Speaking of Hardware...

[Scott Rossi]

Anybody here attend the recent CES show in Las Vegas?

While Mark Wieder pointed out that Notion Ink's Adam tablet is apparently
now shipping, I thought I'd mention a couple of other devices that recently
garnered a fair amount of press during and after CES and seem worth
following from a mobile computing standpoint.

Motorola's Atrix is essentially a smartphone that can also double as a
laptop computer or media player, via special docks designed specifically for
the device. You can read about it all over the Web, but here's a
minute-long summary that sums up most of the features:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX2Sdr4c_vc>
I think I may have even seen one setup where you plug in an external
keyboard and a monitor and it becomes a desktop machine as well.

RIM's playbook tablet appears to be farther along than many people thought.
There's a pretty impressive video of an impromptu demo being done by RIM's
co-CEO that shows Playbook's "multitasking in real-time" feature: playing an
HD video while simultaneously running Quake 3, and both remaining
operational at the same time.
<http://www.slashgear.com/blackberry-playbook-demo-and-hands-on-by-mike-laza
ridis-07124552/>
(See video about 1/3 down the page)

CNET reporters coined the phrase "It was raining tablets at CES" which is
exciting from a consumer standpoint, but maybe a bit terrifying from a
developer standpoint. It's going to be challenging to decide which devices
to develop for, but Android is clearly on most of them. And there's still a
bit of an unknown quantity in Apple's next iPad.

Crazy times...

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, UX Design

[Mark Wieder]

Scott-

> CNET reporters coined the phrase "It was raining tablets at CES"
> which is exciting from a consumer standpoint, but maybe a bit
> terrifying from a developer standpoint. It's going to be challenging
> to decide which devices to develop for, but Android is clearly on
> most of them. And there's still a bit of an unknown quantity in
> Apple's next iPad.

...and Android 3.0 is just around the corner as well...

--
-Mark
-ahsof...@gmail.com