Why I might still buy an HP Touchpad

Recently, Hewlett-Packard announced it’s decision to discontinue supporting the webOS platform. The primary reason for webOS’s demise seems to be because HP didn’t really think out the commitment it was going to take to break into the tablet market but never the less its not a situation I am really crying over as there are an abundance of choices,  some of them haven’t even been discovered so it’s not like the whole tablet market is bound to collapse and even if HP’s webOS was going to continue staying the market I still would not have bought it over the iPad and many superior tablets such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Acer Iconia Tab.

Anyway’s HP recently told its partners such as Staples, Best Buy and Futureshop to put the HP Touchpad on firesale (hopefully I used the term properly) , this means that the price of the HP Touchpad has been slashed in order to generate consumer interest in purchasing the HP Touchpad. Unfortunately this was the only way for HP to get rid of the inventory (and also an expensive way as they lost millions by slashing the prices) they had in stores and in their warehouse.  Overnight the price point of the HP Touchpad dropped to $99 for the 16gb and $149 for the 32gb which as you can imagine definitely generates consumer interest. So much so that I was looking to buy one as well (possibly for the wrong reasons)…..

The first reason was because here on Scewre we have yet to experience webOS in it’s supposed glory and give it a thorough review but the second reason we were thinking of buying an HP Touchpad was simply because we thought some how someone will find a way to root Android onto it and besides experiencing webOS it would also be a great way to experience Honeycomb and perhaps even Ice Cream sandwich (when it comes out) if that is possible. However, I just thought it would be great to have a Tablet in general. It would be a great opportunity to experience  a tablet and figure out it’s position in my everyday activities (if it even has a position), I also felt that the inexpensive price allowed me to buy it over previous situations where due to high prices I had no immediate plans of buying a tablet in general.

In the comments, tell us if you had any plans of buying a tablet and the HP webOS situations stopped you from doing so, and if it didn’t why? Also give us any general thought(s) we would be happy to read them and share them abroad.

Fast Forward: Android meets the LED Lightbulb

Ever since the first Filament lightbulb lighting technology has come far from its roots, we now have energy effecient lightbulbs and lightbulbs consisting of the light emiting diode technology. Truly what we take for granted has change the way we live everyday. At the Google I/O confrence Google made a push to home technologies and one of the technologies that caught my intrest was their lightbulb. Google has simply created a demo of a product that allowed your android phone to control the LED lightbulb. This I think is a huge push towards home innovations. The demo instead of also only using the usual wi-fi or home automation protocols used the brand new mesh protocol, another  innovation from Google. Google hopes that with this product developers will create home automation apps to support Google’s line of home technologies. The person carrying out the demo was playing a shooting game with the lights turning off as shots were fired which made for a realistic gameplay experience and frankly with  the ways that the technology was being used it makes me excited what other developers can make from the API.

Lighting is very visible and prevalent so it made sense for it to be first foray for the platform,” Holland said. “Every one of the lights has a radio integrated inside the lamp so there’s no additional equipment.”

Google is not the only to push home automation products slowly many companies are pushing out their own revisions to making this market more and more intriguing and exciting. The reason why Google used the mesh protocol is because the other protocols would have had the problem of radio interference. These bulbs should be avaible by the end of the year and cost the same as general purpose LED bulbs. I think as Google enters the market of home automation products they need to find creative ways to push and drive this market because literally this market has proved to be a hard sell for many consumers, and many consumers are not paying much attention mainly because the companies in home automation need to take the market more seriously and realize that to break this trend in consumer markets the technology will have to come far in what it’s purpose is and how affordable it can be for the mainstream crowd.

I am personally very excited to hear what’s in store for this market, I believe that with Google’s market penetration there is a good chance Google can really peak people’s interest. Anyway I will keep an eye out for these technologies because I feel they are slowly grabbing my interest and as they make home automation simpler and simpler I can image it, my Galaxy Tab 10.1 in my hand as I play with the switches in my house, sounds boring but you would not believe how useful it is until you have sat hours together on your couch watching marathons of your favorite shows.