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Mobile Web access on a decent-sized screen is getting closer, in Japan at
least. Sony, inventor of the Walkman, will launch a $1100 Web pad called
the Airboard later this year. It has a 10-inch LCD touch screen that gives
wireless access to e-mail and the Web. Dock the A4-sized Airboard into a tuner
base station and it becomes a TV set. To type on the Web pad, you call up a
virtual keyboard on the screen itself. Other companies planning Web pads include
Microsoft, computer maker Gateway and Diamond Multimedia, inventor of the Rio,
the world’s first portable MP3 music player.