Otaku Gadgets

It’s either that or Amazon is trying to divert our attention with an orchestrated hype generating move so that they can quietly work on their world domination plans in the background. Although not as exciting as an evil corporation bent on world domination, we will go with the Kindle supposition. So Amazon has been beefing up its arsenal in order to better compete with Apple’s threat. I can just imagine their emergency board meeting — “We have to do something. Let’s buy a touch company and get a good Manager with a great track record. Forget the cost, we are sinking here!”.

So according to the New York Times,  Amazon has bought up TouchCo — a company who specializes in building touchscreen interfaces that can be used by more than one person at a time. So in addition to the latest Kindle getting a touchscreen, it will also get an brand new interface. Of course, if they continue to use eInk technology, any touch interface will be about as useful as running OS X on a smarpthone.

But it seems like Amazon will let the much hyped (and exemplified against LCD screens) eInk display go in favor of the touch display that TouchCo specializes in making. After all, I cannot imagine waiting for a full second or more to see my touch input taking effect. The plus point of the tehnology being used by TouchCO is that it can detect simultaneous inputs and it can detect inputs from finger touches and styluses. This will greatly increase the appeal of any such touchscreen based device.

Amazon has also hired ace manager Mike Nash, who stepped down from being Microsoft’s VP of Windows Platform Strategy to be with Amazon. He has a pretty impressive track record with Microsoft and specializes in building ecosystems around products. Since Amazon has already announced its ‘Active Content’ (ie apps) plans with the KDK, these two moves fall right in place with Amazon’s “please save us from Apple and other tablets” strategy. The two companies have not confirmed the report but TouchCo’s website says that it is not doing business as of 2010.

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