It has been too long since we’ve featured awesome Web 2.0 apps here on the Splashtop blog. We got all caught up on events and awards. This week I want to get back to our roots and our core message.

Splashtop gets you to your favorite web applications seconds after you hit the power button.

That’s what we’re about. So when I see a great new Web app I’ve got to give it a shout out. Last week I was introduced to a great new application called Presdo. Someone called it “deceptively simple.” Why deceptive? Because it’s a very powerful application. I get very excited when I see a powerful app in a simple package.

This is the basic interface:

Let’s say I type in “have the product meeting with Sergei at 3pm”

This is what I get:

It naturally interprets what you’re trying to do and then provides everything you would need to do with that event. It can email Sergei to let him know. If I provide the basic location it’ll map it for me. If I need a cafe, it’ll suggest it for me. Finally, if I need to export it to another calendar like google calendar or outlook, it’ll make it happen pretty seamlessly. It makes calendaring events kinda fun, actually. It just goes to show you that you don’t need all that desktop software when you have a fully functional web browser.

Take 2 minutes and give Presdo a try. You might just find a new way to calendar all of your events. I’ve been using it a week and I’m hooked.

I like to try out new services as frequently as possible and see if they’re a good compliment to Splashtop. After all, particular applications are better suited for Splashtop given their purpose. kwiry is a great example of a well suited Splashtop complimentary web application.

Last week I briefly mentioned Jott, an easy way to have voice-based messages translated to text and left for your contacts or yourself. Jott makes it easy to send an email to others while you’re in the car.

kwiry plays in the same general space but has their own set of killer features. kwiry’s strength lies in their ability to allow for SMS-based self-messaging. In other words, you’re in the coffee shop and you hear this great song. You ask the Barista, “who are you playing right now?” She answers, “the Black Keys.” Ten times out of ten I would get my coffee and then forget the name of the artist. Later in the day I would be thinking, “the Black…something. It’s not the Black Crowes. Who was it again?” kwiry solves this problem by allowing you to text yourself “the Black Keys” and then be reminded about it once you power on your PC.

Make kwiry a bookmark in your Splashtop browser and you can get to those reminders instantly. kwiry takes it even further by giving context to your reminders. When you get back to your PC and see “the Black Keys” you’ll get options to listen, purchase, find reviews and even tour dates for the Black Keys. This, of course, works with many different things you might text yourself - not just the Black Keys.

There are other things you can do with kwiry including friending people and seeing their kwiry’s. This can be really interesting as you can see what your friends are thinking about. This feature is similar to Twitter but the content is very different because kwiry is much more reminder-based, not as much micro-blog oriented. Give kwiry a try and let me know what you think.

**Update: For those of you who signed up for Jott last week, I spoke to the guys at kwiry and they actually just launched Jott compatibility yesterday. They’ve got instructions on how to integrate kwiry and Jott so you can send in reminders with Jott and have them go to your kwiry inbox (complete with search results). We like things that play well together : )

There are certain days where I think that I must have one of the best jobs. When I started blogging for Splashtop I was highly encouraged to try out new, cool services that would test out Splashtop in order to find things that would appeal to our loyal community of users. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that games fit into this task perfectly. This post will be short because I have to get back to my heavy research on this subject. But, I found a game that I wanted to share with you immediately so that you, too, can heavily research this subject.

The Game is called: Desktop Tower Defense. You can find it on Kongregate, which is a great casual gaming site.

The idea here is that you’ve got your desktop. Your *real* desktop, not your virtual one. You’ve got a bunch of stuff on your desktop including some money. These little creatures that look like evil cells from Fantastic Voyage want your money. In fact, they’re heading right for your dough. So, you’ve got to build a blockade using several types of stationary weapons. As the evil creatures come through your blockade the weapons will fire, thus damaging and eventually killing the creatures. As you pass more levels, you’ll earn more money which will allow you to purchase more weapons. Just don’t let the creatures get to your money or you’ll eventually lose.

The screenshot above is a good strategy hint. I wish I had seen that about two hours ago.

Once again I am reminded that Splashtop can get you to your favorite web applications seconds after you hit the power button. Today my favorite web application is Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 on Kongregate. You should give it a shot. Call it product research.

I’ve been trying my best to live the Splashtop life lately. Basically, I’ve been utilizing Splashtop on a daily basis in different ways so I can better help influence the user experience. A lot of startups “eat their own dogfood” as the saying goes and DeviceVM is no different.

Lately, I’ve been really impressed with a new IPTV service called Hulu. Hulu is an online offering comprising of a whole host of American TV networks. Together, they offer a series of high quality programs and movies that can be streamed onto your computer via your web browser - the Splashtop Browser is no exception. If you want to read more about Hulu, here’s a great article that talks about how Hulu is coming out of Beta and going international soon.

I made a quick video about watching Hulu content using Splashtop on an EeePC. Check it out:

Have you ever Twittered? Hundreds of thousands of people do every day. Depending on how you look at it, Twitter is either a cultural phenomenon or a fad. A friend of mine recently asked, “what is Twitter?” I thought I’d take a post and explain it. After all, it’s the Holidays!

If you haven’t had the inclination to check out Twitter for yourself, it is simply a micro-blogging platform. Instead of taking a bunch of time to write a thoughtful, lengthy blog post, like I’m doing here, you simply dash off a quick note. For instance, “writing a blog post in a coffee shop” is a perfectly acceptable “twit” or “tweet.” Now, everyone who is “following” you knows that at 4:38PM on the Friday before vacation you were in a coffee shop writing a blog. Hopefully your boss is “following” you so that he he/she knows that you’re still working while everyone else is drinking eggnog. But, it has to be under 140 characters. Why? Because, in addition to many web-based options, you can send a tweet from your phone using SMS. This is especially great because (hopefully) we’re not always in front of a computer.

I know what you’re thinking - “following” sounds like “stalking,” right? It does, indeed, but it has a lot of practical applications. First of all, we’re a mobile world - keeping in touch with where your friends are at, what they’re doing or what they’re thinking is hard. Twitter gives you a constant stream of updates which can feel overwhelming at first but information overload has it’s advantages. Like right now - I know that @v (”v” is the twitter name) is curious about one of his clients while @beach is mad at his health care, @robknight is heading to the gym while @mrosas is opening Christmas cards. Get it?

Splashtop is a perfect companion for Twitter because we both have the same philosophy. We are amazing companions. Twitter is a great communication companion and allows you to communicate FAST. Splashtop is a great Operating System Companion as it allows you to get to your favorite web applications FAST. So all you Twitterers out there - make your next tweet from a Splashtop enabled computer!

Happy Holidays,
@thesolster

A while back I wrote a bit about Box.net and their awesome platform for storing files online. Splashtop doesn’t currently allow access to your local files (those on your hard drive) so having online options are really important. Up until recent history, online storage was a pretty linear process - uploading and downloading was the most major feature. The ability to have “access from anywhere” was the value proposition. Now, thanks a host of incredible web applications and a well thought out API, Box.net can do more with your online files than you ever thought.

Let’s say you need to edit a Word document and you don’t want to wait the several minutes to boot up your traditional OS. Or, maybe you’re in Splashtop and want to work on a document because you like our environment better! Either way, Box.net’s platform allows you to do that easily and efficiently. Box.net will match up your file type (like a Word Document) with an online service (like Zoho). Once you add a service (for things like blog posting, image editing, file sharing, twittering and much more) you can access that service by clicking on the arrow on your file.

In the image above, I have clicked the arrow in the right hand top corner of my Word document, at the bottom you can see “edit document” with the Zoho “Z” logo next to it. I’m sure you can guess what happens next…

The great thing about this system is that you don’t have to re-download the document, edit it, and then re-upload it to accomplish the simple task of editing an online file. As you can probably imagine, the same process is true for photos using the excellent Picnik online photo editing tool. Box.net provides incredible utility and well thought out functionality that greatly extends the reach of your online files. Give it a shot and let me know what you think!

I have a great job. I get to play with the best web applications and then tell you all about them. Why? Because Splashtop loves web apps. They’re like chocolate and peanut butter or the Oreo crackers and the cream filling. I must be hungry. Anyway, today I wanted to tell you about Box.net, an online storage service that does some pretty incredible things.

First, storing files online gives you some great options when it comes to sharing files and having access to them from anywhere. Also, if you’re using the Splashtop browser, you don’t have a lot of file access from the hard drive (actually, you have none) so keeping your files online is a great option. The best of the best is definitely Box.net. First of all, you get 1 GB of online storage for free. That’s their “lite” option. If you feel like you need more storage, which might be the case after you hear about all the things you can do with those files, 5GB starts at $7.95/month. I pay more for a coffee and a scone at Starbucks. There is also more expensive options for power and enterprise users.

The guys over at Box.net have spent a lot of time thinking about how people (like us) use files online. What do we want to be able to do? Where are we when we’re using these files? The service has really become incredibly valuable. Sure, you can upload documents, music and photos. You can collaborate on a paper with your friend and you can certainly keep those important files available to you from anywhere. But, Box.net has also built in some special tools that let you do things like stream your music back to wherever you are. This small flash widget is incredibly useful, especially for Splashtop users.

This widget, pictured above is storing some music that I uploaded to Box.net (sorry it’s just an image of a widget, not the actual widget) via Facebook. I also have a Facebook widget on my Profile with the same music which will allow my friends to listen some Wilco when they’re on my profile page. You can do the same kind of social file sharing on nearly every other social network with customized Box.net widgets. Another thing I really dig is the fact that I can allow others to drop files off in my Box. That’s useful, especially when you receive a lot of emails. Sometimes files get lost in the shuffle. Plus, I can have access to it all the time on any machine.

Next week I’ll tell you about Box.net’s most killer feature where they integrate with other popular web applications.

Another great example of the way that Web 2.0 has advanced our browser-based experience can be seen in the realm of chat. Meebo is a great example of a company that has taken web-based chat to new levels. We thought it would be so useful that we put it as a default bookmark in the Splashtop browser. Meebo allows you to do many of the same things that your standard application-based IM client does through the web browser. It can work like a single IM client for AIM, Gtalk, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN or you can register, create a Meebo ID and see/use all of them at once. This is similar to the very popular Trillion application without the application. It all happens right there in the browser. The user experience is excellent.

Meebo also has a feature called Meebo Rooms where you can create custom chat rooms on your web site and share images, links and even video. This can really take the whole chat room concept to a new level as you can place a room right on your MySpace page or blog. In addition, you can find many rooms on a variety of subjects. Here’s an image of Meebo rooms that was on Techcrunch:

One thing I love, in particular, about Meebo is that they have an iPhone version of their service that allows you to chat right from your iPhone. This was a feature that was missing from iPhone V1. Until they bring iChat into the iPhone, I’m a sold Meebo iPhone user. Here’s an image of the Meebo iPhone interface from Gizmodo:

Another company in this space is ebuddy. Ebuddy seems to do more with file sharing and, in my opinion, the interface is much cleaner. Ebuddy pops out a browser window so that the experience feels more traditional application oriented.

Whichever web-based chat application you utilize, they both allow you to login and chat from anywhere including Splashtop!

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!