By Alice Hill
Longtime readers of this blog have noticed that Michael Santo has been doing the heavy lifting largely alone for at least two years now. Yikes! My goal was not to disappear, but I thought it was high time I popped back on and let RTN readers know what I have been up to.
Long story short, I have started up a new company called Bizmore.com. Bizmore is a new online subsidiary of 50+ year old CEO leadership organization Vistage International. What Vistagedoes offline with small groups of members sharing advice and best practices, Bizmore does online for everyone. If you have a business question, are looking for advice or just want a sounding board, Bizmore is a free resource that ties a lot of what was scattered online in one place. We have experts, we have great content, and we have a pretty slick Q&A engine to tie it all together.
We also have a long way to go on the product, but the content and Q&A are coming along nicely. We are going to release some new features soon that will help you promote your business in an easy way, and offer groups the ability to meet privately online. But every website takes time and fine tuning to really connect with users.
To my loyal readers who have gone some time now without any word from me, I hope you can understand. A start-up is grueling business, especially when it’s just you at the very beginning. But we are proud of what we’ve accomplished and I hope you’ll take a moment to visit the site and also let me now what we can do better.
Visit Bizmore.com Here
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
If you travel a lot like me, you know that the lighter something is the better. I don’t even bother carrying a data projector for that very reason, but it is a pain wrangling with various conference room projectors and hunting for the remote, or the video cable again and again. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something palm-sized that could get the job done and wow my audience in a nice cool gadget-y way? Enter the Pico projector.
The AAXA L1 is the next generation palmtop projector – boasting a new LCos (liquid crystal on silicon) technology that outclasses DLP in this form factor. What does that mean? 20-lumens 50-inch picture at 800 x 600 resolution and you don’t have to focus the imagine – the laser takes care of it for you.
Priced at $599 and going on sale February 12, 2010, the AAXA L1 has 160 MBs of internal storage, comes with a 2GB external USB memory stick for more storage goodness, boasts a 90 minute battery life, and will play video, audio and even word docs right from it’s own integrated media player. Translation: no more laptop if you dare.
Order Yours Here
Source: AAXA Technologies via Slashgear
Our Take: Not quite there yet in terms of brightness or battery life, but for wowing the crowds, this one will do the trick.
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
BEGIN ALICE RANT: Call me old fashioned, but I like my CEOs to be a little on the casual side – to a point. Bill G in his cords, Steve Jobs in his classic black mock turtleneck. But I draw the line at the ponytail. The ponytail to me signals leadership trouble, and sure enough Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz proved that today by Tweeting his resignation. As a Haiku, no less.
“Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more”
Blaming the financial meltdown for the woes at Sun is like blaming the Toyota recall on the Detroit collapse. Wonder what Larry Ellison – in his almost terrifyingly formal suits – thinks about this one?
Satellite mapping was interesting but not very useful until Google bought Keyhole and kicked things into high gear. Mapquest even dropped the satellite feature from its service due to lack of interest. (Whoops!)
Today Microsoft announced it was getting into the act with a new service called Microsoft Virtual Earth that offers satellite imagery at a much closer distance than Google’s current offering and at a new angle that can show more building detail. The image on your right is an example of what the platform can do (and I can almost see my office). Of course, Google is planning a major upgrade to Google Maps and Microsoft is also going to beef up the product, so I guess you can say we have a war on our hands, and than means cool features and low or no prices for us all. Hooray!
“Microsoft executives hope to differentiate their service through an exclusive contract with Pictometry, which uses cameras mounted on light aircraft to collect images from U.S. skies. The Pictometry images can show buildings at a 45-degree angle from the earth, allowing them to record details of the buildings such as store names, according to Stephen Lawler, the Microsoft general manager in charge of the Virtual Earth project. The Pictometry images are now mostly used by law enforcement and government organizations.
“A version of the service coming this summer is expected to include the ability to display the results of multiple searches on a map that’s overlaid on a satellite image. A search, for instance, for dry cleaners in a given area would display all the cleaners on the satellite image.”
Mr. Gates’s demonstration followed Google’s showing last week of a coming version of its satellite-mapping and local-search product called Google Earth. The service, an update to an existing service which has a price starting at $30 per year, uses data about the terrain of the earth obtained from space to simulate three-dimensional images of locations.
“Google has a separate free search and mapping search called Google Maps, which shares some of the same functions and does not currently carry advertising. The company has not yet disclosed pricing for its new Google Earth, which will require a user to run special software on his computer — leaving open the possibility that there might be a free version. Both services pinpoint local businesses on maps for users. At a demonstration last week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin conducted a virtual fly-through of the Grand Canyon, showing Superman-style views of swooping over the floor of the canyon. “I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon before,” Mr. Brin deadpanned. “Now I don’t need to go.”Source: Wall Street Journal Online
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
Twitter hype is so loud that I am sorry to add to it, but this one caught my eye. For those stuck in office cubicles unable to tweet undetected, and who want the ease of a desktop client like TweetDeck – comes Spreadtweet. Spreadtweet is a cleaver little app written by Elliott Kember that mimics an Excel spreadsheet but actually organizes live Tweets. Best of all, he support the most popular spreadsheet formats so you truly blend in. Office OSX, Office 2003, and Office 2007.
Check it Out Here
Source: Elliott Kember.com via Guy Kawasaki’s Twitter posting (of course)
By Martin Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Sometimes the real surprising things in life come in small packages. Particularly when they combine innovation, usefulness and amazing value for money.
I’m talking about the Norhtec Gecko Edubook. This is a netbook aimed at a specific market: the same market as the OLPC which aims to bring a laptop to every child in the developing world.
While that is a laudable goal and an immense market by itself, I think the market for this little beauty is even bigger!
I can feel a big review coming on which is sort of ridiculous given the low cost of this product but there is so much to tell about the Edubook which has gotten me excited all right, so hang on!
Read the review on DigitalReviews.net here.
By Martin Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
There’s no denying it: Rugged, wearable video cameras are cool.
As for rugged, wearable High Definition video cameras, well that’s just a whole new level of cool.
By Martin Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
I don’t know how much designers are paid these days but Jabra could not pay the guy who designed the Halo enough for having done a sterling job on this stereo Bluetooth headset! Seldom have I seen a product where form and function so harmoniously work together to present a very pleasing product.
Excitement builds as I unbox the Jabra Halo. With our previous experiences in this department we are a little bit anxious: how good is the quality of the sound and how well does its Bluetooth connection function beyond a couple of metres?
Let’s find out here!
