Snatched Crunchpad appears with new name JooJoo - Update

Update 12/11/09 - Original posting was 12/9 at 5:22 am.

  CrunchPad files lawsuit against Fusion Garage, and Michael Arrington details their case against them.

  The court documents are linked at that page.

---

CNet story, by Rafe Needleman, on JooJoo, a name that is said to mean "magic" and does sound too much like Voodoo.
  Also, here's Engadget's story by Ross Miller and a direct link to their video (larger).

The unsavory story of Crunchpad was thought to be an ending (though my own take here was "Doesn't actually sound like The End to me but a last grasp for control."), but now we have the guy who forced Arrington out, days before the unveiling, apparently feeling that the world will accept his showing up with the item and a new label covering the "Crunchpad" name, demonstrated by himself in a hotel room, and pay him for it.

  And it might have, in this world, had Fusion Garage's CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan not overpriced it at $499 for a unit that does only web browsing but can't use a printer or save files of interest and uses a virtual keyboard that is not functioning well at this late date.

  To be fairer, here is his side of the story.  There's little question though that Arrington's blog clout spurred the interest and certainly the direction of development.  For one partner to push the other one out of the picture at delivery time, presumably because they had no written contracts, leaves a very bad taste.  You have to trust the future of the company behind a product and especially the company itself.  How easy will that be?

  Here's a more positive take on the JooJoo, by Information Week's Marin Perez Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Crunchpad killed amid a flurry of lawsuits promised - Update2

Michael Arrington kills his Crunchpad due to a breakdown of communications (and opposing goals) with partner Fusion Garage.

Arrington details the mess in this story, and the gist of it is in these two paragraphs:

' But the email went on. Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.

Err, what? This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifying Apple a couple of days before launch that they’d be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple. '

Neither company, Arrington says, owns the intellectural property of the Crunchpad outright and only TechCrunch holds the trademark.  In the meantime there've been no statements from the other side, and all we have is this.

I just read it and there are 957 comments since early morning.  Quite skeptical ones.  Doesn't actually sound like The End to me but a last grasp for control.  Sad to see, as it was a promising gizmo, though the price could never have been as low as Arrington insisted it could be done and the estimates had continued to grow.  Inordinately dramatic ending that's reminiscent of a bad movie.

And, an Update following that last thought: CNET Asia has some links to discussions of all this, and a caution: it's not exactly politically correct.

Also, Update2, Information Week has an interesting perspective on this, remembering the original goals of the project. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Weekend free books reminder - and Odd News

Fireflies in December - this book averages 5 stars from 25 users rating it, so I thought I'd start with that.

Here is the Direct Link to the most recent free and under $1 books reminder, unchanged from Late October.   Click on that to get various lists of free or ultra cheap books and the links to them.  It would be difficult not to find something for $0.00.
  (Maybe return here later for the odd tidbits below.)

  Unfortunately, I need to add now that international Kindle users in Europe and some other countries are in high wireless-cost areas, so Amazon charges about $2.30 for the otherwise free book.  For those Amazon customers, I recommend again the following instead

You can download to your computer for later transfer to your Kindle free "mobi" or "prc" format books from feedbooks.com, manybooks.net, fictionwise.com, and as I've often mentioned, any of 30,000 well-formatted books from the Project Gutenberg set.  The instructions meant for the Project Gutenberg to Kindle will work for your computer, and you can move the downloads over to the Kindle later.

 For those interested in an easier-to-remember shortcut to Amazon's 100 Bestsellers (the majority seem to be free but there are regular-priced ones in the list as well), try http://bit.ly/kbsellers.

A FEW NEWS TIDBITS - SOME QUITE ODD
1.   Crunchpad - There are many articles wondering if it's a dead project.  Consensus seems to be, from 5 months of silence, that after a rise of expected price from $200 to $300 and then to $400, the parts became even more expensive and this web-only tablet would not likely sell well at $600 or $700.  In the meantime, no one at TechCrunch is saying a thing.
  At the same time, there are several articles also saying that it would not do well at that price because the currently vaporware Apple Tablet (someone wrote about it as Apple Slate) would do much more and "come in under $1,000."  I should hope so; I have no idea why something so pricey would be considered an e-reader killer.  But it will no doubt be fun to use.

  I'm elated with the Samsung NC10 Netbook which, at under 3 lbs, I carried on my 3-wk vacation (often in a backpack along with my DX), blogging comfortably from Egypt on it and now it can read my Kindle books.  With 7 good hours of battery use, I can't see wanting a battery-eating tablet.  Unfortunately, the pricing went up on this Samsung model, because it's the only 10" netbook with a non-glare screen - no reflections - and a great keyboard plus excellent screen display with accurate color.

2.   NOOK display stands in New York
This is a very promising e-reader, with its added file formats, including ePub, its loaning capability and the WiFi option plus an SD card slot (not to mention people are attracted by the possibly battery-gobbling color LCD navigation screen at the bottom of the unit).

Forum responses from B&N staff confirm that publishers decide which books can be lent out and that any one book can be lent out once only, for 14 days, during which time the owner can't read it (the latter part makes sense).  A second loan to another person later can't be done for the same book.

Gizmodo has a story and photo, with their trademark style caption - "The $259 Double-screen Gadget That Stole All The Crappy Kindle Thunder will arrive in November 30" - while showing a Nook stand at 86th and Third Ave.
  They updated this with the news from another reader that there was a 2nd stand at Union Square but that "He says the units are not real, however: They are plastic mock-ups."  It could be that unanticipated demand for the product affects demo models.

3.   Robert Murdoch is still complaining
Recently, Murdoch had complained that the Wall St. Journal saw only 1/3 of revenue from Kindle subscriptions (it's said by an industry insider as mentioned in another blog entry here that the split is 33% publisher, 33% Amazon and 33% wireless-provider -- the latter paid by Amazon).
  Now, he's got a slightly better cut and is not happy about that.

' Murdoch, speaking during a conference call, noted that News Corp. gets about $6 to $6.50 for every $15 Journal subscription Amazon sells on the Kindle.  "That is not a great deal," he said.  "Amazon treats those people as their customers, not our customers." [Imagine the nerve of Amazon.]  Murdoch said there will probably be "half a dozen" e-readers of some kind on the market eventually, and News Corp. will be open to deals with the distributors of those devices.  "As long as we get a [sufficient] portion of the revenue." '

  He's also been threatening to charge iPod and Blackberry users soon.  But I haven't read anything on that recently; on the other hand, I haven't been paying attention.

  Murdoch has also announced that he plans to block Google search-access to his newspapers once they all go to Pay status.  Two interesting and different takes on that (not negative) are at bigmouthmedia and PCAdvisor, UK.

4.   Completely off topic - "My Nightmare Interviews with Google"
Reading this gal's experience with the strange questions asked by two interviewers was mind-boggling.  They're looking for people fast on their feet, but ... Also, here's a follow-up story: 15 Google-interview questions that will make you feel stupid

5.   A maybe useful 'gadget' for a Kindle world:
  Massaging backpack relaxes your back.
  (The link doesn't work at first. Click on "Try again" and then it does -- very weird.) Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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Apple 'netbook' due October. And, the CrunchPad?

Computerworld reports that the coming Apple netbook (others say tablet) will sell for about $800, with a 9.7" screen (the size of the Kindle DX) according to a Taiwanese news site [I linked a Google automated, though primitive, web-translation].

The expected price is high but Technology Business Research's Ezra Gottheil says "Apple has never been above squeezing early adopters."  As either a touchscreen notebook or Internet tablet, this would be the cost before adding on monthly wireless charges as Apple of course would need to do for Internet access outside the home or office, but for customers who want color and video, the $800 cost plus $720/year wireless access charges (or ~$1,520 for first year) would probably be worth it.  Computerworld says that, according to Infotimes,

' Apple has placed orders with three Taiwanese electronics manufacturers -- Dynapack International Technology, Foxconn and Wintek -- for components that will be assembled into a netbook. Wintek, said InfoTimes, will produce the 9.7-in. touch screens. Foxconn is a contract netbook and notebook maker, and it will be the primary manufacturer for Apple's netbook. '

Gottheil wonders what it will do about a keyboard, though I don't see anything indicating it wouldn't have either a physical or virtual one.  He is hoping for an external one.  Computerworld ends its report with

' But Gottheil was sticking to his "iPod on steroids" vision of whatever Apple introduces to fill the gap between the top-end iPhone and the low-end MacBook Pro.  "That's more likely, I think, than a traditional netbook," he said.  "Even outside of Apple, this has to happen.  PCs, even Macs, are a combination of a professional tool and a hobbyist's device." '

And then there's the announcement still expected, for July, of TechCrunch's CrunchPad, which is a 12" tablet web-browser expected to sell for $350 which will be dedicated to browsing the web in color with no internal storage but with a card slot for external storage.

  In the Chicago Sun-Times report by the always pragmatic Andy Ihnatko, he (unlike other columnists) mentions the need for either WiFi or 3G wireless access and wonders whether 3G capability will be included.

  As of now, no one has said publicly whether the capability is only WiFi (useable at home or office with your WiFi network or at hotspots when out) or also 3G wireless, but there have been hints from salespeople mentioning 3G when apologizing for some halting in the video.

 3G Wireless would be great but will be a capability that requires (except for the Kindles) that the customer buy the monthly wireless (usually $60/month).  However, the other option of WiFi access at home, while relaxing in your chair, and webbing that way, would be great.  I think they'll sell plenty of these for people with WiFi in the house, and WiFi is easy to set up for a total of $50 or less.

Neither of these are e-readers, but the Apple tablet would almost surely have Apple apps capability which means that one could read e-books even if with backlighting, which many would appreciate at night.  But for $800 it would be a luxury to get it for e-book reading.  And battery life would be shorter.  For Net access away from home/office networks, the Apple would cost about $1,520 for the first year and then about $720 plus taxes and fees in subsequent years.

This will be interesting to watch since the Apple tablet wouldn't be as capable as a Netbook with hard drive and normal apps and would be overkill for book-reading while not as easy on the eyes for pure-reading as is the otherwise more limited e-ink screen.  But Apple always makes devices that attract.
  Here are speculations on the form factor and operating system.

I think the CrunchPad will be an easier sell though.  Ihnatko's report includes a video of a demo of the CrunchPad in April. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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