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hi! i’m Tom, founder and creative director of POKE.  i live in CT, work in NYC, munch on tasty digital cookies, collect lunchboxes, take lots of photos and buy lots of t-shirts.  mmm…cookies. i’m passionate about creating a safe internet for kids, cookies, really great Italian cooking, all kinds of dogs, digital photography and the power of technology and how it affects our daily lives. i’d love to tell you i read a lot - but i just don’t. so there. Psychotic.

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cheap hackery makes pretty

I love this thing: Its the new Asus Eee PC 4G. Small, capable, very cheaply made and get this:

* Weighs about 2 pounds
* Has WiFi
* Runs Xandros Linux - no frills and totally hackable
* Has an integrated webcam, microphone and speaker jacks
* Gets the job done

UM. Yeah - it costs $399. (Your iPhone was 400.00).

537861-1254577-thumbnail.jpg My favorite part (and why this is relevant)? This thing is small, light, and cheap. The perfect hackable toy for use in interactive installations in or out of the home or office. I predidct this little guy is going to change everything.

Oh and one more thing. Seeing a trend people? More value, less money. We’re all in love with the latest gadget - true, but not everyone is prepared to spend 800.00 hundred dollars to own a new Kindle, when for the same money, you could have a computer that does it all.

Non profit agencies have been fighting for the low cost computing market for years. The truth is, it all should be low cost and with a price tage (and functionality) like this, this thing will get hacked, designed, re-designed, mounted to someone’s refridgerator, slapped on a remote control car, mounted to the back of an SUV on Pimp my Ride and could quite possibly run be the engine that put digital pants on your ass and this table in your living room.

2008 will bring more product designers to the realization that hacking and adapting technology is an important component in development of new ideas.

Related post: interactive snow projection

 

Reader Comments (1)

Thanks for the update re:Kindle out of stock - sold no ebay for $725. Good stuff.

The gadget above looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
See-ming

January 8, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSee-ming Lee

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