My Internet Notebook

Dell released to the world its internet notebook on Sep. 4th, a 2.2 pound lightweight laptop pc with Intel Atom chip, and embedded cellular broadband. People immediately started comparing it to the very popular Asus Eee PC, and Acer Aspire 900 etc.

What people are missing is Mini 9’s potential challenge to the Amazon Kindle. Make no mistake, Amazon Kindle is great device, it has built-in wireless to allow you to download (buy) books directly from Amazon and it costs $359 a piece. With the Dell Mini 9, you get a real computer that you can not only read e-books, but also play games, browse the internet etc, for $349 or $449 only. If you activate the embedded cellular broadband, you could potentially knock down the price by $200 or more in the form of carrier subsidy. I would say the Mini 9 would appeal to more consumers than the Amazon Kindle. Don’t you think?

Asus Eee PC kind of started this whole sub-notebook segment. They are still the king of the UMPC world. But with Dell’s Mini 9 package and wider availablility of 3G/4G broadband network, Dell is going to push this whole ‘miniaturization’ and ‘mobilization’ to the new level.

I just have to post some quote from an Obama’s speech here:

“…I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.”

What do you think?

In a NY Times article: Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web – New York Times, John Markoff features Adobe’s fisrt official release of AIR, a runtime that allows online applications (i.e. browser based applications) to be taken offline (i.e. disconnected desktop application).

This is clearly going to have big implications for the existing software developers and companies because all existing applications have to be re-written to take advantage of the capability of AIR. But the advantage is that potentially your applications could also work on many types of devices (such as advanced mobile phone) if and when Adobe ports their AIR runtime to these mobile platforms.

As with all things software, the concept is clearly very good. But there will be a number of players that all want to be the de-facto standard bearer for the new paradigm. So Adobe is not alone in this space.

Small players like OpenLazlo and Xcerion are creating “Web-top” or “Web operating systems” intended to move applications and data off the PC desktop and into the Internet through the Web browser.

Mozilla has created a system known as Prism. Sun Microsystems introduced JavaFX. Google is testing a system called Gears. Microsoft is pushing its alternative to Flash, called Silverlight.

If you are looking for Apple iTouch Http User Agent String, here it is for your convenience:

“Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3B48b Safari/419.3”

If you are looking for Apple iPhone Http User Agent String, here it is for your convenience:

“Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3”

If you are just looking for Apple desktop Safari Http User Agent String, here you go:

“Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/ZZ Safari/YY”

“Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/ZZ Safari/YY”

“Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/ZZ Safari/YY”

I rarely post on political issues on this blog. But Mrs. Hillary Clinton’s recent win in New Hampshire primary warrants some very interesting mentioning. Not because of this win’s importance one way or the other, but because of how she attributed her success and I quote:

"over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process, I found my own voice. I felt like we all spoke from our hearts, and I am so gratified that you responded."

This can’t be more true in software business as well. If you, whether you are CEO, CTO, product marketing or product manager, listen to your customers and markets, you will eventually win.