Forget the PDA, Here Comes the TDA 390
Roland Piquepaille writes "A French company has just started to sell the Jackito, the first 'Tactile Digital Assistant' (TDA). This new kind of PDA has no stylus, doesn't offer handwriting recognition and has no keyboard. Instead, it is based on touchscreen technology and relies entirely on your thumbs for input -- which are harder to lose than a stylus. And as Jackito has two simultaneous touch points, you can operate it with your two thumbs at the same time, at least according to the company. For an entry price of $600, you'll get parallel-processing capabilities with 7 processors and plenty of brand new technology, including 3ActilOS, a multitasking OS, which is not even referenced by Google. So be warned before purchasing one! However, the approach is pretty unique and I wish them good luck. Before opening your wallet, you'll find some selected pictures in this summary."
must ... resist ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:must ... resist ... (Score:2)
'Cause you know they got the metric system.
They was also no No Go in Mexico, and nothing about Licking of Wax Tadpole in China.
Re:must ... resist ... (Score:4, Informative)
Bite the wax tadpole is pretty close [snopes.com] though.
Re:must ... resist ... (Score:3, Funny)
So Jackito perhaps means a bit of a jerk.
PDAs are out? (Score:3, Funny)
yes, I read slashdot 24/7
bad pricing idea (Score:5, Interesting)
How would you like to pay $600 for the 499,999th unit? Or (unspecified amount) for the 999,999th unit? D'oh!
Re:bad pricing idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bad pricing idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The pretty color screen will cost you an extra $138. $45 for an internal MP3 player.
$25 for USB *CORD*? I thought that was for a USB interface. But hey, you can get 4 AA batteries for only $5!
Ewwwww (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ewwwww (Score:2)
Unique? (Score:2)
Re:Unique? (Score:3, Funny)
Is it just me... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:2)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:3, Informative)
Couldn't figure out
Re:Is it just me... (Score:2, Funny)
(from the site) Jackito provides us with the faculties we lack as human beings, such as a gigantic memory and vast capabilities for computation, learning, games and communications
Can your ham sandwich do that?!?!?!?
Sorry All! (Score:2)
They just gave it all away. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bye bye, Mr. Tactile Digital Assistant!
Re:They just gave it all away. (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at people who pay several hundreds of dollars for a cell phone just because T-Mobile doesn't offer it yet.
The numbers don't add up (Score:3, Insightful)
Those must be some pretty unimpressive processors to last a week on a single AA...
Re:The numbers don't add up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The numbers don't add up (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? This is a disadvantage when a new product is less than impressive, but it's an advantage when comparing Palm to PocketPC?
Re:The numbers don't add up (Score:4, Informative)
Good for power management, and can still be snappy when you need it.
Hardertolose? (Score:5, Funny)
I only have one thumb! (Score:2, Redundant)
taking notes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:taking notes (Score:2)
Re:taking notes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:taking notes (Score:4, Informative)
Besides, I've been using my finger as a stylus for years, so "hey look! you don't need a stylus!" is about as attractive as marketing a soda can as "look! no glass or straw needed!" Erm, yeah, thanks for the 411.
Their new slogan: (Score:5, Funny)
*If that monkey had opposable thumbs.
Re:Their new slogan: (Score:2)
Re:Their new slogan: (Score:3, Informative)
A single AA gives several weeks of life? (Score:3, Insightful)
To optimize Jackito's features (Finger-Touch Control, battery life, fast graphics, Multitasking, Real-Time Processing, etc.), we have had to incorporate Parallel Processing (seven processors) and a powerful Gate-Array
Isn't it counter-intuitive to imply Parallel Processing and powerful Gate-Array would give better battery life??
This sounds like a hoax.
Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
If you ask me, it's a joke, especially since it's using an OS that google can't find.
Not so hard to lose (Score:3, Funny)
I smell a hoax (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and you pay a $100 or 100 eur "deposit to confirm your order".
So it's not only a hoax, it's a SCAM
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:2)
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:2)
OK, I'll admit my cluelessness. How does this show it's fake?
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:3, Interesting)
In this particular case there is another way you can tell they are faked, and that's simply the quality of the images. If you open one up in an image editor and zoom in you can see that the plain surfaces aren't textured realistically (they're too perfect) and that there are some slight alignment errors where the "author" was cutting
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:3, Funny)
Also, the floating cubes [jackito-pda.com] look very suspicous. I think they may have been put in after the picture was taken.
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:3, Insightful)
Piquepaille is a spammer anyway (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I smell a hoax (Score:3, Funny)
Scam? What are you talking about?
Didn't you see that it is both "the only one with a 'memory saver'" and "the only one featuring a Basic interpreter"? [jackito-pda.com]
Don't tell me the only TDA with a Basic interpreter is a scam.
Re:Story Submitter is a Blog spammer as well (Score:2, Insightful)
you keep it up long enough and hard enough and some of it will inevitably slip through the cracks.
So please go fuck off and die you shameless selfpromoting ignoramous!
obligatory (Score:2)
Seems too good to be true! But I must have one! (Score:2)
Oh no... (Score:2)
The only reason I can still write at all legibly (slightly less then a doctor) is because I use a PDA stylus... just using my thumbs? I might as well swear off ever using a pen or pencil in future.
Re:Oh no... (Score:2)
PDA/TDA? (Score:2, Interesting)
High Sound quality via Screen!
Apparently the speaker is beneath the screen, that's kind of neat.
This seems to me to probably be the equivalent of a "PDA" you can buy at walmart for $
Not exactly no keyboard (Score:3, Informative)
HOAX / SCAM - $100 needed for "Escrow Account" (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a very professionally well done web site, very convincing, but a company of their stature would be accepting payment by means other than PAYPAL!!!
I mean fake Apple PDA pictures have surfaced a few years ago that also looked very convincing as well. At least these fakers are trying to get some money out of you for all their hard photoshopping and HTML design!!!
Re:HOAX / SCAM - $100 needed for "Escrow Account" (Score:5, Insightful)
The website is registered to Novinit, some company in France. I have a hard time believing that they are real since they don't seem to want to leave an address on their website, nor do they own the domain "novinit.fr" which any self-respecting french company would own. They claim that they have been doing the research for 10 years with "tens of millions" of dollars invested in research. Sort of hard to believe since they also claim to have been founded in 1999 and with a 2mil euro initial investment and $10 mil in initial capital. Strange that they keep flipping between Euros and Dollars.
If they are real, they ought to provide more information.
Re:HOAX / SCAM - $100 needed for "Escrow Account" (Score:3, Informative)
TACTIL GROUP LTD
16F STANDARD CHARTERED BANK
BUILDING 4-4A DES VOEUX ROAD CENTRAL
HONG KONG, 00000
Sounds extremely fishy; seems like they couldn't throw a phony website together for the OS.
Re:HOAX / SCAM - $100 needed for "Escrow Account" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HOAX / SCAM - $100 needed for "Escrow Account" (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm.
All thumbs using my P900 (Score:2)
Why can't someone come up with a thumb stylus? Kinda like a thumbpick for guitars...
Good job, bet you a nickel it's a hoax (Score:2)
It has enough technical information to sound real, but there are just so many sections where it just doesn't quite make sense what they are saying...
Re:Good job, bet you a nickel it's a hoax (Score:2)
There are just so many sections where it just doesn't quite make sense what they are saying.
It's French.
its BLACK AND WHITE! (Score:2)
What has two thumbs (Score:5, Funny)
This guy...
7 CPUs? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:7 CPUs? (Score:3, Informative)
Power management. They have one chip, implemented as a cMOS gate-array ASIC, which includes 7 CPU cores. More or fewer cores activate as needed (via gated clocks). It's a very good way to minimize power use (hence the 1xAA battery lasting several weeks, under "normal use," which is to say "waiting for input, usually") while still providing decent performance when needed.
why you need marketing! (Score:5, Funny)
Sony Gummi (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have access to ACM's digital library there's a good paper on it that was published at the CHI 2004 conference.
Harder to lose, but.. (Score:4, Funny)
Fraud! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mmmmm... $600 for a 2-color PDA w/a proprietary OS and heavy DRM. Sign me up for a dozen! I'll take delivery right after Nader sweeps the elections in November!
[And an OS that is described as an extension to Visual C++, to boot!]
-Charles
Re:Fraud! (Score:3, Informative)
Well (Score:4, Funny)
Not if you're yacuza, you insensitive clod.
Re:Well (Score:2)
jump? (Score:2)
A PC mouse can't make objects jump, unlike your fingertips
on a Jackito Touchscreen. A stylus-driven PDA doesn't allow you to touch two points
on the screen simultaneously.
Jackito lets you use both thumbs at the same time.
Jump? The objects on the screen jump? As in, off the screen, into the third dimension? Wow. No wond
In-place editing (Score:2)
This part alone makes me not want it. (Score:2)
From the site's "Software" page: No thanks.
Hmm, let's see.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not even internally consistent... (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty bad when you're not even self-consistent.
Wacky Screen Pricing (Score:2, Redundant)
sour taste in mouth (Score:2)
it's not my cup of tea. reminds me of those grubby touch screen monitors libraries had back in the mid 80's. more importantly where's the compelling software [jackito-pda.com] that is easy to use ~ like my Palm 3 which I got back in '98 for about AUD$600?
Technology looking for a solution that's already been p
SCAM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets see: Weird named OS that has never seen the light of day, a "deposit" required, etc. Even if this isnt a scam, seems like these guys dont have a shippable product, and are looking for some free funding... and that's being charitable
Too many innovations. (Score:4, Insightful)
* You might pursuade people that the wonderous new input device was worth looking at on a fairly standard PDA.
* You might sell them a fairly standard PDA with some new no-name Operating System.
* You might even convince them that they need 7 CPU's on a regular PDA.
* You might maybe sell people a pretty standard PalmOS PDA from a company you've never heard of (if it's cheap enough).
But all those things at once (and at such a high price) are just spelling "DISASTER" to me.
It only takes one of those wonderously innovative things to be somewhat broken to make the darned thing useless - and what happens if the company goes bust tomorrow? They've already admitted that they've paid a fortune up-front to tool up to build a half million of these things. They must owe money out the wazoo - it's a high risk venture they are engaged with here.
Will they be there to fix up the bugs in an untried OS running on 7 CPU's in parallel? Will there be new applications for it? Will there be endless teething troubles with all of these new hardware widgets?
(And if it's a "TDA", why to they have 'pda' in their URL?)
The manufactoring is revolutionary (Score:2, Troll)
This company? Which screen you want, color, b&w, or bistable - a technology that I thought was still in testing! This may be the first use of bistable screens in a large device. (and how about the fact that it's turning the
Does the name "PayPal" mean anything to you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Could they have taken this further.. (Score:4, Funny)
Er ok... Perhaps not...
(such a device might end up being euphemistically
referred to as a jerkito)
Don't think it's a hoax (Score:4, Informative)
If the Jackito is their first product, and only recently named, it would make sense that the domain for "jackito-pda" was only recently registered.
Also, searching for their management team of Arnaud de la Fouchardière: Founder, President and CEO; Patrick Thomsen: Vice-President Marketing and Finance; Noël Pietri: Vice-President Sales turned up (among others) these links: Noël Pietri [wanadoo.fr], Arnaud de la Fouchardière [indexa.fr]. I haven't found anything on Patrick Thomsen as of yet, but if this is a hoax, it is extrodinarily elaborate.
Re:Don't think it's a hoax (Score:3, Interesting)
www.novinit.com redirects to www.jackito-pda.com
check out
http://www.novinit.com/produit_uk.html
Just to keep you guys reminded that france telecommunication and computing are relatively independent of what's going on in the US, so it's highly possible.
Re:it's a hoax (Score:5, Informative)
Novinit is not a registered company name in France. Perhaps it is the operating name of another company. The website does not offer the required information of a tax number, physical address, and other contact details.
Arnaud de la Fouchardière is the money behind the fly-by-night Marcopoly online store. They've got a bad reputation for shipping various bits of kit which probably fell off the back of trucks, and no after sales service. He made his money from online pr0n, mostly doing the technical front for prostitution rings using the old Minitel service.
There are two sites, novinit.com and jackito-pda.com, one is hosted in France, the other in California. They seem identical in content, but the one hosted on 7x24net in the U.S. has bogus registration information.
The photos of the device on the website are of an Apple Newton.
There is no way to get in touch with this company except through a paypal link. The phone number given for the registrars is a pre-paid anonymous GSM phone on the orange network.
All the hallmarks of a scam.
the AC
For those who think that this is a fake.. (Score:3, Informative)
Trademark's aren't free, and this was years ago, so I take this as proof that it's real.
I agree - it's a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
And then they only accept payment via PayPal. So you have no legal recourse when they take your money and disappear.
And their product description looks like a whole pile of feel-good platitudes with absolutely no technical content whatsoever. Their FAQ goes on at great length about how styli are evil, but the site says absolutely nothing about how you enter text into the thing. My guess is that you can't. Assuming the device exists at all, you probably can only enter text while it's docked to a real computer - making it completely useless for everything I rely on my Palm PDA for.
Seven processors and a custom OS? <SARCASM>And if the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop - which can severely damage the processor if left running that way too long. Unfortunately, most novice computer users will not realize what is happening until it is far too late.</SARCASM>
Click here [trendmicro.com] before replying that you don't get the joke.
Re:I agree - it's a scam (Score:3, Informative)
Comes with a basic black and white screen. The bistable B&W is an additional charge.
Still a scam.
Even if it's not a scam it's way overpriced. (Score:3, Interesting)
Look up the M30803. It's a 20 MHz CPU!
The MSP430 is a digital-watch class device.
20 MHz processor. 2.5M RAM, 320x240 display, serial interface, you can ignore the FPGA and "internal bus"... if the CPU is so anemic they can't be any good. I've got a faster PDA with a better screen and more memory that cost under $150. AND you can actually get software for it.
Mafia (Score:3, Funny)
I work for the mafia, you insensitive clod!
Developer tools are hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
They claim that the developer tools are touch screen based... yeah - you code for the product USING THE TOUCH SCREEN!
But there is also a BASIC language interpreter... can you imagine coding BASIC with a touch screen?
"We have supplied this built-in BASIC interpreter, as it lets you code programs directly on Jackito, without having to use a PC. We chose not to include a Java interpreter, as you cannot code Java programs directly on Jackito - you need a PC for this."
What a dumb ass hoax
Re:Developer tools are hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Other than C++, the primary development language for the Psion EPOC32 OS was OPL, a basic-like language that could be development on the PC w/ a simulator, or on the device itself, though the Psions had real keyboards, not just an on screen one.
And this is coming from a person who has done a lot of coding directly on a PDA. First, using Ne
can i write text on it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget the PDA, here comes the PEDA (Score:5, Funny)
Walk your way to a new day! This innovative product, made possible by the NASA space program, has undergone 35 years of development and cost over $10 billion.
Advantages over PDA's:
- Large footprint allows easy data entry. What is more
natural than walking?
- Take notes with the innovative Hopscratchpad.
- Simultaneous data entry with both feet!
- Play fun built-in games such as Twister(tm) and Kickman, and
educational software such as Prance Prance Evolution.
- Experience multimedia interactive fiction such as Stomp: The Interactive Multimedia
Experience (requires force-feedback module).
- Contains FOUR MULTIMEDIA LAYERS of Teflon, Foam, Silicon and
Plastic!
- Easy connection to Segway(tm) docking station.
What people are saying about SolePad:- "Finally, my hands are free to do my work. I love taking
notes with the Hopscratchpad." - Jackie Chan, actor
- "I kept losing my shoes. Now I have an excuse to keep them
on!" - Bikram Choudhury, yoga instructor
- "This is the greatest new technology I have seen since Jackito."
- Michael Jackson, singer
Special prepaid introductory price: $1000/ft.SolePad: Finally, a step in the right direction. (tm)
Kickman (c) 1981 Midway
Twister is a registered trademark of Milton Bradley
5 things stop me splashing the cash... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would be my immediate comment. But I'll back it up with some quick detective work.
Let's view the source on the payment page and start with some PayPal background checks. You need a PayPal account for this:
Seller Reputation: New Member*
Account Status: Unverified
Account Type: French Business
Account Creation Date: 28 Jun. 2004
PayPal Member For: 15 days
Cust. Service Email: lafouchardiere@novinit.com
An unverified account rings an alarm bell immediately. It doesn't take long to do this, just a week or two to wait for a code on a bank statement. It's another sign that you are who you say you are. Any reputable retailer does this. Maybe he's just about to.
Now a whois search on the novinit domain:
Arnaud de La Fouchardiere
66 bis avenue Jean Moulin
Paris, 75014
FR
Phone: 06 07 61 23 36
Alarm bell 2 - the name "Arnaud de La Fouchardiere" itself is registered to another address. You can determine that with a search here:
http://wfa.pagesjaunes.fr/pb.cgi?lang=en
I won't paste it in case I'm barking up the wrong alley. But it certainly isn't the one from the whois result. Perhaps he moved recently, or this is his office address. Or perhaps he's a clever scammer syphoning away our money as we speak.
Alarm bell 3 - from comparisons with the above site, Parisien phone numbers should begin 01 4.
Alarm bell 4 - The whois address given appears to have rather too many companies using it for my liking. It may be a rented service.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
Alarm bell 5 - he wants us to wait 90 days?!?
If you check PayPal's policies, it's increasingly difficult after 30 days to retrieve funds on items that aren't received. This guy is expecting us to wait 90 days before he despatches?
So what we have is a site that seems a little too good to be true, appears to invent technology, and has some large information holes that many other people have pointed out.
Maybe it's genuine. Send us an email Arnaud, we'd love an exclusive interview!
I'll wait for the first million.
Perhaps "Arnaud" could make a better living designing websites? I'd be glad to throw him 600 bucks to redesign mine...
Google searching 101 (Score:4, Informative)
- including 3ActilOS, a multitasking OS, which is not even referenced by Google
True "ActilOS" is not googlable, but "actil OS" is [google.com]. Common boogle -- not trying alternate spacing for acronyms and product names.Re:What will Andre The Giant use? (Score:2)