After HP announced that it would be discontinuing the Touchpad and dropped the price to $99 and $149 respectively for the 16gb and 32gb versions, people flocked to the HP website to buy one. I’m sure that many like me bought one in hopes of running Android instead of the dying OS in the near future (btw, the folks over at CyanogenMod (which I currently run on my Samsung Galaxy ) are making good headway on that)

But after getting one, there was a bit of tugging at my heart for Palm. After using its long outdated PalmOS for years, they developed WebOS. To be honest, I’ve really developed an appreciation for the platform. Struggling against the massively popular Android and Apple devices, the late-to-the-game player with sub-par devices couldn’t remain standing. I really think that if Palm had made their devices nearly perfect at first, the situation would be starkly different from today. The Pre, although nice, just couldn’t really match the iPhone in build and polish. The same goes for the HP Touchpad. It’s nice, but even as HP found out, the hardware is just too limiting. WebOS runs nearly twice as fast on an iPad 2. HP bought up a fantastic company, but with some execution issues (both Palm’s fault and HP’s) now it’s left with a falling community of users.

WebOS is really nicely suited for a tablet interface. I liked it on a smartphone (though laggy at times), but I love it on the large screen of the Touchpad. The multitasking implementation is easy to use and intuitive, but again, the hardware lags behind the software. Boot time is way too long and things just lag all around. It seems just that HP was in a hurry to get the Touchpad onto the market.

Although Microsoft’s Windows Phone was a late player as well, I feel the combination of quality hardware and a larger selection of devices made the difference for the software giant. WP7 is sure to be a huge player in the mobile market and with the introduction of Windows 8, we’re sure to see some shiny tablets running ARM-based Windows soon too.

Although HP is going to license out WebOS for third party hardware developers, it’s probably too late for any major companies to pick up the OS given the strong alternatives available now.

At the same time, Blackberry is riding on a shaky bridge as well. The Playbook is pretty bad in my opinion, designed as a “complement” to a Blackberry smartphone. Although not terrible, I feel the Blackberry new touch-based OS is too deeply rooted in the older Blackberry OS and as a result, feels clunky.

In some ways, I feel HP might have pulled the plug a bit early on the TouchPad. Better hardware and a clear advertising campaign could have turned it around. But then again, focusing on core business instead has its merits as well.

As many wait for Honeycomb on the TouchPad, I think a lot of people will come to realize the potential WebOS had to shake up the mobile computing market. Maybe HP’s hope is that some major software developers will recognize and bring more quality apps to WebOS. But to these people, first building better Android apps is probably much higher on their to-do list.

Palm, rest well, you’ll be remembered in many people’s hearts. The contributions you’ve made to mobile computing are extraordinary.

Overall, I’m really glad I got a TouchPad. There are a couple really nice apps (WordPress for Touchpad!) and hey you never know, maybe WebOS will make a come back…. throwing so many devices into consumer hands has to have some effect.

UPDATE: Thought I’d mention some cool pluses. You get 50GB of free cloud storage through Box.net — for life. The other thing is that messing with the Touchpad is ridiculously easy: you enable Developer Mode (though a code that you type into the search box) and install Preware (basically Cydia for WebOS). I have to say that I’ve significantly reduced lagging with some patches and installing an overclocked kernel.

I got a chance last week to start coding up the platform and I’m basically done implementing the basics. In a nutshell, it aggregates (using SimplePie) RSS feeds into a single stream of news and then displays it. I’m using Tumblr as the provider of the user submitted content since it 1)allows for anyone to contribute out of the box and 2)has that focus on “bite sized content”, which can be short posts or photos or even videos.

I could have just kept it straightforward and just a single page, but from there, I figured I would take it a step further and integrate in some javascript. Now, the PHP-based platform is complete with jQuery effects and AJAX loading.

I’ve open sourced the code for anyone to use. I really think this kind of community news source would be great within a lot of high school and college communities, but we’ll see how it goes at my school.

Check out Andover Pulse at http://pulse.phillipian.net/ and the code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/ericouyang/pulse.

Let’s start a change in how news is made and discovered on campuses! Interested in starting a Pulse at your school? Contact me!

First off, “iPad”, really?!? What kind of name is that. I remember looking at early “renditions” of the fabled Apple Tablet with names including iSlate and iPad. At some point, there was a Borders survey that mentioned and iPad, and I immediately scoffed at the name.

For all this time, people were imagining some amazing device that would be somewhere in the field between smartphones and laptops, not just a huge iPod Touch.

Really, I don’t see why you would spend $499 or more on a device that basically does what an iPod does, but with a larger (multitouch) screen which is supposed to make reading book, browsing the web, and the such easier.

You could buy a netbook for a cheaper price and it would come with a keyboard as well as more functionality. Not to mention you could get one with a touchscreen as well.

Granted, the iPad does have some good points such as weighing 1.5 lbs and a 10 hour battery life, but really that is about it. Look at how stupid the device looks in Steve Job’s hands, being just a huge iPod:

You’ll be able to run all the iPhone/iPod apps on the iPad. Though there is still no multitasking, giving further reason as to the little benefit between the iPod Touch and iPad.

People who want to have an excellent on the go reading device should get a Kindle (which gives you a very paper-like experience), those who want to get a great multimedia device, get something along the lines of an iPod (I’m only saying this to prove a point), if you want to have a cheap portable computing device, get a netbook. So tell me, why would you get an iPad?

So, $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32 GB model, and $699 for the 64GB model. 3G adds $130. The Wi-Fi only model will come out in 60 days, and the 3G one in 90 days.

Image from Engadget.com

Gizmodo article: http://i.gizmodo.com/5458292/apple-ipad-everything-you-need-to-know

Gizmodo has a great guide to all the rumors that sprung up regarding the Apple Tablet:http://gizmodo.com/5434566/the-exhaustive-guide-to-apple-tablet-rumors

Specs: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

Engadget Article: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/the-apple-ipad/

Engadget Apple Tablet History: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/26/the-apple-tablet-a-complete-history-supposedly/

The Standard (agrees with me!): http://www.thestandard.com/news/2010/01/27/early-ipad-reaction-its-just-giant-ipod-touch?source=nlt_weekly

I’ve been working on a separate website to just be a front page to my online self. It will have some info about me, links to all my various online accounts, resources that I think should be helpful to others, and info about my web-design services.

As of this writing, the domain isn’t completely ready, but it should be ready soon. Usually, it takes 24-48 hours for the domain to be ready.

Also, Blog Action Day is coming up, but I’ve been really busy, so I’m not sure I can get in a nice lengthy one, but I’ll be sure to get one in.

UPDATE: The site is finally online. I heard it was working earlier in some other areas, but I’m pretty sure anyone can go to EricOuyang.Com now and find my under construction page.

First, to go through this process, you have to have a banking account with online banking enabled, which involves going to the bank and getting forms signed to enable it. According to my uncle, in the past, you didn’t have to go through this to get online banking, but because of security issues, this extra step was put in.

Next, I assumed that I was all set to go ahead to purchase something on TaoBao, like in the U.S., but I was wrong. In case you haven’t purchased something online before, basically you go to a secure website (with https at the front of the URL) and enter in your name, credit card number, your credit card’s expiration date, and then the security code (the 3 digit code on the back), to send money to the online store. I tried this, but I received an error message. I first had to go to the online banking account website for the card to configure things over there.

For this particular bank, which was the Bank of Communication, you had to enter in your card number and then your PIN (which we set up when we created our card) to log in and create an account. Then you had to enter in a cell phone number. At this point, I was really questioning if buying something online was worth the trouble (it was quite a bit cheaper though, 150 yuan each). I typed in my cell phone number (a temporary pay-as-you-go one that I used for the two months I was there) and then it said that it would send a confirmation number to it. So in a few seconds my phone beeped to tell me I received a text message. Following that, I had to enter this pin into the website. On the form it also made me put in some “verification phrase”, and I wasn’t sure what this was. Clicking on the help button revealed that it was a phrase that I put in that would be displayed during every transaction so I would be confident that the website was not a fraudulent one. Finally, online banking was all set for me.

Though the process wasn’t quite done yet. Next, on Taobao, I clicked on the button for the banking company that I was using, then it brought me to the bank’s website to complete the transaction, and sure enough my verification phrase was there. There, it sent my cell phone another confirmation number to type in as well as my card number and pin. After clicking “confirm”, I was brought back to the TaoBao website where it told me that my purchase was successful.

A few days later,  I received a package with my stuff, and then I had one last step to complete. On the TaoBao website, I had to confirm that I had received the package (in case the seller was a fraud) so it would send the money to the selling person.

Whew. That was quite a bit of work! Well it goes to show that Chinese online shopping is quite secure. But still, many Chinese are not completely sure of buying things online. They worry that their card number would be stolen, or they are sent fake products or defective ones, so most people just continue to buy things at actual stores. And even with this long process to securely setup and purchase something online, there are still stories of getting your money stolen online in China.

It might take a while, but I do think that with time people in China will slowly start getting accustomed to online shopping and make more of their purchases with a few clicks of a mouse.

Now, Yahoo will likely be pairing up with Microsoft to face Google in its domination of the search market. Bing will become the search engine on Yahoo, and Yahoo would deal with most of the search ad work.

I’ve used Bing quite a bit now, and I think it is definitely worthy to compete with Google. In particular, I’m fond of the daily picture on the homepage everyday and overall interface, though I’m not sure its results are as accurate to what I’m searching for as Google. Microsoft is pouring a lot of money into Bing’s, and if done properly will likely take a chunk of Google’s domination. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo will have 30% of the market.

Any thoughts on this Microsoft+Yahoo combo? Leave a comment!

More reading:

BusinessWeek

Article on AdAge

BoomTown

Also, as a side note, some photos I took in China are uploaded onto Flickr here. And a probably more interesting note that I just discovered is that Bing is blocked in China for some reason as well as sites like Flickr and Blogger.

Image from Wikipedia.Com.

JamLegend

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the game Guitar Hero, this is similar in the idea, but online style complete with social networking features like profiles, commenting, and a easy to use interface.

Xmarks

A browser plugin that enables you to sync bookmarks across computers as well as discover new websites though your bookmarks. Also handy as a bookmark backup tool.

Digsby

This program connects together your online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, etc.) in one program.

Elance

An online system to hire  (basically outsource) people and manage these connections. The website also handles the money as well which is convenient.

Tripit

It combines all your travel info (which you forward to it by email) in an organized location and provides additional information to help your trip go more smoothly. There is also an iPhone app for Tripit.

Interested to see the rest of the top 100? Go to http://www.webware.com/100/.

According to this article, what suddenly made this “explode” was that Needham decided to create a Facebook page for her initiative, and although the page is only about a month old, she has already received 470 pledges to join her cause. Combined with this as well as the word of mouth and her own website, people from across the country are joining in on the cause.

Just think about that for a second, in just over a month, one person with the help and support of a few others were able to get almost 500 people to give up a day’s pay even in these hard times. That is what the internet can help us do, tell that to someone 20 years ago and they would think you are nuts.

Coincidentally, I’ve been working with a group of friends to create a website that helps people do just that: harness the power of the world wide web to promote initiatives in their community. I’ll bring up more on that in the future, but I just would like to commend Needham on her work to make her cause known by using the internet. Also, I’m very fond of the overall design of her website: clean, to the point, and informative.

To learn more about this, go to http://www.onedaygive.com/, see the newspaper article (here), and check out the Facebook page as well (here).

Here are a few of them. You can check them all out at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/watchtheads/

Also, Microsoft did the Mojave Experiment where they told people that Mojave was the new Windows, where in fact it was Vista to show people that what they thought Vista was isn’t actually true.

There are also a few other ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates in them which are funny, but I’m not sure they are very good ads: