All Play, No Work? – RIM Announces The PlayBook
The highly anticipated Blackberry tablet has finally been announced and it looks pretty good too. Smaller than the current Apple iPad (rumors are rife that Apple are bringing out a smaller iPad in 2011). The PlayBook as Blackberry have christened their tablets stands in a 7 inches tall, weighs less than a pound, fueled by a 1GHz dual-core processor and dual HD cameras for both video conferencing and video capture. Also, a great additional advantage over the iPad is the inclusion of an HDMI-out port, allowing output to an external display. And that’s just a few of the features, see more below:
Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion explained, “RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world’s most robust and flexible operating systems. “The BlackBerry PlayBook solidly hits the mark with industry leading power, true multitasking, uncompromised web browsing and high performance multimedia.”
Capacity still remains a bit of a mystery but rumors point to 16GB and 32GB.
Blackberry have also ensured support for Adobe Flash Play, Adobe Mobile AIR and HTML-5. It has built in Bluetooth, so if you already have a Blackberry smartphone you can pair that up with your PlayBook and view email, calendar, tasks and any other content that’s on your smartphone on the larger screen of the PlayBook.
It should be reasonably fast to operate with 1 GB RAM.
Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing and 5 MP rear facing) and supports 1080p HD video recording. As well as video playback with 1080p HD video, H.264, MPEG, DivX and WMV. Audio playback is via MP3, AAC and/or WMA.
Connectors include – MicroHDMI, MicroUSB
So, all in all a pretty good package – the PlayBook is expected to be available in retail outlets and other channels in the United States in early 2011 with rollouts in other international markets beginning in (calendar) Q2.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
