In a recent GigaOm article, Om Malik talks about his experiences using a Netbook. “Netbook” has become the popular term for devices such as the Asus EeePC, the MSI Wind or the HP miniNote. Om tries to use a Netbook for while and has a less than satisfactory experience. He cites some problems with the weight of the device, battery life and heat.

Interestingly, he also mentions boot time:

“It runs Windows XP and no surprise, takes too long to boot up. (There is a Linux version, but I didn’t try that.)”

Recognizing that this is a nascent industry, Om lists 10 things that Netbooks should do. On the top of his list is Instant On. Clearly we agree. If you take into consideration the “use-case” for a Netbook Instant On becomes essential. Netbooks are travelers. They’re going to be turned on and off constantly. The use is not unlike a mobile phone. “I have to get online real quick to get that map” or “what’s my next appointment, again?”

Another of Om’s points really applies to Splashtop:

“7. The primary function of the computer should be cloud-based activities that can include everything from listening to live music, reading blogs and watching videos. Writing research reports or cranking out spreadsheets isn’t the primary purpose of these machines.”

Splashtop is completely geared towards cloud-based activities. Our main application is the Splashtop Browser. More often we recognize internally that getting people online to their web applications quickly and efficiently is our key value proposition. You really can’t underestimate the importance of speed and convenience.

Brad Linder from Liliputing writes a response to Om’s article. While he disagrees with Om on many points, he does give a nod to the suggestion of an Instant On environment in Netbooks. In fact, he goes on to say that he sees the importance of both an Instant On environment and a full-blown OS living side-by-side.

“Not that I wouldn’t love an instant-on machine. But Asus and other PC makers are addressing this by adding “SplashTop” and other feature that let you boot into a Linux-based OS in a matter of seconds and browse the web, use Skype, and do a few other basic tasks. When you need the full operating system, though, it’s nice to know that it’s available.”

At Splashtop, we really believe in this positioning. As I explained in this post, we see ourselves as the perfect OS companion. This is even more true for a Netbook which is ultra-portable, generally has a smaller battery and needs to be constantly turned on and off.

Thanks Om and Brad for a great discussion.

Great news this morning! Our partner, Asus, will be putting Splashtop (branded as Express Gate) on several of their notebooks. This announcement, in advance of Computex, makes this the first official release of the Splashtop environment on notebooks. This is great news for us here at DeviceVM as we have been working hard to proliferate our instant web experience. In addition to our web browser, this version of Splashtop will also include chat, skype, photo management and even online gaming.

This announcement on the heels of our last big news, which projects that Splashtop will be embedded on 1,000,000 Asus motherboards per month, makes May a great month for DeviceVM. Everyone who has been working nights and weekends to make the promise of an instant web experience a reality has reason to be proud. Congratulations!

Here’s some early press coverage:

Engadget

Geek.com

Slashgear

Gizmoden

Techworld

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.

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!

As reported this morning by Venture Beat, among others, DeviceVM has new partners in Merus Capital, an awesome venture firm that was started by some ex-Google and Microsoft executives. It’s especially cool because we’re the first company that Merus has invested in! Here’s what Venture Beat says:

“The investment is notable because it is the first investment the firm, founded by Salman Ullah, the recently departed vice president of business development at Google, Sean Dempsey, former Principal of Corporate Development at Google, and Peter Hsing, former Managing Director of Corporate Strategy at Microsoft (our coverage of Ullah’s new fund, here).”

Also, we’re really excited that Larry Augustin, founder of SourceForge, has joined our board of directors. Larry is a really nice guy with lots of insight as to how we can make our software more accessible to the larger community.

Personally, I’m enthused that such quality individuals see the vision of DeviceVM and want to help shape it. The ability to access your favorite web applications seconds after you hit the power button is a simple concept, but making sure that such important technology reaches every consumer will take a team of dedicated employees, investors and advisers. Welcome to the team Merus Capital and Larry Augustin!

Things were certainly busy at the Asus booth where Splashtop was given a small, but effective, enclave. We were visited by interested consumers, potential business parters and members of the press. The press were curious how Splashtop could provide access to your favorite web applications seconds after you hit the power button. Was it true? Was it really that fast? Some press even took out their stopwatches to time it.

One of the cooler press experiences was when Robert Scoble came over to do a live streaming webcast of David giving a demo of Splashtop running on an Asus F8SA Notebook. He was using a Nokia N95 camera to live stream the whole thing to the web. I stood behind Robert and watched the screen as he was filming. I was amazed that comments and questions were popping up on the screen in real time from the audience who were watching the live webcast. It’s amazing how “instant” the back and forth of Robert and the audience was. The technology that makes that happen is incredible.

Webcast below from Qik:

Here are a few other articles that featured Splashtop:

David did a good job being interviewed by Gottabemobile. Click here to watch that video.

Check us out on Techgage.

Or, read about us on Phoronix.

MIT Technology Review had some good stuff to say, click here for that.

Finally, the folks at Engadget stirred up some controversy with this article. I should probably mention that there are no definite plans of putting Splashtop on the EeePC. We just thought it would make giving demos easy and portable.

Thanks to everyone who visited us at the Asus booth! Can’t wait for CES 2009!

Today was day 3 in the Splashtop CES “area” (nestled in the Asus booth). We had lots of people come hang out, watch our demo and consider what might be next for our instant-on system. Here are a few pics from the last couple of days…

Here is a picture of us winning our award with Harry McCracken from PC World.

This is Mark Lee, our CEO, giving a demonstration - we sure gave a lot of demos.

This is our table in the Asus booth. As you can see, we are proudly displaying our award.

This last picture is David giving the folks from Gottabemobile.com a demo. They wrote a cool article about us too.

So Robert Scoble came to the ASUS booth today. For those not in the know, Robert is a former MS guy and started one of the very first blogs, called “Scobleizer.” Scobleizer to this day is one of the most widely read blogs around.

As part of his blogging duties Robert interviews and investigates various technologies and finds innovative ways to share the information, things like qik; qik allows you to stream video from your cell phone, and publish it to people who want to view your videos. From the qik “about” page:

“Qik enables you to share moments of your life with your friends, family and the world - directly from your cell phone!”

So Robert came to the booth with his (really cool) Nokia phone and filmed our Splashtop demo and elevator pitch. I won’t lie to you, it was a little intimidating being on camera. The video is embedded below:

It’s nice to have a chance to share Splashtop with the world, and to simultaneously embrace new and interesting ways of sharing content with readers and viewers. Thanks Robert for coming by the booth and giving us an interview and a neat video.

I’m very excited to announce that Splashtop by DeviceVM has been named as one of the Top 25 Most Innovative Products of 2007 by PC World. In fact, we’re number 10 (right behind Facebook). Here’s a snippet from the article:

Innovation: Allows a PC to boot in a few seconds into a simple, secure interface with a Mozilla-based browser.

DeviceVM’s Linux-based technology allows you to boot into its Internet-appliance-like platform in a few seconds, so you don’t have to spend minutes waiting for Windows to start up. If all you want to do is check your Web mail account or make a Skype call, for example, you’ll save both time and watt-hours. Though the technology is currently shipping as a feature only in the Asus P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi AP motherboard, it should be more widely available in desktops, laptops, and additional motherboards in 2008.

Thanks PC World! We’re very honored to receive such a prestigious award. Look for even more innovations in 2008. Happy New Year!

A whole host of cool technology blogs have come together to create the Crunchies, which is a competition and awards ceremony that celebrates innovation in technology. DeviceVM has been nominated as the “best technology innovation/achievement.” If you’re reading our blog and have literally two seconds to vote for us, I’d be greatly appreciative. Click here, find “Best technology innovation / achievement” (it’s the first one), type in “DeviceVM” and click “nominate.” Voting ends tonight so don’t hesitate!