He Likes It! Hey Walt!

I've been championing Intel's newest laptop segment of ultra-thin laptops. They are based on Intel's Ultra Low Voltage processors (which much of the press has unfortunately been referring to as CULV). These processors enable laptops with sleek, thin designs balanced with performance, and long battery life. Walt Mossberg, the influential technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal just published a review of three such systems in his column. I helped explain the technology and branding to Walt, but we were quite unsure if we were going to receive favorable press or a Walt whipping. Fortunately, the coverage was quite good. Here are some snippets:

Price Is Heavier, but These Laptops Are Very Sleek

November 12, 2009

By Walt Mossberg

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529812650596606.html?mod=djemptech

"slim portables " "sleekness and long battery life" "bright 13-inch screens, power-sipping Intel processors and Windows 7 Home Premium" "I found that all three were capable, easy-to-carry laptops. In my tests, each easily handled common consumer tasks at acceptable speeds. The three weighed between 3.5 and 4.2 pounds. All were about an inch thick, or a bit less, at their thinnest points." "In normal use, with power-saving turned on, the Toshiba and HP could easily last for a full work day of typical activities" "a sleek, glossy machine " "These thin, light, machines perform adequately and can last a long time unplugged."

For anyone wondering, the Title of this blog posting is a reference to the old Life Cereal commercial - He likes it! Hey Mikey!

At least I got the last word....

As I blogged previously, my team launched the new segment of Ultra thin laptops at Computex in June. Ultra thin laptops offer laptop-class performance, sleek design, and longer battery life when compared to standard laptops. They have gotten a lot of good press, and I gave an interview to Ryan Kim of the San Francisco Chronicle. He captured a lot of the information we discussed, and the story is good. However, I only got attribution for the last thing I said in the interview, though it was the last thing in the article as well.

Go here for the full story.

The Future is Ultra-Thin

Last year my team launched Intel's Centrino 2 Processor Technology for laptops (see post below). It was great to drive the technology worthy of the first brand refresh since Centrino was launched in 2003. This year I had the opportunity to follow up one hit with possibly an even bigger one. At Computex this week (June 2, 2009), we launched a new CPU and chipset to enable 'Ultra-Thin Laptops'. You may have read in the press about Intel's 'CULV chips'. CULV stands for Consumer Ultra Low Voltage - and my one regret is that what was intended as an internal descriptor became somewhat of the external descriptor in the press, which was never the intent.

Okay - but what is it? Well CPUs have certain thermal limits - how hot they can get. They are defined by their TDP, or Thermal Design Power. Most laptops have a 35W TDP CPU. What makes Intel's ULV processors so literally cool, is that they have a TDP of 10W. Which means it takes less effort to cool them, meaning less fans/cooling required. The result is the ability for OEMs to design thinner laptops and laptops with longer battery life. A great example of what is possible is the Acer Timeline. PC Magazine gave it this great review, highlighting its amazing 8 hours of batter life. And what's also incredible about it is the price. You can buy the larger 15.6" screen version at Walmart for only $598 with a Pentium processor.

You can learn more about ultra-thin laptops and Intel switchable graphics from me at Intel's web site. Or get the official story here. The buzz is starting to build for these laptops and will likely be the hottest seller for the holidays. This has Intel employees more excited than anything in recent memory. And we're a hard bunch to get excited :).

Twitter - A Business Plan. What a Good Idea!

I read with some amazement, but not surprise, about the twitter about Twitter from the Wall Street Journal's allthingsD conference. It turns out that though Biz Stone and Evan Williams may have over 30 million unique visitors, they have no business plan. That's right. No idea how they are going to make money. The Wall Street Journal calls out that Twitter is "facing pressure to prove it has staying power, as a good number of users lose interest in the service after trying it for a while". The WSJ also notes that "after an hour on the D stage no clear business plan emerged". One idea offered by Evan Williams was charging commercial users of Twitter to verify their Twitter accounts so, say Dunkin' Donuts could pay to ensure fans don't get messages from impostors. Really! Charge companies to make sure their brand doesn't get screwed up. You'd think that would be a given. I can imagine the conversation -"I'm sorry Mr. Immelt that people are getting fake messages from General Eclectic, but you didn't pay your bill this month".

Now I've come to accept that businesses don't have to make money in their early growth stage, particularly internet companies trying to get eyeballs. But I have a harder time imagining that even the VCs didn't force the guys to think through why they existed, what they wanted to achieve with their business, and how they were going to monetize. I have an idea. How about charging anyone to tweet when they have a certain number of followers. It can be a sliding scale. You have 500 followers? Pay $50 a month. 5000 followers? Pay $1,000 a month. Or some other pay scale. The point is that if you've got followers, you are establishing a brand for yourself, and that's probably your goal. And just like in any other medium, it costs money to build a brand.

That will be $1,000 for my advice, Twister. I mean Twitter. You should have payed your bill. :)

Blackberry App 'World'?

I recently downloaded and started using Blackberry's ironically named App 'World'. Now the world is a big place, and I expect a lot of great applications - which is a high bar given the existence of apps on the itunes store. 'Amazon' is a good name for Amazon.com, because it implies its a very big place, like the real Amazon. And it lives up to that name. That having been said, it's a pretty decent app for searching and downloading apps directly to the blackberry.

However, my problem is simple. Why wouldn't RIM make a compelling web site to accompany the Blackberry app? Searching on the Blackberry is not that convenient. I'd much prefer that I had a website that I could go to and easily search and find applications, as well as what other users had to say about the apps. The itunes store enables this on the web. If you want to compete with the best, at least copy their best features. My Blackberry Bold is a great device - great audio, great video capabilities, although the camera is disappointing. It can't be everything that an iphone is, but an iphone can't be everything that a blackberry is. If RIM wants to be able to compete with an iphone, they really have to nail the applications. They need lots of them, and cheap. But they also need world class tools to access them. Kirk out.

Vudu Labs - Now this getting interesting

I've had a Vudu box for some time now, and have increasingly used it for on demand movies. Usually to entertain my kids, but often actually for me. I like the spontaneity of it, and the quality is good.

Recently, Vudu added 'Vudu Labs'. Its a separate environment from the movie side of things that offers access to YouTube, so-called 'On Demand' TV, Flickr, Picassa, some simple games, and most recently Pandora internet radio. In general I am very pleased with the addition of Vudu Labs. It gives me another reason to switch over to Vudu, which will invariably result in me checking out what's new in the movie choices. All of these apps have varying levels of appeal. The photo sites are only OK because I can only see photos that I've made public, which I don't want to do. The YouTube is interesting if you have the time or inclination to surf without a keyboard, which can be painful. On Demand is many podcasts in different categories. Some of the content I do enjoy and will sit and watch. The addition of Pandora is appealing because I do really like the music selection, and now I can play it on my TV in my living room.

But here is one really simple thing that's missing, and it would be best if it was tied directly into Pandora - a nice screen saver. Vudu's larger goal should be to make my TV the center of my house. A movie box is nice but is only used occassionally. Vudu Labs extends the usage with my personal photos and music. Now give me something that I can just have hanging out in the background when I have friends over. It could be beautiful license free photos, or one of those fake 'fish tank' apps. Or at minimum, allow my own personal pictures to run in a loop (in the Flickr and Picassa apps, it just runs through your photos once) while my choice of music plays in the background. I'm sure there are many other ideas to keep Vudu 'always on', but making my HD TV an ever-changing piece of art is a good start.

CES 2009

I just flew back from CES, and boy are my arms tired. I couldn't pass up that joke, but actually its my feet that are tired. Despite reports of a slow CES, there was still plenty to see. Highlights for me included 3D TV, widgets on TVs, SSDs, and applications for Blackberry's.

In TVs, there certainly were big ones, like Panasonic's 150 inch TV - which was impressive, but of course not practical. More interesting in TVs was 3D. There was a cool demo from TCL in the RCA booth that showed 3D without special glasses. It was pretty impressive with animated content, but less so with non-animated. For the other vendors 3D demos, you had to wear some form of 3D glasses. This was the case in the Intel and Sony booths, and both were pretty impressive. The big wow was the 3D theater in the Panasonic booth, which among other things showed amazing 3D content from the China Olympics. This was just a technology demo though. I'm sure 3D is years away at best, but the prospect was certainly compelling.

I was also very interested in the various combinations of internet and TV. Yahoo's widgets are very interesting, though Samsung had their own version. Some of the vendors had the technology built into their TV. But unless this is all software upgradeable (and even if it is, you can't upgrade any hardware), I wouldn't want this since we know technology will move much faster than my next TV purchase. All of these were very interesting, and I think is clearly going to catch on in the near future. Though it will probably be in a Blu Ray box like LG has done (includes Netflix downloads - very impressive), or in some other dedicated box. I know everyone thinks people don't want another box, but its better than TV integration. And Sorry Sony. I don't want Blu Ray either - I've moved past buying physical disks when I can download my content.

SSDs were also very interesting. Yes, I work for Intel, and we recently launched SSDs. But these REALLY speed up application load time, consumer less power than SSDs and are less likely to break as there is no moving spindle. But if you don't trust me, check out Anandtech, or the many other amazing reviews (Anantech Review). SSDs were also in a couple of camcorders, including over in the Samsung and Canon booths. I've been waiting for a fully digital camcorder with good image quality for some time, and we may be there. But the SSDs are expensive. Then the next tricky question - once I have all of my movies in a digital format, and not tape, I'll want to back it up somewhere. But those movies will quickly fill up my standard hard disk at home - so can a local storage device (NAS) ever be simple/intuitive enough for mainstream users?

And finally, I spend sometime in the Blackberry booth, as I'm a Blackberry user. What they need is a huge number of free or cheap apps like the iPhone. They don't have that yet, but they did have about two dozen app providers in their booth. I liked Slacker Radio, and the Wall Street Journal app that pushes news to your phone. I was also interested in Flycast which offers 1200 stations for listening and watching. Its ad supported and free, but frankly I prefer that over mobiTV where I have to pay a subscription. Especially if they can figure out a way to make the ads targeted, so I don't mind listening to them.

That's it from CES. Thankfully it took me a few days to finish this blog entry, so my feet don't hurt anymore.