Boston Power didn’t give us much detail, but used the occasion of DEMO to introduce its new “Sonata” proprietary lithium-ion technology. The claim is that it’s the only battery to actually match the lifespan of a notebook computer, solving “today’s battery fade problem and delivering a 50% faster recharge time.” 
And more is on the way, said the CEO and founder of the company, Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud (who, incidentally, went on stage at last night’s jam session to sing!) “I’ve devoted my life to batteries,” she said, “and we’re committed to delivering a battery you can rely on.” Do I hear a thunderous roar out there? John Wozniak of HP’s PC division, who says his group “ships a ton of battery packs,” gave an extremely complimentary introduction of this presenter, and said his firm is closely partnering with Boston Power. The firm raised an $8 million Series A round last year from Venrock and Gabriel Venture Partners. Once more, the promise for improving our road-warrior lives. Can’t come fast enough for me!
Category: Electronics/CE (Page 5 of 8)
Think ubiquitous interoperability across all your devices will happen only when pigs fly? Well, DARTdevices showed us just now that pigs can do that! 
We’re talking intelligence that lets any device discover, access, and share apps with any other DART-enabled device. No installing software or drivers. This is a company with funding from Motorola Ventures that’s all about virtualizing devices. Now to convince the device OEMs to adopt the technology, and our lives are bound to get simpler….
As a final wrapup of my experience last week in networking of the face-to-face kind — in and around the largest trade show in the country, CES — I thought I’d do what I often do after these things: list the people I met. Most of the these were due to BlogHaus, which is the main reason I made the trip, and where I spent most of my time Sunday through Wednesday noon. 
I also attended an event called Storage Visions over the weekend, a press event called Showstoppers on Monday evening, and a party on Tuesday evening sponsored by Blog Business Summit. (See all my previous BlogHaus and CES posts. And my Flickr set, such as it is, you can find here. My friend Doc Searls’ set is sooo much better, and I actually show up in one of his shots. Also see Thomas Hawk’s great photo-documentary of the event on his very own photo-sharing site, Zooomr — and I’d encourage you to sign up for the service.)
Anyway, back to all the people I met — at least the ones I remember (apologies to those for whom I didn’t get a card to remind me!):
• From PodTech:
– John Furrier
– Linda Furrier
– Robert Scoble
– Maryam Scoble
– Valerie Cunningham
– Jeremiah Owyang
– Chris Coulter
• From Seagate:
– Bill Watkins, CEO
– Julie Still
– Brian Ziel
– Woody Monroy
And these others, in no particular order:
– Gabe Rivera, Founder, Techmeme
– Andru Edwards, CEO, GearLive
– Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger, Dell
– Thomas Hawk, Founder, Zooomr
– James Courtney, Skype Journal
– David Berkowitz, 360i.com
– Nicholas Butterworth, Diversion Media & Travelistic
– Oluf Nissen, HP and GeekTieGuy.com
– Betsy Weber, evangelist, TechSmith
– Paul Loeffler, PR, Palm
– Mark Plungy, PR, Yahoo!
– Mike Terpin, CEO, Terpin Communications
– Jennifer Fader, Terpin Communications
– Teresa Valdez Klein, Blog Business Summit
– Sam Abadir, CEO, Broadclip
– Al Carlton, Coolest-Gadgets.com
– Sal Cangeloso, XYZcomputing.com
– Sarah Browne, TheDailyBee blog
– Sandira Calviac, TechAgnostic.com blog
– Rick Calvert, CEO, BlogWorldExpo.com
– Kristian Rauhala, CEO, H2Oaudio
– Dave Botherway, President, Melbourne PC User Group
– Susan Fitzpatrick, CEO, Dateline Media
– Ron Nissen, investor, Bluebox Devices (Melbourne)
– Robert Yearsley, CEO, Bluebox Devices
– Benno Rice, Chief Architect, Bluebox Devices
– Angus Robinson, CEO, AEEMA (Australia)
– Barbara Adams, Australian Trade Commission
– Annette Ahern, US Consulate, Melbourne
At the Storage Visions event:
– Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal
– Mark Walker, Seagate
– John Freeman, Strategic Marketing Decisions
– Tom Coughlin, producer of the event
(whom I already knew)
– Jim Porter, Disk/Trend (ditto)
Others I also knew but ran into again:
– Doc Searls
– Buzz Bruggeman
– Keith Shaw, NetworkWorld and DEMO
– also met Jason Meserve of NetworkWorld
Whew! I met a lot of great people on this trip. And I look forward to staying in touch with them. I know I’ll be seeing some again very soon at the DEMO ’07 event — for example, PodTech, the developers of the wonderful BlogHaus concept! What a super idea they had, and what a great client they have in Seagate who agreed to be lead sponsor. It was indeed a marketing and PR coup for them! Thanks again to both organizations.
Well, I guess it’s one more post from the airport. Cisco just sued Apple over the iPhone name, according to this Wall Street Journal alert that just hit my in-box here in the sports bar:
TECHNOLOGY ALERT from The Wall Street Journal — Jan. 10, 2007 — Cisco sued Apple for trademark infringement over the “iPhone” name Apple chose for its new cellphone, unveiled yesterday. Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000, and had been in talks with Apple over rights to the name.
“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” said Mark Chandler, Cisco’s general counsel. “There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.”
I was just talking about this situation with some guys last night at the Blog Business Summit party. I said Podtech had reported a source told them Apple had reached some sort of licensing agreement with Cisco for the name. Guess they were wrong!
I said I still didn’t understand why Cisco did a PR announcement of their iPhone line a few weeks ago, if they were in fact negotiating with Apple to let them have the name. One guy I was talking with last night said the December announcement was obviously them posturing to pressure Apple in paying more for the name — that is, to actually raise a higher awareness of the name being associated with Cisco, in an attempt to hold up Apple for more bucks. I said back in late December that I thought it was a really lame, kind of rushed-looking marketing intro. But, at that moment last night, I thought that guy might be onto something. He said they probably reached some 11th-hour agreement with Jobs since then for Apple to buy the rights to the name. But then I still wondered how Cisco would retract, or correct, that recent introduction of their iPhone product line…
Alas, this guy’s conjecture was wrong, too! The parties obviously didn’t reach any agreement at all. And it just amazes me that His Royal Steveness would have the cajones to go on stage yesterday and tout this name as his own! But, then, I guess I shouldn’t be. He’s basically just saying, “Screw you guys, then — sue me.” Obviously, he knows the market wants Apple to have this name, feels it’s theirs, and somehow this overwhelming force will overcome all.
This will get interesting, for sure. Unfortunately, we may never know how much he pays Cisco to give up the name. But I am definitely NOT betting against Jobs prevailing here.
Tags: BlogHaus, PodTech, CES, CES 2007, Apple, Steve Jobs, Cisco, iPhone
This will be my final post from the BlogHaus, at about 11:00 am on Wednesday. It’s been great. Now sitting here with Tom Hawk of Zooomr and Andru Edwards of Gear Live and some of his people, who are all busy publishing. (Tom told me he won’t make his 1000 photo upload goal, but he’s halfway there. He only uploads really, really nice pix, though. Somebody else just said there are 30,000 photos now up in Flicker tagged CES 2007. Yikes! I did a bunch myself, mostly of the BlogHaus.)
Had a great time last night at the Blogger Business Summit party — met a lot of interesting folks. Then back to the BlogHaus, which was going at full capacity, Robert Scoble holding court in one corner, pizza in another. And lots in between. One new person I met was a guy who’s launching the first trade show for the the blog world….called, guess what? BlogWorld! Sounds like a serious endeavor, from a guy who’s run lots of successful shows — Rick Calvert is his name. It’s scheduled for November — in Vegas! Don’t know if there’s a site up yet, but looks like it’ll be at www.BlogWorldExpo.com.
Anyway, I’m going off to some other business soon here, then heading for the airport about 3:00. Just picked up all my email, and learned I missed the cut for a lunch with Guy Kawasaki in Minneapolis on the 19th, before his big talk at the U of MN. Apparently there were only 7 slots at the table, and my friend Gary Smaby tried to get me on the list, but too many muckety-mucks already, I guess… 🙂 [Thanks for trying, anyway, Gary.] But I’ll sure be there for the talk following, which is already sold out.
Guy should be very happy the temps are finally dropping in Minnesota (lows below zero this weekend, I hear) — because, as you may recall, what got him to our state in January was the National Pond Hockey Championships, which are held on one of our city lakes. And people were getting real nervous they wouldn’t have ice, with our temps hovering around 40 for so long. Sounds like the ice will be real hard by the time Guy gets here! Anyway, looking forward to seeing Guy again, hearing his talk, and seeing him play hockey.
Cheers from Vegas! It was a good trip…
Tags: BlogHaus, PodTech, Zooomr, Flickr, Gear Live Media, Guy Kawasaki, Gary Smaby, pond hockey
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