It would behoove the New York Times, for example, to build something like the CrunchPad for consumption of the newspaper. They won’t do it because it is seeming

It would behoove the New York Times, for example, to build something like the CrunchPad for consumption of the newspaper. They won’t do it because it is seemingly off-mission. Umm, I seem to recall seeing a really interesting video a while back of a blogger visiting the NYT's tech arm - and being shown their work on small format devices and "digital paper". So I think he's dead off there. Anyway. It's kind of hard to write commentary like this - because so far there is no real evidence that as advanced a device was ready to go at the (last) price point mentioned. The Crunchpad is an exercise in poor marketing and poor management. None of the initial promises ($200, open source design etc.) were met in the end. There were months of silence about the device. Very few images and demonstrations of ongoing work (apart from the same artfully posed renderings). To be utterly honest I frankly don't believe they had the product they say they did at the stage they claimed. Ultimately though whatever stage they were this product never made it from the "TC office" to the shelves. It's currently a complete failure from any perspective.