Social networking has experienced several important milestones this year. In fact, most would agree that the entire landscape of social networking has been totally transformed. It really started back in late spring with the launch of the Facebook platform. Without going into unnecessary detail, this platform allowed developers to create web applications atop the Facebook site. One key detail that led to the success of this platform was the availability of user information to the application, such as Interests and Profile information. By utilizing this data, application developers could make their applications more relevant and much more viral (as proven by zombies, ninjas and werewolves who are constantly biting).

For 3 months after this platform launched, the word “widget” disappeared from the local Silicon Valley vernacular and instead everyone and their brother was writing a Facebook application. Why? What was the Facebook Gold Rush about? User generation? Experimentation? Monetization?

There’s a cool theory in the startup world which leads to many a cool company getting funded - gather the critical mass and the money will come. Most involved in the Facebook Gold Rush believed that if an application could gain some traction it would lead to monetization. It all started with iLike, a music service that had a sticky application. It became a success overnight and was the Cinderella of Facebook Applications, gaining millions of users in a few days and inspiring the bedtime stories of many entrepreneurs.

iLike also had a nice business model - selling music tickets. But most Facebook Applications are going to depend on the bedrock model of startups: Advertising. In fact, some Facebook Application developers quickly built or purchased popular Facebook Apps in order to create such critical mass that they could create an Advertising Network. While I won’t debate the longevity of these applications (I haven’t been in a Facebook food fight lately, have you?), I do believe that critical mass + advertising = revenue.

So does Facebook and Google. Today is another important milestone in the Social Networking revolution. Google launches OpenSocial(apparently this site will go live on Thursday). Techcrunch does a great writeup and overview. For developers, this might be the start of a new type of Gold Rush. Obviously, the opening up Social Networks has become a trend. MySpace announced something similar a couple of weeks ago.

This is great news for users of web applications and for Splashtop. The more that social networks open up, the more developers will be inspired to create relevant web applications that take into consideration important things like who are our friends and what are our interests. Competition between Google, Facebook and MySpace can only lead to better products for us, the consumer.

In my last post I wanted to highlight some of our new Splashtop blog features while looking at the implications of those features on the web. Digg is a great example of a site that has changed the way we find quality content. Similarly, how we organize the information of the web is a fascinating process. I came across this video which I thought was pretty incredible. More and more, the web browser is the gateway to all you seek. This is why Splashtop is really centered around the browser. Seconds to the web.

First of all, I have to thank my main man, Ricky, who made many incredible changes to the Splashtop Blog. Our launch came a few days earlier than we had originally thought. Some of those last minute details that we had “plenty of time” to take care of crept up on us quickly. Little things like permalinks and subscriptions to tracking services were thrown by the wayside in order to get the site up fast and efficiently. Luckily, Ricky, who is already a busy guy without maintaining our site, was able to circle back around and make some changes.

One change that has become a standard on blogs, news sites and video hosting services is the ever-present Digg symbol that can be found all over the web. The blocky gray man with a shovel adorns many a website, including this one. Whatever your preference is, be it Reddit or Digg, these little buttons point to a revolutionary way we find quality content.

We no longer need to depend on any organization to point us to things that are of interest online. Back in 1996, I worked at a company in Santa Cruz, California called Imagesmith. One of our side projects was a site called, LinksAhoy (by the way, I used the Wayback Machine on those old-school links). Besides, the obvious benefits of an ever-present pirate theme, LinksAhoy would give you reviewed, amazing sites every day. It was similar to Cool Site of the Day, if you remember that. We used to let people submit sites that they thought we should track. We were so close! Digg, as you probably know, was the first site that allowed registered users to submit sites and then other registered users to vote on or, “Digg” them.

This simple paradigm has changed the way millions of people find the great content. No longer does a site editor get to choose what you see, but millions of people participating in finding and digging content point you in the right direction. My favorite example of this occurred a couple of weeks ago when Splashtop was “Dugg” almost 1500 times! Check it out, here.

So, feel free to use Digg and Reddit whenever you see a post on our blog that you think others might enjoy!

A couple days ago I wrote a post about Zoho, which is an excellent productivity tool. While using Splashtop yesterday, I spent some time creating an office document in Google Docs, Zoho’s formidable competitor in the online productivity space. Google’s ability to create an amazing web product is, of course, legendary. Let’s explore Google Docs…

When you first get to Google Docs, you’ll see a central document storage area. This makes sense as the launching point for your productivity experience should be your stored docs. Where Zoho has a multiplicity of productivity tools, Google has three - Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. Your documents get to Google Docs in a few different ways. First, if you use Gmail and get an attachment, you have the ability to open it in Google Docs and then it is automatically saved in your central storage area. Next, you can upload a document into Google Docs from your traditional OS. This is the way Splashtop users will generally upload their documents as there is currently no hard drive access from Splashtop. One limitation is that you can only upload a file under 500K. This might be a difficult limitation in the Presentation application where image-heavy files are a bit larger. Finally, you can create a new document right from the Google Docs central document storage area.

Here we’ve opened a document in Google Docs and have chosen the “edit” tab. You can see that this fairly streamlined user interface has most of the tools you would want to create and/or edit a doc. I find the revisions tab particularly useful as it allows you to revert to older versions of your doc.

Spreadsheets in Google Docs are fantastic. Plenty of features here, even for the most demanding users. Sure, it does all the things you would expect it to do, but, there is one feature it has that I think is killer: you can chat while you’re collaborating on a spreadsheet. This is the perfect place for chat functionality because explaining numbers in a spreadsheet and getting everyone on the same page can be cumbersome.

So there you have it - a couple more productivity tools to add to your list of web apps that can help you make the most out of Splashtop. With tools like this, getting on the web seconds after you hit the power button can be a lot more powerful than you might think. In this case it means seconds to edit a document, spreadsheet or presentation. Isn’t that the way it should be?

Splashtop doesn’t have much in the way of storage space for files and media in the current version shipping on Asus Motherboards. That’s not to say, it won’t in the future! But right now you can’t access much unless it’s online. I tend to look at this as a case of the glass being half-full given the plethora of online productivity tools on the market today. If you haven’t given one a shot yet, whether you’re a Splashtop user or not, I highly suggest trying to create you next document in one of the two productivity tools I’m going to review over the next couple days. Today, I’m going to review a couple of the offerings from Zoho.

Zoho Writer

Don’t be overwhelmed when you get to the Zoho homepage. They have a myriad of online apps, all of which work fairly well. If Zoho CRM doesn’t mean much to you, I might suggest starting out with Zoho Writer. The image pictured below is of a Zoho Writer Template for a resume. As you can see, this online tool does 90% of what Word or OpenOffice does. Importing documents is also very easy. This is important if your document started in another format. I imported a document that was larger than 1MB and Zoho handled it well. There is currently no limit to the amount of storage space you can use for your documents. However, Zoho claims it will institute a 1GB limit once they are out of beta. My only criticism of Zoho Writer is the look and feel of the interface, which feels somewhat disjointed. However, this is a small criticism given the overall utility it provides for free.

Zoho Sheets

In my opinion, Zoho sheets excels in every way (come on, that’s a great pun). Whereas, the look and feel of Zoho writer feels a bit disjointed, Zoho sheets is as close to perfect as any online spreadsheet program. I get the distinct feeling that this was developed by a completely different team, led by a UI-focused Product Manager (who wasn’t afraid to borrow interface cues from Microsoft). I imported several different spreadsheets into Zoho Sheets, some with multiple tabs and the application handled it perfectly. With over 300 functions, I’m guessing Zoho can handle most of what you might want to do with a spreadsheet. For me, calculating expenses and the occasional revenue model is about all the spreadsheet power I need.

Give Zoho a shot for your next document or spreadsheet. Both of these programs allow for document sharing and collaboration. This makes more sense than emailing documents back and forth wondering if you have the latest version. Tomorrow, I’ll review Zoho’s biggest competitor - Google Docs!

Thanks, Rick, for the post inspiration!

This morning, still wired from our exciting week, I was checking Google Alerts on Splashtop. There were a lot of links to blog posts where authors tried to position Splashtop in different ways. There were even more comments where readers speculated how Splashtop could become an OS. After all, Splashtop is based, in part, on Linux and there are lots of programs that run in the Linux environment. Naturally, readers have been requesting programs like OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Evolution, and Pidgin.

On the other side of the coin, a lot of folks have been asking us about our web browser, which is an optimized version of Firefox for our platform. Which plugins will you support? Is this going to become a WebOS? One posting asked if you can open documents in Google Docs and chat in Meebo why would you need any other platform-based apps? All of these are great questions.

OEMs and Manufacturers have specific requirements for us depending on the implementation. In the case of our first release with Asus, it was a web browser and Skype. In future implementations it might be media playback or diagnostic tools. We definitely see ourselves as an instant-on environment and not a traditional OS. Supporting a world of applications like Linux, Windows or OSX takes years of development.

We think the real opportunity is to get people where they want to go quickly and efficiently. On or Off, with nothing in between. We’d like to allow customers to add applications to the system and plugins to their web browser. But, we don’t see ourselves becoming a traditional OS competitor. Splashtop is a great companion to a traditional OS. Need to grab a quick map? Splashtop. Want to show your buddy a funny movie on YouTube? Splashtop. Have to edit a photo with some crazy liquid effect in Photoshop? Traditional OS.

For Splashtop to succeed, we have to be nimble and work with a variety of companies. As a small startup, we need to be able to partner with those who work on and support traditional Operating Systems. The same is true for our desire to collaborate with independent developers who can add significant value to Splashtop. We are quite simply focused on bringing value to consumers.

Well, my dog, Ernie (pictured below) is whining to go for a quick goodnight walk. Have a great Sunday wherever you are.

This has been an incredibly exciting week at DeviceVM. For months we have been meeting, planning and developing. How would Splashtop be received? On Saturday a story appeared on Phoronix about Splashtop. From that moment on, the inquiries came rolling in. Hundreds of blogs picked up on Splashtop, publications began calling us and we began an impromptu roadshow to see many influential members of the press, giving them demonstrations on newly built machines with the Asus P5E3 Deluxe Wifi/AP motherboard.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. The benefits of being able to quickly get on the internet and access your favorite web applications struck a chord with a lot of reviewers who are tired of long boot times. My personal highlight of the week was presenting at the Engadget Reader Meetup in SF on Wednesday night. Talking to consumers gave us all a greater perspective on the opportunity we have. But, we have a long way to go.

Part of my job is to collect all of the suggestions either given in person, on this blog or in commentary on other blogs. Here are the top 5 (not all) of the most requested future features:

1. A Linux-based system for updating
2. Hard Drive access
3. Splashtop on other devices (USB Flash Drive, Notebooks)
4. Booting Windows in the background
5. The ability to develop/add additional applications (media player highly requested)

This feedback is appreciated and gives us excellent direction. If you’re reading this and feel like one of the five is more important than the other four, leave me a comment and let me know. It’s raining here in San Jose (picture below is out the office window). Hopefully it will clear up soon so I can get some outside time. Have a great weekend!

Review by CNet/Webware
Hardware for Webware: A motherboard with embedded Firefox

-Splashtop.com Admin

Splashtop was honored by the last minute invitation to present at the Engadget Reader Meetup in San Francisco last night. We quickly put together a couple of machines with the new Asus P5E3 Deluxe / WiFi AP motherboard that feature Splashtop, loaded them up in my my car and headed to the city filled with excitement. On the way to the event, I discovered that David (our Marketeer) was a huge Engadget fan, just like me. We agreed that Engadget does a fantastic job covering technology with honesty and humor, rarely seen in other tech-focused blogs. We knew we’d have to do a great job representing Splashtop because Engadget readers are quite savvy.

From the moment the doors opened until the moment we packed up our computers, we talked to throngs of people about Splashtop. First of all, there were at least 1,000 people there (which just goes to show you the kind of community Engadget has created). Secondly, a lot of people were really interested in Splashtop. It feels great to have worked on something for a long time, plan for a launch and then finally get to talk about it openly. It feels even better to have hundreds of people appreciate your product.

Having said that, thanks to Ryan Block, Editor-in-Chief at Engadget for inviting us to have a table and give a presentation. Thanks to the many people who stopped by our booth. Don’t be a stranger - if you stopped by the booth and are reading this blog say “hello” in the comments. Thanks to David, Victor, Kevin, Andrew and Mehrshad for helping to give demos.

We weren’t supposed to launch until Wednesday but a bunch of articles have already started to surface about Splashtop. We are a bit overwhelmed by the attention and excited that readers of popular publications such as Engadget and BoingBoing are interested in our Instant Desktop environment. We are trying to track both the enthusiasm and the suggestions in order to create a better product. We haven’t even launched and I already feel like we’re behind on features.

Nonetheless, please keep the commentary coming. I will publish every comment on this site unless it is vulgar or inappropriate (those just go to close friends). Here’s a quick breakdown about where we’re at and what Splashtop is about…

Also, to clarify one thing: Splashtop is branded as Express Gate on certain motherboards built by Asus. These are rather high-end motherboards and are the first products to market with our technology inside (positive comments on blogs greatly appreciated). Our goal is to have Splashtop on many more notebooks and desktops by Q1 of next year.

The point of Splashtop is to get you surfing the web seconds after you press that power button. Many people have asked what other applications we might support in the future. While we’re excited to support many more applications, we’re starting with two (Splashtop Browser and Skype) and we will add more in the future.

Some things I hope to address in the next couple of days are important subjects which have been brought up by the press and user commentary. These include allowing outside developers to build complementary applications and being able to update the Splashtop environment from within Splashtop itself. Thanks for your interest in Splashtop and keep the comments coming.