Hardware

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC), organization has unveiled its future road map and it includes a new concept for a tablet PC for well under $100. The XO 3.0 product, planned for 2012 availability, will be an all new design with a single sheet of plastic to imitate a sheet of paper. It will be based on Marvell’s ARM processor and will run Linux and Windows systems. Images here

One Laptop per Child, a non-profit created by Nicholas Negroponte and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab has so far distributed laptops to 1.4 million children in remote, poor and rural communities in 35 countries and 25 languages.Read more

Chi Mei Optoelectronics, a Taiwanese producer of thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCD) has pleaded guilty to price fixing conspiracy and agreed to pay $220 million in fines. According to a felony charge filed today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Chi Mei Optoelectronics participated in a conspiracy to fix the prices of TFT-LCD panels sold globally from Sept. 14, 2001, to Dec. 1, 2006. Chi Mei also agreed to cooperate with the department's ongoing antitrust investigation.Read more

Through the magic of corporate law (or lack therof), the device formerly known as the Crunchpad had risen from the dead and been reborn as the JooJoo. Following Michael Arrington’s announcement last week that the device would never come to market, former joint venture partner Fusion Garage trotted out their version of the story and a working prototype at a press conference earlier this week.Read more

Michael Arrington’s pet project, the Crunchpad tablet device, will apparently never make it to market, at least under that name.

Techcrunch announced the demise in a sad post today, citing a bizarre series of emails and messages from their manufacturing partner, Fusion Garage.

According to the post,

"Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project [Fusion Garage CEO] Chandra [Rathakrishnan] said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement."Read more

The iPhone is coming to South Korea this month, as carrier KT will start selling the popular device in the country, the company announced today. The South Korean mobile phone market is currently dominated by the home grown favorites Samsung and LG Electronics, with a combined 90 percent market share. South Korea is the latest Asian country to get the iPhone; last month, China Unicom started selling the iPhone in China, albeit a version without WiFi connectivity.Read more

Barnes and Noble's Nook e-book reader has closed up shop for holiday delivery.

"The hottest holiday gift is out of stock," says the Nook page at B&N "Order the Nook today to be first in line for the new year." You can still order one of the $259 devices, but you won't get it until at least Jan. 4, 2010, the bookseller said. Demand has outstripped supply of the Nook, but production is being ramped up, and should be going full bore by next year.

The news doesn't seem to have dampened sales, though. "Nook continues to be the fastest-selling product at Barnes & Noble, and pre-orders have continued to exceed our expectations," the company said.Read more