my litl adventures

I caught this tweet about cloud computing, recently. Thought I’d share the link on the blog.

RT @businesswiki The pros and cons of cloud computing http://bit.ly/65Tn6P #learning

litl was a MITX 2010 award finalists for the event that just happened that other week.

I was a little unclear on why they were listed under devices and not cloud category and/or not both.

There’s a Cloud Computing Conference/Expo Nov 1-4, 2010 in Santa Clara. It’s put on by sys-con. I will say no more … other than do your homework before registering for this event.

Google OS: the end of the hard drive? article. Nice read.

Looks like the Xconomy Clound3 event just sold out for Thursday, December 10, 2009 from 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM (ET).

litl will be there, and even have some demos of their webbook and new platform.

Here’s more info:

In barely two years, cloud computing has transformed itself from a nebulous newcomer into a fixture of the IT landscape that no high-tech company, investor, or entrepreneur can afford to ignore. At the same time, cloud options—from Software as a Service to Platform as a Service to Infrastructure as a Service, and from private clouds to public clouds to hybrid clouds—have grown exponentially.

This Xconomy forum will forecast cloud computing’s impact on the IT climate for startups, small and medium-sized businesses, large enterprises, and consumers. What new services and features are bursting from the cloud? What new businesses and applications are they enabling? How can entrepreneurs and established businesses best take advantage of the cloud? Speakers will include executives and leading technologists from Boston’s biggest players in cloud computing as well as representatives from the sector’s new wave of startups and the investors behind them. Participants will network with the area’s smartest experts, and will leave with a firmer grasp of the new computing-infrastructure options available to them as consumers and businesspeople.

SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY

Xconomy has forged a unique partnership with CloudCamp to make December 10 an incredible day of cloud computing. Our morning forum will be followed in the afternoon by a more technical examination of could computing: an unconference where early adopters—including end users, IT professionals, and vendors of cloud computing technologies—exchange ideas for the advancement of cloud computing.CloudCamp requires separate registration here: http://www.cloudcamp.com/boston

In between Cloud3 and CloudCamp, Xconomy and Microsoft will host a networking lunch open to both sessions’ attendees.

CLOUD3 DETAILS

Keynote Speakers:
Hasan Alkhatib, Senior Architect, Windows Azure Team, Microsoft
Mike Feinberg, Senior Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure Group, EMC Corporation
Tom Leighton, Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Akamai
Featured speakers and participants include:
Greg Arnette, CTO, Sonian
David Cancel, CEO, Performable
John Chuang, Founder & CEO, Litl
Joe Chung, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Allurent
John Considine, Founder & CTO, Cloudswitch
Jim Cuff, Vice President, Strategy, Iron Mountain Digital
Philip Jacob, Founder and CEO, Stylefeeder
Nitin Kapoor, Vice President of Engineering, OpenMile
John Landry, Founder, Lead Dog Ventures
Eric Nakajima, Senior Policy Advisor, Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development
Anand Rajaram, Chief Product Officer, Pixily
Sim Simeonov, Founder and CEO, FastIgnite
Matt Stevens, Chief Technology Officer, Apparent Networks
Devdutt Yellurkar, Partner, Charles River Ventures

Full Agenda here

Schedule:
Registration: 7:45 am – 8:30 am
Program: 8:30 am – 12:30 pm
Joint networking lunch with CloudCamp attendees: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Registration information:
Tickets are transferable but not refundable.
To inquire about press registration, e-mail events@xconomy.com.

litl posted about the launch of their new Facebook channel that launched recently (it’s a Flash based experience, BTW). The idea is pretty innovative compared to many of the other flat, uninteresting, Facebook experiences out there.

litl channels: facebook status from litl on Vimeo.

One of the litl team members, Kathryn Rotondo has shared some information about how Flash is utilized to drive the Flash side of the user experience on the first litl device, in a post called “how litl and actionscript became BFFs”.

Apparently, litl supports *both* Flash Lite, as well as Flash Player 10. However, it depends on the mode you place the litl in. Flash Lite is used for channel content when in “easel mode”. When a user is surfing around in webbook mode, the browser supports Flash Player 10 for Flash content consumption on the web.

In regards to Flash Lite capabilities, looks like Calsoft created a custom Flash Lite 3.x implementation for the device. It supports hardware video acceleration, and bitmap caching support. Other the end spectrum, I’m hearing reports from inside litl, that the Flash Player 10 supports microphone, camera, and plays video very well.

The device can do H.264, fullscreen on a 1280 px x 800 px screen with a 178 degree viewing angle. Pretty impressive. Plus, the display is LED backlit. I can tell you first hand that the gorgeous display is probably one of the top reasons why this device is priced so high … but once you see it in action, you’ll notice immediately the quality over lesser netbooks on market (or at least the ones I’ve seen shipping in US).

In regards to Flash Lite channel content development there are three views (card, full, and channel views). From what I recall cards are individual apps (like on the Palm Pre), “full” is where the app is fullscreen mode, and “channel view” is a user interface where all your channels appear and can be selected.

“we’ve written a straightforward protocol to connect the channel with the device over an XML socket.

the channel can make requests (to initialize its title bar or set properties) and receive events (such as notice that the user has flipped the device into easel mode, followed by go-button and scroll-wheel actions).

we’re wrapping up all this goodness into an SDK to open up the fun, innovative, and rewarding world of channel development to the actionscript community. third-party developers, stay tuned!”

Looking forward to developing for this Flash enabled device.

Exclusive Video of the Litl Webbook

litl has posted a video explaining some of the evolution of their device.

litl webbook evolution from litl on Vimeo.

litl has put an unboxing video online.

litl unboxing from litl on Vimeo.

I should be getting mine any day now.