Category Archives: Tablet OS and UI

AliYun Tablet Confirmed for Upcoming Launch, Coming From Alibaba With English Language Support

Posted by on September 10, 2011 No comments

Alibaba is an e-commerce company from China that handles digital commerce for small businesses and it’s part of a group that has 22,000 employees, so this is a major player in China. Actually, so major that it even has an own OS developed known as AliYun. Launched a month ago and spawning after 3 years of work and 1,200 engineers losing sleep over it, the platform will be included on an upcoming tablet.

Said AliYun OS-based tablet will hit the market within the next two months, with English support included. In case you’re not familiar with this software, know that it’s based heavily on cloud computing and runs Android apps, while also offering HTML 5 and web apps support. There’s already a handset out there called the K-Touch Cloud Smartphone W700, that’s based on AliYun and features a Tegra 2 CPU.

As far as the Alibaba tablet goes, this was announced as an iPad rival by Dr. Wang Jian, the chief architect of the AliYun OS. In merely days from now we’ll see the English version of the OS, in order to get accustomed to the environment that will be found on the tablet. Right now, Alibaba is discussing with at least 3 hardware makers, without any names being mentioned.

I’m guessing Acer here, maybe Huawei or maybe ASUS?


Firefox for Honeycomb App Revealed by Mozilla

Posted by on August 31, 2011 8 comments

Mozilla has just announced a special Firefox app for Honeycomb and we sure wish more companies would be doing stuff like that. The browser comes with a bunch of new features that aren’t found in the stock browser available on a classic Honeycomb slate.

For example, you get a Honeycomb theme in Firefox, including the back button and the tab shape. Also, the Awesomebar made the cut, but one might notice that the tabs have been moved to the left side, for search results to show up more easily. The tabs have also been improved, allowing you to switch between them with ease, but with different modes of display, depending on portrait or landscape orientation.

Mozilla also allows users of the Honeycomb Firefox to scroll through tabs using the left thumb, while scrolling down through the content using the right finger. I’ve seen this trend a lot lately, mostly in newspaper apps and mostly on the iPad, to be honest. Also, this feat was present in the email app on HP TouchPad.


Kno Makes Books Come Alive With 3D Graphics (Video)

Posted by on August 23, 2011 No comments


Remember the Kno, a tablet textbook that was supposed to take over universities and schools? Well, now the person who started the Kno company, Osman Rashid shows us a very cool feature, that seems to bring textbooks to life. We’ve got Facebook integration, activity streams and a 3D modeling feature.

This 3D feature works great with chemistry textbooks as shown in the video below. It displays chemistry models, detailing the atom’s bonds and molecules, all in a spinning 3D model. You can interact with the model, enlarge and rotate it, to give the students a better understanding of the idea.

While some people still argue that students need pen and paper for a better learning process, this single example of 3D graphics is good enough to convince me to adopt Kno and its 3D features. There’s a Kno iPad app out there, that has recently received an update, most likely including the 3D feature as well. Other new stuff added is the video note system, audio notes, photos, highlight stream and the ability to add videos recorded with the iPad’s camera.


Tabco Tablet Based on Predictive Technology, Knows What the User Wants

Posted by on August 12, 2011 No comments


We’ve reached T minus 3 days and still we have no idea what the TabCo tablet is… It could be the product that Fusion Garage was preparing a while ago, it could be Nokia or Microsoft… who really knows? What we know are bits and pieces of this project, that now also seems to include user action -based predictive technology.

The guys of Fast Company managed to get hold of the people behind TabCo and learn that there’s a predictive UI on the slate, involving a gesture-based user interface that will give us a new way of interaction. It’s been said that search and maps are directly integrated in the interface, making me think of augmented reality before all.

Also, the device “draws information from the semantic web and anticipates users’ information needs”, which sounds very cool, but I have to see in practice, before judging it. Google is usually good at such predictive engines, but maybe there’s another player out there, with similar capabilities. Continuing the detailing, TabCo said that you can move information between applications and windows seamlessly. We also get a preloaded suite of apps for doc/photo/video editing, so this is a productivity device.

Gesture-based UI is once again highlighted in the recent interview, so we’re curios more than ever to see what will go loose on Monday, August the 15th…

Related posts:

  1. TabCo Tablet Identity Revealed Tomorrow: Here’s the Countdown
  2. Apple Patent Mentions Pen-based Technology, Heading for Tablet?
  3. TabCo UI Revealed a Bit in Latest Teaser; Launch Event Streamed on August 15th (Video)