SizeEasy – Great Tool For Tablet, Laptop & Gadget Reviews

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I came across a neat site this morning that does one thing, and does it well.  The whole concept of SizeEasyis that it lets you enter the physical dimensions of items, and then it generates various 2D and 3D images that compares how the various items size up to each other.

In the example here, I’ve compared several popular Tablets – The Toshiba M400, The Lenovo X60, and a Samsung Q1 UMPC – this example took less than 2 minutes to enter the data and generate.  You can see how easy it is to compare and contrast the various form factors, sure beats “The Q1 is 227.5×139.5×26.5mm”.

So if you write hardware reviews, check this site out, I think you and your readers will find it to be a great tool.

I sure wish I had known about this when I was struggling over sizes on my last digital camera purchase!

Joost Contest Winners!

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And the winners are….

Congratulations to blog commenters #7 and #13, Dolemite01 & Dochogan they were the randomly selected winners for this round of Joost Beta Invites.

Please check back often, I’ll be doing this again as soon as I have some more invites added to my account.

Enjoy!

Tick, Tock – Time running out for Joost Invite Contest

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Just ~9 hours left to get your name in the hat for a Joost Invite.  Simply leave a comment in this threadto be entered. No purchase necessary!

Winners will be determined at random, using the random integer generator at http://random.org/nform.html

 

Good Luck!!

Google is Coming to North Carolina

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Looks like I’ll have a new (extended) neighbor.  Google has confirmed todaythat they are building a data center in Lenoir,NC a small town of 17,000 in the Western part of North Carolina.

This will create 210 jobs, and they plan to spend 600MM to build the center in exchange for some hefty state and local incentives.

Welcome, Google.

The Venice Project / Joost – Invites Available

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I’ve been fortunate enough to be a closed beta tester for The Venice Project, now called Joostfor a little while now.  This is a new startup from the Skype guys, and threatens to revolutionize the way people view TV.  “IPTV” technology is something that seems to be getting more and more of my mindshare (and time lately).  I find it fascinating, and truly believe we are on the verge of a major disruption to broadcast and cable television.  Definitely a topic to keep your eye on.

I won’t get into a full review of Joost here, but you can find a pretty through introduction here

So, now the point of this post… I have two of their coveted invites available to the closed beta, and would like to hand them out.  I will do this ‘contest style’ by randomly selecting 2 winners from the commenter’s to this post.  Contest will close at 9PM ET (GMT -5) on Monday 1/22.   Good Luck!!

Alltel to Battle the iPhone Buzz with ‘CellTop’

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Today Alltel announced a new product called CellTop:

“An exclusive, patent-pending technology that offers customers an easier way to access, manage and organize a wide range of information already available on their Alltel Wireless phones. Celltop gives customers more control over their wireless experience through a unique and fully-customizable technology similar to the desktop on a personal computer”

Sounds like a great concept, and I’m all for ANYTHING that helps making a phone easier to navigate, but patent-pending?  This sounds an awful lot like Handmark products that have been around for years.  But it is nice to see carriers actually getting involved in the UX (user experience) field, and augmenting their products (sure beats crippling them, as some carries have chosen to do).

CellTop runs on the Qualcomm Brew platform, so it should be portable across multiple phones (and potentially carriers).  I wonder if any of the big guys will take notice of what a regional player like Alltel is up to?

More info and screenshots on CellTop can be found at http://www.mycelltop.com/

iPhone for Windows Mobile?

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Some clever (and fast) developers have put together an iPhone interface for Win Mobile 5 devices.

If I get some time, I may install it on my phone this weekend.

Download here

Happy New Year

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Chips, Soda and an iPod?

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I’ve been noticing more and more vending machines stuffed with electronics lately.  A few weeks ago I had a layover in Atlanta and my gate was directly across from an iPod vending machine.  I figured I’d do some seat of the pants research, and see how many people would plunk down $200-$400 into a vending machine, and how long it would take to feed in all those quarters 🙂 (they take credit cards).  I was also interested to see what would happen if an item got stuck on the way down – I’ve seen people go ballistic for a $.50 candy bar that was stuck – imagine a $400 iPod.

Unfortunately in the hour+ I was there, nobody bought anything (though I was doing emails and other things, so it is possible I could have missed someone).  Using very advanced algorithms, I extrapolated that $0 in 1 hour = $0 / day = $0/month 🙂 and that maybe the machines were ahead of their time just a bit.  I assumed they probably got a few vends a week, but were more of a marketing and branding tool than anything else…

Boy was I wrong…

I just saw an article that says the (exact) machine I was watching does $55,000 a month in revenue – whoa!!  ZoomSystems, the company that owns the machine has 300 of them, including machines inside Macy’s.  The article is pretty neat and talks about demographics of their customer (busy travelers), their return policy, and how well their machines are doing.  I wonder how many folks have bought iPods at the last minute before thy jumped on a long flight, only to find they are pretty useless until you load up some music?

What’s the most expensive thing you have ever bought from a vending machine?  Would you plunk down $350 to a machine for an iPod ?  How about $1000 for a shiny new UMPC??