Tech & Web Spotlight: LifeLens

There was one group of speakers at CIW’s Tech & Web MegaTalk that stood out a bit.

They weren’t media moguls, or designers, or founders of the next mobile marketplace.

But within two minutes of starting their speech, the soft-spoken and seemingly unknown speakers had the audience on the edge of their seats and their fellow speakers wide-eyed with amazement. Meet Lifelens, winners of Microsoft’s 2011 Imagine Cup challenge.
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windows phone at winter wonderfest

AdamWindowsPhone

i had a great time this past friday at the windows phone workplayland at the navy pier winter wonderfest. i was joined by some other great microsoft folks including adam hecktman (pictured above telling all about one of the new windows phones available), chris bernard, and some great folks from the product group.  Continue Reading →

arrington, the mid market is dead

couch computing

on a recent plane ride, i read an article on how the mid (mobile internet device) market is dead. now if someone would just tell michael arrington.

don’t get me wrong, i was one of the few owners of those cute little oqo devices and did use it pretty often. the problem with what mr. arrington is calling the crunchpad is that it has been in development for over a year and other companies like archos will be releasing far more functional devices.

i am not sure the mid market will ever take off with any of these sans keyboard devices, but i do know that the last thing i want to do is pay $300-$500 just to browse the internet. even the iphone does more than that (albeit minus flash).

touch me

only a pc can get away saying “touch me” in public. the hp touchsmart is a great machine especially when taking advantage of windows 7 multitouch features. this one at midway is still running vista but will definitely welcome the upgrade to windows 7.

netbooks are a fad

ideafad

i know that netbooks are all the buzz lately, but i still don’t get it. i had played with one for a day thinking that this might be an inexpensive was to travel lightly. i guess i am just not into small and underpowered (i almost made a reference to a certain comment often used on the office).

the machine could handle basic tasks, but i was not into waiting for those tasks to complete. it is smaller and lighter than most, but my voodoo envy is small, light, and able to run visual studio at a decent pace (not to mention it is dead sexy). it almost reminds me of when i was carrying around my little oqo (which i also hear is not doing that well). yes, it is small and light, but the tradeoffs are too much.

so for me, i still think the ultraportable is the better way to go. easier to type on and a screen big enough to actually get some real work done. i like the price range of netbooks, but i think i am willing to pay double for a machine that is more usable for more tasks.

the creator of touch flo

i was just checking out a couple blog engines and ran into the guy that designed htc touch flo. wtf? dave brinda is awesome!

boot camp update busted

i have been trying for two days to get my macbook air boot camp updated with no success. apple released the boot camp update 2.1 for windows xp and vista users (xp users need to install the boot camp update before updating to service pack 3). the problem is that the update fails miserably on my machine (and others that are feeling just as frustrated as i am trying to get this thing installed).

i have tried all ways to get this thing installed from apple’s software update that throws an error as well as downloading the vista 32-bit update directly. nothing.

if anyone knows the magic way of getting the update installed, then please enlighten me!

don’t forget to finish yahoo! go for windows mobile

yahoo! go 3.0 beta

with all this talk about buying up yahoo!, all i hope is the team that is building yahoo! go finishes the 3.0 beta for windows mobile very soon. if you have not used yahoo! go on your smartphone, you are really missing out, especially if you subscribe to yahoo! services like flickr.

yahoo! go is really an all inclusive email, photo, news reader, weather, maps, search etc. app for your mobile phone. and while yahoo! go 2.0 was fairly solid for windows mobile, navigating the carousel was a little sluggish and the menu items where not what i was used to looking for in a windows mobile app (standard windows mobile ux guidelines apply here yahoo!).

however, looking at the revamped go 3.0 beta, i am anxiously awaiting the release on windows mobile. the new features look like they heard what folks were saying about issues with 2.0 and improved just about all my gripes (although, i can't attest for performance since it is not released on windows mobile yet).

so hurry up yahoo! and finish go 3.0 and maybe even add a little live love in there too!