This article in the Sydney Morning Herald today could not have arrived at a more fortuitous time to help me finalise my book chaper. Nokia today unveiled a small wireless tablet and at the very reasonable price of $458 (AUD) the tablet is being positioned as:
…an alternative to buying an extra personal computer or laptop for different rooms, providing a cheaper, quicker and less-cumbersome way to connect to the web and email at home.
It has no hard drive but rather 128 megabytes of onboard flash memory and a memory card slot. Nokia says the device is not intended as a rival to Apple Computer’s iPod or other MP3 music players. A software update is expected early next year to add features such as voice over internet telephony and instant messaging.
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While fairly novel in terms of its handheld size, the Internet Tablet can be seen as another variation on a concept that has repeatedly failed to catch on - a device that offers easy internet access and basic tasks such as email for which the computing power of a full-blown PC is unnecessary.
During the internet bubble, prominent names from a wide range of technology industries dabbled with web appliances. Intel, Gateway, 3Com, America Online, National Semiconductor and Honeywell all either launched or promised such devices. Nokia itself weighed in with a tablet called the MediaScreen.
Many were wired devices, such as the “Audrey” from 3Com, though a few like the Airboard from Sony and the WebPAD developed by National Semi used wireless technologies similar to Wi-Fi.
Since the Nokia tablet is meant to be carried from room to room, its 10.41cm screen is considerably smaller than the display on most of these predecessor appliances but also far bigger and sharper compared with most cell phones and handheld computers.
And rather than serving up stripped-down versions of web pages like most mobile devices, the tablet uses an Opera browser to display sites as they appear on any computer.
Weighing 230 grams the Internet Tablet is 1.91cm thick, 14.22cm wide and 7.87cm deep. It includes a loudspeaker but there’s no typewriter keyboard for thumb-typing e-mail as on popular handheld computers such as the Treo and BlackBerry. Instead, the tablet comes with a stylus to tap a virtual keyboard on the screen.
The device is designed primarily to use at home, though its Wi-Fi transmitter can also connect with public and commercial hot spots. There’s also a USB port to connect to a PC and a Bluetooth transmitter that can be used to connect with a mobile phone that has cellular online access.
The Nokia announcement marks the second time in days that a prominent producer of mobile devices has veered into a new product category.
Last week, PalmOne unveiled a $US500 device called the LifeDrive, essentially a cross between a mobile media player, portable hard drive and an organiser. The LifeDrive features 4 gigabytes of internal storage and a high-resolution screen for on-the-road access to music, video, digital photos, e-mail and office documents. It also offers Wi-Fi wireless capability to connect to the web and corporate networks remotely.
Nokia has struggled in its attempts to forge several new product categories. Most prominent among these has been the N-Gage, a cell phone designed specifically for video games. Others include a digital picture frame with a cellular connection to download photos.
Copyright © 2005 Associated Press.
Maybe I’ll be bale to invest in one of these later in the year! I kinda prefer the musical and touch fashion but this is pretty cool. My friend Bruno has had some manly thingie Personal organiser device with everything you can imagine on it that he lets me use when I have to choose a movie we can go and see. It also reads his emails and incoming sms text messages. My othern friend Kevin has some tablet and stylus system he uses to do his stock market speculations on but I can never follow what he is doing - not my strong point.
But I do like the look of this one.
Yesterday I showed an image of a musical dress, which had all sorts of special mobile media technologies carefully integrated into the fabric. Of course, the idea of wearable instrumentation is nothing new, see:
Bob Dylan, for example… and of course - my favourite: the fabulous horn guy!
Because I wanted to include a section in my book chapter about mobile cultures I found lots of exciting new trends… here is the second preview of wearable technologies and beyond!
Haptic Gloves
Hold my hand so we can make music together…
Musical Performance in a Sonic Dress
A custom dress made for Phish percussionist Jon Fishman was worn and “played” live on stage using specialized tape head gloves during a concert in april 2004.
Interactive Textile Art
Every art piece produced by IFM is a hand woven and printed computer display, integrated with our proprietary drive electronics and custom artistic software. An IFM color change textile hangs on your wall like any other piece of art, but unlike other artworks it magically changes color and pattern over time.
Denim Jacket Synth
The Musical Jacket turns an ordinary denim jacket into a wearable musical instrument, allowing the wearer to play notes, chords, rhythms, and accompaniment using any instrument available in the General MIDI scheme. It integrates directly into the jacket an embroidered fabric keypad, a MIDI sequencer/synthesizer, amplifying speakers, a fabric bus sewn from conductive organza, and batteries to power the above subsystems.
The Firefly Dress
The Firefly Dress is a creative application that embellishes the wearer’s motion with an ever-changing display of light. Its first part is a skirt, handmade from two layers of conducting organza (one supplying power and the other ground) separated by a layer of nylon netting. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with fuzzy conductive Velcro** ends for electrical contacts are placed throughout the netting. When both ends of an LED brush against the power and ground planes, the circuit is complete and the LED lights.
The bodice (with a conductive front panel) and the necklace form a second dynamic element. The necklace is a simple analog computer, powered when any of its conducting tassels brush against a plane of conducting organza sewn to the front of the bodice. Each tassel has its own resistor network and provides a different color bias to the red, green, and blue LEDs on the face of the necklace. The dress demonstrated the visual, tactile, and mechanical potential of sewing circuitry into clothing.
I spent part of today in a Primary school with a first year education student out on her first practical teaching session. It’s so delightful to see such the enthusiasm of young students. What amazed me though was that the class she was teaching on had a class size of *drum roll* 15 children!!!! With a few of the children away today with the usual wintery illnesses, that left only 12 in the classroom. From the window was a view of the large reconciliation garden (reconciliation is all about respecting Australia’s indigenous heritage) in which the children had planted flowers, shrubs and small trees. There was a large mural of indigenous art along the fence, and several birdbaths and benches on which children and parent volunteers were sitting and reading stories with each other. Other parents were in the room working with small groups (about 2-3 children with each parent!!) also reading or doing writing together. Music was coming from a music room that was actually musical in nature (hey, I was a music teacher for 1 year and let me tell you, 30 kids playing recorders is hard work on the ears!!), and another group of children were in the HUGE computer lab across the hall (apparently there’s a ratio of 1 computer for every 2 kids in the school). I was so dismayed that I’d travelled without my digital camera tucked in my bag because I saw such beauty all around me. It was really refreshing to be in such a positive atmosphere (especially after my last prac visit) and I thought - what a lucky student to have such a lovely place/space/time on her first teaching experience.
