You might have seen me mention a thin blogging kit in a few other posts recently; well this one is here so that I can get my plan in order, and show you what the idea is. Let’s call it the TBK for now! The goal of the TBK is obviously to keep things thin & light! The result will hopefully be a super-light weight, and fully capable blogging platform.

The TBK will include the following:

• Archos 9 (800g)
• iGo stowaway Bluetooth keyboard (158g)
• MoGo Bluetooth Mouse (41g)
• iPhone 3GS (133g) [for pictures/videos and data tethering]

As you can see, the entire kit is just under 1000 grams [2.202 pounds] (excluding the iPhone because that is always with me regardless). And the thickest that anything in the kit gets is the iGo BT keyboard (when closed) at just 17mm. Check out the relative sizes, and a comparison to an Asus Eee 1000HE [Portal page]:The pieces of the TBK will allow me to do pretty much anything I need to. The Archos 9 as you know is a full x86 computer with touchscreen which will be running Windows 7, meaning that I’ll be able to access my blogging software (Windows Live Writer) and do anything else that works best on a computer running a full OS, like media editing. The Mogo BT mouse and iGo BT keyboard up the ante on input for the Archos 9, providing essentially a full input experience, and everything is wireless.

If you’ve looked at the Mogo BT mouse, you’ll notice that it is actually designed to store and charge in a notebook’s express card slot. The Archos 9, as well as most small computers, don’t have an express card slot, but luckily Mogo also makes a USB express card adapter to charge the Mogo mouse if your computer happens to lack said slot, so I’ll be able to charge anywhere that USB is available. And while the Mogo mouse won’t be able to stow away in the Archos 9, I think it is plenty thin to fit the case with the iGo BT keyboard.

In addition to having high quality input through the mouse and keyboard, the iPhone will be able to provide important functions, such as video, geo-tagged content, and data tethering when WiFi is not available.

Have any suggestions for must-have thin accessories that might be great for the TBK? Let me know in the comments, but keep it thin!

Edit: Response to comments – Hey guys, good points about the netbook. Trust me, I didn’t overlook the whole category, in fact, I have an HP Mini 1000 already!

The TBK is just an Archos 9/slate experiment, I guess I should have made that clear. I haven’t used a pure slate, especially down at this size (I have a convertible tablet), so I’m not exactly sure how useful the Archos 9 will be. While a netbook is definitely a good solution, I must say, notebooks are boring!

I really just want to see how thin I can keep the entire kit. This doesn’t have any special practicality, but I’m wondering how compact I’ll be able to carry this setup. There is also increased flexibility. This doesn’t apply as much as this screen size, but on smaller devices, it is generally useful to be able to put the keyboard away and be able to have just the screen out for particular scenarios, like viewing media. With this TBK I’ll be able to selectively use one or more parts as I need them. So If I’m on the bus and I want to watch a show, I can essentially have just the ’screen’. Again, this is just an experiment to see how a slate can be used, as we’re seeing many pop up in recent months.

When one goes to the airport they are faced with the inevitable wait at the gate to board their plane. You’ll find lots of people using laptops and handheld game consoles while waiting to board. An airport is probably one of the most dense Bluetooth places in existence. Everyone seems to wear their Bluetooth headset while at the airport.

For this reason, I like to play a little Bluetooth-based prank. The prank is quite simple:  Using a device that allows one to set the name that is used to identify your device, I sometimes set this name to something like “LOOK BEHIND YOU…” then simply do a scan for nearby Bluetooth devices, and start running down the list and attempting to connect to those that show up on the scan. If I’m lucky, the person whom I’m attempting to connect to will see a message on their BT device along the lines of “LOOK BEHIND YOU… is attempting to connect to your device via Bluetooth, accept connection?” Obviously, you aren’t sure exactly who you are trying to connect to, so you’ll need to carefully observe and wait for someone to pull out their phone or other device and then quickly steal a glance behind them. The upside to this little prank is that people don’t actually need to accept the connection in order for it to work. As long as their device displays your devices Bluetooth name, they’ll get the message, and in most cases,  peer behind them quite conspicuously.

Speaking of the iPhone and Bluetooth stereo today, it looks like an interesting application has been released through Cydia today. Quickly: Cydia is the application that allows you to install unofficial third part applications after your iPhone or iPod Touch has been jailbroken. (iPod Touchs don’t have Bluetooth though, sorry guys!)

So what is iBluetooth? The dev says that in its current incarnation it is capable of doing file transfers of images and audio. Maybe not everything we’ve wished for, but its a start. Here is the interesting part:

The developer says that he is charging a small fee for the iBluetooth (3.99 Euros) application for an important reason. Using proceeds from the sale of the application, he plans to purchase a full Bluetooth stack an implement it as a daemon (background service) into the iPhone so that any jailbroken application can have access to the iPhones Bluetooth with a fully supported Bluetooth stack.

What does a fully supported BT stack mean? Well for starters, it would provide A2DP stereo audio over Bluetooth. On top of that it should support all of the other Bluetooth profiles, which should make it possible for the pairing of keyboards and other devices. I’m pretty excited about the prospect of this happening and if you are as well, the dev asks you not to pursue a cracked version of the application, but instead pay for it as it will lead to the implementation of a full Bluetooth stack accessible to any jailbroken application developer.

[MeDevil]

Fresh news from Computex!

IVT has just announced that they have ported the Bluesoleil 5.0 bluetooth stack found on lots of computers to Linux. The program retains its GUI and user friendliness and is supposedly ported specificaly for UMPCs. However with all the naming confusion thats around and the fact that very few UMPCs actually run linux, we assume they mean Netbooks and MIDs. Expect this to provide a good experience with bluetooth on quite a few devices in the future.

Source.