For the JooJoo\/CrunchPad to win where the Goliaths have lost (and are readying for a rematch) would require being embraced among early adopters and a significant pricing advantage for anyone else to swallow the tablet. At $500, from a company with questionable finances for production, a scorched bridge with one of the most popular blogs for early adopters and a general cloud looming over the reality of the device actually seeing the light of day, magic will likely not be enough. Arrington claims that his negotiated agreements with investors and retail distributors would have put the device in the $300 sweet spot that would make the device a more palatable impulse buy. In what looks to be a bit of a slap in the face, the JooJoo boxes even take on the black and green color scheme familiar to anyone who visits TechCrunch.
\nBut the real loss comes from not getting to witness what’s possible from blogpreneurism. In fashion, the Sartorialist has his successful book, and is shooting campaigns for major labels like Burberry. Jane Aldridge, from Sea of Shoes, had her capsule collection with Urban Outfitters. While we have yet to see anyone make the leap from blogger to successful designer the signs are there.<\/p>\n
While they’ve had success organizing a large scale tech event for 3 years, the CrunchPad would have set a new blogpreneur standard. It’s one thing to write about the topics you love, it’s another entirely to see that enthusiasm through to production of anything. Microsoft didn’t hesitate to invest in the content that appeared in their software (MSN, anyone?), the success of the iPod and iPhone stem in no small part from Apple’s decision to supply the music and entertainment for its various devices. And TechCrunch, which already has a millions strong content network, could have successfully reversed the model by supplying the devices on which they’re read. As newspapers and magazines debate blocking Google and questioning what type of paywalls can be erected to counter revenue losses, this was a full on, outside the box counter to the notion that new media businesses had to be built on variations of what we already know. Would it have worked? For the moment, it looks like we may never know.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5420696\/fusion-garages-joojoo-aka-crunchpad-unveiling-liveblog<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week Chandra Rathakrishnan released a keyboardless web tablet called the JooJoo {Engadget review}. Built to use the web as operating system, the project got its start as the CrunchPad. The CrunchPad demise and JooJoo phoenix have both been disappointing to the tech set following development for different reasons, and in the end both have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6840],"tags":[1867,1863,1868,1866,1869,1865,1864],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7834"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}