Tablet Computer for $200?

A great article by Brett Arends was in the WSJ (inside joke: sorry, JT) about his desire to not pay $500 bucks for an iPad, much less $400 (or, as my pal Scott Rose of ScottWorld.com has pointed out, $349 for a refurbished iPad.) What did he end up paying? "Less than $200... and about 20 minutes of my time."

How'd he do it? Arends explains:

I bought a Barnes & Noble Nook Color tablet (for $190 plus tax from a temporary online promotion, down from the usual $250). And then I downloaded a very simple, perfectly legal software fix from the Internet that turned it into a fully functioning tablet running on Google's Android platform. The fix, known as a "rooting," unlocks Barnes & Noble's proprietary overlay. The instructions came via Ars Technica, a reputable site devoted to technology, and were pretty easy to follow.

I wasn't really expecting it to work. I tried it as an experiment. But the results were remarkable.

The Nook Color, which was designed mainly for reading books and magazines, is about half the size of an iPad or a Xoom. It weighs about 30% less. It runs on WiFi, but not 3G. It has an absolutely superb screen. And, once you've unlocked the software, it runs many Android applications, from email to news readers TweetDeck to, yes, Angry Birds.
It even, ironically, runs the Kindle app from Barnes & Noble's rival Amazon.com. So I can now use my Nook Color to read Kindle books.

Be aware that you perform this software hack entirely at your own risk. Barnes & Noble says it invalidates your warranty. The process ran smoothly for me, but when I read the Internet chat rooms, I found at least a few people had had problems. If it goes wrong, you're on your own.

Of course, it's hardly the same as an iPad or a Xoom or a Galaxy. It doesn't have any cameras. It has a slower processor. It's not for power users. The video support is pretty limited. A few Android programs still won't run on it. And dedicated gamers will doubtless find it frustrating.

But as a basic tablet, it's absolutely fine for me—and, I suspect, a lot of people. Indeed, I happen to prefer it to bigger rivals, because it actually slips into my overcoat pocket. (I hate having to carry things around.)


Arends concludes with some observations, the first one being that the Nook is underrated and B&N needs to turn it into a tablet. On this score, he's 100% correct: it appears B&N has been caught up in its own idea of what the Nook should be used for rather than realize what the customers want to use it for. The winners in business realize that the customer's desires always trump their own plans. B&N is hurting: they need a winner, and Nook, if marketed as a cheap but effective tablet, is a winner.

His second point, however, is even more important, that "tablets are probably going to become cheap, near-commodity items, and maybe sooner than you think.

Think about this. Barnes & Noble — a company that is, ahem, hardly in the forefront of technological innovation — has managed to put together a pretty good Android tablet from scratch in short order, and is selling it for $250 (and even less if, like me, you catch a promotion). It's not a top-of-the-range model, but it does include a superb screen — and analysts will tell you that's typically one of the most expensive parts of a tablet.

Investors in Apple, Motorola Mobility, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Research In Motion and others are hoping for great things from tablet computers. It's all anyone wants to talk about—the huge profits to come from all these tablets and the "cloud computing" services they use. Apple alone is the second-most-valuable company in the world, with an enterprise value of more than $300 billion.

Count me as deeply Missourian about the long-term profits likely to come from this entire industry. In the short run, there may be fantastic money to be made. In the long term, tablets will be a dime a dozen. Every platform will have all the apps you need. Any brand or model is going to have a tough challenge maintaining a competitive advantage over another. Someday we're going to look back and laugh at the day when people thought tablets — or smartphones — were exciting and profitable businesses to be in.

If Barnes & Noble can do it, anyone can."

Move Over, Apple! My Tablet Cost $200
BRETT ARENDS
MARCH 9, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188901890884360.html

New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-social-networking-site-changing-the-way-oh-chr,17465/
New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It
Let Someone Else Report On This Bullshit
May 20, 2010 | ISSUE 46•20

NEW YORK—While millions of young, tech-savvy professionals already use services like Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant touch with friends, a new social networking platform called Foursquare has recently taken the oh, fucking hell, can't some other desperate news outlet cover this crap instead?

Launched last year, Foursquare is unique in that it not only allows users to broadcast their whereabouts, but also offers a number of built-in incentives, including some innovative new crap The New York Times surely has a throbbing hard-on for.

In fact, why don't we just let them report on this garbage and call it a day?

"Foursquare is a little bit of everything—a friend-finder, a local city guide, an interactive mobile game," said company cofounder Dennis Crowley, as if reading from the same tired script used by every one of these Web 2.0 or whatever-the-fuck-they're-called startups. "But more than that, Foursquare is an [endless string of meaningless buzzwords we just couldn't bring ourselves to transcribe]."

Added Crowley, "[Who gives a shit]."

According to sources we feel really, really sorry for, Foursquare works by allowing users to "check in" from their present location, whether it be a bar, restaurant, nearby magazine stand, or man, this piece would be perfect to hand over to that schmuck Dan Fletcher at Time magazine right about now.

By "checking in," users can earn tangible, real-world rewards. For instance, the Foursquare user with the most points at any given venue earns the designation of "mayor" and can receive discounts, free food, or other prizes that, quite honestly, we're thoroughly disgusted with ourselves for having actually researched.

In addition, please, kill us already.

As you've no doubt guessed from reading a dozen similar articles in The Washington Post, now's the part of our "trend piece" where we quote an industry expert like Leonard Steinberg, a Boston University communications professor and specialist in his field who remarks in a rather defeated tone that Foursquare represents a revolutionary new way for businesses and customers to interact.

"Through its competitive elements like badges and points, Foursquare helps generate brand loyalty," said the Ph.D.-holding individual, whose decades in higher education were basically shit upon by our inane questions about various bits of Foursquare ephemera. "It's a unique and transformative social networking tool."

"Can I go now?" he added.

Although it recently hit the million-user mark, Foursquare has yet to approach the vast subscriber base of Facebook and Twitter. But that all could change as people become increasingly reliant on the…okay, here, here, let me sum up this whole "news" story for you: Aging, scared newspapermen throw themselves at the latest mobile technology trend in a humiliatingly futile attempt to remain relevant.

And now that you're all caught up, take it away, final miserable paragraph:

The current mayor of her local coffee shop and the young woman we've selected to represent young people everywhere, Jen Galanos, 26, has so far earned a free cappuccino and two hours of Wi-Fi. But while she likes the rewards, she said they're only a fringe benefit of an application that, as we suspected, The New York Times has already creamed its jeans and tripped all over itself in a rush to cover.

Here's the fucking link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/internet/19foursquare.html

Airwaves Could Beam High-Speed Internet

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-01/internet-ether

Airwaves Abandoned by TV Could Beam High-Speed Internet Everywhere
By Amina Elahi
02.05.2010

When TV went digital, Verizon, AT&T and other cellphone carriers shelled out a combined $19 billion for some of the freed-up airwaves, known as white spaces. Now wireless company Spectrum Bridge is using the parts that are still unclaimed to deliver high-speed Internet from its broadcast tower to your laptop computer.

As soon as next month, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to allow commercial white-space Internet, which could help hook up the 54 percent of rural homes without broadband. These white-space channels use lower frequencies than Wi-Fi, so they can pass through physical obstacles easier and travel farther. Last October, Spectrum activated the first white-space network, in Claudville, Virginia, under an experimental FCC license. The town’s hilly landscape and abundant trees made conventional wireless near-impossible, so the company set up an Internet-connected radio transmitter at the town’s edge and gave the school, business district and a few homes modem-like radio receivers. “They’ve been trying to get connected to the outside world for the better part of this century,” says Jeff Schmidt, Spectrum’s director of engineering.

Because wireless mics and news cameras can also use white-space channels, Spectrum’s system chooses among unused channels listed by the FCC. If all goes well in Claudville, the company plans to test the tech in the more crowded airwaves of cities this year.

We Still Need Net Neutrality Legislation

http://www.freepress.net/news/24353

We Still Need Net Neutrality Legislation
From Information Week, July 4, 2007
By David DeJean

We haven’t heard much about net neutrality legislation lately. That could be because the current Congress might actually be able to pass it, and opponents like AT&T and Verizon are laying low, spreading lobbying money, and trying to wait out that shocking possibility. That makes the Federal Trade Commission’s anti-net neutrality announcement last week even more puzzling. Was it intended as a warning from the Bush administration to Congress to back off, or was it yet another shake of the money tree?

The news story about the FTC report notes that “the FTC sided with high-speed Internet providers such as AT&T and Verizon,” and trotted out once again hollow justifications like “such rules could stifle innovation” and “”This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more — not less – competition,” which it probably didn’t even think up itself, but copied from industry propaganda.

The paradox is that these providers have been working very hard to stifle innovation and move toward less competition for years – take their well-funded resistance, at both national and state levels, to public WiFi and similar local initiatives, for example. U.S. Internet service providers deliver less service for higher prices than many other countries around the world. In April, when the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held hearings on broadband in this country versus others, the committee heard that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had just lowered the United States to the number 15 spot on the list.

Technological innovation in broadband access is a threat to corporate profits, and the FTC report comes down on the side not of the public interest but of the private interests.

As a government policy, this isn’t working. Communication Workers of America union puts it this way:

Our reliance on market forces, deregulation, and inadequate governmental programs has not served us well. We invest relatively less on communications; we are charged more for slower speeds; millions encounter a significant digital divide based on income and geography, and unionized jobs with good wages and benefits are being replaced by low-wage jobs with less training and higher turnover.

Of course, the CWA has a vested interest in this – the more broadband Internet access there is in the United States, the more jobs there will be for well-trained, well-paid members of their union. But that’s a better fit with the public interest than the FTC’s position, as far as I can tell.

The idea that net neutrality would somehow diminish competition is a strange one that I’ve never seen actually explained. It’s almost as strange as the FTC’s contention that we we live in a country where “the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access … generally is moving toward more — not less — competition,” in the words of FTC chairman Deborah Majoras.

Where exactly does she live? Not where Gigi Sohn and I live. Ms. Sohn is the president of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, and she said of the FCC report, “”Despite the fervent wishes of the FTC staff, there is not a competitive market for high-speed Internet services. New technologies, particularly wireless technologies, are not soon going to have the same robust qualities or market penetration as the duopoly cable and telephone-company services.” That’s the situation in my town, and in most towns across America where you can get high-speed broadband access at all.

Another quote from the Reuters piece I loved: “Proposals to impose new regulation actually threaten further advancements in broadband Internet connections. That hurts consumers by denying them new and better services,” said Verizon executive vice president Tom Tauke.

Verizon and AT&T and Comcast and other high-speed Internet service providers have seemed to be far more interested in innovating their revenues by cutting themselves into the content business than in innovating their technology. Net neutrality legislation would help drive innovation by clarifying the service provider’s business and focusing them on actually advancing broadband Internet connections, which this country sorely needs, as a way of building their bottom lines. That’s what the FTC and the FCC should be working on – how to get higher access speeds and truly innovative delivery technologies into the marketplace, not protecting their corporate masters from having to compete with them.