Congratulations to our 44th President of the United States of America; Barack H. Obama!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

This past weekend, ‘The Last HOPE’ conference was held in the heart of New York City, at the legendary Hotel Pennsylvania. ‘HOPE’ of course stands for ‘Hackers on Planet Earth’, this latest iteration being the seventh, and also supposedly the ‘last’. The conference first launched in 1994 and proceeded to become a bi-annual affair in 2000. All but one conference was held at Hotel Penn, so over the years, the hotel itself has become an integral part of what makes HOPE the conference it is.

Quote:

The seventh HOPE conference was held this past weekend in NYC and I was there to take in the numerous talks. Such subjects covered were lock picking, Wikipedia’s evils, YouTube, FOIA, hardware hacking and a lot more. Special talks were also given by Steven Rambam, Steven Levy, Adam Savage and Jello Biafra.

http://techgage.com/article/hackers_on_planet_earth_2008_the_last_hope/

When: July 12th, Saturday, 7:00 - 10:00 PM
Where: Showbox SoDo, 1700 1st Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134
What else?:DJ El Toro, Light Appetizers, Drink Tickets, Door Prizes and more…
RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only

http://summermashseattle-mashbutton.eventbrite.com/

http://mashable.com/

I will be updating the website with news and more reviews soon.

Thanks!

Bill

This place has it all: more than 5,000 square feet; home entertainment; music, video and games; more than three dozen screens; and the latest, coolest, hottest wireless phones. This place also lets customers look at, touch and experience everything in the store.

The more than 5,000-square-foot store will feature several new retail concepts, including six integrated “customer experience” stations that encourage customer interaction with cutting-edge wireline, wireless and converged services. In addition, knowledgeable store personnel will be on hand throughout the store and within each of the stations to guide consumers through product trials and purchasing decisions.

In addition, a centrally located Personal Style Studio will showcase high-end accessories and will allow customers to purchase external wireless features, such as ringtones, crystal handset designs and phone “tattoos”, or pictures that customers can download to a laptop in-store, print on a sticker and apply to wireless phones.

Other unique features include more than three-dozen screens located throughout the store. On these screens, visitors can learn about and experience a variety of AT&T products and services, including broadband, wireless, voice and video. Digital messages that inform customers about the variety of lifestyle, product and feature benefits will be displayed throughout the store on 32-inch LCD screens. A series of “Guided Selling Kiosks” also provide valuable information to assist employees and customers during the sales process.

http://www.att.com/newsroom

We just got back from the PepCom Digital Media Experience event…Pirates was the theme this year…ARRR!!.  Seriously they had pirates and pirate booty with all the trimmings. PepCom puts on one great party.

The new OQO is very sleek and sexy. It features a 1.5GHz VIA C7M processor with 1GB DDR2 ram and packs a 60GB hard drive. Naturally it’s packing Microsoft Vista and a bevy of wireless options like 3G EV-DO, WiFi A/B/G and Bluetooth. Oh, and it has an HDMI digital port…mmmm yummy.

The unit was fast and responsive and the slide mechanism has been redesigned giving it is positive secure feeling. The screen is gorgeous and very easy to read. We will have a full review of a unit in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

Here are some pics:

PSHUG.org March Meeting, 3/28/2006

This month, your chance to vote for our new board, or run for office yourself! 
Also, a great guest speaker, Anil Dhawan, the Program Manager for Connectivity on Windows Mobile.  He leads a team that defines the user interface for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular technologies on Windows Mobile devices.  Anil represents Windows Mobile in the Bluetooth SIG and also maintains a blog on the topic: http://blogs.msdn.com/anil_dhawan .
Agenda

• ActiveSync with Bluetooth: How to setup and sync a mobile device using Bluetooth, with troubleshooting.
• Guest Speaker: Anil Dhawan Anil has been featured in several Channel9 webcasts involving Bluetooth and will be sharing his thoughts on the technology as well as demonstrating some cool stuff!
• Networking, Open Discussion and Pizza
• Elections! Members will vote and our new President and board will discuss plans and goals with the members

Meeting Sponsor: MVOX Electronics Inc. mVox has given us an MVOX MV900 bluetooth handsfree speaker phone for our monthly drawing. http://www.mvox.com/mv900.html
Date/Time:
Tuesday, 3/28/2006
7:00 PM
Location:
Microsoft RedWest Building E – Emerald Room
Redmond, WA
Turn off 148th Ave NE at NE 56st St. (look for the traffic light and the “Microsoft” sign)
It’s just a little farther down 148th from the PSHUG Nov. and June location, the same location as the Feb. PSHUG meeting.
Map:
http://members.microsoft.com/careers/mslife/locations/images/north_campus.jpg

Hi all, I will be out of town this week snowboarding at Mt Bachelor. 

Mt. Bachelor offers nearly 3700 acres of varied terrain and sits in the high desert of the Central Cascades therefore being known for dry snow and the best skiing and riding in Oregon and the Northwest. It also features 4 very different terrain parks and an Olympic size superpipe.

News will be a little slow for a few days. We do have some new reviews almost ready for release next week.

—Bill

PSHUG February Meeting, 2/28/2006

Agenda

Making your own home screen theme
Demo of an MP3 player with USB Host capability
Review of our predictions for ‘05
Giveaways, including Panasonic Oxyride batteries

Don’t forget: Elections are coming in March!
Date/Time: Tuesday, 2/28/2006 7:00 PM

Location:
Microsoft RedWest Building E – Emerald Room
Redmond, WA

More Info: http://www.PSHUG.org

Excerpt:

“The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a tough show this year, with two large convention centers to cover, plus all of the manufacturers’ suites in hotels. As always, it was a tiring but exciting show. As I noted in my most recent blog (“Post Partum CES”), the two major themes of the show were 1080p displays in all screen technologies and the looming next-generation optical disk format war. Will this format war play out like Red versus Blue states, or will it be a different scenario? (In case you didn’t know, HD DVD’s packaging is red, and Blu-ray’s is blue. How quaint.)

We take a look at the new HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players as well as the newest 1080P TV’s.”

Link:

http://news.designtechnica.com/featured_article38.html

Here is our home town hero Jeff McKean with Bill Gates going over the Windows Mobile 5.0 platform during CES. Jeff works in the Mobility group at Microsoft and is a big part of the Puget Sound Handheld Users Group here in Seattle/Redmond. Microsoft is committed to the grass roots of user groups and the mobile community.

Once a month, on the 4th Tuesday the PSHUG.org group meets at Microsoft to discuss mobile platforms and gadgets. Mostly they are Pocket PC related but we do go into other devices and gadgets.

PDAToday dontates a lot of our demo and review gear to the group for their monthly drawing. If you are in the Seattle area I encourage you to stop by and give us a visit!

“This week we have a slew of audio reviews and initial impressions. Initial impressions for the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3100 and the Jabra jx10 Bluetooth headset. I go through a final review of the Shure E3g gaming canalphones, Logitech Cordless Presenter, 180s Tek Fleece ear warmers with integrated headphones, and the Sennheiser PC160 gaming headphones with integrated microphone. I actually use the PC160 for the duration of the podcast, so if you like the way it sounds, pick one up today!

Couple news bits to cover. Sony settles with New York state over the rootkit fiasco. Millennium Music offers and exchange program like none other - send them your CDs, and they’ll send you a nice, new iPod! Sweet! LG is set to launch a line of MP3 players - the FM20 - with built in stress relieving noise creation. I talk about a PC program that does this called Brainwave Generator. Check out the free download for some funky brain goodness. And finally, try coupon code select35 at the Shure store. You’re welcome!

Last, but not least, the CES keynote coverage. Vista looks great! Lots of Mac OSX undertones, but keeping with the familiar Windows interface. Not much on Media Center Edition or the XBox 360, but a noticeable push for content partners and HD-DVD. There will be an external HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360, but listen on for the strange caveats surrounding this big announcement. Finally, Windows Mobile demos on the Treo 700w, and Windows Live Messenger. Overall, lots of new tech coming this year, so get ready for some zaniness!”

Link: http://news.designtechnica.com/podcasts/news/2006/1/DTPodcast_010506.mp3

Socket today announced the Go Wi-Fi! P500, an 802.11g CF Wireless LAN card for Windows Mobile 2003/SE & 5.0 Mobile based devices. The Go Wi-Fi! P500 offers improved performance, enhanced roaming capabilities and includes an intuitive graphical utility that enables users to easily find, connect and manage their favorite Wi-Fi networks.

Go Wi-Fi! P500 is supported on devices running Windows Mobile 2003/SE & 5.0 with Wi-Fi Companion. The plug-in CF card will also work with Linux and RTOS operating systems based devices with a Compact Flash card slot.

Pricing and availability

The Go Wi-Fi! P500 will be available through Socket’s worldwide distribution channels and the Socket website in early February 2006 with an MSRP of $99.

It been a long day so far but we have seen some great gear. Verizon this morning showed off their new Verizon V Cast music and video platform. Steve Balmer was there to talk about Microsoft’s part in the program. Basically they will be offering music and videos downloads to your phone and PC. Looks like iTunes may have to watch their back.

The mobile audio section of CES was loaded with hot cars and fast women…er i mean fast cars and hot women…anyway staff writer Jim Early had a good time getting his picture taken with wholesome industry girls.

We met with lots of vendors like Hush PC, CPC, WebVault and many more along with eating some great food at Pieros. Be sure to watch the PDAToday PhotoBlog as I am blogging photo’s everyday live to our SplashBlog site.

We will be at ShowStoppers tonight and be posting photo’s live starting at 7:00ish.

Adimos has a new gadget that will take video from your shiny new Video iPod that Santa brought and transmit it up to 500 feet to your TV’s waiting arms.

Also they have tech on transmitting video from your video PMP like the Zen along with the iPod wirelessly over 802.11 (WiFi).

http://www.adimos.com