This isn’t the first time I’ve had this reaction to a Lenovo product. And I’ve been burned in the past. I’ve seen some amazing notebooks and tablets teased and promised at CES only to receive news later that they wouldn’t be coming to market, after all. They swear this is not the case for the Yoga; it’s just waiting for Windows 8 before it can ship to customers. I begrudgingly believe them.

After we saw the Yoga, Josh Smith (my colleague at GottaBeMobile) found an old post on the site from 2009 showing off a Lenovo Yoga that looked very different. It was just a concept design back then, but it shared the dual notebook/tablet nature and the hinge that allowed it to fold all the way back. Further delving into tags revealed an even older Yoga design from 2005 — it actually won an award — that looks very similar in design to what we have now.

You can see all the pictures I found over on the Gadget Porn Tumblr. (Yes, that’s also one of mine.)

Seeing that there was a Yoga all the way back in 2005 yet the product didn’t become a solid reality until 2012 makes me feel better about the Lenovo notebooks I’ve loved and lost. Two years in a row Lenovo showed off the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, a combo tablet and 11-inch notebook that was actually two computers in one. The display bit would detach and become a tablet — first running Linux, then running Android — with its own CPU, memory, battery, and ports. When attached to the keyboard base it switched to Windows, again with separate memory, ports, battery and so forth.

I wanted this thing so bad, my friends. Lenovo never did bring it out in America, though, because they couldn’t get the hinge/connector up to snuff (so I hear). Even I could tell that this was the weakest point of the design. Still, some of the devices I saw this year gave me hope that the company could get over that hurdle if they so desired.

Another product I’ve always mourned is the Lenovo Skylight. This was meant to be a smartbook, back when smartbooks were deemed a viable notebook category. Here’s a primer if you care, but the basics are that they were meant to be inexpensive notebooks running lightweight operating systems like Windows CE, Android, or similar that acted like smartphones. They’d sleep instead of tuning off, resume instantly, and stay thin thanks to the components inside.

Putting aside the smartbookness of it, the Lenovo Skylight was is one of the best looking laptops I’ve ever seen. It’s not just thin and light, but crafted and designed so well that you instantly want it, no matter what it’s running or what the limitations. The company even brought in the guy who designed the original ThinkPads to create this thing of beauty.

The whole smartbook thing didn’t last. In fact, I don’t think any ever came out. It’s a shame because smartbooks are what netbooks were supposed to be before mainstream consumers started giving their opinions. Anyway, back in 2010 I asked a Lenovo exec if the Skylight was truly dead, because I felt that it would be such a shame if so. He told me: Not quite. Somewhere in the bowels of the company someone still cares about the Skylight.

Given what’s going on with the laptop category right now, I suspect that it’ll be reborn as an ultrabook. As of right now it’s too thin to deal with the components (I think…) but perhaps when the next generation of Intel chips comes out the Skylight can live again. I can also see the U1 Hybrid making a reappearance as a Windows 8 tablet hybrid.

Hopefully it won’t be another 5 years before I see these products again. But if they rises from the ashes as amazing as the Yoga is today, I won’t grumble about the wait too much.

There’s a very simple business reason why Google cares if they have your real name. It means it’s possible to cross-relate your account with your buying behavior with their partners, who might be banks, retailers, supermarkets, hospitals, airlines. To connect with your use of cell phones that might be running their mobile operating system. To provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the Internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms. 

Simply put, a real name is worth more than a fake one.

- Dave Winer

The entire post is worth a read, and Dave is pretty spot on. The Google reps I've spoken to deny this, but it's obvious to anyone who understands how Google works. Just about everything they do and service they provide is about search and advertising even if they don't seem related to search and advertising directly.

I'm sure that the real name/common name policy is also rooted in other beliefs held by the heads of the Google+ project. However, given all the pushback on this both externally and internally, it seems like a policy they should have given up if it was just about a misunderstanding of how people operate on the Internets. Throw in the fact that it's about money, better data mining, and the ability to tie what you do online to what you buy, and things crystallize a bit.

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Sharing contact information via a smartphone is one of those things that many people assume is a basic, standard task. Going all the way back to the days of Palm Pilot supremacy and the rise of BlackBerry, the ability to “beam” your info to another person was a nice and expected perk of having a mobile, business-focused device. I remember that the process didn’t always work on the first try, but it was there and was easy.

Fast forward to now. Last week I went into my Android phone’s contacts, found my contact card, hit the Menu button and tapped “Send My Contact Info.” The menu that came up informed me that I could send via MMS, Mail, or Bluetooth. You might think: oh, that sounds reasonable. Let me explain why it’s not.

MMS is multimedia text messaging; thus, I’d send my contact info as a vCard attachment to an SMS. Not all phones/services support MMS. I use Google Voice for texting. It does not support MMS. So I can’t use that.

The Mail option is what I wanted… except Mail does not indicate the Gmail app, it indicates the Mail app for non-Gmail accounts. I don’t have any accounts set up there because I use Gmail on my Android phone. In order to send via my Gmail account, I would have to set up that account in the Mail app then set it to not notify me when messages come in because Gmail is already doing so. Convoluted? Yes.

Bluetooth is what people meant by “beaming” in the past, but connecting to another phone via Bluetooth isn’t always straightforward. Try doing it in a conference hallway when you’re on the way to the next panel and the person you want to send to doesn’t know how the Bluetooth works on their phone. Not ideal.

So really, my phone offered little in the way of easy or viable options. Why?

The heart of the problem lies with Android. Apparently, there is no native option for sending contact or vCard data in the OS at all^[1]. How is my phone able to do so? It’s all down to the HTC Sense user interface skin. Android skins do more than just change the way icons look and offer fancy widgets, they also provide deep interface functions which are sometimes fixes for things Android doesn’t provide.

Who should I shake my fist at more, Android for not having a native contact sharing function or HTC for not realizing people might want to share contacts via their Gmail accounts? I’m inclined to be a little angrier at HTC.

That’s because I also happen to have a Samsung phone. I don’t use it as a phone, only as a MID/PDA. It connects to Wi-Fi just fine, so I could send my contact info from that device. I checked, and lo Samsung’s TouchWiz UI does realize that users might want to send via Gmail and offers that option. My problem is solved.

That doesn’t solve the overall issue though, does it? It also doesn’t help if I’m not near a free Wi-Fi signal. And my HTC phone is my main device; I want to be able to share from there. That’s when I started to look for alternatives.

I’ll share what I found so far in another post. Right now I’d like to know: how do you share digital contact information from your phone? Is it easier on iOS or webOS? Have you found the perfect app for the purpose? Let me know in the comments.

Notes

1. This is what I gleaned via research and appears to be true at least up until Android 2.2. Some forum threads suggest that this function is available in Gingerbread (2.3), but I have not had a chance to check this myself.

I had better luck with my Epic 4G — the contacts program there will send the vCard via GMail, which is all I want. Makes it easy to share my info with folks. But the way Android is constantly trying to link up contacts and combine multiples is driving me insane….

Anyway, who else is going to BlogHer?

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From an excellent cartoon essay “Why I love and hate having a smartphone” on The Oatmeal. 

This is my favorite thing about phones right now. Talking about the type of phone you have can lead to fisticuffs!

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I’ll be writing for Notebooks.com/GottabeMobile as well as Android Central and some other media outlets as the opportunity arises. Still covering the same stuff: mobile technology, accessories, apps, all that. Not going far, really. I’m really excited about these new opportunities and can’t wait to get to know the communities around these sites even better.

Moving on from Laptop wasn’t an easy decision. Over the past 3+ years I’ve had the chance to meet and work with some wonderful people. And I’ve learned so much about writing and what it means to be a journalist from my editors and fellow writers.

When I started there back in 2008 I thought I had the best job in the world: creating and producing web content all day? Blogging for a living? Getting to try out every new laptop, phone, and other mobile gadget that came through the office? Sweet! What I didn’t realize at the time was that I would get the chance to do so much more, with constant encouragement from everyone around me. I will forever be grateful to the folks at Laptop for giving me the opportunity to grow, particularly Editor in Chief Mark Spoonauer and Online Editorial Director Avram Piltch. Thanks for all the fish :)

Today I turn in my final review and write my last blog post. Tonight I party with my friends. Tomorrow I sleep in. Next week I move on to the next big thing. See you there.

One of the topics I plan to cover in the near future is good gadgets for writers. Not laptops — those get their own posts — but the other pieces of tech we find useful. For instance, I have a LiveScribe Echo Smartpen, a fabulous pen device that records what I write and digitizes it. It can also record audio while you write and sync it up with what you were writing at the time.

I find it very useful for crit sessions. I don’t have to write down everything a person said, but I can jot down a one or two word note, click it later, and hear their exact words on why my characterization felt flat. It’s also useful for journalists and students (for obvious reasons). One day I’ll write a full review.

So far I’ve got a short list of my favorite gadgets, but I wanted to throw the question out to my fiction writing friends. Are there any gadgets or pieces of tech that you’ve found helpful to have as a writer beyond your computer or cell phone? Things that either help you when writing or researching or even keeping your sanity when dealing with the business end of writing (taxes, promotion). Tell me about them in the comments. Don’t forget to tell me why you find them useful to you.

‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is open to participation. If you want to install a dead drop in your city/neighborhood follow the ‘how to’ instructions and submit the location and pictures.

I love this idea. I have about 30 USB drives without a purpose. This seems like a good one to me.

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“I had one good pickup line, and e-readers ruined it. I can no longer hit on a handsome man on a long commute by asking about his book — because I can’t see it.”

-- Lisa Lewis, writing in the NYTimes’ City Room blog on how e-readers make it harder for her to strike up conversations with strangers. - Matt (via cnnmoneytech)

Is it wrong of me to think: "Quit harassing strangers, woman, and mind your own business!"? It’s probably wrong of me…

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A user of Google+ was logged into Google with both individual and his company’s Google Apps login, and discovered that Google+ can be used — at least partially — with Google Apps:

As reported by Google Operating System, Google’s John Costigan confirmed this: “We’re actively working on making Profiles (and Google+) available for Google Apps - it should be available in the coming months.”

Personally, I feel that this is where the tools that Google+ offers may be of greatest utility, as a stream-based business collaboration tool, an example of what I call work media. As I recently wondered, the effort involved in defining circles might not be worth the effort. However, if you are working in a company of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people, creating circles for projects, departments, or topically-oriented collections of people makes a lot of sense.

Note also that Google Apps already has an app store architecture, so the rollout of apps like Huddle and Hangouts would be simple.

And there is the opportunity to convert the over 25M Google Apps users to something worth paying for.

This is an excellent idea. I do think workflow could be improved by Google+ for Apps accounts. Especially for long email conversation chains. Too bad my magazine is no longer using Google Apps.

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erinonthemoon:

zombiesonparade:

Urgent Reminder For all Tweeters.

This is a legitimate concern.

Excellent advice.

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Cory Watilo via

This is a screenshot from an official promotion video of Outlook 2010. Seriously, what a trainwreck. I still remain a Microsoft fan, but this screenshot just shows the lack of any intelligent design direction anywhere in the company.

I previously wrote about the design disconnect at Microsoft here.

Gross.

Our workplace is going to move to Office 2010 soon and I’m going to be forced to use Outlook instead of my beloved Thunderbird. I want to throw up every time I think about it. This doesn’t help.

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Tumblr opens doors to government agencies from Medill Washington on Vimeo.

markcoatney:

chels:

I worked with the awesome David Charns yesterday on this piece about the government using Tumblr.

You may have seen the State Department’s Tumblr but there are others who are joining up, too. The National Archives runs a few (Document of the Day, the Exhibits Tumblr, and one about Our Presidents). One of my favorite things yesterday was meeting up with the ladies who blog from the National Archives and talking about funny documents they have. Did you know they’ve got the Jell-O box used in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial? One woman said she came across documents from the Civil War listing the health of every horse in every regiment for EACH WEEK of the war. Crazy.

Anyway, the whole article is up on The Daily Caller. And thanks a million to Mark Coatney, the Peace Corps Tumblr people, everyone from the National Archives, and the USA.gov folks.

This was really nice work; thanks, Chelsea and David.

Really loving the diversity of uses people put Tumblr to. Makes me wonder why more companies, publications and organizations haven't jumped on it.

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changetheratio:

This. #nofilter #changetheratio

The New Yorker has come out with its profile of Facebook COO Sheyl Sandberg: “A Woman’s Place: Sheryl Sandberg & Male-Dominated Silicon Valley.” Stop for a second - it’s 2011 and it’s sort of nuts that such a title should even work. And yet! Sandberg is terrific and Auletta shines a light on the issue of access, and visibility, and opportunity - all of Change the Ratio’s favorite obsessions. It’s a great time for Sandberg’s message to be magnified (raise your hand; don’t leave before you leave; lean in) and a great time to be an awesome woman doing cool shizz ready to catch that spotlight now that it’s finally swinging around.

This is great for CTR, too. I was psyched when David Remnick emailed me back in March to hear my thoughts on the matter and more psyched to get to bend Ken Auletta’s ear for 90 minutes in the Hashable office - but he spoke to lots of people and seemed focused on Sheryl and the Valley, so who knew what would make the cut. But we did - with our core mission of visibility front and center. He also included a precis of the contretemps with Michael Arrington not even a year ago - and my God, how out of date it sounds now, eh? See below:

Sandberg and many other women in Silicon Valley think the problems women encounter are usually more subtle than blatant sexism. “I think it is largely innocent,” says Rachel Sklar, a New York writer and entrepreneur who has actively protested against digital conferences that invite too few women to speak. Sklar co-founded a women’s organization called Change the Ratio, and she tries to make sure there are more women onstage. “You can’t know about what you don’t see,” she says.

Some suggest that women are also to blame. Michael Arrington, the editor of TechCrunch and the organizer of the TechCrunch Disrupt conferences, defended venture capitalists and Silicon Valley males in a blog post last summer. “The problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs,” he wrote. Referring to Sklar, and her campaign, Arrington added, “Yeah ok, whatever, Rachel. Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak… . And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.”

It is SO not hard to find qualified women to speak at tech, digital and entrepreneurship conferences - good Lord, I trip over all of you every day. I can’t imagine that all but the most clueless and narrow-minded readers won’t think to themselves, huh, that doesn’t sound quite right, as they mentally go through all the amazing women who are making incredible stuff happen more and more visibly every day. This article will swing that spotlight around even more, and hopefully further illuminate the blindspot where guess what? There are lots of qualified, amazing women raising their hands and leaning in.

This is a good day!

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"As I'm browsing around Google-powered sites there’s occasionally a red notification alert that pops up and immediately grabs my attention. Soon enough I'm clicking through the various notifications and seeing what my friends have shared and who has recently begun sharing with me."

-- The One Google Plus Feature Facebook Should Fear (via digiture)

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My favorite is the Microsoft one. You could almost just copy and paste for Sony.

via: laughingsquid

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“By limiting the number of people who can join Google+, Google is hugely limiting what kind of experience those people will have. Early adopters have plenty of influence on mainstream opinion and love to boast, so if they log into a barren wasteland then you can bet they’ll be telling their friends that ‘yeah, I’m on Google+, but it’s not that great’.”

-- Duncan Geere writing at Wired’s Epicenter blog on why you don’t need to find yourself a Google+ invite (via cnnmoneytech)

This sounds really familiar….

Oh right, it’s what everyone was saying when Google Wave came out.

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The problem I have is that the entire argument is stupid. Most of the apps I use on a regular basis are just front-faces for the web anyway. Use Facebook app, a Twitter client, maps or weather? They are all just front ends to web apps. Even email clients are just a front face on data and information from the web. So where do you draw the line?

(A hint: there isn’t one. This is just another fabricated argument to give us tech nerds something to argue about.)

I will disagree, but only slightly.

My most-used apps are those that do more than just front the web for me, they also give me access to data even when the web is not available. Developers have been lax in creating really useful caching abilities in many apps because there’s this idea that people are only using their devices at home on the couch or maybe at work. Well, yes, because they’re not terribly useful on the go.

Unless you have mobile connectivity, but even then that won’t help you on a plane, in a subway, or out where the 3G don’t shine. Plus, given that Wi-Fi only tablets are much less expensive than their 3G/4G counterparts and don’t come with an expensive data plan (which you may be locked into for 2 years), a huge chunk of the audience isn’t going to be always connected.

I think mobile App vs. Web is a good discussion to have when you think about the advantages mobile apps have int hat they can serve up data even when there’s no connection. How to convince developers that this is something they need to think about? That I can’t answer.

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stoweboyd:

steverubel:

The most important part to read is their guide for reporting and how journos are using Twitter to find sources.

Jake Tapper from ABC News:

The way [Twitter has] been most useful is in terms of following people. I’ve been able to use it for reporting and to find sources. Last year when a health insurance company raised its premiums in California and it affected thousands of people, I didn’t know how to reach any of them, so I sent a Tweet out to my followers: “Is there anybody out there who is a customer of Anthem Blue cross who got their insurance premiums raised?”

@lemoneyes tweeted me that she had and so I followed her. I got her information through DM and then emailed her, we verified her situation and then we sent a camera crew to her. The next morning she was on ABC’s Good Morning America. There is no way I could have done that before.

Liquid media will liquefy all solid media.

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