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.
Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.
If all you are doing is running Firefox and Skype, you don’t need a lot of hardware horsepower, which will keep the cost way down.
The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface, and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.
It will also include a custom default home page with large buttons for bookmarked services - news, Meebo/Ebuddy for IM, Google Docs/Zoho for Office, Email, social networks, photo sites, YouTube, etc. Everything that you use every day.
We’re working with a supply chain management company that says the basic machine we’re looking to build can be created for just a few hundred dollars. They need us to write the software modifications to Linux and Firefox (more on that below) and spec the hardware. Then they run with it and can have a few prototypes built within a month.
What will we call it? The best name I can think of is the Firefox Tablet, but that will take a round of discussions with Mozilla.
Here’s The Plan
We’ll organize a small team of people to spec this out. First is the marketing document that just outlines what the machine will do - we have a first draft of that already and will post it soon. Then we’ll spec out the hardware and get people to help write the customized Linux and Firefox code. Once we’ve completed the design we’ll start to work with the supply chain company to get an idea on the cost of the machine (the goal is $200), and hopefully build a few prototypes. Anyone who contributes significantly to the project would get one of those first prototypes. If everything works well, we’d then open source the design and software and let anyone build one that wants to.
The goal is to keep the machine very simple and very cheap. I think this will be a lot of fun, and it may just turn into an actual product that we can use to surf the web and talk to our friends.
We’ll be coordinating the project over at TechCrunchIT. Leave a comment there if you want to participate and we’ll be in touch soon.
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awesome idea.
Oh no!…. not Firefox!!! Opera-mini is a much better choice (there’s already 45 millions cellphone users across the globe). It’s WAY faster than Firefox and consumes much less RAM. Especially is you have only 500MB of RAM, Firefox is a terrible choice.
Do me a favor: opens 15 tabs in Firefox, with at least 5 of them with youtube pages. You will soon see RAM usage of FF climbing close to or above 600MB!!! While Opera will stick around 200MB.
It’s not FF doing that it’s Flash causing the spike in RAM use.
It would more than half a gig of ram IMHO.
i got firefox with 19 tabs open to use 200mb of ram with a couple plugins running whats ur problem ?
5 were youtube
others consisted of facebook myspace gmail logmein, wich uses a pane in the but proprietary hog pluggin and a bunch of other not google tabs, it ran stable at 208-211mb of ram mayb 2%cpu on vista premium, so i think it could easily work on linux
FF vs Opera: it’s a proven fact that Opera not only runs much faster than FF at launch (opens in 4 seconds with 5 tabs vs 9 seconds for FF with same tabs), just do the experiment before saying. Secondly, after thorough experiments, there’s no doubt Opera uses significantly less RAM than FF, on average 30-40% less. Google FF vs Opera and do a little research, or best, just try it.
And Opera has a built-in email client and a great feature: Tab Sessions. FF looks really retarded to me after only a month using Opera.
I just tried it. FireFox took under two seconds. Opera took five.
Interesting that the “just try it” didn’t prove your point.
Are you sure you would use Opera Mini on a Tablet? I hope you were drunk when you wrote that, because I couldn’t take anything serious you said, especially your way wrong numbers (which can easily be checked without “researching” on Google).
Firefox is an absolute must for its Adblock.
Why is this man allowed to post comments?
Why don’t just install both? It’s not much of a space anyway.
Opera is not open source.
having a first-hand experience work with Opera in Nokia 770, I doubt it will be of any valuable effort from Opera side: they couldn’t care less about achievement, even when paid. And you will need ANY time you need to fix anything. If you want pull chains on yourself, don’t drag other into same moronity at its best.
Opera mini? Just because many phones have cripple-ware on them is no reason to try to ruin a new product.
Stick with something open-source as well.
19 tabs - 600MB = Absolutely non-sense xD
Ubuntu Linux, TVTime, PidGin, Eclipse and… 3 Firefox windows with 20 tabs each = 600MB, you fool xD
I’ve got 40 tabs open in Firefox 3, 10 are youtube videos. 300MB
MAYBE you should leave the decision of what browser to use for the user. Idiots.
I see that it has a touch interface, what about a pen? I am an aspiring graphic designer and such a tablet would be great for me! A pen tablet is also useful for inputing text by hand.
I totally disagree with all of you Firefox haters! Have you not heard of Fennec? Firefox has the ability for third party extensions, which puts it way above par of any other browser.
If you build it, they will fap… But this is quite interesting, the principles are good. In the sense of open source Linux/ Firefox, Skype is free to use though (just not open source). I like the principles as they are not trying to build another laptop, they want a NETPAGE.
Not a bad name if I do say so myself… Or OPENPAGE…Tuesday 22nd July 08, SU Plus46.
The desired hardware shouldn’t need to be super fast, and running Linux can be striped down to be super lean. Great Job
call it a NetSlip
Coupla things…..
1.) anyone who says handwriting recognition does not work has never used xp/vista tablet or any version of windows mobile since 2003 (my WM2003 pda is great), but better than that would be a grafitti style recognition, far easier to manage and train. I don’t really see the need if you are going to do an onscreen keyboard like the iphone, which works remarkably well, but hey, some folks want it.
2.) This has to have bluetooth, so that you can tether it to your cellphone for net connectivity on the go. This would be great for usb/bluetooth GPS units as well
3.) among included software, you need an ebook reader, and the ability to change the orientation of he screen. make sure it supports txt,html,pdf and mobipocket at minimum.
4.) an SD card slot (or even 2) would be great as well… run outta storage space, plop in an 8GB card, forget the other formats - too slow(xd), too power hungry (CF), too proprietary (Memory stick). If a cheap multireader can be had, thats fine, but SD is a definite.
5.) low end specs are fine, and the vast majority of the folks will likely use it exacly as intended, but this thing is a geeks wet dream, and they will play…if the cost can be reasonable, with a processor that can still handle full screen (at whatever resolution) mp4/divx/xvid/whatever playback, then great. A wireless, touchscreen device capable of playing media…. you’ll sell a million of them
6.) The interface must be dead simple to use, iPhone simple, get someone who knows what they are doing. I am a geek and proud of it, but geeks do not always make the best design decisions, they design the way they think and that is not the same way others do.
oh, and
7.) imitating apple’s UI is fine, imitating their earlier hardware (the sample picture of this thing looks like the candy imacs) is not so good. Nor is imitating Amazon’s Kindle. Look at Sony’s PRS-505. Very professional, and clean, remove some of the extraneous buttons and increase the screen size and its the perfect form factor for you, it even comes with a nice leather “cover” that closes magnetically over it to keep it protected. Make this something that someone older than 18 would not feel ashamed of carrying.
Spot-on comments; get all these features in this tablet, and I’ll be the first on the waiting list. Only revision I would suggest is that an SD slot is not quite necessary, if we’re sticking bare-minimum here– a USB SD-reader is what, 10$?
Also: a media player, maybe? I understand that with this little storage, most people will probably just use Pandora or access their music from the cloud & embedded web players, I’d appreciate something like Amarok on there just as an option.
I agree with your comments and would also add three essential elements:
1) Need a stylus with this for clicking on smaller items, plus a lot of people prefer a stylus
2) Need the ability to add software. It would be cool to have a desktop of sorts where you could have a 5-day forecast, but what would really be great is having VNC on the machine, so you could remote into your other computers, surf on them, kick off downloads, check your email, burn a DVD, etc.
3) Either have a dedicated right-click button for extra functionality or a button that simulates it. Right-click is one of those things that is always taken for granted and it’s sorely missed when you need it.
I would like to help on the project but I’m only 15 years old and i have some experience with computer but not a whole lot, but i would be glad to help the team with this project.
Great Idea.. I want to BUY one.
Please dont re invent the wheel, use google android software stack or ubuntu MID edition.
Great Idea. Read up on “Kiosk CD”, its a DSL based distro. All it is Firefox, its meant for kiosks. Modify that, and there you go;)
BTW, DSL is only 50MB.
DSL only uses a 2.4 kernel though. It does not support many newer pieces of hardware natively.
DSL can be upgraded to the 2.6 kernel if need be, like any Linux distribution. However, that might not be necessary or ideal; the 2.6 kernel is WAY bigger than DSL’s 2.4, and since this will primarily be an internet browsing device, it can get away with slightly older hardware that the DSL community already has support for.
I need one of these. I want to help develop it.
Bluetooth? A wireless keyboard would be nice to have.
its a good idea but i think it should run ubuntu or some other linux distro, not mac cuz i would want it to work
I don’t know if i’m too late to add toughs but here it goes.
More or less my ideal tablet pc:
The screen should be between 7″ to 10″ multytouch.
Intel atom processor.
Wireless network 802.11n.
Bluetooth.
The hdd could be SSD but the connection to the main
board should be standard so people could upgrade it
at will.
I think 1 slot for memory is enough up to 2gb ram.
A very good battery that last at least 5 to 7hrs of use.
The more important thing i will like to have if i build
my own tablet will be a vga input so i can use it as second monitor with my pc i think this is essential, i got a good idea as how this will work.
I think something else tablets really need is something to hold them at the back, it could be like a tennis ball so anybody can hold it and it could be use to keep it stand up right on top of a table or desk, probably with the battery inside too.
Defenetly Linux, don’t mind what software are included but i will just add XBMC on it…
This are basic things for my ideal tablet pc, i could add
more things i think is essential like GPS build in and a
slot to plug a SIM card so i could call SMS and connect online over mobile phone network and the good old web cam.
You could use a 15 inch OLED screen that only has wifi and touch.
My talent is HR but sign me up for anything I can do!
Make it fold in half, so when it is carried, it doesn’t get scrathced
…but then you have a line in the middle of your reading plane when it’s open!?
Then that’s just a laptop. Just keep the tablet in a nice sleeve and all shall be fine.
Agreed. I like the idea of protecting the screen, but definitely not folding it in half. What size is everyone thinking? I envision something the size of a Steno Pad. Perhaps a plastic insert could be slipped over the front to protect it during storage or transportation. There could be small grooves on each side where it would slide into place.
What about a simple plastic cover flipping and sliding to the back?
where is the button to bring up a touch screen keyboard?
Awesome idea Mike, and on the note of touch-screen keyboard, can we add another much needed innovation to this “TC Tablet”:
How about handwriting recognition that actually works.
Here’s how: Instead of trying to create a universal recognition, just set it up to simply train on just that one user (might take 1 hour up front). In truth we really only care about our own chicken-scratch, so each letter and word is in a way just our own personal glyph.
Put a one-touch “button” area into a corner of the screen to pop up a FAST, intuitive “Train on (recognition) error” dialog: “We thought you wrote XYZ, please type what you meant ___” (touch-screen keyboard pops up at the same time).
Then you could set up a complete personal shorthand if desired. E.g. “tcc” = “techcrunch.com” and so forth…
Yes! Handwriting recognition that actually works! I’m sure that while hundreds of companies have spent millions of dollars on it with almost no success, a bunch of people in a comments thread or on a wiki will just whip one up! Easy as pie!
Speech-to-text would be a much better use of software than handwriting. Use something like Yap (yapme.com) to speak the majority of your text, then use the on-screen keyboard to make minor edits.
I have really bad handwriting - yet XP tablet edition and all versions of windows mobile since 2003 - have easily been able to recognize my writing. (and yes I know that XP / PocketPC are not Open source)
it would be great to touch with your finger the top right corner and have the keyboard on an alpha layer. just over the site you are looking at.
TC Computers — Arrington takes on HP and Apple
I like it already. Where can I buy one.
I think that if this device comes to fruition it will change the world of mobile web and it will help us make the leap from the desktop/laptop and local storage to true mobile web and interaction and help utilize services like GDocs to it’s full potential.
I love it. I’ve been wishing for this for quite some time, although I’d add one more thing: note taking. Nothing as complicated as MS Onenote… just a simple piece of software that can take notes and send them somewhere. (Maybe Evernote?) This would require a stylus to work. Maybe that’s scope creep, but that is the one thing I’ve really wanted to see for quite sometime.
Highly agree, this would be such a killer device if it had input capability via stylus. Ive been wishing for somehting like this a long time. The closest thing that comes to this is IBM x41 tablet weighing in at a whopping 6lbs!
Let me know if you need help with defining use cases, flow diagrams, UI, etc.
Stylus should be optional. Keep it simple. Keep it really simple.
The notebook should be an application on the web,
HTTP://google.com/notebook
They need to get on the ball and add Gears support to it though..
I’ve been using it for a few weeks and it is GREAT, couple it with the google notebook firefox extension, and it would be great for this project!
Or, as previously mentioned, you could use evernote web instead of a desktop client.
andrew - we’ll need a system tray at the bottom for that (hopefully the only time linux peaks through), and also to launch skype.
The simpler the better BUT, can we add optional GPS? Perhaps, pay an extra few bucks if you want GPS. Is that too much?
You would only need to buy an external bluetooth GPS.
Why not just local “start page” for that?
Adding on to what Kuroki Kaze said…How about make the start page in Firefox have buttons to launch Skype or whatever else, then the o/s wouldn’t have to show. Here’s a very crude mock-up I made of a possible “start page” I threw in VLC, just cause I think it needs a media player.
Here it is…
http://img401.imageshack.us/im.....kupwy9.jpg
So opened up it would be 2x the size of iphone, bluetooth would be better than USB port.
I like it! I’ll support it.
How do we contribute to this project ? I’m excited.
Excellent, count me in.
Sign me up! Call it the Blitz!
I support this, how do I contribute?
Andre - go to techcrunchit and leave a comment, we’ll be in touch.
http://www.techcrunchit.com/20.....t-project/
Okay, thank you.
I would like to do marketing & sales, perhaps a license, for The Netherlands.
Dit kan natuurlijk alleen maar Jake B zijn niet?
If it’s going to run Flash (youtube, etc.), it can’t be that low-end on processor. If Dell can put out an E with an Atom for $299 and MSI the Wind with Atom for $399, I don’t see why a simpler device such as this can’t have an Atom processor either.
interesting
TC its called Ipod Touch
yes! with a huge screen.
And you don’t think Apple already has that in its pipeline??
Good luck with that… I’m sure you won’t violate any of their patents.
The more i think about it is the more sense it makes to get apple out of the top spot since nothing of theirs is open source. Truth is if you can get something that performs with the same speed and quality as a ipod touch but without a bunch of bells and whistles But a bigger Screen for 200 bucks then im sold. Bottom line i don’t need a screen to play my music but a direct connect to the internet i have all the music, video, pictures, social networking that i need online.
and lots of openness !!
What about this? $1,750
http://tabletkiosk.com/tkstore.....roduct=177
Oh heavens no! Michael is going to create the product of his dreams for next to nothing through THE POWER OF IMAGINATION! And if imagination be our fuel, why would we pay so much? IMAGINATION IS FREE!
But while we’re all smoking peyote and grooving on our creativity, why stop there? I want my magical tablet to polish my shoes! And feed me Twinkies! And raise my kids! All we need is some determination and a Wiki!
duechey. how many super-clever, sarcastic, stop-energy comments are you planning to post?
If all you are doing is running Firefox and Skype, you don’t need a lot of hardware horsepower, which will keep the cost way down.
Hmmm, except that more and more sites are relying on flash, which requires underlying libraries, etc. Nokia’s tried with the 770/N800 series but the cost isn’t there, nor is the performance.
my question is if OLPC couldn’t break $200 without subsidy and this does a whole lot more. But then BHAGs are fun to explore
I would like to hope that we are more efficient than the OLPC project
You pretty much described the Nokia N810 Internet tablet…
Cheers
bigger
yes, although we want to build it a lot cheaper and have a much bigger screen.
http://www.nseries.com/index.h.....,n810,demo
But the nice thing about the N810 is that the OS is everything you described already, and it’s open-source.
http://maemo.org/
That leaves you to **only** have to worry about the hardware.
Agreed. If this group was serious, they would look at the N810 as the benchmark, and start reading the history on http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums. Any area where Arrington and company want improvement has hurdles that have been well addressed there.
The Nokia tablets’ shortcomings (and they are actually few, and small) are mostly driven by the desired price point. If anyone thinks they can build something larger and more powerful, while lacking the economies of scale enjoyed by Nokia, they are seriously kidding themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, gang: dream, and dream big. Do your best to make this happen. But don’t write off Nokia’s efforts without diving below the surface and examining the WHYs.
Yeah, I concur. The slim part of this will drive the costs up, and this gadget, while desirable, can never be sold at a $250 start price.
Maybe you could call it a Wablet. Just my two cents. Great idea, by the way. Cheers!!!
I jizzed in my pants
I’m also happy to contribute time and/or resources if needed. Personally I think the name “Foxlet” is pretty catchy. =)
That’s exactly the same name I thought of
Foxlet it is!
wow. awesome idea! what’s the top 3 things on your to-do list for this? I’m guessing you would release the open source code under CPAL so anyone who orders it from the supply chain management company (from anywhere in the world, I’m sure they’ll ship it for a fee) would then have the TechCrunch Logo on login
I absolutely, completely want this. I dreamed about it (literally) when apple tablet rumors were floating around because it was on my mind so much. In my dream, it was running frontrow- think of it as a giant Sonos remote that could also browse the web.
This is a great idea, good luck to everyone involved. I would help, but I lack technical expertise and I’m not in marketing.
Interesting…why not use Android’s linux version as the base OS?
A lot of tabloid’s touch screen evens are in andorid, it’s designed to be relatively low in resource and battery consumptions.
Plus it will have a browser and other stuff that you might need.
I’ve done a little development on Android, and at this stage it’s more painful than it needs to be.
Keep in mind, it’s still in early stages. By the time this thing is closer to reality Android is going to be more robust. Imagine, all the power saving features that is built into android and having a tablet that actually lasts a good time on battery.
I agree, having done a little Android development - Android is still long way from being ready for the masses.
You can be quite sure that the thing Google will let out as final release will be quite stable and far away for the thing you have been developing with.
Android will be definitely the easiest approach to do such a thing. Everything is already there: multimedia codecs, web browser and a system which will be a perfect fit to run on ultra cheap hardware.
Alone to do the same modifications to optimize performance and resource hunger will cost more than a year of work of a top notch team. So every sane person will just grab what Google has done and do the comparatively little extra work to make this thing happen.
Personally I’m expecting that a lot of other products using Android outside of the phone business will be made.
PMM support here (former Yahoo/Adobe/M$) if needed.
Also, I’d be willing to work on any part of the software required- drop me an email if you get anywhere and still need software people!
Michael,
Would love to help with the firefox integration and customization aspect of it. May be even build a special version of feedly for it. Will leave a comment on the TechCrunchIT side.
Count me in too.
Great Idea. Simple & Usefull.
I’m a System Engineer from Perú and I would love to help all I can.
Just one thing, keep it simple. It’s a common mistake to build it up with more and more atributes that in the end it gets really complex.
Final Veredict: It will be 2009 Best Invention.
Hi Mike,
May be using the software from OLPC http://www.olpc.com/quick-facts.html (my opinion this is light)
thanks
Kumar.
Great Idea!!!
Covering open source business software, I would love to help with trying to figure out how this can be used by a business user. I already have some ideas. This can revolutionize how business software is interacted!!
If you click on my web site link you’ll see the ViewTouch wireless X terminal tablet that I’ve been selling for point of sale since nearly five years ago. What you’re looking at is actually a window manager that has the ability to create lots of applications, not just point of sale.
I’m in! I’d love one. Can’t wait to watch it progress. If anyone can do it, you can, Michael.
Another one: $999
harddrive, VISTA (sucks)
http://secure.tabletkiosk.com/.....roduct=238
Vista sucks to those who are unfamiliar with it.
My Vista Ultimate kicks ass.
Neat Idea. I would propose buttons like in the iphone to start your favorite applications : Gmail, Docs, Facebook etc..
I have called them Fireboxes http://blogs.zoho.com/general/rise-of-the-firebox/
A web tablet would serve my own computing needs perfectly too!
I’m an User Experience and Usability Consultant… I’m in for this project… I really think there is the need of a device like that…
In fact, I’ll try to help. Don’t have any particular expertise but would be happy to contribute time. Contact me if I’m of use…
any local storage for gears database will require a file system - the browser needs to make calls to the GDI for drawing and raster ops.
It would be coup, apart from the minitablet project, for some smart VM company to do what BEA did for their servers - bypass the OS using the hypervisor and a small set of storage, graphics, and comm primitives.
That would be bigger news than any device - it would spawn thousands of devices. The ultra thin no OS slice.
great point - when I fire up the mailing list I will bring that up
Can I put down a deposit NOW?
Call it an OpenTablet or BrowsePad…
OpenTablet is a pretty catchy name. I’ll second that!
Catchy? You have got to be kidding. Everything today is called ‘Open’.
What about ‘Fablet’?
I absolutely love it. Where do I sign?
Angus
Hopefully you can pull this off, cause if you do, I am going to get one in every room of my house including all the bathroom’s, my office waiting room, etc. Replace all my magazines and newspapers with these. Good Luck!
Sweet baby Jesus. I just cried when I saw this. If this product comes to market you’ll kill it. MAKE IT WORK!
I am with you guys on this. I can be useful on the design side - from prototyping and user experience up to the final design.
Also I would suggest that a page should be available for suggestions, members and so on. If you make that I will support it and place a banner on my site.
Let’s rock
I have donated domains to many open projects - i would be happy to give you one to brand this - http://0pc.com is a good example
Or xg.org - let me know!
Check our recent review on Linux.Com
Just saw this post from Toni Schneider from last year:
http://toni.schneidersf.com/20.....-computer/
Where would you get a touchscreen component that would support a 200.00 price point… maybe it needs a fold out keyboard (yuck)
Actually resistive touch screen technology is relatively cheap to add on top of a lcd panel. It lacks the multitouch of the iphone, but could be produced at less than $20 a screen(just a estimate, but I think I heard that topic and pricerange come up with the olpc). It would be nice to have the latest technology but unnecessary if trying to hit the $200 goal.
Hopefully this does not go the way of the eee pc or olpc. One of their problems was overkill. Keep it simple!
Guys,
what do you think about this site products ?
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Really neat idea, want to see how this shapes up.
I think this is a really sweet plan.
Likelihood that I would buy this? 90%
If it runs OpenOffice, you can adjust that up to 100%