TechCrunch's tablet could be good news for papers

TechCrunch's rendering of an open source web tablet. (Adapted from original)

Yesterday, Michael Arrington of the popular technology blog TechCrunch issued a challenge to his circuit-savvy readership: “I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web.” In other words, a computer that consists of nothing but a thin, flat, touch-sensitive screen that can sit in your lap. No device like that exists yet, Arrington wrote. “So,” he said. “let’s design it.”

Apple’s iPhone has proven how much a computer can do without a keyboard, mouse, or the need to be anchored to a particular location. With the exception of a few complicated kinds of applications — games and moviemaking software, mostly — almost all of what we do with our computers can now be done online. (Can you remember the last time you sat down at your PC and didn’t open a browser?)

Personal computers, actually, are not really about computing anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. What they’ve become are windows onto the online landscape: tools to seek, find and share the world’s information.

One implication for newspapers is that tablets could become a kind of midpoint between office computers and printed media. You’ll be able to sit with your screen at the kitchen table and read your favorite publications while you sip your morning coffee. But because the device is online, you’ll be able to read brand new news, not just the day old stuff you get from the bag on your front porch. That might help go a bit further in separating newspapers’ biggest strength — news — from their biggest weakness: paper.

There aren’t many people around with the influence to recruit all the people you’d need to build a  sophisticated new product from scratch — and without being paid for it. But Arrington is off to a good start. He posted his call to action Monday afternoon, and by Tuesday, thousands of people had written saying they’d like to contribute to the project.

“We can access the best of the best,” Nik Cubrilovic, the co-editor of TechCrunchIT, the business-tech arm of TechCrunch, wrote in an e-mail. “The people who have contacted us *are* the people who have previously worked for the companies the open source products compete with.”

A bit of idealism is required to believe that a group of hobbyists will be able to create a product that Apple, Google, and Microsoft couldn’t. But it sounds good on paper.

Comments

[Mike]

Apple's already working on it:

RUMOR: Apple’s secret product is ‘MacBook touch’

[TomS]

Apple will likely be shipping this type of device later this year, eons before some wishful-thinking bunch of freeware zealots will ever actually build a real product. (Look how well the "one laptop per kid" project turned out! D'oh!) The iPhone is already this device-- just needs a bigger touchscreen.

[Luis Ventura]

Mike I feel sorry for your ignorance and level of stupidity. Making of a comparison of a 200 dollar internet tablet to a MAC product that will probably cost 1200 dollars is unnecessary and misguided. Also you need to research the difference between freeware and open source that's where your level of ignorance becomes evident. I don't believe you are aware of the difference between the ARM architecture and X86. Innovation is probably an inconvenience for you.