Having used Palm Pilots and Pocket PCs for nearly a decade, you can call me a styli junkie. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss them. But when I see one I become a bit curious. I tried a capacitive stylus a couple years ago and found it to be very unresponsive. Figured it was time to give it another shot.

The Targus Slim Stylus is a tiny thing, measuring 4.375” long and about 0.25” across, not including the handy pocket clip (to store in your geeky pocket protector). Being a capacitive stylus, the target area is not as precise as a resistive stylus or one of those Wacom digitizer thingies. As a result, its use is somewhat limited, but I knew that before laying down my cash.

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If “Lefty’s Bar” makes you think of a virginal middle-aged man in a leisure suit (and if you’re old enough to know what a leisure suit is…), then I have a good chuckle for you: Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is almost here!

Replay Games of Austin, Texas, successfully funded a Kickstarter program to re-do the original, LSL in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, from scratch. They had a goal of $500,000. They’ve made over $650,000! And now they’re aiming for $750,000 to add more content. They’ve even gotten some of the original game creators on board. Oh, and they’re going to make all 7 original Sierra games. I may be female, but I am SO THERE! Those games were funny as all out!

LSL:Reloaded will be available on May 31, 2013 on the following platforms: PC, OS X, iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Android phones, and Android tablets (please, oh PLEASE let this run on my Fire…).

Yeah, baby!! Now, someone bring back the old Infocom games!

Yes the prices are fluctuating up and down like a yoyo. Yes Windows RT tablets got off to a chilly start. There is no disputing these things. Still it seems consumers have been quick to jump on good deals when they have had the opportunity. A Strategy Analytics report on the tablet market has revealed that Windows tablets account for 7.5% of devices shipped in Q1 2013. That isn’t so bad for a fledgling platform delivering a completely new OS and UI.

Exhibit 1: Global Tablet Operating System Shipments and Market Share in Q1
2013 (Preliminary)^2

Global Branded Tablet OS Shipments (Millions of Units)  Q1 '12 Q1 '13
Apple iOS                                               11.8   19.5
Android                                                 6.4    17.6
Windows                                                 0.0    3.0
Others                                                  0.5    0.4
Total                                                   18.7   40.6
Global Branded Tablet OS Marketshare %                  Q1 '12 Q1 '13
Apple iOS                                               63.1%  48.2%
Android                                                 34.2%  43.4%
Windows                                                 0.0%   7.5%
Others                                                  2.7%   1.0%
Total                                                   100%   100%
Growth Year-over-Year %                                 146%   117%

The bad news is the report cites very limited distribution, a shortage of top tier apps, and confusion in the market, are all holding back shipments. The good news is that Microsoft has already seen twice the amount of success in the tablet market as it has in the smartphone market. This should also be enough to kickstart a second wave of developer support in creating apps for the Windows 8 & RT platforms. The introduction of $200 priced tablets and devices at the end of 2013 will only serve to continue Microsoft’s growth in the market.
Source: Bloomberg

I was going to pick up my son from his after-school program today and I was listening to NPR on my radio. I heard a story about the Bear County, Texas, library system. They were implementing e-readers in a big way, and the brief story was about this transition.

I can’t link the story until tomorrow (NPR posts stories the day after they air), but I found another story from last May, and it got me to thinking about e-readers and libraries.

This older story, titled Libraries Grapple With The Downside of E-Books, had information I didn’t know, and created more doubt in my mind about the wisdom of our public libraries moving to more and more e-books. My initial reaction was, “Libraries had better be ready to replace checked-out e-readers A LOT.” John Q. Public can’t take care of his OWN device (how many people have cracked iThing screens?) – do you really expect them to take care of e-readers checked out from the library? Seriously, think about the state of your bathroom at work. Even worse, any public bathroom. Yeah, we see how people treat “public use” property. And remember that, ultimately, these devices are funded by your taxes.  Yeah … they won’t be replacing them as they 1) break or 2) just plain disappear.

But, I was willing to say, “Okay, but maybe they can save money by using e-books.  Nah, that wouldn’t make some business money, would it?

According to the article above, not only are publishers reluctant to make their books available as e-books to public libraries (fearing loss of digital sales – wait, do they think that of physical books at libraries?), but libraries Don’t Own the digital copies they DO lend out. They use a third-party service, in the US that is primarily Overdrive, to rent out these books. And the libraries pay a yearly subscription fee. Guess what happens if you’re library can’t afford it any more, or has to cut down? Bye-bye e-books. In addition to that, the libraries are paying 4 and 5 times MORE for that digital book that they would for a hard-copy text!

It sounds like the college textbook racket to me.

So what do you think: should public libraries lend out e-readers? Can the extra premium of services like Overdrive outweigh the cost of extra librarians, tracking books, etc? Would you change your mind if you knew your e-reading habits were being tracked for market research?

It’s been along week..Monday and Tuesday had an issue with my oldest kid and school, now I had to go and pick up my youngest because he’s sick. So the news for now is that Flipboard is now available on Android tablets. It’s been optimized for larger screen sizes basically. Full details below..

Today, Flipboard™ launched its social magazine optimized for Android™ tablets, a top request from Flipboard readers around the world. Read by millions every day, Flipboard lets people enjoy local news, world updates, blogs they love or simply catch up on stories from friends. Now anyone with a Samsung GALAXY Note 10.1, GALAXY Tab series, Nexus 10 or other seven-inch or larger tablet that runs Android, can download Flipboard for free on the Google Play™ Store. Additionally, current Samsung tablet or Note 10.1 users will be able to enjoy Flipboard via an upcoming software update from Samsung.

“With the new devices that Samsung, Amazon, Google and others have brought to market in the recent months, there’s a fast growing Android market,” said Eric Alexander, Head of International Development at Flipboard. “As more people buy Android tablets for themselves or others over the holidays, we wanted to make sure Flipboard is part of their tablet experience.”

For this tablet edition of Flipboard, page layouts have been optimized for a variety of screen sizes and aspect ratios. Taking advantage of the wider screen of the larger Android devices, readers can save more of their favorite sections as tiles and can see larger story excerpts as they flip through their magazine. And having worked with Samsung over the last year, Flipboard is optimized for Samsung’s tablet devices.

Flipboard came to Android phones earlier this year and the phone design was available on devices with a seven-inch-screen, such as Kindle Fire, NOOK and Nexus 7. Now, when they upgrade, owners of these devices will have the new tablet edition of Flipboard. However, for those who upgrade and prefer the phone design experience, they can switch back using “application mode” in settings. Kindle Fire and Nook users can find Flipboard in their respective app stores.

About Flipboard

Flipboard is the world’s first social magazine, a single place to see everything you care about. Inspired by the beauty and ease of print media, Flipboard is designed so you can easily flip through news from around the world or stories from right at home, helping people find the one thing that can inform, entertain or even inspire them every day. Start reading your magazine by downloading Flipboard at www.flipboard.com. The company is based in Palo Alto, California and backed by legendary investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer, Index Ventures and Insight Venture Partners. You can follow us at twitter.com/flipboard.

Web Site: http://www.flipboard.com

Kind of kitchy, but okay, Microsoft, we see what you did there.

Fresh Paint is the reimagined, Windows 8 version of the old standby, Paint.  So what can MS have done to Paint to make it new?  Remember this adage, grasshopper: Through the eyes of children, you will see things anew.

Steve Clayton at technet.net downloaded a copy of Fresh Paint and installed it on his Samsung tablet.  Here’s what happened in his words:

Originally created as a prototype for the Materials Lab at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Fresh Paint has been used by over 56,000 visitors at MoMA. When I installed the release preview of Windows 8, I wanted to check out what got those visitors so engaged, but it wasn’t until my 3 year old daughter started playing with the app that I truly realized it is quite different from any other painting app I’d seen. It’s paint for the modern age, and has a simplicity and realism that is amazing.

I began in a very grown up fashion, drawing things like a car, playing with brushes and dabbling with the colors. When my daughter started playing, she did much more – splashing digital paints around on my Samsung tablet with her fingers (just as she would with real paint) and mixing things up like a mini Picasso. While she was busy making mini masterpieces, I was busy noticing how the oils on canvas behaved just like real oil paints. When she combined a red and yellow together, they reacted just like real oils would – creating an orange of course, but it wasn’t a flat orange. It had bits and pieces of red and yellow and built up layers of digital paint. Imagine running your finger over an oil painting and feeling the texture. Fresh Paint recreates that experience by modeling height, thickness, deposits, mixture of paints, and the properties of paper and canvas. This includes modeling the texture of the surface or canvas as well as the absorption of the fibers of the material. I spoke with some of the team, and they literally painted with real paints on different canvases to make sure the painting modeled real life.

It makes me wish I had a tablet device.  Or a younger child.  Okay, not the latter.

Can’t get enough SyFy? Well now you can take it with you on your iPad or Android tablet. I don’t what else to say, it’s rather all self-explanatory isn’t it?!  It’s an app, go get it, full info below..

Watchwith, the leader in related content syndication, and Syfy, the media destination for imagination-based entertainment, today announced the debut of Syfy Sync, powered by Watchwith. Syfy Sync is the best way to watch and experience Syfy’s hit reality show, Face Off, using the Syfy iPad or Android tablet app. SyfySync adds all-new original content, created on-set, including photos, videos and behind the scenes information, specifically produced for the sync-to-broadcast experience. This exclusive Face Off second screen content debuts tonight with the season three premiere on Syfy and was created by Syfy producers using the Watchwith Showrunner tools. Watchwith enabled the Syfy team to quickly create and publish valuable scene-based content that brings a new level of fun and interaction to the consumer viewing experience.

“From the beginning, we were clear about our creative goals for the sync experience; the content needed to be additive and not duplicative. No simple re-use of assets across screens was allowed”

“From the beginning, we were clear about our creative goals for the sync experience; the content needed to be additive and not duplicative. No simple re-use of assets across screens was allowed,” said Matthew Chiavelli, vice president of emerging platforms for Syfy Digital. “This approach drove us to create fresh, fun, interactive content and deliver an application that is truly enhancing the experience for viewers. This is the kind of creative commitment needed to produce a great sync-to-broadcast experience, and something our close relationship with show production allowed us to create.”

“Syfy Sync is a great example of how Watchwith helps content owners unlock the value of their programming across screens,” said Watchwith CEO Zane Vella, “Syfy gets closer to their audience, viewers get a deeper experience, and advertisers connect in a high value, intimate way.”

To download the Syfy App for iPad and Android Table and to get more information about Syfy Sync visit Syfy.com/sync.

Microsoft, the new owners of Skype have dropped a new update on iPhone and iPad owners that is sure to please! In the latest update just released Skype has added photo sharing as well as some other performance updates including the ability to leave Skype running all the time.

The photo sharing is a well received function that will definitely help me maintain a better communication with the Australian companies I work for. We monthly meet via Skype and as manufacturers there are products that are being discussed that having images or diagrams to work with would make the meeting more productive. The nice thing about this Skype feature is that there is no size limit so email size limits will not apply. Also, there are no MMS fees (if applicable) if you currently don’t have an unlimited text plan or have crappy cellular service where you live like I do.

Skype is no able to run in the background thanks to a much leaner and battery friendly performance update. This will allow you to “stay connected” and even get the IM’s or chat throughout the day. Head on over to iTunes and grab this update.

Download Skype for iPhone and Skype for iPad from the Apple iTunes App Store now.

[via Skype Blog]

I just posted about the news of the Galaxy Tab 7 coming to Verizon and in there I ranted a bit, thinking about it more I want to rant some more, or extend my thoughts on all of that. When it comes to Android tablets there’s no doubt we’ve got tons of choices, but the ones from big name companies are very expensive. You can get a similar specd no name tablet for a fraction of the cost of a big name brand but then you run across compatibility issues that really aren’t there but they just appear to be there. The Kocaso 7” Android tablet I recently reviewed here is an example of that, the specs are fairly decent and the tablet itself is nicely made but yet I’ve run across more and more things on Google Play that aren’t compatible with it. They just appear to be incompatible though, I can go over to the Amazon marketplace and get the same thing and it works fine. Who knows why this is exactly?!

Innovation:

Android tablets have been pretty much the same since they came out and really that was quite a while ago but yet there’s still really no innovation going on. Samsung just released the Galaxy Tab 10 and then Galaxy Note 10 and I don’t see much of a real difference between them at all. What’s the point of coming out with the same thing just a different size and then stopping support for the one you just released a few months ago? That makes no sense to me. All of these new generations of tablets are coming out but there’s no real innovation at all going on, it’s just more of the same again and again.  Sure the specs change a bit, we go from a single core CPU to a dual core CPU and now quad core CPUs,  and maybe more ram and storage, but it’s still more of the same really. I want to see companies focusing on innovation instead of rehashing and updating existing products to feed to the masses.

This is innovative, the Fujitsu Lifebook 2013 is just amazing, yes it’s a just a concept and one that will sadly probably never see the light of day, but it’s what I want to see on the market.

This thing is tablet but it’s a phone but no it’s a laptop but no it’s a camera but no it’s all of that in one device. It has a pop out smaller tablet that you can take with you or you dock it and use it as the keyboard for the full sized laptop. This is innovation, this is truly an all-in-one device that needs to be brought to market. Not sure if it’s Android but you get the point, it could be and I’d be the first in line to get one, I’d roll my pennies and search though the couch for spare change to get one. This is innovative, it’s different and it’s what we need to bring a breathe of new life into the tablet market.

Tablets are here to stay that obvious but they’re stagnating really, it’s just more of the same being released. Once the new Microsoft Surface tablets hit the market I think Android is going to really be in trouble if they don’t do something new and innovative. The PC World article I just linked to above mentions a price of $199 for Surface tablets, there’s no way I’ll pay four, five, six or even seven hundred dollars for an Android tablet when I can get one of those for $200. Yeah I think Android is in big trouble. The release of a $200 Surface tablet could signify the demise of Android tablets at any price point. If they do sell for $200 I can’t see why you wouldn’t pick on up, unless of course you’re a die hard Apple fan, but then that’s another rant altogether. Then again at that price point I think a lot of Apple users might be more than tempted to pick one up. For that price I can see them selling out quickly and causing a lot of commotion and publicity for Windows 8 and the Surface tablets.

Fragmentation:

There’s nothing wrong with inexpensive tablets, I have four Android tablets myself. Three of which I use and one (cheap one with resistive screen) I gave to my kids to play with. My tablets vary from 7” up to 10” in size and one of them, the Le Pan TC970, runs Android 2.2 while the other two run Android 4. All three tablets that I own myself are very well made and offer decent specs, they are comparable to the likes of Samsung and other big companies. The reason the Le Pan is still running Android 2.2 is because the company just stopped supporting it. When they first launched the Le Pan TC970 a big selling point was the fact that it could be upgraded and this led me and many others to believe that Le Pan would be upgrading it. After a while of nothing from Le Pan they released a statement saying not they weren’t going to upgrade it as it would be too hard as the hardware wasn’t enough to run a anything newer than Android 2.2. This is wrong of course as I have tablets running Android 4.0, and there are more on the market with similar specs to the Le Pan TC970 running better than 2.2. One of the tablets is the Idolian TouchTab 10 and it’s just plain awesome, and it shipped with Android 2.3, within a month of the release of Android 4.0 they updated the tablet. That’s how it’s supposed to be done.

Fragmentation is a big problem with Android and the main fault lies with the manufacturers in some cases but when it comes to phones the fault lies with the carriers most often when it comes to updates. AT&T is a big one for this, I had a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate and it took about a year to get Gingerbread on it after it was officially released. That’s a ridiculous amount of time to make your customers wait for an update I think.

I mentioned incompatibility with apps above, fragmentation is part of the cause of this I think. I can get a simple flashlight app on one phone running Android 2.3 but then on another phone running the same thing I can’t. I don’t understand that at all. The specs could be pretty much the same but yet it won’t work. Then back to my point about Google Play and Amazon Marketplace, I can go to Google Play and it will say the app isn’t compatible with my device but I can get it with no problem on Amazon?! Can someone please explain to me how that works?  Some of the apps on Google Play just blatantly says my tablet isn’t compatible, but some say they aren’t available in my region. My region is the United States and Google Play supposedly goes by your location, how does it think I’m in China or some other country to say it’s not available in my region? I can use my other tablet and I can download the same exact app from Google play with no issues, but the other tablet I can’t.

Not sure if it counts but then we have those tablets out there that don’t even have access to Google Play on them, what’s the point of those? The main reason to get an Android tablet is for access to the official Android market. The cheap tablet I mentioned above is one of those and it comes with it’s own market which is a joke and just has garbage on it and is loaded with malware as well.

Then we have manufacturer introduced fragmenting for Android. This isn’t exactly fragmenting  per se but it sure seems like it to me. I posted a bit ago about Call of Duty: Black ops Zombies coming to Android, but you can’t get it on all Android devices only on Sony Xperia phones. Sure this isn’t exactly fragmentation but it still annoying to me. I get whole idea of exclusivity but it just pisses me off and I feel it alienates everyone else who doesn’t own that exclusive device. Exclusivity will never go away of course, but I can hope…

Oh dear:  after Apple gets Samsung banned from Germany and Australia, the UK says, “Nay!”

High Court Justice Colin Birss ruled today that Samsung Did Not copy the iPad design for the Galaxy tablets, and did not infringe upon their designs.  And furthermore, Apple must now make a public apology to Samsung for the suit and defamation.  To wit: Apple must post the apology on apple.com/uk  and keep it up FOR SIX MONTHS.  Also they must pay for notices in the Financial Times, The Daily Mail, Guardian Mobile magazine, and T3.

Apple lawyer Richard Hacon said that effectively amounts to advertising for their competitor.  Apple’s lawyers told the judge that they will appeal, and he has granted them permission to do so.  (You need permission to appeal?  That’s a new one on me, or maybe that’s a UK thing?)

Samsung had also wanted to stop Apple from even claiming that Samsung had infringed upon their designs, but the judge refused to do so, saying that Apple was entitled to their opinion.

Source: Bloomberg