Google to Open Online Tablet PC Store

Our favourite internet behemoth – Google – is planning to open an online store to sell tablet PCs directly to consumers, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Google’s online store would offer tablets made by Samsung and Asus based on Google’s Android software, according to the WSJ report.

Google briefly sold a specially-designed Android smartphone – Nexus One – directly to consumers in 2010, but closed the store after four months saying it had not lived up to expectations.

Google now relies on retail and carrier partners to sell Android smartphones made by a variety of handset makers and Android has become the world’s No.1 smartphone operating system, ahead of iPhone-maker Apple Inc.

But Apple still dominates the market for touch-screen tablet computers with its two-year old iPad. Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire tablet is based on the open-source Android code, but the device features a customized interface that does not use many Google services.

Google may co-brand some of the tablets sold through the store and has considered subsidizing the cost of future tablets to make them more competitive with the Kindle Fire, according to the Journal report. It is unclear when Google plans to open the store.

Oregon Scientific MEEP! PC Tablet For Small People

Oregon Scientific has launched a new tablet designed specifically for children at the recent Toy Industry Association’s 109th American International Toy Fair in New York. The amusingly named MEEP! tablet runs on Android 4.0, features a 7-inch Neonode zForce touch-screen display encased in toughened silicon sleeved housing, is Wi-Fi-enabled and well just too darn cute :: Read the full article »»»»

HP’s Schizoid WebOS Turn Around? No Phone, But Yes to Tablet PC!

Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman said Friday that the company plans to manufacture a WebOS tablet in 2013, even as the company winds down the WebOS-based TouchPad tablet.

The HP TouchPad was such a disaster that the company canceled it 49 days after it launched. But that was under its previous CEO, Leo Apotheker. Apparently new CEO Meg Whitman wants to take another shot.

In what is the latest sideways vertical move for HP on it’s WebOS platform, TechCrunch has reported that Meg Whitman and board member Marc Andreessen have told the site that the HP will manufacture a WebOS tablet, perhaps in 2012, but definitely in 2013. Whitman has said previously that the company is committed to the tablet market.

An HP spokesman, asked to confirm the report, said that a WebOS tablet would be made only if the market was “viable”. He said that he preferred to focus on the decision to release WebOS as open source, which will give it an immortality that it otherwise might not have.

In August this year HP anounced that it was pulling out of consumer electronics all together, August 19,2011:  Hewlett-Packard is pulling out of it’s consumer PC business, the company chose its Q3 earnings call to drop the bomb. The tech behemoth under Mark Hurd’s watch focused on  splashing out $7 billion to buy Palm, 3COM, and 3PAR. Hewlett-Packard in a complete 180  is now ditching both the Personal Computer and Palm-Mobile Computing business, oh, and they’ve signed on the line to buy Autonomy for $11 billion. Read the full article »»»»

Motorola Wins Apple Wireless Patent Fight in Germany

A German court has found Apple in violation of a Motorola Mobility patent, ruling that Apple’s iPhone and 3G model iPads infringe on cellular communications, patents owned by Motorola Mobility that relate to General Packet Radio Service – GPRS – data packet transfer technology.

The patent-in-suit is European Patent 1010336 [B1] on a “method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system”. This patent is one of the two patents at issue in the action in which a default judgment was entered against Apple Inc. It was declared essential to the GPRS standard. It’s the European equivalent of U.S. Patent No. 6,359,898, a patent against which Apple raised a FRAND defense in the United States and which is being asserted in an action that was just transferred from the Western District of Wisconsin to the Northern District of Illinois.

Motorola said the ruling validated its “efforts to enforce its patents against Apple’s infringement” Read the full article »»»»

Senseg! Touch Screen Feed-back for your Fingers

Touch screens, the input device of the 21st century are due for a major upgrade. While they may be convenient they have always lacked any type of direct feedback, forcing us to live with passive feed back, the incessant beeping of the touch screen keyboard. Finnish company Senseg have recently announced a revolutionary technology that provides feed back directly to your fingers as you swipe the touch screen. Dubbed feel screen technology Senseg is able to simulate various physical textures, edges, contours and vibrations, putting the touch back into typing.

“By passing an ultra-low electrical current into the insulated electrode, Senseg’s Tixel, the proprietary charge driver can create a small attractive force to finger skin. By modulating this attractive force a variety of sensations can be generated, from textured surfaces and edges to vibrations and more”  Dave Rice, Senseg Read the full article »»»»