Last time around at CES, we were wholly underwhelmed by Toshiba’s first Android tablet, the Thrive, says Today in Tech. This year it seems that the team at Toshiba went back to the drawing board. Its second slate effort, the 10.1″ Toshiba Excite X10 is a sleek Android slate with enough ports to please anyone, and — even if only for the moment — it’s actually the thinnest tablet in town. We enjoyed some hands-on time with the Excite X10 at an exclusive Toshiba event last night, and the ultra-slim .3″ tablet left us with a very favorable impression, both compared to its predecessor and as a device all its own. The Excite X10 clearly isn’t cut from the same cloth as the Thrive. While the Thrive had a bulky rubberized back, the Excite X10 is svelte as can be, with a handsome brushed aluminum chassis…
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Understanding SOPA: The House debates the Stop Online Piracy Act
This week, some of the biggest companies on the web came out in full force to oppose a proposed anti-piracy bill wending its way through Congress, Today in Tech reports. The bill is known as the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA, and it expands the U.S. Department of Justice’s power to enforce copyright—and to demand that internet entities like social networks and search engines take an active role in doing so too. Prior to a congressional hearing this morning, a consortium of nine companies that would be affected by the bill (eBay, Twitter, AOL, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Mozilla, Zynga, and LinkedIn) released an open letter publicly criticizing SOPA . The hearing only featured a single witness against the proposal: Google’s policy counsel, Katherine Oyama…
…Read More5 killer features on the Kindle Fire that you won’t find on the iPad
Tuesday, Amazon will untie the bow on its long-anticipated iPad competitor, the Kindle Fire, Today in Tech reports. While no company to date has been able to make so much as a dent in Apple’s iron grip on the tablet market, Amazon isn’t your everyday manufacturer, and the Kindle Fire isn’t your average tablet. Unlike Motorola, Samsung, HTC and every other major company to rush an iPad clone onto store shelves, Amazon took its time—and perhaps most importantly, it opted to rethink what consumers might really need in a tablet, playing to the iPad’s few weaknesses. Instead of rehashing the winning appeal of Apple’s wonder slate, Amazon took its winning e-reader formula and applied it to a more tablet-like device. So what does the Amazon Kindle Fire have to offer that the ubiquitous iPad doesn’t? Read on—you might be surprised…
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