The Techcrunch Web Tablet Project | Hacker News Reader

The Techcrunch Web Tablet Project

techcrunchit.com

29 pointsdbreunig19 comments

Thats how Kindle should have looked like, instead of that 1980s looking contraption amazon came out with

Kindle was designed to do a completely different job. It uses a specialized screen -- I think it's ePaper, or something similar, based on some work from MIT a few years back -- that's designed to make the text as easy to read as a printed book.

AFAIK, there's no color support on that kind of screen technology yet, or if there is, it's prohibitively expensive.

Correct. That screen utilizes eInk (ePaper, whatever currently the hype word is for it). The main idea behind this technology is readability and minimal energy consumption. Next generation of this technology will probably be OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) with which it will be possible to have thin and colorful displays. Sony has developed interesting prototypes which you can see e.g. here. (http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=NcAm3KihFho)

Very nice link. It's incredible how thin and flexible they are. Do you know what the time frame of launch is on these and the prices?

I am not an expert in this topic but they sell this here already. You can e.g. find here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode#So... some information about it.

I wasn't really talking about the screen, more about the exterior of it

great comment and very true - although the Kindle serves a different purpose (ie. selling ebooks from Amazon)

It sounds like the techcrunchies haven't actually used the Nokia N810. Just like their dream web tablet, the N810 already uses a Linux kernel, runs Firefox, Skype and plays Flash and other media. It also just hit their $299 price point. They dismissed it, however, and said they want a bigger screen, even though it has has a fantastic 800x480 resolution and 225 pixels per inch (compared to the iPhone's 480x320 resolution and 160 pixels per inch).

Then Cubrilovic and Arrington deleted their comments. Go figure.

They dismissed it, however, and said they want a bigger screen, even though it has has a fantastic 800x480 resolution and 225 pixels per inch (compared to the iPhone's 480x320 resolution and 160 pixels per inch).

It's a very ambitious project. Doable although I think something like this really needs leadership, guidance and a project timeline.

"""... when we were discussing the ultimate web browsing/cloud computing client hardware..."""

WTF is a 'cloud computing client'. Personally I'm sick and tired of hearing the word 'cloud' being used in every hyped project now.

There's a marketing play here, you see how the slash separates two types of future customers?

"Cloud computing" - for those who believe in it and "web browsing" for the rest of us.

:-)

'cloud computing client' == client for web applications, which use cloud computing. But I think we are still talking about having Firefox in a cheap tablet.

Read: Thin client.

People got fed up with Web 2.0, plus it pairs poorly with "Web browsing device", so they made a new word.

Anyone else notice that they said it would support open media codecs. Does this mean the device (much like Ubuntu without added repositories) wont support common formats like mp3?

That page crashes Firefox and Safari. edit: no one else?

Fine on FireFox 2.0.0.16/WinXP. Which Firefox are you using? If you're on 3.0 make sure you upgrade to 3.01 as it's a lot more stable.

Good call, I upgraded from 3.0 to 3.01 on Leopard. And it doesn't crash anymore, though it doesn't crash Safari either anymore, so I'm thinking it could have been something on their end that's since been updated.

plz let me know if it does - i think at one point there were so many comments going in at the same time that funny stuff was happening with wordpress

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