I wanted to share a really cool thing I found tonight that you can take advantage of in the coming weeks. No matter where you are in the world, the elections in the United States are very important. There are several scheduled debates by the Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates. These are generally well covered by all the major television networks. So far this has been a one-way experience. Other than the arguments that may erupt with your spouse, the debates aren’t exactly “interactive.” Until now.

Current, which is an amazing user-directed news television service, teamed up with Twitter to provide something that is very unique. They call it: Hack the Debate.

Here’s an overview:

It’s really cool to watch user-generated commentary stream live across the screen as the debaters are going at it. It definitely made me feel like I was in the room with millions of people. In fact, at times, the commentary became more interesting than the debate itself. Give it a chance next Thursday when the Vice Presidents have it out.

Did you see it? One of the coolest notebooks of all time? The one that HP is going to put up against the MacBook Air? The one that’s all carbon fiber with backlit keys? It has a little something on it called Voodoo IOS which gets you online seconds after you hit the power button. Sound familiar? It should because Voodoo IOS is Splashtop. That’s right, we teamed up with the folks over at HP to bring the Voodoo Envy something that is both unique and incredibly functional - just like the notebook itself.

There are a lot of things that get me very excited about Splashtop. We have a team of brilliant engineers who have made it possible for our OEM partners to make Splashtop their own. Different OEMs have different target markets and goals. We give them the ability to customize the Splashtop experience for their users. With HP Voodoo you have an example of a team that wanted to give a very slick, high-end experience to really match the spirit and soul of some incredible industrial design.

We’ve already been getting great feedback on this product. Here’s a live overview on a pre-production version that Laptop Magazine did on YouTube:

As we search the web for feedback, we see this from Now Magazine.

It has a staggeringly meaty specs and a super-strong outer casing, but its greatest feature is the Voodoo IOS (Instant-On Solution), which offers instant access to your Internet browser and Skype without having to fully boot up Windows.

G4 did some great coverage of the Voodoo and the IOS (it gets good around 3:40):

If you’re unboxing a Voodoo Envy and take a video, let us know and we’ll feature it on the blog! Congratulations everyone on a great launch of another exciting product.

Splashtop was covered last week in USA Today. Normally, I don’t blog about coverage that we’re getting because it’s kind of repetitive. But, there are two reasons that I wanted to mention this coverage:

1. It’s USA Today - an important, very mainstream publication.
2. There were a lot of comments

Here’s a little snippet of the article:

An instant-on feature, such as Splashtop, gets around the problem by avoiding Microsoft Windows. Push the button, and in a few seconds, a Linux-based “mini-operating system” is activated. It lets you use some popular tools, such as an Internet browser, Web e-mail and instant messaging, as well as make Skype phone calls and open attachments.

The feature also extends the battery power, since only a small portion of the laptop’s computing power is consumed, (Mark) Lee (DeviceVM CEO) says.

The author, Roger Yu, asked “How much does the slow bootup on your laptop bother you?”

I was surprised at how many responses this question got. While I know that slow bootups are a consumer pain-point, I didn’t realize how much discussion would ensue. There were nearly 70 responses which is a lot. Of course some of it turned into a Mac vs. PC discussion. But, I’ve filtered out some of my favorite comments…

The long boot-up time really bothers me. I’ve got a wifi, two-user laptop at home (secondary to the master desktop.) Booting up the former is a lengthy process, which I start when going down to breakfast….

After booting windows vista I usually leave it on as long as possible on my Dell laptop. A 4 to 5 minute boot time is a mind blower and a test on my nerves.

This one is my favorite…

It is a PAIN to start up my laptop. It takes at least 5-10 minutes and it is only 2 years old in Jan. I am all for the instant start-up. Really, all i use are web-based programs anyway. Also - In stand-by I am still consuming electric power to some degree. What about being eco-friendly and cutting back on energy usage?

Great job to Mark Lee, our CEO, for giving a great interview.

By now I’m sure you’re aware of Google Chrome, a new web browser launched by Google. At DeviceVM, we are keenly aware of everything that happens in the Browser space, because for our lightning fast environment, the browser is the killer application. Just as an FYI, our current browser, called the Splashtop Browser, is based on Mozilla’s browser (Firefox) and optimized to run super fast and limit security risks in the Splashtop environment.

Now, I could go into all the amazing features of Google Chrome because there are many. But, I’m going to let the experts at PCWorld take care of that. To quote PCWorld:

Chrome’s design bridges the gap between desktop and so-called “cloud computing.” At the touch of a button, Chrome lets you make a desktop, Start menu, or QuickLaunch shortcut to any Web page or Web application, blurring the line between what’s online and what’s inside your PC. For example, I created a desktop shortcut for Google Maps. When you create a shortcut for a Web application, Chrome strips away all of the toolbars and tabs from the window, leaving you with something that feels much more like a desktop application than like a Web application or page.

This is certainly the beginning of something monumental. This is where we’ll see a shift in the marketplace. It’s no secret that Google believes the future of most, if not all, computing resides in the browser. What the PCWorld quote above is referring to is something called an SSB or Site Specific Browser. The basic idea is to turn a website (or web application like Flickr or Facebook) into something that behaves more like a traditional application. This means that Google believes more and more you’ll be accessing your main applications via web browser.

Check out this quote by Sergei Brin (Google Co-Founder):

“We (Web users) want a very lightweight, fast engine for running applications.”‘

That’s where DeviceVM’s Splashtop comes in. CNET’s Dave Rosenberg noted this the other day:

A very interesting use case would be to integrate Chrome with something like DeviceVM, which provides an “instant-on” application set to bypass the operating system to get users up and running with a subset of applications immediately.

Splashtop and Google Chrome is the future of computing. Get to your favorite web applications seconds after hitting the power button. We don’t burden your system with lots of legacy applications - we take a fresh approach to your computing experience. With Splashtop you get just what you need (and what you want) - web applications running quickly and efficiently, optimized for safety and power conservation. We have a team that focuses on nothing but making sure the “fast engine for running applications” is available. The way we compute will change forever when Splashtop and Google Chrome collide.