We have been involved with a number of MeeGo initiatives driven by the Linux Foundation for some time now. As you may know, Mark, our CEO, joined the LF board, and two of our executives, Alex and Cliff, are directing LF operations in Taiwan and China respectively. In June, we announced a MeeGo “remix” of our Splashtop product.

If you are interested in MeeGo and Linux, there are several upcoming events we are participating in that I want to let you know about. Hopefully you can make it to one of these.

On July 26, Cliff will be speaking at Japan’s 1st MeeGo Seminar.

On August 11, Mark will be at the LinuxCon in Boston, talking about where Linux Desktop is succeeding. He is on a panel with folks form Novel and Qualcomm, moderated by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Computer World.

Finally, on August 14, Ted Chou from our Hangzhou engineering office will be speaking at the COSCUP / GNOME.Asia Summit in Taipei.

Splashtop has been named a winner of the 2010 Mobility Awards - Technology Innovation and we could not be more excited. Especially, when some our awesome partners like Acer, HP, and Lenovo which ship Splashtop on their netbooks and notebooks, are also recipients of awards too.

Thanks Mobiletrax for the honor. You can check out the full list of recipients here.

HP has introduced the new Mini 210 Vivienne Tam special edition netbook. We are happy to be contributing to the QuickWeb software of such a beautiful product. Here is how QuickWeb looks on the Mini 210 Vivienne Tam edition:

Notice the Mirror app in the application dock - a must for a true fashion product.

To see lots of gorgeous runway photos and videos, make sure to visit the special site HP and Vivienne Tam put together for this product.

What is in a product name? Everything! Would the iPod have been as successful if its name was iMP3? It is possible, but likely not. A good name lets you build a strong culture around it, so coming up with a good name is vital to any business. But sometimes what’s even harder is coming up with the translation of a name. We’re all aware of the marketing mishaps that come back to haunt companies. Just take Ikea, I could probably come up with a dozen product names that don’t work well in English.

We at DeviceVM need a Chinese name for Splashtop. Rather than having me come up with something that gets lost in translation, our China office would like to enlist some creative individuals that can help us come up with something. If you think you have what it takes to come up with a name and is fluent in Chinese we welcome you to join our contest. There’s a number of prizes that will be given away, but the deadline is February 5th so you better hurry. You can find more details about the contest here.

Recently Baidu CEO, Robin Li, gave the keynote at BaiduWorld Beijing, a huge event for the mammoth Chinese search engine. Our CEO Mark Lee and CSO Cliff Miller were VIP attendees at the Beijing event. During his keynote he unveiled the concept of “Box Computing,” for the future of computing. In the image above you’ll see a laptop projected behind him showing instant Baidu search, powered by Splashtop, and will be launching on various major PC OEMs in China soon.

Robin’s full keynote speech is available in Chinese here.

We translated the last paragraphs of his keynote below as this really summarizes our shared vision of “Box Computing” well:

“….We believe that the future of the computer, or terminal — it may be mobile, it may be the Internet appliance, we believe that users no longer need to wait several minutes before the operating system boot up. When you press a power key to open the device, within a second a Box will appear. We have traditionally called this the search box, but now it is actually no longer a simple search box, and it becomes a more universal box. In fact, as long as there is such a Box, all your needs can be met, without needing the users to learn anything. Ask your questions, and we will do needs analysis and deliver the result.

Box Computing is what I want to share with you today. Thank you all.”

We are very excited about the vision of “instant-on Box Computing” that’s available before the OS is booted and the browser is even started. Instead of entering search terms, users can just type in any question, spoken naturally. As more and more intelligence is built behind the Box, we will deliver enhanced simplicity and convenience to the consumer. This universal “instant-on Box” will become the central component and starting point to our ever-connected world.

At Splashtop, we are continually looking at ways of improving people’s online experience, making it faster and simpler. We see continuing innovations in client-side distributed searches, vertical searches, real-time searches, and new input methods for search initiation. Instant-on Box Computing is just the beginning of the kind of innovation Splashtop will bring to the market.

CES allowed us to continue to demonstrate the power of our fast booting, web-centric operating environment. There were a couple videos that we wanted to share with you. The first is Sergei’s incredible appearance on “Into Tomorrow” with Dave Graveline. Check it out…

Next, we have a “Death Match” between a bunch of Splashtop enabled machines hosted by GottaBeMobile, who stopped by our booth. As you’ll see every Splashtop device runs very quickly. The difference is often the components used in the machines. You might expect a less expensive netbook to run a bit slower than a super high end, more expensive device. In my opinion, the real “death match” occurs between Splashtop and a traditional OS (check out the video on this NY Times article to see what I’m talking about). Here’s a link to the full GottaBeMobile article.

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…

So, we’re here at CES getting things all ready for an awesome show. We’ve got a whole crew of people including myself, Kevin T, Sergei, Kevin H, Cleo and Speiser. We’ll get a few fun days with Mark and Alex too. CES is all about finding out about what’s new, what’s exciting and long nights of partying whose got the coolest booths. Here’s a few highlights from our setup day.

CES Splashtop Setup Day from Sol Lipman on Vimeo.

Don’t forget to come visit us as IP200 (we’re in the innovation pods).

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.