The dawn of the 21st century brought us a problem: we had lots of data, but no real way to bring that data into the real world. We could feasibly lug laptops and phones around, but did they ever do exactly what we needed them to do? Don’t answer that.
Manufacturers, in their wisdom, decided to do something about it and so devices like the Peek - for email - and the CueCat - for nothing - were born. Here's a look at ten "avatar" gadgets, gadgets that brought a web service into the real world, for better or worse.
Twitterpeek - We should be nicer to the Twitterpeek. This standalone device, designed specifically for Twittering, mirroring our own obsession with the microblogging service and, if anything, we willed it into existence with our collective desires for always on Twitter. Does it work? Eh. Is it a good idea? Eh. Is it for us? Probably not, but what do I know?
Simply by Apple’s law of averages, the likelihood that the following two videos are real, is very small. If someone was able to sneak out one video of the Apple Tablet in action, it’d be a miracle, but two? Now you’re just tempting fate. Still, that isn’t stopping Brian Lam of Gizmodo from wondering if there could be something to these (even though his colleague disagrees). And you know what, even if they aren’t real, Apple should consider hiring whoever made them, because this seems like the right idea.
Sure, certain details are off, like the text alignment on some of the elements as ZDNet points out. But just look at this system in action. It’s like having multiple iPhones on the same giant touch screen (and that may actually be exactly what this is).
Regardless, whatever this is or isn’t, I want this. I was unsure if the app model would be better or worse than running a version of regular OS X on the Apple Tablet, but I’m definitely leaning towards better recently. And after seeing this, I hope Apple is too.
Also enjoy some images posted in the MacRumors Forums of the same purported device.
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