image credit: Engadget

CES has been a lot of fun (more videos coming soon). While we didn’t have a lot to announce this year, we did enjoy showing off our instant on software on many a cool device. People seemed to be drawn to the Lenovo S10 quite a bit at the booth as netbooks are really all the rage at CES. There were some cool surprises this year. Generally when we announce something it takes weeks of discussion and planning. Press releases are written and approved and positioning debated. I’m always amazed at how long it takes to announce something! So it was surprising when LG debuted their sweet new LG X120 on the CES show floor featuring…you guessed it…Splashtop.

On LG machines Splashtop is called LG Smart On. This is the second Netbook for Splashtop. The first is, of course, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 which we launched in late October. At ShowStoppers (which is this rad press event at CES) press were constantly impressed with our netbook product. The LG Smart On implementation of Splashtop is beautiful and the team that worked diligently to make it happen should be congratulated.

Engadget covered it here with a sweet video so make sure to check it out!

We’ll do some more CES roundup in the coming days…

It was just last week that we found out we won a prestigious award from Popular Science. Plus, we’ve been getting lots of coverage from places like the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. Heck, even Howard Stern loves us. Does this make us cool? After all, we’re nerdy technology types.

Thank goodness that we won an award that brings us back to our roots (before we got too Hollywood). We’re proud to announce that Splashtop won the “2008 Open Source Product Innovation Award” at LinuxWorld China. Yep, our very own Shawn Fang, pictured beautifully above, was on hand to receive the award. This award is very dear to our team who has been working incredibly hard to further Open Source Technology and the mainstream distribution of Linux. Congratulations team!

Another notable piece of news from this week is that Wired Magazine wrote an article titled, “Top 10 Products That Helped Us Forget 2008.” The number 7 product was the incredible HP Voodoo Envy (which we still fight about in the office). It’s not a long article but it does mention the Voodoo Instant-On Solution. Here’s what it says,

“An instant-on OS lets you surf the Web or make Skype calls without booting up Windows. It all adds up to one drool-worthy package.”

Yep, Splashtop is getting a lot of attention and why not? It’s an incredible product. Recently, I’ve been using it quite a bit on the new Lenovo S10e. I hope to blog more about my experiences using Splashtop on a Netbook next week. Until then, for those in the US, Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s an interesting weekend read. According to an article by MIT Technology Review, there are lawsuits being filed over PC Boot Time. Let’s say you’re expected to begin working at 8am. You get in at precisely 8am and the first thing you do is push that power button on your PC. Unless you have Splashtop, you’re going to wait a while to commence your work. So, you head over to get a cup of coffee, say hi to your co-workers and grab that morning doughnut. Well, it’s been about 5 minutes now. I bet your computer is about ready to use.

As you’re walking back to your desk, you notice your boss giving you the stink-eye. “What?” you think, “I’m waiting for my computer to boot up.” Sure enough it comes up in your yearly review. You’re not “getting to work” when you get to work. And that’s the big question - are you “working” as your computer is booting? Or, should workers be required to come in earlier to boot up your computer so that you can commence work on time? From the article…

During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. …

The solution is so simple. It makes me sad that so many resources have gone into fighting this workplace lawsuit. Everyone should have Splashtop. There you go. It’s that simple. If employees all had Splashtop enabled computers, they’d barely be able to get their jacket off before they were ready to be productive. Another problem solved. Have a great weekend!

It was only a week ago when we were all excited about being in the New York Times (on the cover, on a Sunday - not trying to brag, just stating a fact). Then Howard Stern talked about it on his show! I wish that I could share that audio track but it would be inappropriate and would probably violate some copyright law. Let’s just say that he saw the potential for some instant adult entertainment.

This week we’ve got a couple of other accolades to share. First, we were in the San Francisco Chronicle. From a tactical marketing perspective, we’re starting to see Splashtop covered by more mainstream press all the time. I think this really highlights the shared pain point felt by many consumers. Lengthy boot time is a ubiquitous pain felt by almost everyone. Here’s a great quote from the article:

Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy at research firm Jupitermedia, said the instant-on features will be more attractive on netbooks and ultra-portable notebooks, allowing them to be used quickly, like a smart phone. “As more users migrate to laptops and want to be able to use them ubiquitously, waiting for it to boot or come out of hibernation can be frustrating,” Gartenberg said. “That’s why we’re seeing these tactical solutions.”

Next up, we’ve been selected by Popular Science as the Best of What’s New in 2008! This is a very prestigious award and we’re honored to have received it. It appears that we’re in the category of computing and the second product listed (right after Spore). You can see their description of Splashtop here. This is from the press release:

Each year Popular Science reviews thousands of products across a variety of categories from Automotive technology to Computing to Green tech. 100 technology innovations are selected to receive the prestigious Popular Science award and be profiled in the December issue of Popular Science Magazine.

Thanks, Popular Science, for the honor!

I’m very proud to announce that we are launching today on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e. This is a major accomplishment for DeviceVM as it’s our first Netbook release. As you know, Netbooks are growing in popularity as discussed in this post. We’re very excited to be on the Lenovo S10e and working closely with the Lenovo team. It seems the press are also excited about it as we’ve gotten a lot of coverage already today. Here’s a quick list of some of the great press, which I’ll update as more comes in:

- Market Watch
- Intl. Business Times
- Techworld
- Engadget
- Gizmodo
- Slashgear
- Geek.com
- Ubergizmo
- The Inquirer
- Cheap Laptops.org
- Laptop Magazine
- JK on the run
- Inquisitr

Congratulations team!

disclosure: Allison, pictured above, is not my mom.

I got a call at 8am on Sunday morning from my Mom. My mother will often call too early on a Sunday morning and I figured that today was no exception. She began excitedly, “DeviceVM is on the front page of the New York Times!” I sighed, “Mom I’m sure that you’re confused,” figuring that it was an article about something that might possibly be reminiscent of Splashtop. “No,” she insisted, “DeviceVM is on the cover of the New York Times. It even has a quote by Sergei.” I shot up immediately. “No way!” I thought as a grabbed my keys and headed to my car on a mission to find the Sunday edition of the New York Times.

I grabbed the first one I saw and yelled, “No way!” as the fine folks at Starbucks looked on suspiciously. Yep, there it was, an article titled: In Age of Impatience, Cutting Computer Start Time. We see blogs and great coverage of Splashtop all the time but it is very special to see it printed on the front page of a printed paper that is voraciously read nationwide. The article talks about Instant-On technology and how OEMs see the great opportunity that Splashtop provides.

It’s really neat to see the New York Times talking about many of the same core messages that we at DeviceVM utilize to explain our value proposition. For instance:

“Of course, some computer users try to avoid slow boot times by never turning off their machines; they simply leave them in standby mode. But PCs sometimes have a hard time waking up from standby and tend to crash the longer they run without rebooting. Leaving a machine on also wastes electricity and, for laptops, can drain the battery.”

We feel like you shouldn’t have to leave your computer on 24 hours a day to make it a usable tool when you need it. It’s exciting to see others taking note. Equally interesting was a term used in the article - “boot-up anxiety,” or “pre-boot anxiety (PBA) as it was called in the video online. It seems that DeviceVM is definitely the prescription for what ails tens of millions of PC users.

If you have a minute to read the online article, you will see an awesome video where they put two notebooks next to each other and have a “boot-off.” The authors hit the power buttons at the exact same time and do a side by side comparison trying to get both machines online. The banter between the authors is funny as they look for things to talk about while waiting for the Vista machine to finally boot up. It took longer than they wanted, apparently, as you never actually see the Vista machine open a web page.

Congratulations team!

The other day during my regular perusing of blogs I found this interesting concept in Engadget by a company called OLO Computer. Now, this is clearly a concept and not necessarily something that is being brought to market. I thought it was a cool enough netbook concept that I would share it with followers of this blog.

I often forget that our mobile phones are quickly becoming as powerful as a traditional computer. Sure, they are for the most part, under powered compared to most notebooks. But, they are definitely nearing the raw specs that we find in Netbooks. Think for a second about a spectrum of devices - from a low end mobile phone to a high end notebook like the Voodoo. Right in the middle of that spectrum are devices like an iPhone and Netbooks like the EeePC. This concept puts the two of them together.

It seems like you push the iPhone in where the trackpad exists and the connected device would power the netbook shell. The iPhone would then become the trackpad. It’s interesting to think of a mobile phone such as an iPhone as the computer behind a netbook. My iPhone has just about everything I’d want on a Netbook minus work files (this could be easily remedied). It has my music, photos, contacts, email and a very good mobile browser.

One could think about Operating Environments in a similar fashion. On the mobile phone side of the spectrum you have some impressive Operating Systems like the Windows Mobile, the iPhone OS, Blackberry and now Android. On the netbook side you have Windows XP, several flavors of Linux and, in the case of the EeeBox, Splashtop. I wonder which of these Operating Environments will cross over to the other side of the spectrum. Will the scaled back version of Apple’s OS X found on the iPhone power a netbook one day as in this concept?

The Engadget article points out that Palm tried this with the Foleo project. Maybe Foleo was just a little before its time? Or, maybe product design, such as the OLO device above, will light a fire with consumers? If anyone has thoughts on the subject feel free to share in the comments.

In case you missed it, Wilson Rothman at Gizmodo wrote an awesome article about one of the first Voodoo production units scored by a reviewer. While he gushes about how thin and sexy it is, he spends a considerable amount of time talking about the Voodoo Instant On Solution (VIOS). Here’s a snippet of his comments:

The gimmick I am most interested in is the lightweight Linux OS called Voodoo IOS. It’s the Splashtop instant-boot OS we’ve started to see in other places as well, and having finally sat down and played with it, I see a lot of promise. At startup, you can select to enter Windows or choose Skype, media player, web browser or photo viewer to take you into the VIOS environment. I was eager to try this out and can say that it works as billed, though I’m still divided on its ultimate practicality.

We finally got a production version here in the DeviceVM office. It’s a coveted device (and we have a lot of devices). I’ve seen about 10 different people approach the Voodoo like it was an artifact and hesitate prior to even touching it. It’s as if the the Voodoo is a museum piece. Then, they carefully pick it up and give the weight test, “hey, this is light!” Next, they open it and hit the power button. Pow! Splashtop comes up instantly.

Every day lately, there are arguments in the office about who our Voodoo production unit belongs to.

“No, that one is going to be mine.”
“No, I need it for marketing.”
“Biz dev needs it.”
“But, you said I could use it.”
“Look, I’m the boss.” (that’s where it usually ends)

Hopefully you’re better off than we are and you can get one for yourself. If you do get one you’ll spend a lot of time showing off your notebook to friends and random people in coffee shops. But, you’ll be able to make up that time by using Splashtop!

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.