News December 7, 2009

“JooJoo” – Definition: Tablet That Ships With Controversy Built In

A bombshell was dropped last week when Michael Arrington revealed that their “partner” FusionGarage has suddenly squeezed them out of the product THEY envisioned. I was so struck by how forthcoming Arrington was, that I read his blog post to my entire family at dinner that night. It was big news for any of us who were anxiously awaiting the release of the CrunchPad. But that wasn’t nuthin’ compared to today’s news…

Today a teaser site went live for a new tablet called the JooJoo. It is a dumb name for what looks like an interesting product. (At least from the two promo shots on the teaser site.) On that site you can sign up to get information when pre-ordering goes live this Friday. It looks neat, and both Judie and I were ready to pre-order so that we might review it here on the site. Then we found out a little detail on the mystery tablet… the company behind it is FusionGarage.

Yup, this IS the CrunchPad, minus the cool name and the visionary who thought it up. It does add some things into the mix, however like a $499 price (almost double what Arrington envisioned) and the potential of some big-time legal drama.

Engadget quotes FusionGarage’s Rathakrishnan as stating “The death of the product has been greatly exaggerated.” And while Arrington took what I believe was a respectful but heartfelt high road, Rathakrishnan went on the attack stating, “”Anybody can write blog posts. There are dreamers and there are doers.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Judie and I, however, won’t be ordering it any time soon.

Tags: Rumors and Speculation, Ultra Portable Tablets

AT&T Wants to Know about Your Network Problems

Guest YouTube reviewer: LuisMayhem17 reviews the Griffin Outfit for iPod 5G

About Dan Cohen

View all posts by Dan Cohen

Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him.

http://twitter.com/AndySoc1al Gary Bunker

Not interested in a low-powered, keyboardless, overpriced device with questionable legal entanglements? Shocking!
Pingback: MikeMcMahon
Pingback: William Miranda, CPA
Pingback: Warner Crocker
Pingback: topsy_top20k_en
Pingback: Allistair Lee
Pingback: danc
Pingback: Larry Greenberg
http://twitter.com/Haesslich Haesslich

Is it just me, or is that screen kind of… green? Like old-style Palm Pilot green?
dougom

I'm trying really hard to be fair-minded here, but the difference between the tones of Arrington (aggrieved and sorrowful) and Rathakrishnan (bitter and sarcastic) make it awfully hard.