Toshiba UMPC appears- err, reappears

You may have seen a slick-looking new UMPC from Toshiba that is appearing on the web today and wondered if that thing looked familiar.  You would be correct, Toshiba was exhibiting this MID in January at the CES and we had a chance to play with it for a while.  They were showing two versions of this device, one running Vista and the other Linux.  Here are the photos we took in the Toshiba booth:

CES Interview with Ian Dixon: UMPCs, MIDs, and WiMAX

One of the CES highlights we previously mentioned has a nice follow up today. James and I had the pleasure of sitting down in the Press Room with Ian Dixon to talk tech earlier this month and the interview is available today. Our history with Ian goes way back to early 2005, nearly three years ago, when we were involved in one of the first commercial podcast ventures together. We've all since gone our separate ways, and it's been real treat to watch Ian's continued successes such as his book, his MVP Award and his popular podcast. In short: he's fun and personable, not to mention passionate about technology.

In his CES wrap-up, we chat about our various mobile devices with Ian (who's also a Samsung Q1 owner) and discuss our take on the coming year for UMPCs, MIDs and WiMAX. You can also catch CES opinions of many other great folks like Stephen Hughes, Chris Lanier and more. Thanks again Ian; always a pleasure to meet with you!

Will the Redfly benefit a writer? A real-world test

As a writer I am always looking for tools that let me practice my craft without having to carry such a wide range of bulky tools with me.  It is fortunate that as a writer the tools can be a lot more basic than those needed for a lot of other tasks that people use mobile gadgets for.  A good keyboard, screen, word processor and internet connection will pretty much do it as far as most writing projects are concerned.

Since spending a bit of time with the Celio CEO, Kirt Bailey, and seeing first-hand what their Redfly device can do, I have been giving a lot of thought as to how the Redfly could be a great tool for the writer.  The Redfly basically is just a screen and keyboard in a mini-laptop form that can connect to a Windows Mobile smartphone.  The Redfly has no storage, memory nor processor, it uses the phone for all of that.  It simply adds a bigger keyboard and screen to make interacting with the Windows Moble device easier to do.  It seems to me that this could be a perfect solution for the writer, allowing him/ her to carry just the phone and the Redfly which is smaller than the Asus EEE PC.

While giving this a lot of thought I realized that I had a pretty good setup to test this with the HTC Advantage.  I often use the Advantage, a Windows Mobile 6 running device, with the Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard, and HTC has also included a VGA monitor dongle to connect a PC screen to the Advantage.  I figured that I could do a test using the Advantage, the wireless keyboard and a PC monitor to duplicate the functionality of the Redfly.  This wouldn't be anywhere near as elegant as the Redfly solution since it is a self-contained device with both the screen and keyboard but it would give me a feel for what it would be like to work on the Advantage with a bigger keyboard and screen.  So that is what I did and this article is the result.  It was created solely on the Advantage running with an external keyboard and display.

Word Mobile on the big screen

I just noticed that Jenn of Pocketables posted a tutorial for connecting a monitor to the Advantage, good timing.  :)  Note that in the photos I have included in this article that I am using a 19 inch monitor displaying a VGA screen so of course everything looks large and garish.  This won't be the case with the Redfly as that screen looks to be a little less than 7 inches which should display VGA pretty well.  What we'll have to wait until the Redfly is released to see is how big that keyboard is.  It looked about the same size of the keyboard on the EEE PC which is right on the edge of usability for touch typing.  I'm thinking the Redfly keyboard will work but we'll see.

The end result of this test proves to me that the concept of the Redfly as a phone extender could be very beneficial to those who do a lot of writing or document work.  Road warriors who work with a lot of email could also find the Redfly to be pretty darn useful without taking up much room in the travel kit.  I found in my test that Windows Mobile worked well with a larger screen and I had no issues at all.  I can't wait to get my hands on a Redfly to really test this out.  It could be the ultimate in portability for the type of work that I do.

Working with email

Web work is a breeze

What was my most-used gadget on the CES trip?

The trip to Vegas was full of gear usage, running around exhaustedly and of course introspection as I always look back on trips like this and give a good thought to what gadgets I took with me.  Guess what my most-used gadget was?  No, it wasn't the venerable HTC Advantage that let us live-blog from the show floor and no, it wasn't the HP 2710p which let me do anything I needed to do no matter where I was, even encoding video on the run.  Nope, it was the one thing that stays in my travel bag no matter what else I switch out.  It is the Monster Outlets to Go power strip that I find incredibly useful to take on every single trip I take.  It is simply perfectly designed to do what I need for power.  Thanks Marc!  'Nuff said.

PodTech video on Intel and MIDs

One of my personal CES 2008 highlights was working with Warner Crocker in front of a PodTech camera. We both got the opportunity to share our thoughts around Intel and the MIDs that are upcoming. We're just a few of the many particpants in this video; I think Warner has more camera time, but I hear he's got a better agent. ;) Thanks to Catherine and the other great folks at PodTech for the opportunity!

CES 2008- getting all those business cards into the HP

It is so nice being back at home after the exhausting grind that is the CES and I am finally getting back into the swing of "normal" life.  One of the residual tasks facing me upon my return was getting all of the dozens of business cards I received into my Outlook contacts database.  Entering so many cards into Outlook is no fun no matter how you approach it and I put it off until late yesterday until I remembered something about the HP 2710p Tablet PC that I always forget I can do. 

One of the coolest features of the HP is a utility that is pre-installed called Presto BizCard.  This utility works with the integrated web cam of the HP to digitize business cards photographically into an internal database that can then be synchronized with Outlook.  Since I was confronted with inputting so many cards I decided to give this a whirl and see how well it worked.

There is a tiny slot on the front of the 2710p (laptop mode) just above the screen latch where you insert a business card.  With BizCard running you hit a button to snap a card and a preview window appears with a red box imposed on it to show where the card needs to be for interpretation.  All you do is start to close the screen slowly and when the web cam, which has been switched to macro mode, gets the right distance from the card you hear a series of beeps that tells you a photo of the card is about to be snapped.  When BizCard snaps the card you hear a camera shutter sound and you can open the screen back up to see what it's done.  In a few seconds BizCard then does a text recognition of the business card and opens an editing window so minor corrections can be made.  There are always a few edits needed since every business card is so different but it is overall accurate in determining not only the text on the card but putting the different items into the appropriate field such as "mobile phone".  BizCard keeps its own database that includes the interpreted cards and also the photos of the cards which is a handy reference that lets you throw the card away.  Once I had a bunch of cards processed and edited I then told BizCard to export them to Outlook which took only a minute.  It was very cool and much easier than trying to enter all of these cards manually.  This is a very practical use of cool technology and I am very glad that HP included it with the 2710p.

Jawbone's free headset promotion a success at CES

One of the coolest and most successful promotions I have seen was conducted by the folks who produce the Jawbone Bluetooth headset.  The Jawbone uses advanced noise cancellation technology and is a well regarded headset although they were too pricey for me the last time I checked into them.  The promotion they were running all week at CES was simple yet effective, anyone who came to their booth and traded in their existing headset got a brand new fully charged Jawbone headset for free.  This was very popular as you might guess and yesterday I dropped in and traded my old headset in for the Jawbone.  It was indeed fully charged which was important as those wearing a headset likely needed to keep doing so before getting to a charging location.  I have only used it for less than a day but I have to say I am very impressed with the quality of the noise cancellation.  For a test I called Kevin on the Jawbone from a tremendously noisy location (I picked it on purpose) and he said he couldn't tell I was on a headset as the audio was crystal clear.  It is a nice headset although a bit bulky and ugly but hey, free is a good price.  :)

Special thanks to our families

Kevin and I want to shout out a big thanks to our families for letting us take off for a week to come to the CES.  It's always toughest on them and we really appreciate letting us drop out of reality and head for Vegas.  Thanks Sheri and Barb for putting up with our geekiness and supporting what we do, we really appreciate it tremendously!  We'll be home soon!

CES 2008 wrapup- general thoughts on the show

Well the big CES show is all wrapped up, Kevin is clearing airport security for his trip home, I am flying out later today and it's time to think back on this past week and throw out some general thoughts about the show.  It is as big and daunting as ever from the point of those of us who cover the show, it's so large and spread out that covering it is as challenging as ever when you're just two guys like Kevin and I.  That said, we saw everything we wanted to see and spoke to many who gave us some good information about the mobile tech space.

We found this year like years past that the main show is not always the best place for mobile tech news.  We attended some outside events that were very useful places to see new things.  First up, the Digital Experiences show was very nice and we got to see a lot of new things in just a few hours as major exhibitors like Lenovo and HP were in attendance.  It was one of the highlights of the entire week.  Next up was the ShowStoppers event which we were both very disappointed with.  While similar in nature to the Digital Experiences show the exhibitors were not of the same quality and we both felt it was a genuine waste of our time.  This sentiment was echoed by pretty much everyone we spoke with who attended both events.

Another cool event we attended was the HP Blogger Appreciation Dinner hosted by HP and Symantec.  This was arranged by Chris Aarons of Buzz Corp., one of our very good friends and it was an excellent opportunity to spend quality time with others in the Blogosphere who do what we do.   It was a great time and we thank Chris for setting this up. 

We also got to spend a lot of good time with Dave Zatz of Sling Media (and ZatzNotFunny) and it's always good to see Dave again.  It was almost kind of spooky because we even ran into him by accident once out of all the places in Vegas we could be, there was Zatz.  This was in a hotel, not the show floor and it was kind of spooky.  We thought maybe he was stalking us.  We met up with a lot of old friends which is the main reason we like to go to the CES and we weren't disappointed with this.

It was still strange as it is every year that the Adult Video exhibition starts the last day of the CES and their hall is in the Sands Convention Center like the CES exhibit.  I just never get used to seeing people get out of limos in front of the Sands literally in their underwear.  Very surreal and only in Vegas.

The highlight of the week was the Tablet PC meetup as it is every year and it was a great time.  It is very rare to have so many mobile enthusiasts in one place and we got to meet many readers who made the trip for this event.  It was awesome to see four lucky stiffs win Tablet PCs and great to meet people like Otto Berkes, the inventor of the UMPC for Microsoft.  Great time and thanks to Lora Heiny for setting it all up again this year.

This year we were invited to more private briefings from major OEMs which is always cool and informative.  We attended the Asus press conference by invitation and as we blogged Kevin's video demo of the EEE PC was used by the Asus CEO for his presentation.  Talk about being a part of the show, that was very cool.  We had briefings from companies like Nokia, Palm and others that were very nice.  It was evident from these briefings that jkOTR is making an impact on the mobile tech space and that is very gratifying indeed.

The live blogging we did new this year was a total blast as sharing our experience with readers live as it happened was just neat.  It blew away everyone who saw us doing this and it was just so cool.  Feedback we've received was so positive that it's something we'll try to do, and even better, next year.  It was a direct example how the right mobile technology can be leveraged in new and useful ways.

The whole experience this week was very positive, it's not often that Kevin and I get to spend so much time together geeking out and we had a blast doing it.  From walking around the show to podcasting in the Blogger's Lounge it was a good time and while we are both very tired today we'd do it again in a heartbeat.  We hope you enjoyed the coverage this week and we appreciate each and every one of you who follow what we do here on jkOnTheRun!

CES exhibitor "things to not do next year" suggestions

Having spent this week dealing with the hustle and bustle that is the CES I have constructed a short "don't do" list for exhibitors who wish to make good impressions on visitors:

1. Don't do one on one briefings by rote.  Be adaptive when talking to just one person who has specific questions.
2. Make your booth easily accessible.  Don't create narrow paths that can't be navigated when the crowd is large.  This is the CES, the crowd WILL be large.
3. Don't put your wares under weird lighting.  If you must have your goods secured under a closed display do not put weird lighting that makes taking good photos impossible (that means you, Intel).
4. Don't put a bunch of your new cool product in partner's booths and then not put one in your own (that's for Aigo).
5. Do not invite us to private briefings, send a car to take us off-site, and then make us sign an NDA that means we can't talk about what is covered for THREE MONTHS (yes Palm, you know who I am talking about).