Storm in a pad

It will be another two months before that much-talked-about device is available in Singapore, and already it's raised a storm. Well, actually it raised a storm before the launch and is continuing to rattle the teapot.

From really bad jokes about its name to claims that it copied the name from Fujitsu, Steve Jobs' latest baby sure has got people talking, and fighting.

In Singapore, a local tech start-up Fusion Garage is locked in a legal battle with American blog TechCrunch over their tablet computer called The JooJoo.

The two had met and fallen in love when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington "put out a call for help in building a cheap touchscreen tablet computer for browsing the Internet", so the story in The Straits Times goes.

Fusion Garage, set up in 2008, answered the call, TechCrunch said "can do" and together, they worked on prototypes of the product, "originally called the CrunchPad".

By last November, love had flown out of the window and Arrington, in a blog post on November 30, said "The entire project self-destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication."

TechCrunch sued Fusion Garage, alleging offences such as "fraud, stealing its business ideas, false advertising and unlawful business practices".

Last week, Fusion Garage responded and asked for the court to dismiss the suit. "The case is as baseless as it was in December. We believe that at the end of the day we will win the case," chief executive Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the newly-named JooJoo is due to ship later this month. There are plenty of reviews out about it. Shortcomings cited include the lack of a single USB port for hooking up a keyboard or mouse, and its inability to run non-Web applications. What it does have is a 12.1-inch screen and it supports Adobe Flash, which the Apple device doesn't. Battery life however is five hours compared to the iPad's 10-hour claim.

After my column last week on "Help, get me an iPad", I received several emails from friends advising me to wait. "It has no phone," one says. "No camera," says another. "No wifi," cried out a friend from across the South China Sea.

It is incredible what we demand from a device these days. We want it to do everything.

I used to expect that of my parents and then I realised they were only human. I think we expect that of people we hire too. In Singapore, some domestic helpers are expected to clean the windows of their employers' high-rise apartments. Some have fallen to their death.

I went against the tide the other day. I bought my second Vado, this time in HD. This does nothing but take videos. I wanted to get the Kodak zi8, the new pocket digital HD video camera, but mention the name "Kodak" in stores at Funan Centre and you get a blank. One salesman said, "Kodak not big here."

I am toying with the idea of making my own videos for my own inflight entertainment so that I won't have to rely on other people's content and other people's devices. It's a Brave Me World we are entering.

I think I will fly AirAsia X next. At the low cost airline conference in Singapore last week, Azran Osman Rani (pictured above), CEO of the low cost, long haul airline, said that leaving the IFE out of their new 330s saved them 1.8 tonnes in weight.

Great, airlines get lighter and we get heavier and then, they charge us for extra weight.

They always get us in the end.