I don’t often chime in on tech soap operas – we have Valleywag for that (for better or worse). But the latest surrounding Mike Arrington’s pet project is a doozie. For the last couple of years, Arrington had been developing a tablet computing device called the CrunchPad with the help of his partners at Fusion Garage. Set to launch his device late last month, Arrington dropped a bomb on his site that had everyone talking: The End of the CrunchPad:

Our plan was to debut the CrunchPad on stage at the Real-Time Crunchup event on November 20, a little over a week ago…And then the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication.

To make matters worse, Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan held a private press conference today to tell his side of the story, and perhaps more importantly to announce that the CrunchPad had been renamed JooJoo, and would launch in eight to ten weeks, without Arrington. CNET’s Rafe Needleman was on hand and had a chance to play with the JooJoo:

The hardware is slim and pleasing to hold. The screen is gorgeous, and huge, and the plastic back is gently curved. The unit is very slim, thinner than a MacBook Air. There are no buttons on the device, save the single power switch.

Sure, the device certainly looks great, but I can’t help but feel it still has that “beta” vibe. The performance is sluggish, and unless Fusion Garage can keep the retail price down as Arrington originally conceived, I do not see many rushing out to buy this thing in its current state.

What was once considered one of the “10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009” by Popular Mechanics had suddenly turned into a product nightmare for Mike. With wild speculation over the possibility of an Apple tablet launch next year, many tech pundits believed Arrington wanted to capitalize on the sudden rise in tablet love and launch a product ahead of the Cupertino giant. Whether or not Arrington was riding the coat-tails of an Apple product rumor, however, became irrelevant; many were in fact genuinely excited to see the CrunchPad, an affordable touch device that promised to have the largest capacitive touch screen of its kind. Naturally, Arrington has launched legal action against his former partner, and had this to say on his Twitter account following Chandrasekar’s press conference:

There aren’t any more CrunchPad posts coming from us. It’s all in the lawyers hands now.

Only time will tell whether JooJoo will make its launch date amidst this escalating fiasco.

::SS::

With the 2009-2010 NHL season just around the corner, I thought I’d post a tip for all of you Calgary Flames fans out there who wish to listen to the Fan960 on their iPhones or iPod Touch.

1. Download and install FStream from the iTunes Application store on to your touch screen device of choice (iPhone/iPod Touch) – http://itunes.com/app/FStream
2. Once the app is installed, launch FStream and add the following address to your FStream “Favorites” – mms://a543.l8090152405.c80901.n.lm.akamaistream.net/D/543/80901/v0001/reflector:52405

You do not need to fill in the “Format” or “Bitrate” fields as they are populated automatically. That’s it! Now you can enjoy listening to Peter Maher blurt out “Yah Baby!” for just about every play.

::SS::

Hey all, as you’ve probably noticed my blog posts are becoming less and less frequent. I’m very busy with school and volunteering, but a lot of my time has also been devoted to guerrilla marketing a pet project of mine called Cinephile Magazine. I’ve just completed designing a new revision of the site, and we’ve also started a podcast called Cinephile Spoilers. We have three episodes under our belt and will continue to release a new episode every week on the latest movie release(s). You can follow Cinephile Magazine on Twitter at twitter.com/cinephilemag, and subscribe to Cinephile Spoilers via iTunes here.

So while I’ll continue to keep this blog live, don’t expect updates to come every day as they once were. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/literallyfresh, or at Cinephile Magazine occasionally contributing reviews, but mainly behind the scenes tweaking the site, editing and publishing reviews, and producing, editing, and opining on our podcast.

::SS::