The O2 Joggler is billed as your new fridge door; replacing all the notes and scrawled on calendar with a neat touch screen unit. You can text others from it, text in calendar dates, listen to internet radio and according to the O2 website, watch videos.
It looks a little bit like the iPad and with a bit of simple DIY hacking, the Joggler can start acting like one too. But be warned; it doesn't have a battery so it must forever be tethered to the mains. It doesn't come in a swish aluminium casing and the Joggler won't save the publishing industry anytime soon. But you can install a netbook operating system from a flash drive via the USB port. And that's when the fun starts, here's a video:
A friend of mine has hacked his and now uses it to show pictures, check his email and run Spotify all in the comfort of his own kitchen. He bought his Joggler for £50 on the high street, which is exactly £479.95 less than the entry model iPad is expected to ship in late May.
Apart from the price, why bother? One reason, is that some people, such as Russell Davies, think the iPad could be quite popular with old people. You just load it up with family pictures and a calendar and hand it over. And if you've ever had the experience of trying to explain to an old person just what 'mouse' is and why the window they should look at is not on the wall, you can see the appeal of saying 'touch what you see and have a play.'
Five hundred notes is a lot of money to spend on an iPad and my parents have already had one failed attempt at 'webbing' up granddad. Now I should point out, my granddad is still a sharp cookie and worked with computers (albeit mechanical ones), designing missile guidance systems – he just can't get his head around a laptop. And seeing as a typical day for him is watching the cricket on Sky and eating cream cakes, I reckon he just can't be bothered with the intricacies of Windows Vista.
But he is an avid follower of family photos and something like a hacked Joggler could be a good way of getting him used to the internet. If he can start playing with a touch screen, then upgrading to an iPad should be easy.
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