SAN DIEGO--At DemoFall 09 here Tuesday morning, one theme quickly emerged: new applications for collaborative video meetings.
First, Hewlett-Packard introduced its Skyroom videoconferencing application for PCs. But in my opinion, the better answer is Fuze Box's Fuze Meeting. This is a nice application for the iPhone or BlackBerry that allows multiple users to conduct multimedia meetings via their mobile devices.
It's designed to make it possible to add participants easily and quickly from various social-networking services' friends lists--like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter--to a real-time meeting session.
Fuze Meeting allows rich-media videoconferencing on iPhones and BlackBerrys.
(Credit: Fuze Box)Like Skyroom, Fuze Meeting allows users to have high-definition meetings--on the iPhone, that requires having OS 3.0.
Once a meeting is initiated, users can share a wide range of media with each other, including PowerPoint presentations, business documents, 3D geospatial maps, photos, video, and more. In addition, any URLs used in a meeting can be posted, with one click, onto Facebook or Twitter for wide dissemination.
What's nice about Fuze Meeting is that it seems to provide a simple way to get multiple people together, regardless of where they are, and have a quick meeting where they can all share many different kinds of content. To be sure, this is not likely to be a company's only way to have online meetings for remote employees, but given its ease of use and the fact that it allows the sharing of rich media across popular mobile devices, it seems like something that a lot of people may use.
It's also got a major advantage over HP's Skyroom, which is limited to being used behind a single corporate firewall. I liked Skyroom's technology--though it seemed to have many similarities to Apple's long-available iChat AV software--in particular because it offered the ability to share rich media, including real-time video.
But Skyroom's behind-the-firewall limitations seem unnecessary, and Fuze Meeting proves it.
This post was updated with correct information about requirements for Fuze Meeting on the iPhone.
Among the highlights of Road Trip 2009 was getting to be on hand for new cadet in-processing at the Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)After more than five weeks and 5,765 miles of driving through Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and very, very small parts of Arizona and Nevada, Road Trip 2009 is over.
This was the fourth year I've done this project, and I've now covered a fourth major region of the United States. In 2006, it was the Pacific Northwest; in 2007, the Southwest; in 2008, the deep South; and this year, it was the Rocky Mountain region. All told, my CNET Road Trips have taken me through 21 states and have covered 18,618 miles. And while there are 29 states I haven't visited yet (on Road Trip, at least), I feel like the projects have allowed me to see a great deal of our amazing country, including many of the back roads that most people don't get to see. And that is quite a privilege.
For me, there were many highlights this year. Any list of those (not exhaustive, of course, as that would be impossible in a story like this) would include being on hand for new cadet in-processing at the Air Force Academy; getting a chance to visit and explore the infrastructure of the underground fortress, Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station; visiting a group of Utah canyons and national parks I've been wanting to see for years; trekking to the great Utah Earthworks, the late Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and his wife Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels; getting to be the first reporter to see the completed solid rocket booster designed for future missions to the moon--and maybe Mars; walking the volcanic wonderland that is Craters of the Moon; driving through Montana's incomparable Glacier National Park; seeing the incredible downsides of decades of hard-core mining in Butte, Mont.; visiting a former Wyoming coal mine that has been reclaimed and turned into a huge wind farm; and, of course, fulfilling a years-long mission to explore the hot springs of Idaho.
The trip began, and ended, in Denver. But by the end, that felt like pure coincidence, especially as I returned to the Mile High City from a totally different direction than I had left it. Ultimately, though, I have to seriously tip my hat to Colorado's Rocky Mountain region. Coming from California, I always felt that the Sierra Nevada mountains were as good as it gets--in North America, at least. Now, I'm thinking I may have to reevaluate.
The technology
As always, Road Trip is also a chance for me to try out some of the latest tech gear. Among the gadgets I was testing out that I ended up using the most were Apple's latest 13-inch MacBook Pro; Nikon's D5000 digital SLR (complete with HD video); Inmarsat's BGAN satellite modem; Flip Video's UltraHD; Apple's iPod Touch; Amazon's Kindle 2; Verizon's MiFi 2200 mobile hot spot; Hewlett-Packard's OfficeJet H470; LiveScribe's Pulse pen; and of course, the Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV I drove for those 5,765 miles.
It may say 1,765 miles, but this is actually the final mileage for Road Trip 2009: 5,765.4 miles.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)When you're driving about 150 miles a day for more than five weeks, as well as doing three or four hours of daily reporting and an additional three or four hours of writing and photo processing, there's not a lot of time left for other things. And that includes trying out new technologies.
That means, of course, that some of the gadgets and technology I had brought with me never made it out of the bag. Among those are Sony's MDR-NC22 noise-canceling headphones and Adobe's Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.
I also didn't really get a chance to use Apple's iPhone 3GS much, at least beyond what my own personal iPhone 3G can do. I will say, however, that the 3GS is definitely much faster than the previous model, and if I wasn't locked into my 3G, I would likely upgrade now.
Getting online
As someone needing to do a fair bit of online research and, of course, file daily stories and photo galleries, the quality of Internet connectivity was constantly on my mind.
I stayed in 27 different motels during the course of the trip, and while almost all of them promised high-speed wireless Internet, my conclusion is that few were able to actually deliver on that commitment.
I don't know why I'm still surprised at that fact. After four years of doing these road trips, I guess I assume that by now, big hotel chains like Best Western, Holiday Inn Express, and so on will have figured out how to provide true high-speed Internet to their customers. Yet, again and again, my experience was of slow, barely usable connectivity. I guess my standards are too high.
The Audi Q7 TDI clean diesel SUV that CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman road-tested on Road Trip 2009.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)That meant it was often a struggle to get my stories and photos out on time. Fortunately, cafes, restaurants, and libraries also offered Wi-Fi, and I always had access to Verizon's EV-DO network, though that, too, was often sub-standard in quality.
Wrapping up
So now Road Trip 2009 draws to a close, and I will get back to my usual reporting on all things geek culture, mainly from my office in San Francisco. But my thoughts are already turning to Road Trip 2010, which I believe will take me to the East Coast. So if you have thoughts on destinations that might make make sense for me to check out, please don't hesitate to let me know.
In the meantime, thank you so much to everyone who assisted me on this project, be it the many public affairs representatives who took time out of their busy schedules to accommodate me, or my editors, who often had to be cleaning up my words late at night.
The garage where David Packard and William Hewlett started their new company in 1938 as recent Stanford University engineering graduates.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)PALO ALTO, Calif.--Sometimes, when things are huge, it's easy to forget that they come from the most humble of backgrounds.
Such is the case with Hewlett-Packard, one of the biggest technology companies in the world. It has a massive headquarters in this central Silicon Valley town, but like the stuff of legends, it got its start 71 years ago in a tiny garage in the middle of an otherwise nondescript residential neighborhood here.
Today, that garage, and the house it sits behind, belong to HP. In front of the house is a plaque declaring the location the "birthplace of Silicon Valley" and noting that it was recently added to the National Registry of Historic Places.
But back in 1938, the garage--significantly renovated in 2005--was the affordable rental workshop secured by William Hewlett and David Packard, two Stanford University engineering graduates who, after going back east for stints at MIT and General Electric, respectively, came back to Palo Alto to start a business.
According to HP archivist Anna Mancini, "the boys," as their landlady called Hewlett and Packard, rented the space there because in addition to living there--Packard lived with his wife in the lower floor of the house, and Hewlett lived the bachelor life in a spartan shed out back--they were allowed to set up shop in the garage.
The HP Garage is not open to the public as it is located in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood that would be unable to handle the traffic that would come from hosting such an attractive tourist destination.
The two set out to start their company with a business plan that was famous, Mancini said, for having everything in it "but a product." At the urging of their former Stanford adviser, Fred Terman, however, the two decided to build audio oscillators.
Already an established product, Hewlett and Packard found a way to improve upon what the competition was selling by adding a small light bulb to the equation, an innovation of Hewlett's that compensated for fluctuations in the current, and which allowed their oscillators to hold frequencies longer and test more frequencies than the competition's offerings.
Beginning to send out letters soliciting customers, the two entrepreneurs soon began to see results. "'We started getting (back) these letters and some of them had checks in them,'" Mancini quoted them as having said about their first sales.
In the early going, they charged $54.40 for the oscillators, but soon found they were losing money on the devices. Deciding to raise the price to $71.50--competitors were charging as much as $500, but Hewlett and Packard had low overhead since they were making the oscillators themselves--they quickly became profitable.
At first, they used nothing but parts from the hardware store. "They tried to contract out the sheet metal," Mancini said, explaining that their business was too small to support such an endeavor, "and the guy was like, 'no.'"
Still, the nascent Hewlett-Packard was making about 200 oscillators a year, and before long, they had outgrown the garage. In all, Mancini said, they were there for just 18 months. By the spring of 1940, they'd moved on to a larger space in Palo Alto.
Though HP is now best known for its computers and printers, the company actually continued making the original oscillators until the 1960s, Mancini said. And today, those devices fetch upwards of $300 on eBay. And she should know, because she's been buying them for HP's archives for quite some time.
"I drove the price up," she said, "because I was buying a lot and people figured it out."
In 2000, HP bought the house--and the garage--in order to convert them to somewhat of a museum piece. And while the interior of the garage now looks much like it's thought Hewlett and Packard had it when they worked there, it's in fact entirely a re-creation.
To be sure, the garage itself is authentic. But everything inside it was placed there by Mancini in a bid to make it seem like the space where the young Hewlett and Packard created the company that became HP.
And she's done a good job. While it obviously undercuts the authenticity, the re-creations feel right. Everything in the garage is from the right era, and the space is practically littered with original oscillators.
These days, some might argue that the garage's claim to the "birthplace of Silicon Valley" honor neglects the fact that there were several technology companies in the area prior to the founding of HP. But Mancini said that the title likely has more to do with the fact that HP ended up becoming so key to the development of the region as a technology powerhouse. She explained that there have been a long history of spin-offs from HP, and that the company's technology was considered key to the American World War II effort.
After the war, she continued, HP cherry-picked many of the best minds from the military and began to build a technology powerhouse in earnest. And today, as everyone knows, it is one of the leaders in the industry, and, in Palo Alto, an anchor that ties the small city irrevocably to Silicon Valley.
But there was a time, back in 1938, when it all began in a 12-foot by 18-foot garage. And a couple of legends were just two guys trying to get a start-up off the ground.
On June 21, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
As a Bay Area native steeped in academia--my father is a college professor--I always wanted to believe in the primacy of universities in just about everything.
That's why, for years, I had assumed that the most important factor in the development of Silicon Valley as the world's leading technology center was Stanford. After all, it is located in Palo Alto, Calif., right in the middle of the Valley, and its students and graduates were behind such industry powerhouses as Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Google and many others.
Well, as my story, How NASA helped invent Silicon Valley, which is up on News.com today, illustrates, that wasn't quite the case. In fact, while there is no single factor that shaped the region's technology future, the space program was as important as anything.
It turns out, as I report in the story, that the opening, in 1930, of what was then called the Sunnyvale Naval Air Station--a new home to giant airships--and what is now the NASA Ames Research Center, had a huge impact on the Valley.
As the San Jose Mercury Herald put it, in 1931, "Industries allied to aviation will spring up like mushrooms, each bringing its own payroll. It means in short that San Jose and the Bay region are on the threshold of the most glorious era of posterity in their history."
How right they were.
It is true that Stanford, and in particular Frederick Terman, dean of the university's engineering school, were also instrumental in helping bring more and more tech to the area. But ultimately, not as instrumental as I had long thought.
Stay tuned to News.com all this week for our full package on 50 years in space.
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