Hasta La Gadget!

Dell fully unveiled their Adamo laptop and it appears to fit somewhere between the Voodoo Envy 133 and MacBook Air with a 1.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 128-gigabyte SSD and .65-inch thickness.

At .65-inches, the Adamo is one of the thinnest laptops ever, sitting five-hundredths of an inch closer to the ground than the Envy (.7″). But at 4 pounds, it’s heavier than both the Air (3 pounds) and the Envy (3.4 pounds). Its machined, one-piece aluminum chassis and glass display round out the premium features found on the Adamo.

The 13.4-inch Adamo has a 720p, 16:9 screen, 2-gigabytes of DDR3 RAM (max 4GB), 802.11n wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and is currently rated for 5+ hours of battery life. It also has 2 USB ports+USB/eSATA combo port, and connects to DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA and DVI with optional cables. The laptop runs on the Intel Mobile 965 Express chipset, making use of GMX4500 integrated graphics for its visual juice.

The use of the Core 2 Duo means that the Adamo runs Windows Home Premium (64-bit, to be exact), and will come in either white or black colorways. The $2000 configuration comes fitted with the above specs while a $2700 config comes with a 1.4 GHz processor, 4 GB RAM and an AT&T 3G WWAN card. Pre-orders will begin starting today, and the first units will ship on March 26.

DELL INTRODUCES ADAMO BRAND WITH LAUNCH OF THE WORLD’S THINNEST LAPTOP

· Adamo is first product under new Adamo by Dell brand

· Premium craftsmanship and design inspires new aesthetic across Dell family of products

· Adamo by Dell created to disrupt people’s perceptions of what personal computing is today

ROUND ROCK, Texas, March 17, 2009 – Style-minded people who place a premium on precision craftsmanship and design can now add Adamo to their list of must-have items for 2009. Dell today unveiled the world’s thinnest* laptop as a kick off to the new Adamo by Dell brand.

Adamo, derived from the Latin word meaning “to fall in love,” will serve as a flagship in a line of products created to disrupt the personal computing space with the combination of new design aesthetics, personalization choices and sought-after technologies.

The News:

Adamo is the pinnacle of craftsmanship and design and features:

· A chassis milled from a single piece of aluminum featuring precision detailing and a scalloped backlit keyboard

· Striking high definition edge-to-edge glass display

· Fully connected with WiFi, Bluetooth™ and optional integrated mobile broadband** and full complement of connectivity ports with no compromises

· Cool, quiet and robust solid state drives

· Available in Onyx and Pearl colors with a broad range of complementary accessories

· Price starting at $1999

Quotes:

“Great design needs to be timeless and evoke emotion in people”, said Alex Gruzen, senior vice president of Dell’s consumer products. “While a premium computing experience was assumed for Adamo, the intent was for people to see, touch and explore Adamo and be rewarded by the select materials and craftsmanship you would expect in a fine watch.”

“Dell continues to signal a commitment to design and personalization across its entire product line and has made significant strides forward in the past year,” said Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group. “The Adamo laptop is a showcase for this commitment and a flagship product that will draw buyers to the brand.”

People who choose Adamo will be offered a unique color matched collection of Adamo by Dell branded peripherals and accessories including, in the U.S. an exclusive line of bags fromTUMI. Choices will include:

· External storage option with 250GB*** or 500GB*** external hard drive.

· External DVD+/-RW or Blu-ray disc drive.

· 8GB*** USB drive.

· Connectors and cables including DisplayPort to HDMI, DVI, and VGA.

· Adamo Premium Service (US Only):

o 24/7 access to Dell’s best trained technicians

o Consistent communication with a dedicated personal team

The Adamo by Dell brand is being supported by innovative and new approaches to marketing and promotion for Dell. Designed to challenge people’s perceptions of what a computer is, the Adamo by Dell brand was inspired by fashion, luxury brands and timeless design.

Dell has looked beyond traditional approaches to reaching computer shoppers and launched a provocative campaign featuring:

* A stylish worldwide print campaign shot by acclaimed British-based photographer Nadav Kandar and featuring high-fashion models that reinforces the “fall in love” positioning. Kander, whose work is celebrated in galleries worldwide, also shot the moving portfolio, “Obama’s People,” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine earlier this year.

* AdamoByDell.com, the centerpiece of the campaign and a highly stylized site where viewers can learn about Adamo, register for updates and, beginning today, place orders. Since its launch last month, AdamoByDell.com has attracted nearly 800,000 unique visitors from around the world and more than 1 million page views.

* Artful packaging in which the product arrives “floating” in a clear box with minimal clutter – a beautiful experience for a sophisticated product.

Product Specifications:

* Intel® Core 2 Duo processors with Intel® Centrino ® technology

* DDR3 system memory

* 13.4-inch 16:9 HD display

* Draft-Wireless N

* High-performance solid state drives standard

* Bluetooth 2.1

* Mobile Broadband* option

* Up to 5+ hours of battery life (preliminary)****

* 2 USB ports, 1 USB/eSATA combo port, Display Port, RJ-45 port

* Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-bit

Available for pre-order today at www.adamobydell.com and shipping worldwide starting March 26, 2009, Adamo will be available online for purchase in 24 countries including U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, U.K. France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, ANZ, China, Honk Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia/Singapore, Japan, and Indonesia.

Links:

www.AdamoByDell.com

www.dell.com

www.dell.com/designstudio

www.flickr.com/photos/dellphotos

Apple’s updated its Wi-Fi router and backup drive combo, Time Capsule, with a guest mode and simultaneous dual-band wireless. I was pretty surprised at how wireless performance has increased, too.

Before I start explaining little things like speed, it’s important to understand that the main reason why Time Capsule is cool is that it’s the most easy to use device lazy Mactards like myself can back up their machine to. To do so, you just run a OS X Leopard program called Time Machine, which finds your Time Capsule—or any locally connected hard drive—and uses it as a backup HDD. Every day, more or less, by wireless or wired network, Time Machine (the software) and Time Capsule (the Wi-Fi router with a HDD in it) will continue to log changes you’ve made to your data. The physical drive inside comes in 1TB or 500GB capacities, and is a server drive rated for continous 24/7 use for quite awhile. [UPDATE: Jason just reminded me that last year, some people found the drives in the old Time Capsule to be rated for as a network server drive, but also, for consumer machines. So it’s not as robust as some drives you’d find in, say, a data center.] Last fall, the Time Capsule saved my butt when my laptop’s drive died overnight. Miraculously, after dropping in a new HDD, the OS X install discs asked me if I wanted to restore from a previous Time Capsule/Machine backup, and ended up losing only 2 hours of data. Two hours!

There’s more on the Time Machine and Capsule relationship in our intial walkthrough review.

So, if you want Mac backup in one simple unit, there is no better solution than a Time Capsule. And this one is slightly improved over the last. But unlike a year ago when the first generation drive came out, there are other options that are slightly cheaper. More on these later, after the TC performance tests.

First, let’s look at the improvements Apple has made in this hardware and to the previous generation’s via firmware.

• Dual Band: Two radios instead of one so you can run in 802.11n on both the 5GHz frequency (very fast, although not as interference or wall/door resistant as 2.4GHz) and on 2.4GHz, while older devices with 802.11b or g simply run on the 2.4 band. The last generation of Time Capsule had both band options, but you had to choose one, and that meant almost always choosing 2.4GHz for max compatibility. Having dual channels—which show up as separate Wi-Fi access points but are on the same network—gives you another lane to drive in while the one is saturated with media streaming, a backup or giant file transfers. Somehow, the new antennas are 6DB stronger than the previous antennas, according to the AP Grapher program.

This resulted in an outdoor walking test of about 100 feet of usable range vs 70 for the old unit, about 30% in a sparse area with few other Wi-Fi signals around. (I tested using the 5GHz N mode on both Time Capsules, and 2.4GHz mode on the second band on the new Time Capsule. In the above chart, you can see the DB ratings, with closer to zero being stronger. In the chart, the SSID “APL-N” is the old Time Cap, and “Network” is the old WRT54AG Linksys router.)

The computers connected to the Time Capsule’s N network at between 300 and 270mbits per second. I sent some a file—a 150MB 1080p quicktime trailer to JJ Abram’s new Star Trek movie—over the network to a computer on the same type of wi-fi connection and found the new Time Capsule to be slightly faster than the old one and even faster than a top-line Linksys router.

*Shorter times are better.

*One caveat on the newer Linksys WRT610N results—Jason Chen helped me test the new Linksys which he has at his house: The wi-fi congestion in his area is undoubtedly greater in his urban living space, compared to the cabin in the woods where I tested. I’d expect the score to be closer if not on par with the Time Capsule in the woods.

• Remote Disk: If you’ve got Apple’s useful $100 per year Mobile Me service, you can access the data on your Time Capsule’s drive from anywhere you’ve got an internet connection, without knowing your IP address.

Mobile Me‘s service keeps track of the Time Capsule’s address and passes it onto your machines that are registered with the service. It shows up as a drive on your Finder’s side bar. Handy! But testing showed that the drive did not always show up on remote machines, and there’s no clear way to force the remote drive to mount.

• Guest Mode: Guest mode is extremely simple, creating a different network SSID and security key (optional) on the 2.4GHz band, while keeping the other two access points for your personal use. It separates the network from all your private network’s disks, computers, and shared resources by using a different subnet. Guest mode does not include things we’d like to see, like a way to throttle guest bandwidth. It’s not an important or useful feature, unless you’re making a habit of letting people you don’t trust use your internet. Unlike the Mobile Me remote disk function, guest mode is not a feature available to the old Time Machine by software update.

As before, the Time Capsule also has a USB port which can be used to plug in a second disk or printer, which can be shared on the network. I did not test the USB port with a printer, but our previous tests showed this function to be buggy at times. Using Time Capsule with a secondary storage device is not a bad idea, because Time Machine backups cannot be size limited; they’ll use whatever disk space you have available to store the incremental changes in case you want to restore a file’s version from a specific date in history. Time Machine backup software can also bog down the network when doing a backup, saturating the airwaves. Other machines in the house can now use the second SSID in such a case, but we also recommend Time Machine Editor, a third-party program that allows you to schedule backups whenever you want them. I use it to schedule backups at 1am when I’m usually not working. (These are annoying shortcomings of Time Machine software, and so not something we can blame the Time Capsule hardware entirely for. Not entirely.)

As before, Time Capsule has one ethernet port for your internet connection, and three gigabit ethernet jacks. That’s one too few, in my book.

The unit runs very quietly, and sometimes you can hear the disks spinning up or seeking data, but its quiet enough for the notoriously anti-cooling-fan Steve Jobs. The unit’s top runs, according to my heat sensor gun, between 100 and 120 degrees. It’s warm, so I wouldn’t rest anything on it, which would exasperate the heat build up.

Time Capsule is $500 for a 1TB and $300 for 500GB of storage. That’s not a ton of storage for high-end machines these days, and multiple machines will almost certainly require the 1TB setup if you want to keep a moderately detailed history of your computers’ data changes. As you’d expect from Apple, that’s more than the cost of a 1TB external drive and a nice Wi-Fi router. Unlike when Time Capsule’s first-generation box was released, you have options now.

If you have an AirPort Extreme, you can plug in a USB disk to the port on it for Time Capsule backups. If you want a NAS that can do Time Machine backups but also act as an iTunes music server, this HP media box will do the trick (although won’t act as a Wi-Fi router). Since the new Time Capsule gets a bit more speed and distance out of it radios, and gets the useless guest mode, a refurbished Time Capsule could be a smart budget buy if those things aren’t on your “must have” list. If you’re a PC user, there’s no Windows equivalent of Time Machine back up software included, nor is there a way to use Time Capsule as a remote disk from across the internet, so this product is not for you.

Regardless of my caveats, I just prefer the Time Capsule to these options as it fits a lot of back up functionality and network performance in one box.

Top wireless performance

Server grade hard drive…maybe

Quiet

Easiest backup hardware ever for lazy mac users

Mobile Me remote disk function

Costs a bit more than separate Wi-Fi routers with a USB drive plugged in

Guest mode can’t throttle down bandwidth

Remote disk doesn’t always mount

PC Support is non existent for back up and remote disk

Last weekend Kirin debuted a unique marketing campaign in Shibuya Station that mixed three Japanese loves together: Green tea, cute characters, and vending machines.

While utilizing the always-busy pop-up marketing spot in Shibuya Station, Kirin created an elaborate setup to distribute gift packs of Namacha Panda Sensei, the official character fo the popular tea who has been bottled up himself in recent advertisements.

Up until the beginning of the campaign, Kirin had been heavily promoting the “character in the bottle” commercials to build up hype for the idea. While this may seem tame outside of Japan, never underestimate the power of well-conceived characters for brand promotion.

When it was revealed that there would be select, limited-edition giveaways of Panda Sensei in the tea bottles as in the commercials, lines were formed at the Shibuya-station spot to receive a number to claim one of the coveted little bears. The video below is a brief intro to the concept, where bears were dispersed from vending machines.

In the last years we’ve seen countless promotions integrated with vending machine culture, from Smart Cars to Humans. It’s a medium that resonates with the public, and can be quite convenient as well for creating staff-less promotions. In the Trendpool we discuss some new examples of integrating tryvertising with machines as well.

Pictures via Momo Kimock and FunFunFunOK!

The campaign is making a few more stops around the country on its limited tour, always on the weekends, and is stretching the length of Japan all the way up to Sapporo.

For more insight into Japanese marketing campaigns and promotions, and how they fit in with global trends, check out the Trendpool database. In the meantime, Panda Sensei has a blog you might want to check out.

physorg.com: Dr. Lodge McCammon and his team at NC State’s Friday Institute for Educational Innovation have developed FIZZ – a suite of tools that allows teachers to implement safe Web 2.0 environments in the classroom, similar to a private YouTube site for each school. Helping students solve classroom assignments is an important part of FIZZ, McCammon explains. However, there is another lasting component – teaching students appropriate ways to interact with available Web tools.

“Students are getting mixed messages about how to use sites like Facebook and YouTube. At their schools, these sites are banned – giving students the impression that the sites are inappropriate,” McCammon says. “But then they go home and their parents tell them they can use the sites, but maybe for only 30 minutes a day. No one is really giving them guidance on how to use these tools in an appropriate manner. They don’t fully realize that once they put content online, it is out there forever and they can’t take it back.”

Through the FIZZ Web site, teaching and learning outcomes can be easily broadcast over the Internet to increase student engagement and achievement, while still allowing school administrators to control the Web site’s content.

iTeacher: Program Brings Web 2.0 to the Classroom [physorg.com]

Star-Telegram.com: Given the recent global financial crises, it comes as no surprice that many families would be looking for budget-friendly activities for their kids while school is out. Open your own culinary school in the kitchen by exploring some of the recipes in these easy-to-follow cookbooks for kids. With these recipes, your family can learn new skills and travel the world — all for a few dollars.

Dish out fun with cookbooks for kids [Star-Telegram.com]