kno

Digital textbook reader and marketplace Kno wants you to get smarter, and today it released an update that creates robust flash cards and adds study-habit analytics.

"In digital learning, things should be in context, so instead of going out to the Web, the facts should come to you," said Kno CEO and co-founder Osman Rashid in an interview last week at the 2012 Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. The analytics are available in a dashboard called Kno Me, which tracks a student's studying habits within the Kno app. This includes the time spent in a given … Read more

It's official today: the Kno tablet is no more.

The maker of the educational tablet said today that it received a huge new funding round, and that it is changing strategic direction. With $20 million of the $30 million infusion coming from Intel Capital, as a part of the agreement Kno is going to make educational software and will not produce its own hardware, according to a Kno spokesperson.

The news of the funding round was first reported by All Things D last night.

You may remember the Kno, originally pitched as a dual-screen tablet for education. The company eventually decided that a single-screen tablet should also be an option for students. It announced pricing for tablets last fall at $899 and $599, respectively, and even took some orders.

The touch-screen tablet market is getting crowded, so it's not a huge surprise the company made this choice. Even more challenging is pricing: it's been tough for the field to beat the iPad, which starts at $499, though Android tablets are getting closer.

Intel and Kno will work together on all hardware design efforts from now on, according to the company.

This story was corrected at 3:20 p.m. to note that Intel and Kno will be jointly handling future hardware design, and future Kno software will be available for many devices, not just Intel.… Read more

According to sources close to the situation, Intel Capital and Advance Publications will lead a $30 million investment round in Kno, the high-profile student tablet start-up.

In addition to the funding from its venture capital arm, Intel itself will take over the hardware design business of Kno, which will now focus on its software to manage the devices that are aimed at the college market.

Intel will not manufacture tablets, but take its hardware blueprints and share them with their OEM partners.

Its current investors will also participate in the round, said sources, but Intel Capital and Advance, the owner … Read more

With today's proliferation of tablets it can be hard to distinguish one device from the next. But here's something that sets the Kno Textbook Tablet apart (besides its big dual displays and focus on students): it's getting stress-tested by a Lego robot.

The Kno product development team needed a way to automate tests of the ambient light sensor and the note-taking stylus' interaction with the LCD touch screen. So they built a Lego robotic arm (they give it the far less sexy name of "accelerated life test apparatus") to shoulder the repetitive work.

In the behind-the-scenes video below, you'll see the arm directing the pen back and forth and up and down across a screen, while another robot makes the device itself go back and forth. The team has been testing the stylus for touch, sweep, and flick motions that mimic those of a non-robotic user taking handwritten notes. … Read more

On today's show, a brief digression on the topic of McRibs and then back to the serious news of the Windows Phone 7 launch, Amazon doubling rev share for newspaper and magazine publishers, and broadband satellite service with real speeds. Also, our review of the first TV with Google TV inside, and the best looking iPhone game ever. --Molly

Kno, which showed off a fancy dual-screen tablet for education earlier this year, said today that it also has plans for a cheaper, single-screen option.

The company is aiming at the education market and had touted the two-screen option as a great way to read and take notes at the same time. However, in announcing the new model on Monday, the company acknowledged that the added glass also adds cost to a product aimed at a cost-sensitive market.

"Even though the Kno pays for itself in 13 months, the smaller up-front investment of the single screen version will allow … Read more

You're going to have to listen to the show to understand the evolution of our favorite new phrase, "mucho bogo." Speaking of evolution, the HTC EVO 4G is officially available, just in time to be stomped into dust by the forthcoming iPhone. Maybe. Also, Google's going to hand over its intercepted WiFi data, to make a bad problem worse, and we're giving a big (BIG) no to the Kno.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif.--While the iPad is the device that everyone is talking about, another tablet made its debut at D: All Things Digital on Wednesday.

The Kno, with its dual 14-inch screens and touch-based Linux operating system, is aimed at students and is slated to hit the market at the end of the year. Kno isn't talking price just yet, but the company's goal is for it to be well under $1,000.

I had a chance to catch up with Kno CEO Osman Rashid just after his onstage demo and got a firsthand look at … Read more