image credit: geek.com

Well, this morning we have a BIG announcement. Thanks to our growing partnership with Asus, Splashtop is going to be shipping on over a million motherboards a month.

“In response to great user feedback, our plan is to proliferate Express Gate across our entire motherboard product portfolio, starting with over one million motherboards per month,” says Joe Hsieh, General Manager, ASUS Motherboard Business Unit. “Consumers want to turn their PCs on and off like any other appliance, and Express Gate has made that possible.”
Note that Express Gate is what Asus calls Splashtop.

This is obviously a big deal to us and everyone involved in DeviceVM. An incredible amount of hard work, patience and perseverance is paying off. To think that 1 million motherboard purchasers a month are going to get our environment is thrilling. Millions of people getting to their favorite web applications seconds after hitting the power button. This is what the team has worked so hard to provide.

Congratulations, everyone! This is just the beginning.

Rafe Needleman at Webware has already covered it here.

Sal Cangeloso over at Geek.com has covered it here.

Thanks Michael Larabel at Phoronix for covering it here.

Nice! We’re on slashdot here. Thanks Timothy.

Rob over at TECHGAGE did a very complete writeup here.

Check our press section for more stories about Splashtop and developments related to this announcement.

It has been too long since we’ve featured awesome Web 2.0 apps here on the Splashtop blog. We got all caught up on events and awards. This week I want to get back to our roots and our core message.

Splashtop gets you to your favorite web applications seconds after you hit the power button.

That’s what we’re about. So when I see a great new Web app I’ve got to give it a shout out. Last week I was introduced to a great new application called Presdo. Someone called it “deceptively simple.” Why deceptive? Because it’s a very powerful application. I get very excited when I see a powerful app in a simple package.

This is the basic interface:

Let’s say I type in “have the product meeting with Sergei at 3pm”

This is what I get:

It naturally interprets what you’re trying to do and then provides everything you would need to do with that event. It can email Sergei to let him know. If I provide the basic location it’ll map it for me. If I need a cafe, it’ll suggest it for me. Finally, if I need to export it to another calendar like google calendar or outlook, it’ll make it happen pretty seamlessly. It makes calendaring events kinda fun, actually. It just goes to show you that you don’t need all that desktop software when you have a fully functional web browser.

Take 2 minutes and give Presdo a try. You might just find a new way to calendar all of your events. I’ve been using it a week and I’m hooked.

As usual, there’s all kinds of stuff going on over at DeviceVM. We’ve got business people traveling, engineers coding and bloggers blogging. Everyone is heads down working hard. This is a quick roundup of all things Splashtop.

Earth Day

As per my last post, we’re doing our part for that big blue and green planet we live on. We’d like you to do your part by checking out our challenge on Carbon Rally. I know I’m being a bit repetitive but I think that some of these facts are incredible considering how many of us leave our computers on 24 hours a day 7 days a week. By turning off your PC each night, you will reduce your CO2 emissions by a total of 51lbs for the month. That’s 51lbs of CO2! That amounts to $200/year in savings.

It’s being covered by some notable press. Check out the article here on Geek.com.

Matt Cutts gives Splashtop a Shout Out!

No we didn’t pay him ten bucks. And, he isn’t my cousin. He’s Matt Cutts and he’s an important dude to us geeks out there. First of all, he’s in charge of Spam for Google. Not creating Spam but preventing it. He’s also widely known as a technical visionary at Google. That’s why we were pretty stoked when Matt gave us a little shout out when asked, “What’s the most important, cool, scary, or useful product or technology (not made by your company) that’s recently arrived or on the horizon?”

He said us…Splashtop. Check it out…

“I like Splashtop, which uses a tiny version of Linux that can be built into motherboards. The result is an instant-boot operating system that comes for free when you buy (say) an ASUS motherboard. Lots of people know about virtualization and lightweight computers such as OLPC and the Asus EEE machine, but Splashtop strikes me as something different. Someone has to do the initial work to modify Linux to work as a built-in motherboard. But after that initial engineering effort, you get a product where paying for an operating system (OS) is entirely optional. A perfectly fine OS is built right into your motherboard when you buy it.”

Don’t believe me? Read it here.
Thanks Matt!

Web 2.0

This brings us to my last item on the roundup. I’m going to be around those halls at the Moscone this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday hanging out at Web 2.0. If you’re going to be there, please ping me - sol[at]devicevm[dot]com. I’ll have a Splashtop demo unit there if you’d like to try out the Operating System that puts the web at your fingertips!

Earth Day is just around the corner (April 22nd) and we here at DeviceVM don’t want to be left out of the festivities. We all know that Splashtop is fast and allows you to browse the web seconds after you hit the power button. We also know that Splashtop is secure as it doesn’t fall victim to the wide variety of viruses as that other big Operating System. But, did you know that Splashtop is amazingly Eco-Friendly?

We talk a lot about “instant-on.” The ability to go from a cold-boot to a fully functional web browser is killer technology. But, sometimes we forget to highlight instant on’s less sexy parter, “instant-off.” Consumers leave their computers on 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Hundreds of millions of people do this because it takes a long time to turn off and we all know that it takes forever to turn back on. We want to challenge you to turn your computer off when you’re done with it this Earth Day (and every day after) so we’ve teamed up with our friends at Carbon Rally to do so.

Did you know that by turning off your PC each night, you will reduce your CO2 emissions by a total of 51lbs for the month. That’s 51lbs of CO2! That’s why we’re teaming up with Carbon Rally to promote the “Give Your Computer a Rest for Earth Day” Challenge. You may not have a Splashtop-enabled computer (yet) that makes turning on and off your computer easier. But, by taking this challenge you can do the right thing for the environment and even reduce your personal electric bill by $200.

Sign up for the challenge at Carbon Rally and make a difference this Earth Day!

I haven’t blogged for a bit because I had a baby. Well, I didn’t but my wife did. So, I apologize for being late with this post about our success at Under the Radar, which was almost two weeks ago. In my last post, I put up a nice video of Mark’s great presentation. The thing that I didn’t highlight enough was that this presentation showcased our virtualization solution for the very first time. In fact, Under the Radar has different categories for company presentations. Ours was in the virtualization category. According to the audience present at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, DeviceVM was the best company in the virtualization category.

This begs the question, “why was the audience so taken with Splashtop?” There were other great companies present. My favorite (other than us) was JumpBox. Mark’s presentation was great but I like to think it wasn’t just his charm that won us an audience award. I believe that our solution touches a pain point that every consumer feels about using a PC. They are slow to turn on, slow to turn off and don’t get us online fast enough. I think that when the audience members recognized the promise of a better computing experience they were excited and they wanted it on their PC.

It doesn’t matter how whizbang our technology is (and it is pretty whizbang, by the way) - at the end of the day our solution solves a real problem faced by consumers on a daily basis and that makes it exciting and attractive. Get online seconds after you hit the power button while letting Windows boot in the background. Your favorite web apps at your fingertips. Zero to Internet in seconds. However you want to say it, consumers want a better computing/online experience. That’s why Splashtop won the Audience Award for Virtualization at Under the Radar.

I know that most of our loyal readers woke up this morning and thought, “I sure wish I could watch Mark Lee present today at Under the Radar.” Never fear! We have the video right here at the Splashtop blog. Mark did a great job and so did Sergei who manned the demo unit. Thanks to David Speiser for helping out with the video.

I don’t know about our CEO, Mark Lee, but I’m nervous excited for our presentation at Under the Radar on Thursday of this week. There are a lot of reasons why our presentation is going rock. Mark presents first thing in the morning. This can make for a tough crowd depending on the amount of available coffee. But, really, this just means that everyone is fresh and ready to see some serious innovation. Next, we don’t just have a deck of slides like everyone else - we’re doing our presentation using Splashtop. A lot of companies talk about how their product works but we’ve made a commitment to “eating our dog food.” We work, browse and present with Splashtop whenever we can. Finally, Mark is a great public speaker! He is very passionate about Splashtop and the power of our product.

Many would agree that one of the world’s greatest public speakers is probably, our Cupertino neighbor, Steve Jobs. Just in case any of you want to brush up on your public speaking skills, here’s an article I found in Business Week where Carmine Gallo analyzed Steve Jobs’ speaking style and boiled it down to a 10-part framework.

Finally, to inspire all of those public speakers out there, here’s a YouTube clip feature Steve Jobs (our neighbor who should invite us over some time) introducing the Macintosh for the first time:

Sergei and Kevin are hard at work at CeBIT. Sergei sent me an update this morning…

This week we are helping ASUS promote their Splashtop-enabled products at the CeBIT show in Germany. ASUS has an awesome booth – complete with a Lamborghini on display – appropriate given their position as a top mother board vendor, and one of the top notebook vendors in Europe. Also, they make the Lamborghini laptop which is the yellow laptop in the left of the picture.

They have a number of motherboards with Splashtop (branded “Express Gate”) on display, and for the first time they are showing the top-of-the-line M70 notebook with Splashtop (called “Instant Fun” on this line). M70 is a beast of a machine, with surround sound, 1 TB of hard disk, and HD graphics. Here is our Kevin with the M70.

And here’s a sweet Splashtop Motherboard:

ASUS is getting a ton of visitors to the booth. It is lots of fun working together with their team - like Jessie from the Taiwan team and Dmitry from their European team here in the photo. These guys know every single feature of every ASUS notebook ever made, which is quite impressive!

Thanks, Sergei for the updates. Tomorrow I’d like to see a pic of you and Kevin in the Lamborghini.

I like to try out new services as frequently as possible and see if they’re a good compliment to Splashtop. After all, particular applications are better suited for Splashtop given their purpose. kwiry is a great example of a well suited Splashtop complimentary web application.

Last week I briefly mentioned Jott, an easy way to have voice-based messages translated to text and left for your contacts or yourself. Jott makes it easy to send an email to others while you’re in the car.

kwiry plays in the same general space but has their own set of killer features. kwiry’s strength lies in their ability to allow for SMS-based self-messaging. In other words, you’re in the coffee shop and you hear this great song. You ask the Barista, “who are you playing right now?” She answers, “the Black Keys.” Ten times out of ten I would get my coffee and then forget the name of the artist. Later in the day I would be thinking, “the Black…something. It’s not the Black Crowes. Who was it again?” kwiry solves this problem by allowing you to text yourself “the Black Keys” and then be reminded about it once you power on your PC.

Make kwiry a bookmark in your Splashtop browser and you can get to those reminders instantly. kwiry takes it even further by giving context to your reminders. When you get back to your PC and see “the Black Keys” you’ll get options to listen, purchase, find reviews and even tour dates for the Black Keys. This, of course, works with many different things you might text yourself - not just the Black Keys.

There are other things you can do with kwiry including friending people and seeing their kwiry’s. This can be really interesting as you can see what your friends are thinking about. This feature is similar to Twitter but the content is very different because kwiry is much more reminder-based, not as much micro-blog oriented. Give kwiry a try and let me know what you think.

**Update: For those of you who signed up for Jott last week, I spoke to the guys at kwiry and they actually just launched Jott compatibility yesterday. They’ve got instructions on how to integrate kwiry and Jott so you can send in reminders with Jott and have them go to your kwiry inbox (complete with search results). We like things that play well together : )

This is an early warning for our friends who will be attending CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. It’s taking place March 4-9 and we’re going to be there showing off our latest Splashtop wares at the Asus Booth. I guess CeBIT is even larger than CES because according to the website it’s “the world’s largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments.” We’re all about hanging out with the international geek crowd.

In fact we’re sending out the A-Team to CeBIT. Sergei and Kevin are going to represent Splashtop and DeviceVM. Go and meet them and ask them why they didn’t bring me at the ASUS Booth, which is in Hall 26 D39.

If you’re looking for a convenient map to the CeBIT madness, look no further than this link. I am promised a daily report of EVERYTHING that goes on, so I’m sure we’ll be blogging the good stuff here.