Today I got to meet the new CEO and Sales Director for GPS Tuner, Tamas Frigyes and Marta Hunics dr while setting-up the new GPS Tuner booth at CES 2009. I also got to meet my long time friend Gabor Tarnok, whom I have known for more than three years now.
Truly a great day!
Tamas Frigyes (CEO), David Matson (Tech Support), Marta Hunics dr (Sales Director), and Gabor Tarnok (Founder and CTO).
A couple of years ago, several Bloggers (Eric Hicks, Johan van Mierlo, Mike Temporale, and Stephen Hughes) went through a dozen nightmare situations trying to attend interview appointments with big vendors like Palm during CES 2007. Quite frequently, the vendor was late or was a “no-showâ€.
They decided that there “had to be a better way†to do this and spare themselves the disappointment and wasted time and energy.
This year, this same group of Bloggers got together and held their very first CntrStg event, where the vendors would come to the Bloggers, and it looks like it is going to be an extremely successful event indeed!
It looks like it is going to be a wonderful CntrStg based on the schedule below:
Wednesday
4:00pm – Doors Open / Welcome Event – CntrStg Welcome Party and Keynote Live Stream
2:00am – Closing
Thursday – Mobile PC Day
8:00am Opening
9:00am Tablet Kiosk
11:00am Eye-Fi
1:00pm Boston Power
3:00pm HP: HP and MTV Engine Room
4:00pm HP: Fireside Chat with Fred Bullock
5:00pm AMD: Nigel Dessau
2:00am Closing
Friday – Home Electronics Day
8:00am Opening
10:00am Adapt: Jack Hampson
1:00pm American Airlines
2:00pm HP: Notebook Teardown
3:00pm HP: The promise of Digital Entertainment
4:00pm HP: Touch the Future
5:00pm – 6:30pm Community: Digital Lifestyle
2:00am Closing
Saturday – Mobile Phone / Handheld Day
8:00am Opening
10:00am HTC: Eric Lin
11:00am Microsoft: Windows Mobile
12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch provided by ProClip
1:00pm Sling Media
2:00pm Ace
3:00pm – 6:00pm Community: Tablet PC Meetup
2:00am Closing
Sunday
8:00am Opening
12:00pm Closing
I look forward to meeting a lot of friends at CntrStg!
It didn’t take more than 15 minutes to get through the security checkpoint in the airport, so now I have an hour an a half to kill. Having a million things to do online, I decided to take advantage of the Sacramento Metro Airport “Free Wi-Fiâ€, available in the food court area.
I have a VPN tunnel connection so that I can browse the Internet securely, but I can’t quite see all the other users of this Free WiFi being aware of the inherent dangers of Public WiFi Hotspots.
It’s really hard to recognize a hacker, sometimes they can look very professional in a suit and tie, so you can never be sure who is who. As I type this, I see six suits typing at their keyboards. Walking over to pickup my order, I observed at least one conducting what appeared to be personal banking on his laptop. I certainly hope that he practices safe computing by using a VPN tunnel. That’s just not a good idea at Public WiFi Hotspots.
I guess that it’s time for me to dust-off my 4 part series on Security in a Mobile world…
Wednesday morning I’ll be getting ready and heading out the door to catch my flight to Las Vegas Nevada where the Consumer Electronics Show is being held again this year.
I’ll be hitting all of the best exhibits and checking out the newest gear. I’ll also be helping out my friend Gabor with his product GPS Tuner, and another friend Johan with his new Bloggers-only event called CntrStg (short for “Center Stage").
An extremely important factor will be the fact that I will finally be able to meet a whole bunch of people that I have know for a very long time but never had the chance to meet in person!
And among them will be my very good friend Jack Cook, whom I owe a tasty steak dinner for all of his wonderful help and patient mentoring…
I’m so excited! More posts to come in the next few days as the show moves along.
HP finally came through in the end, and it looks like the left-hinge issue is completely resolved!
My sincerest thanks to Murray at the Case Manager group for watching-over the whole process.
Boy, was that close! I will really need the laptop when I attend CES 2009 in a few weeks!
I just got a new Urgent notification from Microsoft earlier this morning regarding a new patch release for Windows Internet Explorer:
What is the purpose of this alert?
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Microsoft is scheduled to release a security bulletin (out-of-band) to address a vulnerability in Internet Explorer on all currently supported versions of Windows. The bulletin is scheduled for release at approximately 10 A.M. Pacific Time on Wednesday, December 17, 2008.
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This security update will be released outside of the usual monthly security bulletin release cycle in an effort to protect customers. Microsoft recommends customers prepare their systems and networks to apply this security bulletin immediately once released to help ensure that their computers are protected from attempted criminal attacks. For more information about security updates, visit http://www.microsoft.com/protect.
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The purpose of this notification is to assist customers with resource planning for this security bulletin release. The information offered in this notification is purposely general in nature to provide enough information for customers to plan for deployment without disclosing vulnerability details or other information that could put them at risk.
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Anyone believed to have been affected can visit: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/support/default.mspx and should contact the national law enforcement agency in their country. Those in the United States can contact Customer Service and Support at no charge using the PC Safety hotline at (866) PC SAFETY. Additionally, customers in the United States should contact their local FBI office or report their situation at: www.ic3.gov.
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Microsoft continues to encourage customers to follow the “Protect Your Computer†guidance of enabling a firewall, applying all software updates, and installing anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Additional information can be found at: http://ww.microsoft.com/protect.
I boxed up the laptop last night (Sunday), and Jana was able to get it down to one of the FedEx locations nearby for shipment back to HP.Â
Hopefully they’ll get it later tomorrow and we can get a decent start on the 5-7 day repair cycle that HP needs.
Update: Per the FedEx tracking number, they have received the shipment in less than 15 hours. Pretty quick!
The folks over at PPCTechs are having a Holiday Blow Out Sale effective until December 31st, 2008!
They will be offering 25% off of all accessories, and 10% off of all repairs.
Customers are welcome to use the discount code Santa08 during the completion of their orders to receive the discount.
Thanks to our friend Sue for the heads-up!
From MobilitySite…
Well, I didn’t get any further response from Bill Robbins from Porter Novelli in the last day and a half. So I decided to followup on this. Granted, it’s already 5:45pm, so I don’t really expect a response tonight…
By the same token, I can’t really afford to wait on this, as I hope to cover CES 2009 January 8th thru the 11th, and that’ll be hard to do without a laptop. I figure if I wait too long, then my package will have to compete with all of the Christmas mail traffic. Sigh…