Hasta La Gadget!

Kno Movie from Kno, Inc. on Vimeo.

Big players have tried and failed to bring out a “textbook replacement” e-reader. Kno won’t be shipping their entry until Christmas at the earliest, but it’s a serious candidate that’s worth a second look.

Kno’s form factor is essentially two slightly-oversized iPads on a giant 180-degree hinge. It has two 14″ stylus-compatible touchscreens, which you can keep separate for a textbook or multi-screen layout, unify for a single widescreen display, or fold back for a single tablet.

(I’m guessing you could also lay one side flat and use it with a software keyboard like a notebook, but I haven’t seen that configuration advertised — maybe you can’t make a hinge fluid AND stiff enough to pull that off.)

Under the hood is a 16GB hard drive and an NVidia Tegra 2 processor. You could compare it to Microsoft’s scrapped Courier project or a larger take on the Toshiba Libretto. The Libretto, though, is a warning sign; Kno wants to keep their price under $1000 (preferably under $900) but Toshiba’s smaller entry is stuck starting at $1100.

That said, it just might work. Kno’s CEO Osman Rashid has raised a lot of venture capital money, brokered deals with most of the major textbook publishers, and already has one education-market success with textbook-rental service Chegg. He’s been making the rounds, giving interviews talking up the product. Your college student just might discover a Kno in his or her stocking, just in time for Spring semester.

Story via Fast Company and TechCrunch.

See Also:

• Dual-Screen Tablet Maker Hopes to Reinvent the Textbook
• Toshiba Dual Screen PC Folds Like a Book
• Startup Gives Digital Textbooks the Ol' College Try
• Amazon.com Kindle DX
• New, Black Kindle DX Now $380
• Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education

Leapster inadvertently (or not) spilled the beans on a forthcoming learning handheld way back in May, and with nary a peep from the company, it has managed to launch said unit just as the next school year was fixing the start. The $70 handheld ain’t the cheapest in the world, and considering that the “learning” cartridges are $25 a pop, it won’t take long for this investment to get serious. USA Today‘s Ed Baig managed to wrangle one for review, and while he certainly let his kids do the dirty work, he couldn’t help but express frustration by the inability to use older games with this new system. Forward progress aside, Ed found his kids enamored by the device, and while that led to him making quite a few digital Leaplet purchases (downloadable games), it also kept his youngsters occupied and engaged in something beneficial. All told, he handed out 3.5 of 4 shiny stars to the minuscule device, and so long as you’re cool with daily demands for new software from Johnny and Jane, this might be the best back-to-school gift ever.

Leapster’s $70 Explorer learning handheld gets reviewed, loved by a father originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bill Gates just might be the world’s most famous college dropout (sorry, Kanye), but lest you think he’s changed his mind about the educational establishment, he’s got a few words of reassurance for you. As the closing speaker of the Techonomy 2010 conference, Bill dished out his vision of how learning will evolve over the next few years, stating his belief that no single university will be able to match the internet when it comes to providing the learning resources a student needs. Describing traditional studies as “place-based” and inefficient, he forecasts that university education will become five times less important within five years, with online lecture sources picking up the reins of enlightening our youth. In other news, Bill’s pen-based tablet PC idea is going great!

Continue reading Bill Gates expects the web to be the best single source of education within 5 years

Bill Gates expects the web to be the best single source of education within 5 years originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The late Joker said it best: “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” The truth ingrained in that very statement makes the bold words of OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte all the more curious here. In an open letter to the Indian government published in the Times of India, Nik Neg has seemingly eased up on his apparent grudge against the nation, but there’s a decent chance that something’s in it for him. Largely, no one with any link to reality believes that India will indeed deliver $35 laptops — their $10 laptop eventually soared to $100 before evaporating completely. But in the letter, Negroponte offers the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development “full access to all of [OLPC’s] technology, cost free,” further urging them to “send a team to MIT and OLPC at your earliest convenience” in order to talk about world domination, the latest Cricket happenings and janky PCs that may or may not ever land in the classroom. Of course, some are surmising that the scheme will enable the MHRD to easily give up their own aspirations, buy a truckload of XO-3s and save face in the process, but hey — so long as the children win, it’s all good. Right?

OLPC’s Negroponte offers India help in realizing $35 tablet dream, probably has a few other motives originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today’s Library of Congress statement marks a historic moment in the battle between those who dictate how we should be able to use media and technology, and the rest of us. We explain what the new exemptions mean for you. More »