PaperTab

There’s a lot of consumer electronics news flooding out of CES in Las Vegas this week, but one of the more interesting technology stories we’re seeing is trickling out of Ontario, Canada, where Queen’s University researchers working with partners in the UK as well as at Intel Labs and Plastic Logic have developed a tablet computer that is both paper-thin and flexible.

And while we’ve seen concept prototypes for flexible e-ink screens and the like previously, what’s most intriguing about the so-called PaperTab is the user interface.

The idea behind PaperTab isn’t to make your iPad flexible, but to rethink the way we use tablet computers--and to make them more like the actual pieces of paper we shuffle around our desks. Designed to work in clusters of up to ten tablets, the user can control various screens at once, with one or more PaperTabs for each app in use.

So you can have several documents or apps running at once and work across several PaperTabs to execute tasks while moving things around between them. You can use several together to make a larger PaperTab display, or shuffle them around like you would actual paper documents. Touch two PaperTabs together and you can swap data between them (this is all far better explained in the video below).

Rather than relying on buttons or swipe gestures, PaperTabs respond to the flexing of the actual screen in certain ways--bend the right side of the display to page forward and the left side to page backward, for instance. And while it feels like this might be easier to master in theory than in practice, the folks in the video demo make it look pretty simple.

But the point is, PaperTabs create a really interesting workflow--something like taking the various windows on your PC desktop and breaking them out on your physical desktop while retaining the ability to quickly move data and programs around from page to page. Figure out how to untether these things from those unsightly cords (they’ll need a paper-thin, flexible battery) and this Queen’s U. team might be onto something here--if not a consumer product just yet, at least a very cool interface idea.



@ Global Info Center

Google Nexus 7 Second Generation Is Ready

Next week, search juggernaut Google will officially kick off Google I/O, its annual developer conference where it's expected to show off the latest and greatest Android developments. The event will be held at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, the same venue where Apple and Microsoft are hosting their own respective developer conferences next month.

On the hardware front, Google may unveil a second-generation Nexus 7 to follow up the success of its first flagship tablet. After Amazon.com demonstrated that there's considerable interest for a $200 7-inch tablet, Google jumped right in.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has made a name for himself by accurately calling Apple moves in advance. Kuo's supply chain sources now reiterate prior rumors that Google has switched from NVIDIA to Qualcomm for the brains of the new tablet. The next Nexus 7 might be powered by a Snapdragon instead of a Tegra this time around, and ship in June or July.

That's entirely reasonable, since NVIDIA made a conscious choice to push out its Tegra 4 schedule in order to pull in the Tegra 4i release. NVIDIA has been anxious to get into the integrated LTE game to challenge Qualcomm, and it was a necessary trade off that would inevitably translate into sacrificing some near-term design wins to accelerate the 4i's time to market. That strategic decision is largely why Tegra revenue dropped 22.2% to $103.1 million last quarter, and Tegra 4 sales aren't expected to ramp until the second half.

Asus is also expected to continue building the tablet. The OEM has benefited greatly from the Nexus partnership, with tablet volumes soaring ever since the Nexus 7 launched last summer.

Google is expected to bolster the display resolution to 1,920 x 1,200 for the 7-inch display. There should be some improvements in thickness and weight, and Google is likely going to stand pat at the $199 price point. That would translate into a loss of $5 to $10 per unit.

The iPad Mini is putting pressure on the low-end, but a Nexus 7 refresh could strengthen Google's defense. Apple isn't expected to release Retina iPad Minis until this fall, giving Google a couple of months. Microsoft is also about to move downmarket with a rumored 7.5-inch Surface, in recognition of the growing consumer preference toward smaller tablets.

@ Global Info Center

Will Windows 8 Be The End Of Microsoft

With mobile technology often seen as the future of computing, investors and consumers everywhere have waited anxiously for news on Microsoft's recently launched Windows 8 platform.

Although numbers have been hard to track down, some of the data points that have emerged about Microsoft's big bet on mobile haven't been as encouraging as some had hoped. In the following video, our tech analyst, Andrew Tonner, sits down with Brendan Byrnes to break down how investors should look at these numbers amid a struggling PC market.

It's been a frustrating path for Microsoft investors, who've watched the company fail to capitalize on the incredible growth in mobile over the past decade. However, with the release of its own tablet, along with the widely anticipated Windows 8 operating system, the company is looking to make a splash in this booming market.

Will Windows 8 be the end of Microsoft?