Tag: Tablet

Aakash 2 – the world’s cheapest tablet

Niranjan NandakumarLeave a comment

It was touted as an “iPad” challenger in India, simply due to its pricing at around $35. Aakash simply was not able to keep up with its initial hype received at its launch in 2007.

While there are several theories debated amongst the elite politicians and technologists in India and outside, including questions raised on India’s innovation capabilities, the Canadian based company, DataWind , which has invested heavily on this product, has already announced the launch of part 2, in this saga – The Aakash 2 . Expected to have double the specifications of its predecessor, the manufacturing of this product is set to start in August.

With the failure of this Android-based version 1 mainly attributed to the lack of planning and management of the supply and demand and the amazingly high percentage of failures on the few that actually made it out to the consumers hands, I guess I will just sit back and watch where the version 2 takes us, before actually getting overly excited about it.

Think Geek item of the week

For a person such as me, who just moved into a new apartment and who just manages to wake up and run to office in the morning, a 3 in 1 breakfast station such as this will be just ideal!

These wise men from the mountains say, “The world is shrinking… you may have heard the adage”. So then why not have an appliance as big as a toaster to do something way more than just toast!

Era of the solar panels, Surface and Angry Birds

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Take 1:

I was particularly impressed back when thinkgeek listed a Solar Charger for all mobile devices (except of course the laptops). And I thought to myself, there is so much real estate in any mobile device that perhaps one day someone would think about replacing it with renewable sources of energy. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to see this article from Engadget on smart panel research done by Apple and Microsoft and the subsequent patent filed. Section 0031 under this patent talks about auxilliary sources of power using solar panels laid across the cover attachments.

Offbeat: It might just be worth taking a look at this ground breaking datacenter that Apple is setting up at North Carolina. Solar farm as Wired calls it, the solar grid is breathtakingly impressive.

Take 2:

The news of the patent took me to a territory which I typically tend to avoid – The Microsoft Surface! I had been slightly skeptical since the concept was first put out to public back in 2007 . But 4 years later, I must admit the tablet version that has evolved from an overhyped kiosk is actually not-so-bad! The zune-like backstand with an Apple like cover did initially put me off. However the fact that they have a keyboard and trackpad on the cover and have packaged it along with the tablet as such, rather than as an add-on accessory is actually ingenious! Kudos to Microsoft. Finally I do see a good enough competitor to iPads. Android based tablets never attracted me as much as this.

Take 3:

Gone are the days of G.I.JOE Toys ! Angry brids have taken over! Wall Street Journal reports on how plush toys are being rescued by angry birds . There was a time when video games were influenced by toys and comic books. The trend seems to have take a 360 degree turn!

Tablet with a “real” OS

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This was a rather ancient concept – to run tablets with the same OS as a desktop or a laptop. Microsoft toyed with this idea back in 2005. , with rather limited success. And in 2007, a company called Axiotron came up with a tablet that runs on Mac OS X . But priced at around $2300, for a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, this did not fly well either. User community somehow could not grasp the fact that a gadget as small, was pricier than a laptop with a better processor. Times have changed since then. With tablets leading the sales over the desktops and laptops, Axiotron decided to relaunch the tablet, but this time under a different company name – Modbook Inc . The Modbook Pro as it is unsurprisingly called, the tablet looks a lot classier than its previous version. It comes in two configurations at 2.5GHz and 2.9GHz. Priced tentatively at $1100 – $1300 and capable of dual booting to Windows 7 as well, it certainly looks promising.

But as Apple moves its Mac OS X closer to iOS with every new version released and iPads along with the Android based tablets ruling the consumer market, it could take a while before we know if the product can hold on to its promise of an “ideal take-it-anywhere workstation”. The concept could possible face some road blocks in the enterprise sector as well, where virtual desktops have already made a mark in terms of mobility.

The era of digital identity

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MacRumors announced yesterday that Apple won the patent for Near Field Communications based iTransport , an app that could transform the way the world identifies you! Although this was long pending, there was an air of unusual caution thrown by Apple in regards to the concept of mobile payment. So when Passbook digital wallet app was announced as part of the iOS6 last month, I bet there was a sigh of relief among the Apple fans, who were on the verge of losing hope. According to MacRumors, there was also an unexpected level of details put forth by Apply as part of the patent for an application that still remains a concept, perhaps due to the sensitivity of the materials that it may potentially contain in the future – credit cards, passport data, driver’s license, what all and what not.

The concept of digital wallet is not new. It’s potential was identified back in 2004 when Nokia, Philips and Sony established the NFC Forum . And in 2010, Google along with Samsung announced the first NFC enabled phone – a Samsung Nexus S running on Gingerbread version of Android . Near Field Communication, or NFC as it is lovingly called, is a protocol used in smartphones, or any mobile device for that matter, to establish a two-way communication between each other, when touched or brought within a close proximity. Unlike the pairing in bluetooth and the configurations in a Wifi communication, NFC’s ease to setup is perhaps its best selling point. In 2005, Mastercard started rolling out EMV (Europay Mastercard Visa) compatible wireless payment feature through its MasterCard Paypass and it spread like wildfire with banks latching on to the paypass feature on their credit cards. But it was not until 2011 when google announced its Google Wallet , that the concept of using mobile phones to make a payment “without a swipe” started to take shape.

Soon it burgeoned, through key fabs, mobile tags, and of course the smartphone apps. And with iTransport, this “magical” concept might just be elevated to whole new level, if digital documents become a reality. Now, before you go dreaming any further, there are quite a few obvious challenges, one of them and perhaps the biggest of them all being the security threats that it can impose. Being able to wirelessly transfer a passport, a driver’s license or a social security information can present a happy hunting ground for identity thieves . And that in itself can make its acceptance among common man (consumers as they call it) a herculean task. So going back to what I said earlier, Apple coming forward with a rather unusually detailed patent on its iTransport application could just be a way to build that confidence amongst the consumers. Or would it just open up a whole new can of identity theft crisis? I guess only Time can tell what is in store…

Magical “yet” Revolutionary

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It was never an easy catch! A pre-order that started a month before its launch date, a case which arrived 3 weeks before the actual product, almost prompting me to judge the “book by its cover”; add on yet another week of delay on the launch on the 3G version of it, when “ships by late April” seemed like the daily “proverb” that kick started my day alongside a dose of caffeine and it finally arrived on 30th April 2010, keeping the promise on “late april” – iPad (wifi + 3G) , yet another member in my Apple Family!

While it did take me a month to completely free myself from the habitual tapping on a laptop that had almost become a part of my system (I must admit, I did experience some serious withdrawal symptoms, at the early stages of quitting), the iPad did manage to replace a vast spectrum of the work that I did on it – from browsing to blogging, from spreadsheets to presentations and even a shell (although not locally, yet) to a shelf (book shelf at that)! Being completely unbiased was never an option for me. But I must say a well written critique would perhaps sound biased anyway! So while I can go on and on praising this gadget for the way it has changed my lifestyle so far – both at work (with this being my notetaker at the meetings and a paperless replacement for the sticky notes that took a liking to my monitors at the office) and at home (being my diary, Internet, blog, book shelf and a partial technology playground through “VNCs and SSHs” of course) – for once let me try and see if I can be on the other side of the fence.

One of the applications that I was most certainly looking forward to, did disappoint me – iBooks. While the application as such gave an experience that was amazingly close to holding a real book (sans the smell of course), the store has been a huge disappointment so far, with the selection of books restricted mainly to NY Times bestsellers, which never was a choice for me. Having said that, the free Amazon Kindle application did turn out to be a life saver. Amazon did manage to make a smart move to let itself free on a gadget that was bound to kill its hardware. And this would keep the Kindle market place thriving even more!

Wise men from the mountains say, a revolution is a forcible overthrow of an existing system. So while iPad is yet to prove itself to be magical, it certainly is revolutionary, threatening to kill the existing establishment where a combination of laptops and smartphones ruled! Now turning it around again, with Apple’s traditional characteristic of bringing down its own market on its existing products through the introduction of a new product (an example being iPods through iPhones), I do see a potential for iPads to have a go at the iPhones; what with the unlimited data plan on it plus a cheaper voice only option as a phone, working out to be way more cost efficient than an iPhone plan.

BUT then came yet another ios (read iOS, that “surprisingly” rhymed with IOS). With ATT making me eligible for an early upgrade, I guess the family is getting ready to welcome yet another member! And yeah, there is a Nexus One soon to find its way in as a black sheep too!

Technology never ceases to amaze me!

Disclaimer: This was a post that I made on my personal blog sometime back. Thought this could be a good starter for a technology blog, which I hope to update frequently.