Jenn over at Pocketables is doing her best of capturing spy shots of yet to be opened CES booths. She has some new pictures of Intel’s MID display up, so go check it out at her site. There are quite a few devices up there, including the err beautiful pink WiBrain which I’m sure many will drool over completely ignore.

Anyways, heres the link.

Pankaj Kedia is the director, Global Ecosystem Programs, Mobile Internet Devices at Intel Corporation. The information here is from a telephone interview I made on 23rd Dec.

The ‘journey continues’ says Pankaj, referring to the progress made in the MID market this year and the steps that will be taken to further it in 2009. About 15 Menlow based devices were launched. There are 13 Moblin distribution partners ranging from Novell to Canonical. 3 of these distributors (Canonical, Asianux and WindRiver) are working on Moblin. There are over 7000 developers are involved in the Moblin ecosystem. That’s not bad for year one although many of us in the western world are still asking where the devices are! Distribution for the 15 devices remains tight with many western countries not having direct access at all to a Menlow based device.

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We’ve been trying to track the announcements over the year but it’s been getting increasingly difficult. In an interview with Intel today I was able to get the definitive list of Linux distribution partners that are working with Intel to distribute Moblin.

Netbook / Nettop OSVs: Ubuntu, Asianux, Xandros, Linpus. Novell, gOS, Mandriva, Pixart, S2C, Turoblinux

MID OSVs: Ubuntu, Asianux, WindRiver

More on the Intel interview soon.

About 8 months ago I had an idea for a promotional project. I called it the ‘MID Summer Tour’ and pitched it to Intel. They were very interested but unfortunately, my timing was terrible. I should have known that projects like this can take an extremely long time to set up so instead of a summer tour, we’ve re-worked the idea and have come up with the MIDMoves project. A mobile Internet device project, website and tour that will take place during Jan 09. We’re going mo-blogging crazy with Intel MIDs!

Over the next 4-weeks, 4 people will be preparing themselves for a 4-day tour with Intel’s MIDs. We’re going to prepare by talking about the latest location-aware services, look at how we can integrate services like Friendfeed, Twitter, Flickr, how we plan to stay connected using 3G and WiFi services and how we will communicate back to the website. Then, soon after CES, we’ll have 8 Intel-based Mobile Internet Devices distributed across the team and starting on the 19th Jan we go mobile! We’ll be leaving our comfy offices and getting ‘out there’ to test the devices, the scenarios, the mobile communications software and the public. We’ll be creating a near-live, media-rich, mobile-communications road-tour right on the MIDMoves website.

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This week it’s been my great pleasure to be testing another ultra mobile PC based on the Intel Menlow platform. It’s not my first as I’ve had the Gigabyte M528, Aigo MID and Kohjinsha SC3 but there’s a couple of things about this Wibrain i1 UMPC that are worth talking about and one of them is a real first in the mobile computing world and has got me all fired-up about UMPCs again. I’m not talking about the competitive pricing, hi-res touch screen, usable keyboard or built-in 3G. I’m talking about the battery life.

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The new 8.9" touchscreen Classmate PC that LaptopMag got some time with isn’t going to be most people’s cup of tea, but that’s probably because it’s not aimed at most people reading tech websites! There’s a few elements that are worth highlighting though.

• Trend. A lot of netbook manufacturers are now talking about touch-screens. Is this a trend that will take off in the mainstream or will it be confined to niche segments of buyer. Will we see slate designs as the next step?
• Touch enhancements.  Thought and effort is going into the software development with touch-friendly apps and overlay ‘launchers’ like we’ve seen with Origami Experience.
• Developing on XP. Considering XP is supposed to be near dead, putting significant manpower into creating new apps for XP hints that there’s even more life to it than we might think.

Also known as the CTL 2go, this product is based on the netbook platform and uses a ruggedised housing designed especially for the education sector. Launch is expected at CES 2009.

More details, images at Laptopmag

This sums up a lot of what we’re going to be doing doing on the tour. Smiling, walking, typing and avoiding lamp posts!

Watch in higher quality here.

As much as I hate seeing concepts that we don’t yet have the technology to create, I manage to remind myself that the market needs goals to shoot for, otherwise there won’t be innovation. That, and it is an excuse to look at some really cool looking gadgets… even if you have to pretend that they exist.

Jkk has highlighted some interesting MID concepts from an Intel sponsored design contest in the Czech Republic this year.

I really like this concept. Actually this one could potentially be produced. See the projected keyboard? Technology like that exists and can be bought today. Infrared projection keyboards have been on the market for a few years, but have had very limited adoption because of their many pitfalls, such as low visibility in highly lit settings, and no tactile feedback for key-presses. I suppose this device looks pretty cool, but its practicality would be limited to the software that powers it. If the interface could be designed so that all functions can be reached through the use of the touch screen, then it could be viable. It wouldn’t make sense to allow the only text input to come from the projected keyboard; what would the point of a mobile device be if you had to sit it down somewhere to use it? An on-screen-keyboard would suffice for short text entries (URLs/IMing, etcetera), then you could fold up the keyboard projection armatures for some serious writing. I think they would need to increase the typing experience on the projected keyboard before bringing something like this to market.

This next one is basically a smaller and slimmer HTC Shift [Portal page]. If the hardware evolves enough that we can see a sleek design like this with decent performance and battery life, I think it will make a great MID. The form factor really has a lot going for it, but the problem is finding the right size for the keyboard. Some people felt that the HTC Shift’s keyboard was right between touch-typeable and thumb-board size, and that is a major problem. As for the Windows 7 image on the screen of the rendered MID… I think it would make more sense to use a custom OS.

The main thing I want to see in upcoming mobile tech is the use of capacitive touchscreens. The iPhone and iPod Touch line have the most consistent touch recognition of any touchscreen I’ve ever used, and in general have a lot of advantages over the current standard that is resistive touchscreen technology. I have always hated having to use a stylus to navigate the GUI of a device because they made the interface based on old principles. I feel that in the future we will start to move away from styli on mobile devices (they will certainly stick around for tablet PC folks, and graphic artists), and that is a change that I welcome with open arms.