Jul
16
2010
It's a netbook with a heart
The ferociously creative Shanzai developers in China are at it again and this time they’ve outcuted themselves.
Courtesy of Shanzai.com, this photo shows an adorable, yet functional handbag that is actually a netbook complete with an X86 processor (either a VIA C7 or Intel Atom).
As you know, VIA is a yearly sponsor of Lunch at Piero’s and every year surprises us with the tiny yet highly functional devices using their VIA X86 processor or ARM processors from the company’s WonderMedia division.
This rhinestone encrusted handbag cum netbook houses a screen, keyboard, 1Gb of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and offers WiFi and Ethernet connectivity. Add a little spending money, a credit card and a driver’s license sparingly, because it does not look like there’s much room for bulk inside.
The price is $300. Over the top you might say, but I’ll be there’s a pair of Jimmy Choos or Stuart Weizmans that will match this bag perfectly and make its price seem like pocket change in comparison.
Jun
04
2010
Travelers are using electronics more and more but some devices like smart phones carry a hefty price when you start using data overseas. Enter the WikiReader from Openmoko showcased at Lunch at Piero’s in January. It is a small, elegant palm-sized device that does one thing extraordinarily well: deliver more than 3 million articles of the Wikipedia along with hyperlinks.
Travel publications are writing about the WikiReader as summer approaches and most recently a delightful site, http://www.MyItchyTravelFeet.com hosted a contest where readers told why and where they most would like to use the WikiReader. Read for yourself here: http://myitchytravelfeet.com/2010/05/20/wikireader-review/
Mar
22
2010
Spring Design Opens Alex eReader Store
The Alex eReader, which made its world debut at Lunch at Piero’s during CES 2010, is closer to entering the market. Spring Design has opened the web shop for pre-orders of the Alex, priced at $399. The Alex is Android-based and runs a number of Android apps right out of the box. You can annotate, highlight, even make voice notes to augment what you are reading. You can browse, enjoy multimedia, use Gmail on the LCD screen. Two surprisingly loud speakers deliver great sound or you can listen on the headset provided with the Alex.
EPD and LCD screens can work together through the Duet Navigator extending the LCD display up into the larger EPD screen that lets you read anything, even in bright sunlight. The handy LCD screen also lets you look up things easily as you read a book on the EPD screen. But here’s the real magic: Imagine if books came with built-in hyperlinks? Spring Design suggests that publishing is going through a major change and has designed LinkNotes into the Alex that lets users or publishers embed links into text. Textbooks will never be the same again, nor as bulky. The Alex is 4.7 x 8.9″ weighs only 11 ounces and is less than a half inch thick. And imagine if you could not only read about that chemistry experiment but actually watch it on the LCD screen either playing off the Web or stored on the microSD card for up to 32GB of extra storage.
A slight delay in opening its store was attributed to web site glitches, but now everything appears to be running fine. By the time the Alex ships in mid April, there will be resellers and partners around the world. Spring Design has already developed the Alex in several foreign languages.
Spring Design plans to expand its developer community and provide plenty of content to read from various partners that will be announced later.
