Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99
linuxfordevices.com
linuxfordevices.com
That seems like a big mistake and it's no longer $99 for most people.
http://www.zipitwireless.com/default.aspx?skinid=1
Which includes wifi, color 320x240 LCD, qwerty backlit keyboard.
Here's a NES emulator running on it http://hackaday.com/2009/09/25/with-zipit-who-needs-a-netboo...
"After your year of free messaging has ended you can buy another year of messaging for a one-time charge of only $29.95."
Today just seems like a step back to 2000 by not having wifi builtin.
Seems a little excessive, but no more so than a toaster with wifi.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/03/coby-85-smartbook-feels-l...
Still, I applaud the effort and hope that the upgraded models will be out soon.
You see the nice DONE checkboxes on Pandora site,but people have been waiting for Pandora for a long time.
I wonder if it would run Android...
Quake: http://www.openmobilefree.net/?p=367 GTK: http://nanl.de/blog/2009/10/gtk2-running-on-top-of-directfb-...
http://sharism.cc/ has a few more details/projects.
They create smartphone games for little kids. Twenty-first century pacifiers? Apparently the kids love them!
What I'm thinking of, though, is a dedicated device. You don't need a smart phone for kids games; all you need is some audio/graphics and whatever it is that runs Java ME in these things. Given the price of cheap Nokias, it should be doable for less than $100, especially since you don't even need the actual phone machinery.
A large part of the reason for a dedicated device is that most kids are not going to accidentally make calls, they're going to accidentally drop your expensive phone or something else that will physically damage it. A 'toy phone' could be made a bit more resilient...
e.g. Click on the picture of dad and hear him snore... etc.
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch
$200 for 8GB, I believe $150 refurbished.
For example, someone built what is essentially an ipod for kids, but based inside a teddy bear
Music devices inside stuffed animals isn't new. I (still) have a stuffed frog toy somewhere in my shed that contains a radio in its chest I received as an infant 27 years ago.
I suspect if you could build interactive applications embedded within a toy, you'd have a winner, especially if a parent could expand the applications on it.
Could you imagine an interactive teddy with its own app store powered by something like fisher price or hasbro?
It's designed to connect to Wifi and do IM and SMS, not a whole lot else ... but for a lot of kids I suspect that's a large portion of what they want. From a parent's perspective it frees up the computer and avoids having to get Junior a cellphone (and its requisite monthly plan fee) for a while longer.
Apparently ZipIt charges $30/year for the SMS and IM functionality after the first year, which makes me wonder if they're selling the hardware unprofitably, believing that they'll get subscription fees down the road. (That strikes me as a poor business model, since I doubt most of the devices will resubscribe for a second year -- 12 months is a long lifetime for a $50 device aimed at kids that's most likely a stopgap on the way to their own laptop. But I assume they've planned for that.)
I'd guess we're going to see a lot more in that space in the near future; the PC and laptop markets are getting pretty saturated, but I think netbooks have really just started to tap into the ultraportable demand, and kids could be a big consumer.
in Qi Hardware. it's should translate to root. source. origin.
[edit: ah, no, i think you just want a client; you've got the sever on the eee? in which case ignore this. you know you can buy the little controller handset things?]
I believe in addition to running linux, the complete hardware design of this thing is open source so you could in theory build one yourself.