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.
Use a circular motion and the waffle patterned cloth totally removes fingerprints quickly and without leaving the kind of dust that tissues do.
You can find the 3M microfiber cloths inboth lens size and a larger size for electronics online on Amazon or at CVS and Wal-Mart.

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. 

ZAP is a pioneering electric car company in Santa Rosa, California.  You may have seen the company’s unusual Xebra cars or heard about their flashy ZAP Alias.  The company recently announced it is entering the fleet car business through a partnership with Jonway in China, who will manufacture all electric cars based on a very attractive EU-quality sedan design.   ZAP is also getting into the charging station business and has targeted countries around the world where the path to adoption of electric cars is being eagerly awaited.

ZAP’s  highly attractive three-wheeled vehicle, the Alias, will compete in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize.  Check out this video with Joseph Rajakaruna, engineer for ZAP.  Joseph combines his interest in science and art with his passion for cars and a rich background at Honda and Visteon Automotive, a division of Ford.  Now he is part of the ZAP electric vehicle team.   

We had the opportunity to see the Alias and the ZAP taxi in person this past weekend, and even myself at six feet tall could slip easily into the car.  We’ll keep you updated about the X-Prize competition.

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.