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A honey-sweet alternative to the Xoom?
Acer announced the April 24 release of its 10-inch Honeycomb tablet, the Iconia Tab A500, priced at a-not-unreasonable $450. With nearly identical hardware specs and $150 cheaper than the pricey Motorola Xoom’s, ZDNet is hailing the A500 as “Xoom Light.” The bad news? It has half the flash storage. Still, not a bad deal if you want to test drive Honeycomb and don’t want to sell your soul to do it.
You can preorder the A500 at Best Buy.
The Iconia Tab A500 at a glance:
- Weight: 1.7 lbs.
- Dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor
- 1.0GHz processing speed
- 1GB DDR2 memory
- 16GB eMMC on-board memory
- 4G LTE connectivity
- 2MP front-facing camera
- 5MP rear camera
- HDMI
- Supports microSD up to 32GB
- High-speed USB 2.0 port
HTC and Acer sweet on Honeycomb
Source: Amazon.co.uk
Gigaom is reporting Acer’s Iconia A100, a 7-inch Google Android Honeycomb tablet, has appeared on the UK’s Amazon site for pre-order ahead of its April 20 release date and is priced at around $485 (US dollars), a bit less the Motorola Xoom, which begins at around $600.
The Iconia A100 at a glance:
- 512MB RAM (not KB as on the site)
- 8GB hard drive
- NVIDIA Tegra 250, 1GHz Dual-Core processor
- 1024 x 600 screen resolution
- 5MP auto-focus camera
- 2MP front-facing camera
- Dolby mobile sound enhancement
- 3.5mm audio jack
Meanwhile, HTC tweeted Friday that they’ll be offering Honeycomb upgrades for its HTC Flyer when it’s made available.
@Geekhangover We will be offering a Honeycomb upgrade when it’s made available. What feature are you most excited about?—
HTC (@htc) April 01, 2011
Source: HTC press room
The HTC Flyer at a glance:
- 1.5GHz single-core processor
- 1GB RAM
- 32GB flash storage (expandable via microSD card)
- aluminium unibody construction
- 7-inch display
- 1024 x 600 screen resolution
- 5MP rear camera
- 1.3MP front-facing camera
Find of the Day: Mashable’s 10 hilarious cellphone ads
Why write about the Motorola Xoom and iPhone 5 rumors when you can revisit the days of “transportable phones” and “cell-u-lar phones”?
Mashable has a roundup of 10 vintage commercials for mobile phones that’s a terrific time-waster, er, research. I found this one for Radio Shack’s “affordable, portable cell-u-lar phone” particularly nostalgic. (“Cellular service available in most major cities.”) And check out the sexy transporting case!
More on foursquare vs. Facebook
Emma Barnett of the UK’s Telegraph talks to foursquare chief Dennis Crowley about the location-based network’s 7-month-old rivalry with Facebook’s Places. Crowleys says Facebook’s no threat to foursquare, which saw a 3400% growth in 2010.
Crowley tells The Telegraph:
We offer a fundamentally different tool to Facebook Places. Facebook is very good at offering its users tools for sharing things online. We are good at facilitating activities offline, once a person has shared their location online. Our primary aim to get people outside and doing more stuff.
I’ll buy that. But I wonder, if Facebook isn’t a threat to foursquare, what about Google?
EARLIER: A Business Insider graph looks at foursquare’s growth.
A foursquare post claims 7.5 million users now, and as Business Insider points out, that’s more than double their number of users when Facebook’s Places launched in August.
What location-based platform are you using?
Yahoo News on USA TODAY’s revised strategy
Yahoo News looks at some of USA TODAY’s recent efforts to reinvent itself in as a digital destination, which includes a rollout of mobile applications for devices such as the Apple iPad and the new Motorola Xoom, which is powered by Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
From the story:
USA Today’s applications for mobile devices have been downloaded more than 6 million times, including 1.25 million designed for Apple Inc.’s hot-selling iPad. Mobile applications of The New York Times, another national newspaper that’s trying to gain more readers and make more money on the Web, have been downloaded more than 9 million times.
Who’s J?
I am Jane Q. Public: consumer and citizen. As I go, so goes the nation. Sometimes.
(But really, click the link.)
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No, really, who’s J?
Jacqui Barrineau
Editor. Writer. Consultant.
I'm an editor and writer with certifications in public relations and e-Commerce. I also have a background in information technology. (In another life, I was a systems analyst.)
When I'm not editing copy for USA TODAY, I write an occasional short story or poem. My work has appeared in Calliope and the feminist journal So to Speak, and I'm a regular flash-fiction contributor to Paragraph Planet and Doorknobs & Bodypaint. Also on occasion, I interview editors for The Review Review, a comprehensive guide to literary journals and the people who produce them.
My points-of-view are collected on such esteemed outlets as Wordpress, Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed here and elsewhere are mine, not my employers'.
I live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with my husband, Trey, our Shetland Sheepdog, and two unhelpful-but-funny cats.
