Our friends at Asus recently released their Eee Box (pictured above). It’s an Atom-powered nettop box that is the desktop cousin to the Eee PC netbook. The concept is that internet loving consumers need devices that are differently focused then the traditional bigger, faster, better model that PC manufacturers have provided over the last 15 years. What we need is simple, direct-to-web devices that get us what we need/want efficiently.

The Atom processor has been built specifically for this purpose. This is what the Intel website says,

“If you’re a prolific emailer, avid Web surfer or dedicated VoIP user, you may want a computer focused on getting you online. The Intel® Atom™ processor was specifically designed for simple, compact desktop devices—or nettops—that deliver affordable Internet experiences, making it a great choice for people who primarily want to engage in basic online activities.”

Does this sound familiar to you? If you’re a reader of this blog then you probably know that with the text above, Intel has described Splashtop perfectly. Simple, fast, secure, eco-friendly Splashtop gets you just what you want/need.

It’s exciting that the entire PC industry is developing around the web. That statement sounds simple enough and you might be thinking, “obviously.” But it’s not as obvious as you might think. Not long ago the web browser was a new piece of software, not the centerpiece of the computing experience. The Mac I grew up with didn’t have a modem. Windows 95 was launched without a browser. Now, we have entire processors dedicated to devices whose main focus is to access web applications.

It’s the beginning of an enormous sea change. Think about how devices are now conceived, designed and produced. If you were to design an inexpensive device built for every day usage, what would it do? Access the web. Fast, efficient, secure and eco-friendly. Again a perfect fit for Splashtop.

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

There I am hanging out at home last night checking email reading and one of my favorite blogs when all of the sudden this hits my inbox - an Asus-produced Express Gate commercial! Express Gate, as you’ll remember, is how Asus brands our product, Splashtop. Check it out, it’s pretty awesome…

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!

Earth Day is just around the corner (April 22nd) and we here at DeviceVM don’t want to be left out of the festivities. We all know that Splashtop is fast and allows you to browse the web seconds after you hit the power button. We also know that Splashtop is secure as it doesn’t fall victim to the wide variety of viruses as that other big Operating System. But, did you know that Splashtop is amazingly Eco-Friendly?

We talk a lot about “instant-on.” The ability to go from a cold-boot to a fully functional web browser is killer technology. But, sometimes we forget to highlight instant on’s less sexy parter, “instant-off.” Consumers leave their computers on 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Hundreds of millions of people do this because it takes a long time to turn off and we all know that it takes forever to turn back on. We want to challenge you to turn your computer off when you’re done with it this Earth Day (and every day after) so we’ve teamed up with our friends at Carbon Rally to do so.

Did you know that 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’s why we’re teaming up with Carbon Rally to promote the “Give Your Computer a Rest for Earth Day” Challenge. You may not have a Splashtop-enabled computer (yet) that makes turning on and off your computer easier. But, by taking this challenge you can do the right thing for the environment and even reduce your personal electric bill by $200.

Sign up for the challenge at Carbon Rally and make a difference this Earth Day!

Sergei and Kevin are hard at work at CeBIT. Sergei sent me an update this morning…

This week we are helping ASUS promote their Splashtop-enabled products at the CeBIT show in Germany. ASUS has an awesome booth – complete with a Lamborghini on display – appropriate given their position as a top mother board vendor, and one of the top notebook vendors in Europe. Also, they make the Lamborghini laptop which is the yellow laptop in the left of the picture.

They have a number of motherboards with Splashtop (branded “Express Gate”) on display, and for the first time they are showing the top-of-the-line M70 notebook with Splashtop (called “Instant Fun” on this line). M70 is a beast of a machine, with surround sound, 1 TB of hard disk, and HD graphics. Here is our Kevin with the M70.

And here’s a sweet Splashtop Motherboard:

ASUS is getting a ton of visitors to the booth. It is lots of fun working together with their team - like Jessie from the Taiwan team and Dmitry from their European team here in the photo. These guys know every single feature of every ASUS notebook ever made, which is quite impressive!

Thanks, Sergei for the updates. Tomorrow I’d like to see a pic of you and Kevin in the Lamborghini.

This is an early warning for our friends who will be attending CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. It’s taking place March 4-9 and we’re going to be there showing off our latest Splashtop wares at the Asus Booth. I guess CeBIT is even larger than CES because according to the website it’s “the world’s largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments.” We’re all about hanging out with the international geek crowd.

In fact we’re sending out the A-Team to CeBIT. Sergei and Kevin are going to represent Splashtop and DeviceVM. Go and meet them and ask them why they didn’t bring me at the ASUS Booth, which is in Hall 26 D39.

If you’re looking for a convenient map to the CeBIT madness, look no further than this link. I am promised a daily report of EVERYTHING that goes on, so I’m sure we’ll be blogging the good stuff here.

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.