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.

Spring Design Opens Alex eReader Store

The Alex eReader, which made its world debut at Lunch at Piero’s during CES 2010, is closer to entering the market.  Spring Design has opened the web shop for pre-orders of the Alex, priced at $399.  The Alex is Android-based and runs a number of Android apps right out of the box.  You can annotate, highlight, even make voice notes to augment what you are reading.  You can browse, enjoy multimedia, use Gmail on the LCD screen.  Two surprisingly loud speakers deliver great sound or you can listen on the headset provided with the Alex. 

EPD and LCD screens can work together through the Duet Navigator extending the LCD display up into the larger EPD screen that lets you read anything, even in bright sunlight.  The handy LCD screen also lets you look up things easily as you read a book on the EPD screen.  But here’s the real magic: Imagine if books came with built-in hyperlinks?  Spring Design suggests that publishing is going through a major change and has designed LinkNotes into the Alex that lets users or publishers embed links into text.  Textbooks will never be the same again, nor as bulky.  The Alex is 4.7 x 8.9″ weighs only 11 ounces and is less than a half inch thick.  And imagine if you could not only read about that chemistry experiment but actually watch it on the LCD screen either playing off the Web or stored on the microSD card for up to 32GB of extra storage.

A slight delay in opening its store was attributed to web site glitches, but now everything appears to be running fine.   By the time the Alex ships in mid April, there will be resellers and partners around the world.  Spring Design has already developed the Alex in several foreign languages.

Spring Design plans to expand its developer community and provide plenty of content to read from various partners that will be announced later. 

It’s tinkertoys for musicians and aspiring musicians. Create your own songs using pre-built mixes and personalize tracks with special effects on your iPhone. Record it, export it, or take it with you to hear time and time again. Aaron Higgins showed reporters at Lunch at Piero’s during CES 2010  just how easy it is to bend, blend and publish your own music mixes.

LifeLock provided this chilling look at just how many ways one’s identity can be stolen. The company has a strong focus on educating consumers and working with law enforcement and elected officials to better understand the increasing threats of identity theft.   In this interview with Betty Chan-Bauza shot at the Lunch at Piero’s innovator and media event during CES 2010,  LifeLock showed off its proactive tools and programs to protect consumers from identity theft.

Seth Socolow, head of the SF App Studio shows Mobile Music Messenger, an easy app that lets you share your music recommendations with friends and easily buy the piece of music.  SF App studio was joined by five App developers at the special App section of the Lunch at Piero’s innovator and media event during CES, just one way that the company helps developers market their mobile applications, taking charge of PR, events, social media and even direct contact with enthusiasts.

The award-winning Alex eReader promises a new era of richer digital publications, according to Dr. Priscilla Lu, CEO of Spring Design.   The dual-screen, Android-based Alex eReader is making headlines as Spring Design promises new opportunities for authors and publishers with “Link Editions”:  books that already have links to multimedia resources built into them.  Spring Design showed the Alex eReader to reporters from around the world and announced relationships with Borders and Google at the Lunch at Piero’s innovator and media event January 7 and 8 during CES 2010.

D-Link showcased its CEA Innovation Awards winners including the Boxee Box, the Pebble media players, the D-Link Home Monitoring Starter Kit and the D-Link Home Energy Starter Kit.  Also at the Lunch at Piero’s innovator and media event during CES 2010: D-Link showed the industry’s first 600Mbps home wireless access point with four data streams, a very fast 450Mbps touch screen and a portable N pocket router that lets users set up a hotspot anywhere, and the D-Link 3G Door phone, which acts like a standard doorbell, but is anything but ordinary.

Knocking Live impressed us with their direct smartphone to smartphone visual communication app. Truly the fastest and most intriguing way to share pics, and it is truly live.  This technology turns a storage network into a simple relay, making it possible to instantly receive pics on their Apple iPhones and even iPod Touch.  Watch this interview shot at the Lunch at Piero’s media and innovator event during CES 2010.

If you like shiny bright objects in your performance PC, look no further as Jim Jardine, senior product manager at Crucial.com gave reporters a hands-on look at the latest bling for your RAM at the Lunch at Piero’s media and innovator event durig CES.  In red, green or blue or a combination of the three, a twinkling module indicates the performance of the RAM in your PC.   The company also announced  the latest addition to the Crucual SSD product families – the fasted SSD in the world available in February, a fitting followup to last year’s Shake-O-Matic demonstration, which proved that you can play perfect HD video from a Crucial SSD drive undergoing the tortures of a paint shaker.