Wired has demoed an application for a Tablet that is running on Adobe AIR and yes it is demoed running on a Tablet. Publishers are certainly hoping this kind of effort is the future and that they will figure out a way to entice us all to pay for these things. The jury is still out on that.

I went back and looked at my records from about 12 years ago. At that time I subscribed to 14 different publications on an annual basis that were delivered by regular mail. I also bought two daily newspapers each morning and the Sunday New York Times each week at a cost then of $4.50. All told I was spending about $700 a year on all of this. That eventually stopped and those costs were simply transferred to paying for Internet access.

Several points about this.

First, you can tell how much the iPad has invaded the thinking of so many as quite a few articles about Wired’s app mentioned it as an iPad app. It was being demoed on another device. We all know Apple’s stance on Adobe’s Flash platform, and from the sound of things, Adobe might be positioning AIR as an alternative to fighting that battle, but there’s no guarantee that Apple is going to let AIR on its platform either. We’ll have to wait and see on that.

Second, Wired’s app proves that great design is going to be a key element for acceptance, in addition to content, but the technology for delivery is going to also be an important factor. Face it, publishers are going to want their content on any device they can get it on. An Adobe AIR like solution would certainly make that easier but a battle over who controls what is not going to move things along for anybody.

Third, in the longer view, Wired’s demonstration shows that there could be a resurgence in the kind of content creation and delivery that led every high school activity group to sell magazine subscriptions as a fundraiser for a good portion of the last century. The question is will we be willing to pay for it and value it in the ways we paid for content in an earlier era. Yesterday also saw a story about how their is some internal struggling going on at the New York Times over pricing of its future digital product. The circulation folks apparently want to see a monthly cost of $20 to $30, equivalent to what you pay for the paper to be dropped on your doorstep. The digital folks see a much different model of around $10 a month.

I don’t think anyone has the answers yet. The next few years will see all sorts of attempts and experiments to try and make this work on a number of levels, and somewhere in the future a model will probably evolve. But given the pace that things shift technologically these days, it is most likely going to always be a moving target. That is going to require a flexibility that will need to be learned as well for those hoping Tablets will be any sort of salvation.

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Announced last year in Singapore then unveiled at CES the UH900 is now also released in Japan. Not much to say here since the spec are pretty much the same with an Atom Z520 CPU at 1.33GHz, 2Gb of ram but with only 30gb of SSD instead of 62gb in Singapore, and WiMax.

But the most important point here is without a doubt its 5.6″ multi-touch screen that will make wonders on this PC. With a total weight of only 495g, the UH900 will sure find its place in many bags soon!

Finally Bathing APE (BAPE) Japan and Fujitsu joined force to create 2 unique Skin for the UH900 with the usual BAPE camo pattern.
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If you expected the next generation of tablet PCs to be light on your pocket, think again. The DigitalRise X9 could be mistaken for the Apple tablet, but with a built-in NES game emulator and Windows 7 OS we quickly realize it is not.

With a decent 10.2” multi-touch screen that is dust, scratch, and fire resistant giving you a resolution of 1024 x 600, an Atom 270 processor, standard 945GS chipset, 2GB of RAM, 160 GB Sata hard drive, 3 USB slots, one card reader (SD/MS/MMC/MS-Pro) and i’m still not even finished.

The company DigitalRise is popular in the EU, so we haven’t heard much from them out this way. Let’s get on with the rest of the specs. The X9 also has built-in GPS Navigation, Bluetooth, WiFi, and Mp3-Mp5 support. A 2,800 mAh or 3,500 mAh battery are available which can provide an estimated 4 hours of play time. At 2kg with dimensions of 226.3×166.9×24.7 mm it’s not a bad size.

Software wise, it runs on Windows 7.0 OS and comes with office file viewing applications, communication software and of course, that NES game emulator.

Given a 4 star rating on ChinaGrabber (where it is available for sale), it sells for $780 ($220 off list price) and ships on February 3rd.
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Here’s yet another thing the iPhone can do: it’s a universal remote. This ThinkFlood RedEye system includes a dock that communicates with your iPhone via WiFi, creating those infrared (IR) signals that your AV components obey.

Like our favorite Logitech Harmony 900 remote, the RedEye’s macro operation is sophisticated, letting you create “actions” that turn on multiple components for, say, watching TV, or watching a Blu-ray disc. You can arrange the buttons on the touchscreen however you want, and you can even use multitouch slides to control functions such as volume.

Besides its steep $188 price, the only disadvantage we see is that when you’re watching TV, it’s better to have physical buttons that you can operate without looking at the remote. But that eyes-free multitouch function takes care of channel changing and volume, the main functions you use while watching TV. Nice. Take a look at the video of the RedEye in action:
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There’s no question multi-touch enabled hardware is going to be invading many homes and offices in the years to come, and it’s exciting to see how some software makers are already building applications that take full advantage of the multi-touch experience, aided by support baked into modern operating systems and increasingly powerful graphics processors.

But until today, I had’t really seen anyone boast a full-fledged multi-touch website yet.

Well, say hello to the future by visiting the new SilverPAC website, built by LA-based Ciplex in collaboration with Microsoft using Silverlight on Windows 7.

I just got off the phone with executives from the 10-year old interactive agency, and they told me they were actually commissioned by consumer electronics developer SilverPAC to build a new website with the usual technology. Instead, Ciplex saw an opportunity to take a stab at building a multi-touch web experience for the company using Silverlight tech, supported by the fact that its customer already had a working relationship with Microsoft. This gave Ciplex the early access to the Windows 7 beta and the set of Silverlight APIs needed to accomplish the feat.
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MOTO Development Group on Tuesday showed off its first round multi-touch casino gaming table prototype at the Global Gaming Expo 2010 in Las Vegas. Similar in concept to the Microsoft Surface, the touch table has Blackjack and Texas Hold ‘Em poker games built into it. The table has one large integrated touchscreen that supports multi-touch inputs from many players.

MOTO believes its resistive touch system is ideal for card gaming, as it replaces physical tokens, chips, cards and game pieces, letting users get straight to the game and skip setting up, counting chips or keeping track of all the rules. The Blackjack card game demonstrated on the MOTO gaming tablet was written in Java and uses open source graphics library called Processing.

Users can deal out the virtual cards by sliding them to each player, or automating the task. The cards are placed face down, but can be flipped when users cup their hand and slide it across the surface, shielding the cards from other players. Showing cards is done by raising the cupped hand. Bets are placed by dragging virtual chips into the center of the table.

There is no indication of when gamblers can expect to see MOTO’s surface gaming in casinos, but the company says it needs to resolve security and human learning curve issues before this happens.
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Now that Windows 7 has been released, multitouch is now substantially supported in one of the big two operating systems around, and countless new all-in-one desktops are being released with built-in touchscreen functionality.

Fans of the other big operating system — OS X — have got to feel a bit left out in the cold, though. Although Apple is firmly on board with touchscreen and multitouch to drive the interface of their iPhone and iPod Touch line of devices, the venerable iMac all-in-one has been left out in the cold… sort of.

Sure, it has the Magic Mouse, which — like its predecessor, the Mighty Mouse — is getting a very lukewarm reception, but there’s no on-screen multitouch in the new 21.5 inch and 27 inch iMacs. If you want to use multitouch in Snow Leopard, you need to do it by stroking the back of your Magic Mouse.

Still, the after market has you covered. Troll Touch has released analog resistive touchscreen kits for past iMacs and MacBooks, and the latest update to the iMac and Macbook line-up have seen them revise their product line. They now offer touchscreens for the 21.5 inch and 27 inch iMac as well as all unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Putting a touchscreen in your Mac is an expensive process. The iMac kits start at $1099, while a Macbook touchkit starts at $699. Still, if you’d rather manipulate your desktop by swiping your greasy digits across the screen, both kits can be found now on the official Troll Touch website for your DIY installation.
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