Hasta La Gadget!

Admit it, you’re not really working remotely from home on a Friday. We know, you’re sitting at home with your six strings of seduction jamming out to Ryan Adams albums. Well, just in case you need to clear some of that monitor space for actual work — or a memory jolt during that gig you booked at the local cabana — i-Tab’s got you covered with what it’s calling “the world’s first electronic songbook.” The 5-inch touchscreen clips to your guitar’s headstock and serves as a reference guide for your cover song needs. It’s got a built-in speaker, headphone jack, stylus, USB port, TV out for pseudo-karaoke stylings, and 4GB storage. Thirty songs are available from the get go, with more tabs (and audio backing tracks) available via its online store. Just the thing you need to kick up the jams? Word on the street it’s coming in April for $199.

For all your digital guitar playing cheat sheet needs, there’s i-Tab originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that rumors of an Apple tablet have manifested themselves in the iPad, speculation about the next-gen iPhone can begin in earnest. Gesture-based tech? pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10460831-37.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Apple/a/p

Around the same time Apple’s iPad will land in stores, we’ll also see one of its first competitors: the JooJoo (formerly known as the CrunchPad).

Scheduled to launch March 25, the JooJoo tablet sports a 12.1-inch touchscreen display and weighs 2.4 pounds. The tablet will ship with a custom operating system developed by Singapore-based company Fusion Garage.

The JooJoo was originally set to launch late February, but a manufacturing issue has caused a delay, according to Fusion Garage. The obscure tablet was more well known when it was called CrunchPad, a project that TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington touted as his brainchild. Fusion Garage, the company manufacturing the tablet, said it decided to move forward without TechCrunch after feeling pressure from shareholders. The startup rebranded the tablet JooJoo.

Wired.com had some hands-on time with the JooJoo back in December, and though we described it as a delight to use, I can’t imagine how it will succeed. The fact the tablet runs a custom operating system means Fusion Garage must convince third-party software developers to create apps for the JooJoo OS. It’s unrealistic to expect software developers will choose to make apps for a small, obscure company whose tablet audience will likely be diminutive upon launch.

Plus, from a consumer perspective, there’s no compelling reason to buy the JooJoo. It costs $500 — the same as Apple’s iPad, which will be compatible with all 140,000 apps in the App Store out of the box. So unless Fusion Garage miraculously recruits thousands of developers in the next month, all you’ll have for a while on the JooJoo is a pretty touchscreen that runs an off-brand web browser.

However, one area where the JooJoo beats the iPad is awkward naming. iPad we can get used to, but JooJoo? JooKiddingMe?

See Also:

• Hands On With the JooJoo, Formerly Known as CrunchPad
• JooJoo Tablet Faces Uphill Battle Against iPad
• Startup Disses Arrington, Relaunches CrunchPad Tablet as JooJoo …

Product page via Forbes

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Despite a picture that won’t wow sticklers, Sony’s edge-lit LED-based NX800 sets a high bar for beautiful design and well-executed features.

Well, that didn’t take too long. Just a day after we pondered the shipping status of Fusion Garage’s JooJoo tablet, the company’s come clean and told us shipping will delayed to March 25 because of a manufacturing issue with the tablet’s 12.1-inch capacitive screen. Yep, it looks like it’s going to be at least 27 more days until you’ve got a JooJoo of your very own — which means, of course, that Fusion Garage will now be trying to launch this thing during the same week Apple’s scheduled to launch the iPad. Ouch. To its credit, Fusion Garage says it’s not happy with the delay and has promised a free accessory to pre-order customers to make it better — we’re told it’s likely to be the $30 stand. We’ll see if that’s enough to hold back the effects of Cupertino’s coming media blitz, but either way we’re quite excited about making a tablet sandwich at the end of March. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading JooJoo ship date pushed to March 25 due to manufacturing issues

JooJoo ship date pushed to March 25 due to manufacturing issues originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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