Chinese ‘iPad’ Maker Threatens to Sue Apple for Plagiarism

From Wired -

Xiaolong Wu, the president of Shenzhen Great Loong Brother that makes the P88 tablet has announced via an interview with Spanish national newspaper El Mundo that if the iPad reaches China, his company will be forced to sue Apple for "plagiarism."  It is assumed he meant IP or copyright infringement.

Wu claims Apple has not only copied the concept of a multitouch tablet, but also the design.This is notwithstanding the fact the P88 looks just like an enlarged iPhone or that its specs are entirely different - its screen isn't even multitouch, it runs Windows, and only has a 1.5 hrs battery.

Mobience smallQWERTY offers tactile relief for touch devices

From Dvice -

South Korea-based Mobience's smallQWERTY keyboard is a concept design the company came up with to wirelessly connect and input text into touch interface smart phones. No technical details have been released yet but there's a demo video below.

iPad Keynote in less than 180 Seconds

Alienware M11x Available for Preorder Now, Shipping March 1

From Gizmodo -

Dell has listed the Alienware M11x, its high-powered ultraportable gaming notebook on its website for pre-order. It starts at $799, and will ship on March 1. Specs include a Pentium SU4100 processor, ($100 more for the Core2Duo SU7300), 2GB dual channel DDR3 800MHz, ($350 more for 8GB dual channel DDR3, and160GB SATAII hard drive ($150 more for 500GB SATAII (7200 RPM)).

Wi-Fi Detecting Bumper Sticker Helps Out the Wardriver Behind You

From Gizmodo -

Instructables has instructions on how to modify a Wi-Fi-detecting t-shirt into a Wi-Fi-detecting window decal.

Peewee Gets An iPad!

Stephen Colbert has an iPad!

The Killer App: iPad Board Games

From I4U News -

Actual board games take up way too much space and are a pain to clean up. With the iPad, the board game may have found an ideal platform. Imagine loading up digital copies of all your favorites games into just one tablet. Just as the Kindle does away with physical bookshelves, the iPad can do away with physical boxes. Moreover, it allows playing in a moving car. In a nutshell: the iPad is a potential goldmine for family entertainment.

Asus Eee PC 701 running Mac OS X Leopard

A bit old but still fascinating -

Turn Your iPhone and iPod touch into iPad

Asus Eee 1201n netbook EVE Online

MSI plans to launch an US$500 tablet

From Digitimes -

Per MSI sales director Sambora Chen, her company is set to launch a Nvidia Tegra-based tablet  the second half of 2010 priced US$500. It will feature a 10" color touchscreen with wireless support and will be light-weight and thin for mobility, while featuring all the functions of a regular notebook.

Apple iPad may take away netbook demand

From Digitimes -

Per Paul Peng, executive VP of AU Optronics' global business unit, the Apple iPad may take away some demand from the netbook market because of the same price point.
iPad's US$499 starting price is very competitive and should provide Apple a chance to achieve annual sales of 10 million units, which is a significant since the current tablet PC market size is only about three million units a year. However, sales may be impacted by component shortages.

Unexpectedly low Apple iPad price forces notebook vendors to re-evaluate their tablet PC strategies

From Digitimes -

After the launch of Apple's iPad, which came in starting at way under the expected $1,000 pricepoint, leading netbook makers Asus and MSI are now forced to re-evaluate their strategies for the tablet PC market. The companies originally planned to offer their competing products at 20-30% lower than the Apple iPad. But the $499 entry-level price has caught them by surprise. But since they are used to, in fact, they tend to focus on price wars, we can expect the emerging tablet market to be fought on low prices.

The iPad's New Gestures

Rest easy, iPad roamers: O2 and Orange have micro SIM orders, too

An anonymous tipster has informed Engadget that there are actually a couple of international mobile carriers will soon be using the same microSIM card used by the iPad. Apparently SIM card supplier Gemalto has revealed both O2 and Orange have micro SIM orders in the pipeline. While that doesn't necessarily mean that Apple is going to be partners with them, at least users can opt to use their microSIM cards since the built-in modem is unlocked.

Apple's iPad -- a broken link?

The Adobe Blog's Adrian Ludwig posted his thoughts on the iPad, or rather the lack of Flash on the iPad -

"It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple's DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

If I want to use the iPad to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab -- not to mention the millions of other sites on the web -- I'll be out of luck.

Adobe and more than 50 of our partners in the Open Screen Project are working to enable developers and content publishers to deliver to any device, so that consumers have open access to their favorite interactive media, content, and applications across platform, regardless of the device that people choose to use."

Tech Experts Debate The iPad

Aspect Ratio

 At 1024x768 resolution, the iPad's display has an aspect ratio of 4:3. The trend these days actually is going towards 16:9 and represents a step back. However, given the orientation of the Apple logo on the back, the iPad is probably meant to be primarily to be used in portrait mode and a 9:16 aspect ratio would have been too narrow for the screen.

Curiously, as Lonely Sandwich pointed out in the graphics above, the iPad in portrait mode is equivalent in aspect ratio to two iPhone screens stacked in landscape mode. This definitely makes for some interesting possibilities...

iPad Commercial video Leaked