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HP Roadshow Coverage Report

by Andrew McCaskey
The HP Road Show

It’s hard to find a more fun and challenging environment than one day technical events in a venue that no one has seen before.

It’s also hard to find a major corporation that is willing to work with New Media and adapt on the fly to our somewhat quirky needs.

We have been exceptionally lucky on both counts. On March 11, 2010, SDRNews mobilized Andy and Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine, with another backpack studio operation to provide basic coverage of an event for Hewlett Packard, through IVY Worldwide.

We has a great location, and, after some DNS server issues, were able to get on an external (outside the HP firewall) LAN connection, without relying upon the EVDO / Cradlepoint combination which as become such an essential part of our field kit in live coverage of events.

What we could not account for was instability at uStream.tv. During the first hours of the morning coverage, our viewer count was moving smoothly from start-up to over 200 viewers. We were confident that we would hit the 600 mark from the HP Tech Forum, and with the good luck to be a featured channel on the uStream.tv iPhone app.

The wheels began to come off around noon Pacific time, and we then began to see incredible delays and viewer counts in the low teens. The next step is to see what can be retrieved from the local copy, and get them uploaded to Blip.

The HP reaction ? Stuff happens – and the informality and support of the blogger/podcaster/social media makes a run of technical bad luck tolerable.

I’d wager there are few if any of our listeners or viewer’s who have not walked this same path. And it’s great that HP seems to agree.

We do have some great offline interviews, and as soon as we get them pushed to Blip.tv we will have them available. Session videos will follow.

I hope that you’ll get HP know that you appreciate their support by including #HTRS and #HPCI in retweets when we announce bitly links and in your participation in the HP Road Show Contest. We will be giving away a new HP notebook computer, the HP 2530p Elitebook. It is ultra-mobile powerful Windows 7 machine, with 250GB drive and MSRP of $1629.

The winner will be drawn from those who either attend the live stream or view recorded video for a limited period after the event and correctly identify codewords within five recorded sessions on their entry. More details to follow.

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

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HP Combined Infrastructure RoadShow Event

by Andrew McCaskey
All primed in Palo Alto – ready for coverage of the HP Combined Infrastructure Road Show tech day March 11 2010.

Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine on station – we tested the link from the venue tonight and it looks like we are go for real time streaming of the technical formum for HP channel partners and customers. We should begin at 9:00AM Pacific with both uStream.tv and embeds on both sites active.

Topics are of direct interest to IT managers and executives. Topics include virtualization, servers, storage, networkikng and thermal and environmental management.

As an added benefit, we will be giving away a new HP notebook computer, the HP 2530p elitebook. It is ultra-mobile powerful windows 7 machine, with 250GB drive and MSRP of $1629:

The winner will be drawn from those who either attend the live stream or view recorded video for a limited period after the event and correctly identify codewords within five recorded sessions on their entry.

Odds of winning may vary. See site for complete restrictions.

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

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Toyota’s Choice

by Andrew McCaskey
Toyota has only a few more weeks at most to come clean.

With the latest incident – a Prius run wild at 90 miles per hour and 911 called police in hot pursuit, it’s time for the public to put an end to this.

Toyota should be required, as a condition of doing business in the US, to provide full disclosure of all “black box” recorder data in its possession.

As should any manufacturer. It ALL should be public.

If the data shows accelerator on full, bits stuck with full braking and attempts to shut off the engine so be it.

The public and Toyota owners have a right to know. and shortly are going to be demanding that right.

Toyota needs to get out in front of this. People already suspect the worst, and if Toyota said “here’s the data” – and asked for data mining investigations by skilled people around the world, the jury would at least be informed of the best efforts to be transparent.

As it is, these juries are going to suspect a coverup. And that is the last thing Toyota needs.

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CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network

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Welcome to the iKey

by Andrew McCaskey
Patent lawyers at Apple are busy once again – this time with the idea that the iPhone might be very useful as a portable electronic key.

Some combination of numeric sequence, colors, icons time and accelerometer could create some pretty robust passwords. My only wonder is how that did not escape some earlier patent or some creative iPhone App developer.

It may be that Apple just has the deep pockets to keep the patent lawyers productive. In any event, it’s good to see that the marketing presentation hand wave finally has some revenue potential.

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QR Codes

by Andrew McCaskey
Since the late 1970’s PaperBytes, there have been attempts to get information inexpensively into computers through some sort of printed, machine readable system.

The QR codes might just now have a chance. Apparently the company Snappr had been actively promoting them, fell on hard times, and have been purchased at a fire-sale price by a company in Japan.

What a difference a year or two can makem ! The Japanese company already has a million customers for a 2D barcode app, and has the customer base and financial strength to make the jump to 3D QR code.

There’s got to be something in the works, if Google is using it as a Yelp competitor. It just had to arrive at the right time.

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Obsoleting the Desktop

by Andrew McCaskey
Google’s latest: The desktop will be obsolete in three years.

I think they’ve gone a little bit overboard, but the notion is correct. In fact, the desktop/tower combination has already left the building.

The shift to mobile devices, smartphone or iPad/Google Chrome netbook or whatever is tremendously important. Not only is the technology sexy, it has, for the moment – margins.

Mainline PC manufacturers have despised netbooks – and Apple simply refused to play the game. Both recognized that there was, simply, no money to be made and focused their development efforts on the laptop segment where there were still opportunities for attractive returns.

As long as the combination of app store ecosystem and desirable design/fashion apply, the mobile sector will have potential. Apple is just the best player, but HP and others are finding niche player successes in some arenas.

They do realize, however, that Google is right. The desktop is dead as far as profits are concerned.

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Skinput Demonstration

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FIguring out the iPad

by Andrew McCaskey
I think that I have finally figured out where the iPad fits in.

If you are looking for an indication of where e-readers are headed, take a look at two of the stories just mentioned. The WSJ iPad app, and the Freescale procesor that can drive e-readers below $99. As far as the WSJ (and NY Times and Wired and Fast Company and others) the iPad is the great white hope that their business model might survive. And that is going to keep them in place as the biggest fanboys of all time.

The $99 reader is going to suck the life out of monochrome readers like the Kindle and become, with Wifi distribution, the equivalent of the newsprint shopper and paperback. Actually at that price point it’s not too many paperbacks at all.That is going to firmly cement the category – but how can a device five times that price point survive ?

The answer is in use models for the iPad for two critical groups: Baby boomers and business travelers.

Home use – going to be a big hit but only in certain demographics. Big hit in more affluent households over 50 – ease of use, existing base of apps a “safe way” to share photos, participate in Facebook, etc. That’s why I expect some sort of webcam in the 2.0 version. And the comfort value of the iTunes and App Store ecosystem are there, in all the upscale packaging.

Business use – not so much. As entertaining and handy as iPhone apps are, they are useful because of their portability and always at hand availability. The iPad is certainly a new category, but it’s trapped between two that the business traveler will not give up – the iPhone’s portability and the laptop’s power, flexibility and keyboard. People will carry two, but not three, unless it is for the entertainment value.

Now – weight and bulk aside, we might be getting somewhere: The driver for the business segment will be the entertainment value – previously in the form of books and magazines, along with reference documents in instant-on form.

The iPad is going to have some slippage in dates when really available but it’s a solid double if not a home run.

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SDR News is a Daily (M-F) Technology Podcast with Tech News Highlights from Slashdot, Digg and Reddit

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Solar Storms are Real Threat

by Andrew McCaskey
The National Center for Atmospheric Research conducted an exercise recently on a Solar Storm scenario, a large sunspot event such as occured in 1921 and 1853. Such events are rare, but recurring.

The massive effect on satellite communications, GPS, weather satellites and similar facilities would pale beside the event’s effects on the power grid in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southerern Hemisphere would not fare much better, with the disruption of commerce, funds transfer, communications and trade.

The redundant designs that have been a part of good engineering for years are there for a good reason. In communications systems as well as earthquake resistant buildings.

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Ignite Talk Radio Controlled Model Aircraft

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Ignition Worldwide

by Andrew McCaskey
The series of events around the world this week should be noted by geeks and business people alike : The Ignite Conferences are one of the encouraging indicators of grass roots initiative, intelligence and opportunity.

The spontaneous organization of these events is encouraging news indeed. Five minutes, twenty slides – a format that assures the ignition of the imagination for the right combination of people, ideas and timing.

The combination of novelty, social interaction, structure, a ban on sales pitches, and high energy is putting them on the right track.

Connectivity drives them home. Check them out at http://igniteshow.com/events/

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Yahoo On the Ropes

by Andrew McCaskey
Sad to note that Yahoo is in decline – but not unexpected.

There was a book about twenty years ago called “Great Expectations”. The subject was demographics, and the fact that the Boomer generation did, in fact, have great expectations for itself and that sheer size would dictate that many of those expectations would come true.

The conclusion was that the “pig in a python” as that demographic moved through various stages of life was sure to have a marked effect on virtualy every aspect of society and economics.

Yahoo’s slow decline is yet another manifestation of that demographic’s shifting tastes. Facebook offers the way to painlessly reconnect, share photos and lifestories, and participate in a visual and graphic way.

Yahoo just couldn’t measure up, and the shifting tastes of a very large demographic and taking the majority and late majority segments of the marketplace with them. There are not yet enough younger users to take up the slack that find Yahoo’s portal approach interesting.

It’s not personal, it’s business.

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NASA Project M Proposal

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