OMG NDA

 

Hahahahahahahaha

Notion Ink, the world’s slowest and most pathetic start-up, blessed with the world’s least intelligent management, comes up with more excuses. This time it’s an NDA… wonder how that came as a surprise?

Don’t be regretful Notion Ink, there’s only 3 guys interested in your tablet anymore. Or maybe it’s 2.

A quick recap of recent events

 

Let’s do a quick recap of what has happened since end of Sep 2012.

On 11 Sep, this is what Notion Ink said.

On 22 Sep they said ‘we’ll get to adam II shortly’, and you know what “shortly” means in this company’s lingo.

And this, on 27 Sep

And some completely worthless, useless, already known info on 12 Oct

Stay tuned! for ….???

And then, a pathetic ‘hello world’ with a blurry pic that excited no one. This must be the saddest intro pic that I’ve seen in a long a time. And maybe 5 people were excited after reading this…

This also prompted some interesting headlines from the web

Notion Ink Adam II Tablet Rears Its Sadly Hyped Head

Notion Ink's Adam II greets Twitter with blurry eyes

It’s a laughing stock at this point (except to a few clueless fans still hanging around). OK, now let’s discuss a few things.

And then, on 9 Nov, a festival tweet and silence.

Is there any doubt anymore that this is one of the worst startups ever to see the light of the day? Does anyone believe these people anymore? Here’s a recent thread that shows that even the “I believe in them and all their mess is because of someone else!” crowd is beginning to have some doubts.

It’s amazing that it took so long for some people to see what many of us saw over a year and half ago, crystal clear, that they were all being lead along by a company with no value for its words and questionable business behavior. Think they haven’t been making false claims? Just look at the tabs on top of this page.

Oh, and a quick update on the retarded monkey situation. Retarded monkey’s been quiet. Nothing new to report. Mail’s been spam free too.

Have you also wondered why they abandoned their blog for their silly newsletter? A newsletter is purely one-directional. Unlike the blog which can be indexed or comments left on, a newsletter gives no chance for anyone to respond. Exactly what they want.

Some fantastic new technology for Adam III

So, we all know how incredible Adam I was. We've heard much about Adam II already, read here for the promises made on Adam II. Never mind that in over 3 years of its "start-up" existence this amazing company hasn't released one viable product.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we're already hearing about Adam III! Who bankroll's these geniuses, I wonder? (I have a theory*).

So here's a glimpse from the article in economic times - and excerpt for your convenience

"The research and development team is creating a stylus technology, which will enable students to write on tablets the way one would use a pen and paper for writing or drawing. This includes making tablet screen rough or uneven to give a feel like a standard pad of paper. The firm is also working on a technology that will enable students to interface laboratory equipment with tablets and smartphones to perform experiments and do calculations"

"The company hopes to release these technologies in the third version of the Adam Tablet within two years. "We believe low cost tablets will become ubiquitous among students in the next two years," says Rohan Shravan, founder of Notion Ink Design. The use of tablets is also growing within academia. "We are very bullish on the wide scale use of tablets within the education industry."

Oh boy! Did you read that? Notion Ink Design Labs is now working on new stylus technology for Adam III! This is the same illustrious team that got us Eden, Adam I, all the DIY stuff, amazing Adam I camera and what not. Who believes them?

I'm just waiting for the NI worshippers to come screaming "REVOLUTIONARY" too bad NI isn't publishing the comments of their own fawning fanboys (all 10 of them) ;) Hey you guys can post on my blog, I'll publish.

So that's it guys, those of you waiting for Adam II. keep in mind Adam I was a third rate beta product that you forced yourself to praise. Your guess is as good as mine for Adam II as, you know, they're already onto Adam III. Hooray!

-------------------
* I sometimes wonder if they're making some money by providing OEM/design services for some of those cheap low quality tablets coming up in India, released by other companies.

They're all about design, precision and quality. Like last time?

Well, the twitter account came to life a bit - and here are two interesting tweets

Here's what I'd say: Please shut up and stop talking about "we're all about...." and indulge in more self praise as you did the last time. A whole lot of hot air and excuses later on. The quality and precision won't be evident in NEWSLETTER UPDATES, it will be in the actual physical product in the hands of users.

Brag about your precision, design & quality AFTER you release it. The last time the users heard plenty of how amazing Eden would be only to experience garbage that quickly got abandoned.

The same empty words and bombastic nonsense is back again - their 25 fans will no doubt lap it up and start screaming "iPad Killer!!!!!! we haz faith in u Rohun!!!!!visionary! omg camera!!!!!!!!!" but the rest should sit tight and wait to see the product. If it's all they've promised, great.

(The second tweet says 'we've received lots of feedback', not clear if they're referring to the past feedback or of people having seen their next product.)

Constant stream of exciting updates coming!

Hooray! Oh boy! Oh boy!

Notion Ink is alive again…it’s all about Adam II baby

Well, the homepage changed — well, I actually like the minimalist, simple page indicating something will happen. Clueless they may be about how to communicate that they would be vanishing for a while (see their blog about coming back from a break and nonsense like that), at least something is happening now.

First, they have a new twitter feed! Oh wait, they had one about 1 1/2 years ago and … well who cares. There’s a new twitter feed http://twitter.com/notionink and it’s full of updates! Just kidding.

Maybe the fans will get a working device after they’ve exhausted their 297th beta, 698th alpha and 2400th ROM.

The retarded monkey’s been quiet though – guess it too got working.

That settles it: Adam 2 is going to be fantastic

the excitement begins again

I suggest you all put off your tablet purchases and wait for it. It's going to be fantastic. Don't spread hate people!

stuff like this is not going to happen!

The cooling of forums

First, it was notioninkfan, then notioninkspot, then networkpost or tabletpost or whatever it was called, then there was another fan forum I even forgot. They all quietened down or died.

Now TR NI forum is beginning to cool. For the previous one the "negatives" "critics" got blamed, kind of hard to blame them anymore because they were all told to be quiet.

Who do we blame now?

Public question, private response. How nice!

First, read this thread:

http://conclave.notionink.com/showthread.php?1193-Don-t-kill-me&p=7209#post7209

Too lazy? A user asks if Notion Ink is alive or dead. Customer support rep "Michelle" responds that she's sent a e-mail.

Huh? Why not post the response in public? Is the company going to send private emails to everyone who asks what's happening? I mean the CEO did say several things about keeping people busy on weekends etc.  and then promptly broke his word again.

I'd be really curious as to what this private email has that cannot be revealed in public.

I hope the user who got the email sends it to me, I'm happy to publish it.

Notion Ink Adam ICS - F- report card, not mine

http://blogs.computerworld.com/mobile-and-wireless/20647/android-upgrade-report-card-second-quarter

Lists the ICS updates. The incredible Notion Ink Adam got an F. But then I'm sure, as the fans will say, this is because

a) The blogger is dumb
b) It's Nvidia's fault
c) It's Google's fault

Interesting how the writer says "the company" released ICS. Not really. But you know what I mean.

Google new Nexus tablet vs. Adam 2

Should I be comparing these two? Does it even make sense?

Nah. What about Microsoft Surface? Nah.

Steve got in touch with me but went into hiding. Don't know why. Rakesh too. C'mon guys!

Weekend special..kind of / Ripley's believe it or not

Since we keep getting told that people should exercise "common sense" when it comes to Adam, I just dug some some gems from an old, well not very, interview that TabletRoms conducted with Rohan Shravan.

Now given the friendly relation between TR and NI, you would imagine that the CEO of Notion Ink would be quite honest with them.

Also imagine that you were a visitor that read these sentences and had no vague knowledge of what Adam is and no real idea of Notion Ink's poor track record, what would you think?

[This interview was in July 2011, which means statements that say they're already doing something... should probably be done for now, given this is a start-up n' all, you know]

"By the way we have a team working only on antennas and Adam 2 should have brilliant reception." We'll check that when Adam 2 releases.

"Eden 2 and Adam 2, in fact 3 as well are already underway " - Ah, I see. Eden 2 is already underway! Wait, this was July 2011. Has anyone ever bothered to ask them where this "underway" is right now? And if it's not "underway" anymore is there an explanation? Adam 3 was in progress too! Woohoo!

"Full scale expansion in 5 different countries in progress!" Oh wow! Which 5 countries? What does this even mean? O boy! O boy! Is this the same as Notion Ink's "strong partnership" with Amazon and TI and Quicklogic? Now that it's close to a year since this statement, can someone tell us how these full scale expansions went? Please - someone from TR?

"A Game Design Team is already doing excellent job!" - huh what? game .. design? OK, it's been a year now, can we see what game? Oh we shouldn't ask?

He mentioned that "they're on it" for camera, we all know where they're on it.

So gentlemen, if you don't have much background context into this company, see for yourself and what you would conclude. You would, innocently, believe that the next generation Eden was being done, the next 2 generations of the tablet were being designed, that the company was in expansion mode, and they were doing something serious in games.

Of course, no one bothers to follow-up on these words, because its easier to make weaselly excuses or find excuses for them. Does that mean all the above should have positively happened? No. But when someone says "we're already doing it" then they should come and say what's been done, and if not done, why not.

So, the question to the big fans. Should we believe these words or not?  Would you tell your friends to believe this or not (or would you come up with lawyerly cleverness to define what 'full scale expansion' means or what 'already underway' means --- kind of like Clinton defining what Sex is...)

Here is the original interview, in full - and oh, to the question of quality problems, he says "people need something to talk", yep - it's all fantastic quality from Notion Ink, it's all people's fault and lack of common sense.

Could TR do a follow-up interview with specific questions asking answers for these?

Found some gems from an interview

It's always fascinating to see soft questions, bombastic answers, and then no follow-up.

Post coming in a day or two.

Toshiba Excite tablet vs. mythical Notion Ink Adam 2

So... Toshiba announced their Toshiba Excite Android tablet today. This is an interesting comparison because of the similarities.

Specification / Other	Toshiba Excite	Notion Ink Adam 2
Price	$529 starting	Unknown
Availability	Now	Unknown
Processor	TI OMAP 4430 dual-core processor	TI OMAP 44xx Dual-Core
OS	Stock ICS - Android 4.0	ICS
Screen	10.1" high res, 1280 x 800 LED Backlight, 16:10 aspect ratio	We know it won't have a high-res screen. That's all we know.
Interfaces	Micro HDMI, microSD, microUSB, Bluetooth, Wifi	Unknown
Peripherals	front (2 MP) and rear facing (5 MP) cameras	Unknown
Software	-stock ICS-	World's first modular architecture, drag-drop, anyone can build apps etc.

So, here's what is interesting. This is available now, uses the same family of OMAP processors mentioned in Notion Ink's blog. Potentially has higher-res screen that Adam 2 and rest of it... is kind of same.

The Toshiba excite isn't exactly very exciting tablet (see  reviews), so a tablet that's kind of like this but comes 6 months later will be, er, you draw your conclusions. But Adam 2 might have a parallel port and a tape drive! Now that... that will be a game changer!

(now, get to work, retarded monkey)

No point of a post

After some thinking, I realized I don't have anything really new to say about the whole "Don't blame NI" saga - and it's not about technical challenges but about how the company conducted itself (and conducts itself) in the last 1.5 years.

I have plenty of posts to illustrate the point, so it's still amazing some people perpetuate the myth of "it's all customer expectations gone awry", really? What about all the things NI CEO has been saying?

[I've removed a para on someone I asked for - he's contacted me, so no need for this]

In other news, the retarded monkey* apparently wrote a new blog post saying I'm so technically dumb that I need more days for my post.

No, retarded monkey, "few days" means just that, few days, and it's not going to happen, but - why run a company if they want to hide behind a skirt of excuses anyway?

- Can't upgrade OS? Blame Google
- Can't make camera work? Blame NVidia
- Can't ship on time? Blame Pixel Qi
- Bad reviews on tech sites? Blame journalists for being pissed about not getting devices to test
- Couldn't make it to CES and talk to the TR guys? Blame US immigration
- People upset at product quality - blame it on expectations

And this is a company whose CEO said they had 100 employees, operations in 87 countries, and were going to take their readers on a journey to build the new tablet.

So, retarded monkey*, hold on to your bananas, go back to your meds and don't get too excited. And looks like you stopped subscribing me to newsletters, wasn't much fun, was it? And it seems you gave up trying to hack my accounts too. It's illegal, may I add?

(*for readers wondering who the retarded monkey is - it's a fan of Notion Ink who created a fake blog in my name, and writes as if it's me...blaming myself. How retarded is that logic? See some of my previous posts)