While the
Web rumor mill has been buzzing over the
Apple Touch Tablet (which Apple still has yet to discuss or show publicly), entrepreneur and founder of TechCrunch.com, Michael Arrington, has been busy building his own touch tablet called
The CrunchPad.
This new device, set to launch in November, could bridge the gap between laptops, e-paper devices like the Kindle and smart phones like the iPhone, while helping to expedite online communication and wireless broadband even further.
The Straits Times broke news of the production, saying:
"A Singapore company is racing to be the first in the world to bring an almost mythical creature -- the touchscreen tablet computer -- to the market.
"The start-up, Fusion Garage, has teamed up with famed American technology blog Techcrunch and aims to get its machine out by November, in time for the Christmas buying rush."
Arrington has been periodically releasing updates and videos of the tablet prototypes. He launched the project last year after becoming frustrated with products on the market. He lamented:
"I'm tired of waiting -- I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell Latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn't exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let's design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them."
Techies have rallied around him and are waiting with money in hand. It looks as though Arrington is actually going to bring this to market, perhaps even before Apple's overly hyped tablet.
