

HP’s Touchpad Makes the Ultimate Business Dashboard - dustyreagan
http://dustyreagan.com/hps-touchpad-is-the-ultimate-business-dashboard/

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dangrossman
This was my first thought when they dropped to $99 last week.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2905724>

Unfortunately it's impossible to get a TouchPad at that price any more. If
you're going to pay $200+ for a tablet, then you might as well get something
that's not discontinued and will have an app/support ecosystem going forward.

Right now I am using a Logitech Revue (Google TV) to display my GeckoBoard on
a normal LCD display. The Logitech boxes are very low power, are only $99, and
will be upgraded to Android 3.0 in late September.

[http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6209/6080298965_6ede3e2cb0_z....](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6209/6080298965_6ede3e2cb0_z.jpg)

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joezydeco
So is there a market for a super-dumb LCD that can have information pushed to
it over WiFi? Forget the touchscreen, forget the storage. Why aren't we
hacking photo frames to do this?

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spinchange
No doubt - like the modern equivalent of a common LED matrix scrolling
display, but for web data.

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pkamb
I'd go full-on retro with a Solari Board:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solari_departure_board>

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joezydeco
Wow! Another split-flap fan! Hermano!

Seriously, other than the rare eBay auction, can you even buy these modules on
the open market? Who salvages these things from old installations?

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dotBen
For a while I toyed around with a startup idea that was essentially what
geckoboard is doing.

I decided the size of the addressable market is too small to be interesting
but one of the revenue ideas I had was to essentially build out a big screen
tv-based dashboard product customers could buy from me.

The idea is to ship the customer something that could just be hung on the
wall, plugged in, connected to wifi and immediately display the dashboard -
just using an off-the-shelf TV and a cheap mini-ITX board or similar plugged
in behind the TV.

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dustyreagan
If Geckoboard had a small pre-configured display for sale for say $250, I
would have bought it.

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Tichy
So unfair. Some people would make better use of a TOuchPad, if they had
managed to get one.

No offense, but I think there are better (dumber) devices for dashboards that
don't have unnecessary features like a TouchPad.

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sliverstorm
Are they cheaper? 'Cause I think that would be the 3rd metric of importance,
right behind "Has a screen" and "Has WiFi".

Anyway, he says it just does that while it's charging. So, he could well use
it for other things too.

Don't let yourself drown in bitterness over "I'd use it better!". I used to do
that when I was a teenage car enthusiast, lamenting morons crashing their
Ferrari's. But really, the world's not fair, and in the end the TouchPad
doesn't give a damn how it's used.

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Tichy
Not really serious, I am just disappointed that I didn't get one.

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unwiredben
Love this! Just passed the link around the webOS Dev Relations team.

