The CrunchPad Touch Tablet Web Computer and Dreaming Big

In a few weeks Michael Arrington, leader of TechCrunch, is going to unveil his biggest project ever - the CrunchPad. The CrunchPad is a touch-sensitive tablet computer that loads directly to the web browser. It's low-powered and low on features, but completely optimized for web applications. It's designed to be the computer you keep on your couch to check fantasy sports on, to read email on, to look up IMDB on. It will have a USB drive so you can plug in a keyboard if you need, and it may end up having a web-cam for Skyping, but other than that it's likely everything you see in front of you. In a few weeks Arrington will unveil the CrunchPad at a press event and it is expected to go on sale soon after for less than $300.

Whether the CrunchPad ends up being everything we are hoping and everything we are expecting from the visionary Michael Arrington is really not the story. Arrington went from being a lawyer to a blogger to the leader of a blog & web development empire. But a year ago he decided to set his sights on something bigger; he wrote a call to arms saying he was tired of no one building the perfect and affordable web-optimized tablet. He put a call out to anyone who was interested in helping him achieve the vision, put together a team of partners, and embarked on a journey to build a piece of hardware. One year later he's days away from achieving his lofty goal, testament to his dreams, his work, his cunning, and his work ethic, regardless of his lack of prior experience. This from a lawyer-turned blogger. So despite the product that we see, or whether it succeeds, the fact that he dared to undertake it and see it through is really what's important.

Oh and if it means anything, today's Google announcement is at least a vote of confidence for his vision.

Related articles by Zemanta

• We want a dead simple web tablet. Help us build it. (TechCrunch)
• The CrunchPad Tablet Prototype Update B (TechCrunch)
• Bits: Apple, Acer, and...Arrington? (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)

gdgt is a gadget community built by the tech obsessed for tech lovers

After months in the works, new tech community gdgt from tech legends Peter Rojas and Ryan Block launched. gdgt is a site for gadget lovers. You can create a profile, build a portfolio of gadgets that you have or had, review them, and start discussions around them. It's also designed to be the most detailed knowledge-base of gadget info and specs around - if a gadget isn't there yet, you can add it, or you can add specs to any existing product through wiki-like approach. Jump to a product page and you can see reviews, discussions, and more all in one spot; and not just from gdgt, but pulling in reviews from across populare tech sites like engadget and gizmodo (the old homes of the gdgt founders). One feature I think might be interesting on the product pages is a twitter search feed around the product; when I was trying to decide whether to buy the new Macbook Pro, I spent a while just watching the sea of twitter posts around the product for some community commentary.

gdgt as a brand has been around for a year or so, with Peter and Ryan giving a weekly podcast and running the best live blogging of big tech events (like the Apple keynotes) around. The podcasts, the live blogging, and some editorial will be continuing, and they promise many more features added as they role out their vision for the world's greatest gadget community site around.

Above is what my portfolio looks like right now - more gadgets will be added as the pages I submitted are approved (my Dell 20.1'' monitor, and my canon SD700 IS camera). Once you join, friend me here: http://user.gdgt.com/kskobac/

Related articles by Zemanta

• First Came Gizmodo, Then Engadget. Now, GDGT. (nytimes.com)
• Peter Rojas and Ryan Block launch gdgt -- the Swiss Army knife of tech sites (engadget.com)

A Visit to the Gizmodo Gallery

Today I went out to The Annex on Orchard Street to check out the Gizmodo Tech Gallery. Gizmodo took over a show room for a weekend and filled it with gadgets old and new - everything from the world's first camera phone prototype (it's different than you think) to a 102 inch LCD TV with a 3D television demo. Very cool stuff, and very cool of them to take their collection on the road free for their audience. I didn't take pictures of everything, but you can see a some of the cool 'original tech' they had demo'd over at my Flickr gallery (I should've taken some pictures of the original Apple prototypes!).

[my Gizmodo Tech Gallery set on Flickr]

Weekend Web, Tech, Commerce, Music, and Entertainment News from the Reader

It seems like there were a lot of small, interesting, news stories that came up in Google Reader (My RSS Reader) in the last three days, so I thought I'd lay them out briefly:

• Fred Wilson calls for companies to implement purchasing through text messaging, noting that texting is now a primary way that most people communicate, and small things like movie/song purchases could easily be activated through SMS. Jott is showing how much can be done via short voice and SMS. Interestingly I read in the same weekend that Pizza Hut and Papa Johns are now accepting pizza orders via text message; I don't advocate eating their pizza, but if sub-par fast pizza chains can leverage modern technology, I'm sure other commercial companies can take the next step.
• Facebook continues to refine the way information is added to the newsfeed, and what rights 3rd parties (applications) have in interacting with users en mass. I'm a big fan of the information stream (I wish people leveraged social resources more), and expect that it will change in a big way this year. Companies like friendfeed are showing more interesting progress, and that same technology could be used in Facebook to make the newsfeed more all-encompassing and more valuable. In any case it's good to see that Facebook is continually looking to improve user-experience and information value. [see my friendfeed page here or at the right of my blog or left of my facebook profile]
• Google Operating System has an interesting article outlining how Google Reader could benefit from features that exist in Gmail. All of the suggestions are strong, could leverage long term value out of Google Reader (similar to how adding search functions changed the information store value of Google Reader), and when you think about it, seem obvious. Another interesting web application, ReadBurner, is leveraging the shared item function from Google Reader to create a Digg competitor of sorts; this seems like an obvious application that Google could do natively stronger than ReadBurner could do, and I don't see how they can stay out of this space. Hopefully innovation rolls out in a big way in Google Reader this year.
• Mark Cuban wrote about how musicians need to let go of the concept of the music album, and recognize the success of micro-payment / micro-purchasing, i.e. the $0.99 cent single. He says 27 single tracks sold more than 100k times in a single week, which shows how big the single is, how big our threshold for small, inexpensive purchases is, and calls for bands to start offering subscription-type single track models. It's a good idea, and the next in a long line of suggestions that are being made across the web about how the music business could reform to fit the changing digital entertainment sales landscape. The larger point is this - the music industry is not dead; there is a lot of money to be made, all it takes is recognition that making money will require flexibility and innovation.
• EA announced they will begin offering games to be downloaded and ad-supported. This is newsworthy because it's the first real venture into ad-supported video games beyond the Pogo / Real Arcade / etc. free online casual games subset. EA is recognizing that there can be more engaging, higher-level games that fall between the casual game and the hard-core game, which will attract players if the price is right, which means if the price is free. By offering these games by online download, it also means that they can sell dynamic advertising to be streamed in like Massive does with XBox360, and that's a valuable opportunity for advertisers, which means it's a valuable proposition for EA. This could be a market-changing move by a company that has traditionally relied on a few big key franchises that come out at a significant price year after year to the same fans.
• HBO has started testing an online offering where HBO subscribers can access content via streaming broadband. On-demand movies seems like a must, with Netflix, Apple, and others offering it. The real question, though, is how they are going to combat piracy. Networks are finding that offering free content with ad-support online is a great alternative revenue stream and alternative offering to make illegal downloading less worthwhile (it is often about content accessibility). HBO isn't addressing this problem by only having offerings for their current subscribers. Ultimately all content that people can get for free somewhere (legally or illegally) needs to be unlocked and offered via value proposition to the masses.

Technorati Tags: google reader,gmail,sms,rss,text messaging,texting,hbo,broadband tv,streaming content,EA,video games,free,download,music,mark cuban,readburner,digg,facebook

CES Trend #2: Blu-ray Wins over HD-DVD (and Both Lose...)

This is second of my posts on trends that were illustrated by announcements at CES 2008:

1. Blu-ray Wins over HD-DVD - Blu-ray takes a substantial lead over HD-DVD, but it becomes clear that both will lose eventually to streaming media.

The day before CES began, Warner studies made the unexpected announcement that they will be moving exclusively to Sony's Blu-ray format over HD-DVD. With Warner moving, most of the movie studies will be selling their movies either exclusively or jointly on Blu-ray, and Blu-ray has over 70% of the content expected to hit market (irregardless of Blu-ray player market share). This is enough that most experts believe HD-DVD will disappear, as few people will buy players that have no content.

The big news, however, wasn't the Blu-ray over HD-DVD announcement, but rather the tech announcements that hinted to how quickly the physical disc movie market may become obsolete. Within a few short weeks, several big moves into on-demand movie downloads were made by major companies:

1. Netflix is now offering unlimited movie downloads on the PC
2. Apple is now offering HD movie download rentals directly to the TV via AppleTV
3. Sony announced they will offer downloads of movies via Divx to PS3 or PC
4. Tivo announced additional deals beyond Amazon unbox to download movies to the TV

All of these announcements lead to it being easier and easier for home movie watchers to get a movie on-demand without even a cable service. The Apple announcement in particular is important a) because it's as mainstream and media download companies get right now and b) it's HD quality capable, which means as far as most people can tell the quality will nearly match their DVD potential. All in all, in-and-around CES the theme was Blu-ray may be Sony's first format win after they lost betamax and minidisc, but it may all be for naught in the near future.

CES Trend #1: Open Platforms

This is first of my posts on trends that were illustrated by announcements at CES 2008:

1. Open platforms - everything is opening up and everyone wants to own the platform.

At Yahoo's keynote talk, Jerry Yang (who just this year returned to serve as the CEO of Yahoo after years away) showed off two new open platforms - one just launched and one as a concept for the future.

Yahoo! Go 3.0 - Yahoo! has offered a rich visual interface for download onto mobile devices and easy access to Yahoo's most popular tools for a while now.  With Yahoo! Go 3.0 Yahoo has standardized the mobile widgets on an open platform, and allowed other brands to build widgets for download and integration directly into the mobile platform.  Advertisers will also be able leverage the platform by designing ads that utilize the Yahoo! features such as maps.  Yahoo opening their mobile platform is a direct response to Google's announcement of Android, the open mobile platform that was announced in 2007 and we'll likely here  more about at the Mobile World Congress next month.  Verizon Wireless has also announced that they'll open up their famously closed network by the end of the year.

Yahoo! Social Mail (concept) - Yahoo! also showed a conceptual design for a new Social Mail  program built out of their popular online mail client.  The Social Mail concept would be turning Yahoo! Mail into an open platform for communication, allowing other companies like MySpace and eVite to integrate directly with Yahoo! Mail, as well as all of the other Yahoo! properties that would not be integregated, such as Maps and Flickr.  It would start by turning the Mail startpage into a life-stream of all of your contacts, letting you know when you friends updated flickr, facebook, sent you a text message, IM, or e-mail.  All of your contacts across all of your properties would be integrated, sync'd, and ranked based on your overall communication levels.  Then you would be able to leverage all of the integrated programs. 

For example, say you were IMing friends via Yahoo! Messenger inside your Yahoo! Mail program, and everyone decided to go out to dinner tonight.  You'd be able to click the Yahoo! Maps tab and see everyone's favorite restaurants ranked via Yelp!  Then you'd be able to send out an eVite with the names of the people you are IMing, the highest ranked restaurant across all of your friends preferences already added on, and the event assigned to your calendar.  Afterwards, all of the pictures your friends took at the dinner would show up in your life-stream in-box.  Google, again, is expected to reveal a similar integrated email program in the near future, at the very least leveraging more Google properties.  Mail is the most social application we have, regardless of the spread of MySpace and Facebook, and both Yahoo! and Google are expected to leverage this into a more powerful social application in 2008.

Here is a small portion of video footage I took of the talk where Jerry Yang shows the friend rating, mapping, and eVite features.

Technorati Tags: CES,consumer electronics show,CES 2008,Yahoo,Yahoo! Go 3.0,Google,Android,open platforms,mobile

My CES Recap

I'm back from CES (the international Consumer Electronics Show) and there is a lot to digest, but I'm going to try to put everything I've learned into a few key insights.  The convention itself was very cool, but overwhelming - supposedly 150,000 people attended, and there were thousands of companies spanning miles of convention hall floors.  I don't think there were any game-changing announcements, but there were many things that illustrated major progressions that will likely take place over the next year.  Over several posts I'll address these trends.

Technorati Tags: CES,consumer electronics show

Kevin Goes to CES (The Consumer Electronics Show)

I am about to head out to Vegas for a quick 48 trip to see the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  Over three thousand companies from all over the world will be there showcasing the new technology that should come out in 2008.  I will be attempting to post pictures and notes on a mobile blog that you can find here during the Monday and Tuesday walk through (I only have tickets to the floor, not the main talks).  Check it out, leave messages, and I'll be in touch soon!

(and ignore the crappy test posts and all the junk below)

How Much Microsoft Makes in Profits

Think Microsoft is losing ground to Google? Think they're hurting from pirated versions of Windows floating around? Maybe, but they made $14.4 billion dollars last quarter, including a net income of $4.93 billion. That's a hell of a lot of money, but to put it fully in perspective, see how it stacks up against other major earners. It takes Microsoft only about...:

• 10 hours or so to exceed Red Hat’s quarterly net income of $20.5 million.
• four days to exceed Research In Motion’s quarterly net income of $187.9 million.
• four days to exceed Starbucks’ quarterly net income of $205 million.
• one week to exceed Nike’s quarterly net income of $350.8 million.
• two weeks to exceed McDonalds’ quarterly net income of $762 million.
• two weeks to exceed Apple’s quarterly net income of $770 million.
• 18 days to exceed Google’s quarterly net income of $1 billion.
• 23 days to exceed Coca-Cola’s quarterly net income of $1.26 billion.
• five weeks to exceed IBM’s quarterly net income of $1.85 billion.
• 10 weeks to exceed Wal-Mart’s quarterly net income of $3.9 billion.

That puts it well ahead of the hugely profitable names you'd think of.

[via techiqmag.com]

Technorati Tags: microsoft, red hat, RIM, research in motion, starbucks, nike, micdonalds, apple, google, coca-cola, coca cola, ibm, wal-mart, wal mart, profits, quarterly profits, net income, earnings