Whatever you make of this, it doesn’t hint towards much of anything. Crunchpad.com, as of today, is pointing towards a BusinessInsider article titled “Arrington’s CrunchPad Will Be ‘A Real Hit’, Says Best Buy Marketing Boss.”
For more than a month, the domain name was redirected to an Engadget piece, “CrunchPad coming in November with built-in 3G connectivity, says Straits Times.” This will confirm that a 3G enabled CrunchPad will be available in November, for sure.
And before the redirect to that article, it was pointing towards a CrunchGear post named “CrunchPad prototype coming this month, be available ASAP,” but since then there has been no sign of the launch prototype. When I spoke to Tan Weizhen of Singapore’s Straits Times, he was not allowed to to view the aluminum launch prototype (which is what will be released), only the older plastic units.
Why these redirects? Maybe a marketing gimmick to allow people who type in CrunchPad.com to get at least something in their faces in this time of dire need.
the domain name is not owned by techcrunch
see this forum here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=555587
Andre,
Thank you very much for pointing that out. I will write a post shortly.
Regards,
Trooper P
Andre,
Sorry, I didn’t do my research before I posted that comment 2 weeks ago. I was in a huge rush.
If you check the Whois for CrunchPad.com, it states:
Record created on 2008-07-21 14:53:27.
The date that Arrington announced the CrunchPad initiative was also the same date as the domain registration date.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/
Vaksel says “I registered the domain about 6 months before Techcrunch”.
Am I missing something here or what?