Lunch@ Events – Trade Show Press and Innovator Events

It's a netbook with a heart

The ferociously creative Shanzai developers in China are at it again and this time they’ve outcuted themselves.

Courtesy of Shanzai.com, this photo shows an adorable, yet functional handbag that is actually a netbook complete with an X86 processor (either a VIA C7 or Intel Atom). 

As you know, VIA is a yearly sponsor of Lunch at Piero’s and every year surprises us with the tiny yet highly functional devices using their VIA X86 processor or ARM processors from the company’s WonderMedia division.

This rhinestone encrusted handbag cum netbook houses a screen, keyboard,  1Gb of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and offers WiFi and Ethernet connectivity.  Add a little spending money, a credit card and a driver’s license sparingly, because it does not look like there’s much room for bulk inside. 

The price is $300.  Over the top you might say, but I’ll be there’s a pair of Jimmy Choos or Stuart Weizmans that will match this bag perfectly and make its price seem like pocket change in comparison.

Put this 3M cleaning cloth in your trade show kit bag.

I wish I had a camera every time I saw someone at a trade show rubbing their mobile phone aross their tummies or shirt sleeve, inspecting it, fogging it with a “ha!” and doing the tummy rub again. But sadly, shirts, sweaters, and especially tissues and paper towels not only do a lousy job of cleaning electronics, they can actually scratch them.

So here’s my recommendation for our Lunch at Piero’s sponsors, and in fact for anyone tasked with keeping electronics bright and sparkly at trade shows: 3M microfiber cloths. I just discovered these and they’re fabulous. Along with the bubble wrap, the gaffer’s tape, the packing tape and all of the other things we always bring to trade shows (I suddenly realize are all made by 3M) we now are adding these magical cleaning cloths. And they’re washable and reuseable. Continue Reading »

Travelers are using electronics more and more but some devices like smart phones carry a hefty price when you start using data overseas.  Enter the WikiReader from Openmoko showcased at Lunch at Piero’s in January.  It is a small, elegant palm-sized device that does one thing extraordinarily well: deliver more than 3 million articles of the Wikipedia along with hyperlinks.   
Travel publications are writing about the WikiReader as summer approaches and most recently a delightful site, http://www.MyItchyTravelFeet.com hosted a contest where readers told why and where they most would like to use the WikiReader.  Read for yourself here:  http://myitchytravelfeet.com/2010/05/20/wikireader-review/