Whats it all about? Novinit a French company has developed the worlds first TDA or Tactile Digital Assistant. The TDA is based on
touch-screen technology
and relies entirely on your thumbs for input, which are harder to lose
than a stylus. The TDA is named Jackito and comes with two simultaneous
touch points so you can operate it with your thumbs at the same time
and so no need for a stylus. Using the
TDA is very easy, since
you can search a database or a large address book, with just your
thumbs. Using the device with your thumbs is actually much faster than
a stylus well at least thats what the company claims. The device comes
with a variety of features like finger-touch control, battery life,
fast graphics, multitasking, real-time processing, interchangeable
skins and much more.
The idea of a device like Jackito was conceived from the fact that the
worlds first touch screen based PDA was already developed by a US
company called Litton in 1978 for the US and German armies. After some
years Novinit pondered If theres a touch screen based PDA for the
armies, why not for the gizmo lovers? Arnaud de la Fouchardire of
Jackito says, The architecture chosen for Jackito focuses on user
friendliness. Fingertips (as opposed to a stylus) are used as a natural
device for touching the options displayed by the LCD touch screen.
About 200 engineers from 10 countries for over 10 years, have worked on
making this device better and $50 million has been invested in these
efforts.
Seven Processors and a larger screen The Jackito runs
on seven processors with full parallel-processing capabilities (two
micro-controllers and five accompanying reconfigurable cores), a large
4.5 color QVGA LCD fingertip touch-screen that offers resolution of
320x240 dpi, display with landscape orientation and two SD/MMC card
slots. The TDA runs on an operating system called 3ActilOS, has 2.5 MB
SRAM and 16 MB NOR Flash memory. The Jackito measures 140 x 80 x 16 mm
and weighs just 150 g. It feeds on a single AA battery, which according
to the company, can sustain for several weeks. Using the touch-screen
with your thumbs or index fingers means that you dont have to carry or
use a stylus, keyboard or any other input device. Also Novinit says
that the finger's contact area is hundred times larger than that of a
stylus and a stylus exerts hundred times more pressure on the screen
than a finger. Arnaud goes on to say that The Jackito is not only an
electronic device, but also a personal companion, supporting the three
essential ingredients of a well-balanced lifestyle works productivity,
personal life and edutainment. The Jackito will also come preloaded
with about twenty applications, which includes games, puzzles, address
book, clock, to-do list, synchronization feature, backup application,
etc.
Want to buy it? Novinit hasn't yet appointed
any dealers for Jackito, though as of now they plan to make all the
transactions through their website. The Jackito is available for sale
on
www.jackito.com
at a list price of 600. Novinit says that if you are interested in
buying the product, you will have to order it online through their
website by remitting $100 and then wait for about 90 days for the
product to be delivered to you. However, you can choose the screen type
(color or monochrome), user interface, removable front cover and
changeable stick-on strips of your choice. The Jackito is entirely
customizable you can choose between add-ons like internal MP3 player,
FM radio, microphone, headset, Bluetooth, solar battery charger and
much more at an extra cost. According to Arnaud, they will target at
"early adopters" for this product, but the product is destined for
everybody because the product has all the facilities that we lack as
human beings gigantic memory, vast capabilities for computation,
learning, games and communications.
TDAs the way to go (or is it not?)The
development of the TDA doesn't stop here in fact this is just the
beginning. Novinit expects that by April 2005 it will be able to make
available innovative accessories for the TDA you will be able to choose
from WiFi modules, GPS, digital camera (CMOS based), micro-printer,
micro-scanner, barcode reader, smart-card reader, TV module and much
more. Though TDA seems to be an in thing with all the features it talks
about, there are certain things that work against the very concept of
digital assistant. The Jackito doesn't come with character recognition
software built-in. It means that you will have to type through the
virtual keyboard on the TDAs screen if you want to enter a few
important data. This is far more tedious than just scribbling a few
notes on a PDA screen with the stylus and leaving the conversion part
to the handwriting recognition software. The TDA runs on an operating
system called the ActilOS, which no one has even heard of before. This
means that there wont be any third party applications for the TDA, at
least immediately. Moreover the product is similar to a PDA its just
that the TDA can be used with the fingers / thumbs and supports
landscape orientation too.
Though the TDA seems promising
enough, time will only tell whether it remains stable in the market. So
if you want to experience the magic of TDA, logon to the Jackitos
website and click on buy!
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