As that meme grows stale, new ones like the following arise.
This is a submission for a Doritos viral marketing campaign contest:

Sports Illustrated – Tablet Demo 1.5

Time Inc which owns Sports Illustrated released this demo of what they’re working on for some reason. I say for some reason because… why? whats their angle for showing people this? It would make sense in conjunction with the announcement of a product release – like an Apple Tablet for instance or some major freaky update to Amazon’s Kindle, but no. we got nothin.

Lindsay Lohan’s voicemail password is 1234

In the spring of 2008, LiLo made the unfortunate decision to post her private information — including her cellphone number — on Facebook which was soon snatched up and passed around by approximately half the internet population.

As a result, Lindsay left her private voicemail easier to hack – even EASIER to hack once it was learned that the 4 digit password she chose was… “1…2…3…4”

Yes…1 2 3 4 5. So the sneak who cracked the code then put what is allegedly her voicemails up on the interwebs, and shown here below. Another reason I don’t have voicemail on my phone anymore… Be sure to listen to the end where apparently “her desperate deadbeat father warbles a heartfelt message and then holds his cellphone up to the car stereo speakers to let her know he’s listening to her new CD as he drives.” yikes…

Good News: Microsoft is lobbying for cheap laptops to perform like cheap laptops

Microsoft is pressuring vendors to limit the hardware capabilities of low-cost laptops so that they don’t eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Vista.

Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs). To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs.

The program is outlined in confidential documents that Microsoft sent to PC makers last month, and which were obtained by IDG News Service. The goal apparently is to limit the hardware capabilities of ULPCs so that they don’t eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Windows Vista, something both Microsoft and the PC vendors would want to avoid.

Imposing the limitations solves a number of problems for the PC industry, said industry analyst Roger Kay, president of EndPoint Technologies Associates. “It allows PC makers to offer a low-cost alternative, and it prevents eroding of pricing and margins in the mainstream OS market,” he said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the documents. “We don’t speak publicly about our agreements with [PC makers],” the company said in a statement via its public relations agency.