It’s silly season again so we’re having a party. No, not just full of geeks so don’t panic. It works like this…

5pm – 6pm – Tech Showcase for 2010

…..So let us buy you a drink and say thank you for supporting us, introduce the new team from our merger with Dr Logic and show you what 2010 has in store tech wise: Windows 7 reviews, Mac or PC, Training Tips, view Office 2010, iPhone Smarts,  Social Media Tips, Automated Systems to save money and generally what, who, where, why for small biz IT next year. We will make it fun, interesting & relevant

6pm – 8pm -  1000 Like Minded Fun Business People in 1 Room

…..having a drink next door. They will mingle in our room and vice versa. Free drinks. Great networking opportunity. Use it! You are welcome to stay until 1am when we kick you out to cop some zzz’s.

8pm – 1am – It’s partay time

……£20,000 worth of booze behind the bar, 80s theme (Please make an effort, more fun), live entertainment, great people, guest DJs, lots of surprises. A fun night for 1000+ people in a fantastic venue. Previous parties here including a video of last year.

Tickets for Tech Showcase, Networking & Party - £30. 5pm-1am.

Buy Tickets here (Friend ticket)

Dec 10th in The Arches - 51/53 Southwark Street, London SE1 1RU

600 tickets have been sold already, be quick…..

The Pics are In!

http://theengineroom.co.uk/blog/2009/12/xmas-party-pics/

In August 2009 we ran our first Pecha Kucha style learning event in Adam St, central London. (Pecha Kucha means chit chat in Japanese)

8 speakers given 7 minutes to share as much useful knowledge as possible with an audience of 30 small business owners. A tough task!

Some video feedback for you

Speakers

Danvers Ballieu – Winston Strawn legal top tips

Tiffany StJames - Head of Digital Engagement (UK Gov)

Simon Bird – DotCommerce Tech Director shares recent online behavioural research 

Robert Fenton - Serial Entrepreneur starting Talent Expo. The biggest UK gathering of talent

Richard O’Connor - Serial Entrepreneur, ex Amber Green & We Ents talks sales and marketing

Keren Lerner – From Top Left Design shares website must do’s and dont’s

Mark Jacobs – No nonsense Accountant talks money and how to keep it

A quick video promo here and the lengthier version below

This workshop explored the ‘What the heck is it’ and ‘How the hell do I use it’ regarding Social Media in small business. We all need to generate sales, but firstly trust, and Social Media fits the bill perfectly if you know how to leverage it.

We had 25 small business owners join us for our 7th workhop. Long may they continue! Hoorah.

Well done Richard O’Connor from Grab Marketing and Luke Williams from Social Tech for delivering a full-on workshop. The feedback so far has been extremely positive with only 1 or 2 a little brain fried with too much content. However, we will remedy that.

Thank you to all who came, I’m sure there is follow up to do so let us know ‘What’ and ‘How’ you would like that to happen.

Thanks to Rick from Red Banana for creating these diary and promo videos. Lovely! Now all I’ve got to do is lose some weight and learn how to present!

All constructive feedback appreciated. As usual, the Good, Bad and Ugly…….

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Us here at The Engine Room are a mixed and odd bunch. Most of us have iPhones and use them for both work and play in mixed and odd ways. In this blog we cover a few of the more sane iPhone applications we use on a daily basis. All these applications are available to download for FREE here: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/appstore.html at time of writing.

First up we have MyRail Lite. It’s an essential application for people living in or around London who commute into work via train. It displays an exact duplicate of the platform timetable display for any given station including departure time, arrival time, platform number and all stops and times on the way to your destination. The only time I’ve seen it misbehave is when the actual station is having trouble with it’s timetables too.

Next we have TwitterFon. It’s a neat little iPhone app for reading and updating your Twitter account if you have one. It’s nicely laid out and very simple to use. You can follow twitter links and scroll through recent friends’ twitters on the move.

One of my favorites is the apple Remote application for iTunes. It allows you to use your iPhone or iPod as a remote control for your iTunes. Provided your iPhone or iPod are on the same wireless network as your computer with iTunes on it then you can search, play, skip and adjust the volume of your music in real-time.

For those of you who are forever correcting leaning pictures on the wall or the tech savvy carpenter this little tool will come in handy. Aptly named the iHandy Level, it users the iPhone’s inbuilt motion sensors and displays a very accurate spirit level.

The last little tool is more of a toy. It’s called RJDJ and users your iPhone’s microphone to sample sounds from around you and turn them into a spacial sound-scape you can manipulate by touching the phone’s screen.

I was quite excited to go to CeBit this year (Tech expo in Germany). I’m a CeBit virgin so didn’t really know what to expect. Here are my 3 key learnings:

* Only go if you are a serious home user geek OR need something in the big business Enterprise space. i.e. You are PM’ing a large CRM rollout for a bank (Not that they will be investing in anything soon)

* There appears to be a lack of investment in anything new tech wise. I guess the reasons are obvious

* It is huge! Think 25 x Olympia. Wear confortable shoes and get lots of sleep the night before

So. I guess I feel pretty neutral about it really. Kinda fun but no real juice. Shame.

Check out the website www.cebit.de

PS My fave piece of tech was a 103″ Touch Screen Plasma from Panasonic. Funny, My front room wall is just the right size.

Small TV

Ultra portable laptops have been around for many years, but in order to get all that power and technology crammed into such as small unit, you would have had to pay well above the £1000 mark.

Enter the Mini-Notebook (aka the Netbook)

While Mini-Notebooks aren’t latest ‘craze’ to hit the market, they are rapidly becoming more and more popular due to their ease of use and low cost. Before going into more depth let’s understand what exactly is meant by the term Mini- Notebook. 

In this blog we mean those developed specifically to use the new lower power processors (such as Intel Atom or the Via C7), have screens 10 inches or less and most importantly stay under the £400 mark.

I’ve rounded up a few of the latest to hit the shelves to see what they can do.  All of these have the bare essentials i.e. Speakers, headphone & mic jack, USB ports, network port & Wireless. While some even include card readers and Bluetooth, but we’ll get to that later.

First up we have the predecessor to the original ‘EeePC’. This latest offering from Asus bridges the gap between laptop s and netbooks that much more. Is this, the EeePC 1000 the pinnacle of Mini-Notebooks….or just a stepping stone on the way to the top? 

With the top spec model boasting a 10”screen, 1GB of Ram, an 80GB hard drive and Windows XP you have a very capable machine at a wallet friendly price.

The keyboard is a pleasure to use and the mouse track pad, unlike its rivals, supports multi touch gesture points. So you can stroke 2 fingers vertically or horizontally to scroll, or use a pinch or stretching motion to zoom in and out of photos -ala Ipod touch. Other useful features include Bluetooth, SD card reader and VGA output.

In conclusion the EeePC 1000 is a fabulous machine and coming in around the £350 mark it won’t break the bank. For surfing the internet, creating and editing documents and even watching movies this is a perfect alternative to the full blown laptop.

Pros – Large screen and multi touch pad
Cons – Weight
Engine Room Rating: 4/5

Next up I had a look at the offering from MSI, aptly named the Wind. While MSI have largely kept to motherboards and graphics cards in the past, they have come out guns blazing with their ‘Wind’ Mini-Notebook and have a genuinely stylish product that will give their rivals a good scare.

Going for around £330 this definitely won’t break the bank and is loaded with plenty of goodies, such as Bluetooth, 4-in-1 Card reader, VGA output and 1.3mp integrated webcam.  Plus the usual 10” screen, 1GB ram and 80GB hard drive.         

One of the Winds biggest selling points is its looks: it screams sleek and sophisticated, and it is ultra portable at only 1kg.

The screen is a pleasure to behold and keyboard is extremely responsive, with well set out keys. 

Unfortunately for the Wind it is let down by battery life and only manages around 2 hours movie viewing between charges.  But MSI have a larger 6 cell battery in the pipeline that addresses this problem.

So for a Mini-Notebook that looks the part and does what it’s meant to then the MSI Wind is a winner, and cheaper than most rivals.

Pros- Great Screen, responsive keyboard
Cons- Average battery life
Engine Room Rating: 3.5/5

While HP has entered the Mini Notebook market later than it‘s rivals it does present a terrific model on its first time out.  Enter the heavyweights at HP with the Mini 1000

Based on the ultra portable business 2133 Mini-Note laptop, HP has kept the best features, i.e. the large comfortable keyboard (92% of a full size laptop keyboard) and thin body.

For the typical price of £400 you get the same Atom processor, 10” screen, 1GB Ram, 60GB hard drive, wireless and Windows XP, USB

The screen has edge to edge glass which is borrowed from the new Apple MacBooks, and while this is aesthetically pleasing it does prove to up the glare factor.

All in all this is a worthy contender to sit up there with the EeePCand Wind, mainly due the fact that HP did right by the average user and kept the 2133’s large keyboard. Look out for the Mini 1000 to fly off the shelves when it becomes available in February.

Pros – better keyboard, thinner
Cons- Limited expansion, shiny screen, proprietary drive slot
Engine Room Rating: 3/5

Another one of the ‘big dogs’, Acer have joined the Netbook party with their take on what ultra portable ultra cheap computing should be: I present the Aspire One.

Like the HP Mini 1000 Acer have plumped for the biggest keyboard possible and succeeded, well almost. (They managed 95% of a full laptop keyboard) So you could pretty much touch-type on this as normal without losing much speed.  The compromise is the small touchpad with buttons mounted on either side instead of below, which can take some getting used to.  Elsewhere you will find the usual connectivity: usbx3, VGA output, mic/headphones, integrated webcam and network port.

But instead of one SD card read slot there are two. One is meant for semi-permanent use to add valuable space. Though it might not be needed as the £320 model comes with an 80GB hard drive, 1GB of ram and the Atom CPU.

Probably the biggest noticeable difference between the Aspire One and its competitors is the 8.9” screen.  But Acer have an ace up their sleeve and it comes in the form of an optional 3G/HSDPA adaptor, so simply plug in your 3G enabled sim card and you’re good to go browsing anytime anywhere.

Acer have thus capitalized on an unused, but often needed feature and this will be an important selling point in the Mini-Notebook sales war.

Pros- 3G Card, twin SD slots,
Cons- touchpad, battery life
Engine Room Rating : 4/5

Now with more and more of the big dogs sitting up and taking notice of this niche in the market (Dell have a Netbook in the pipeline and Packard Bell aren’t far off)  this technology is only going to get better, faster and cheaper much, much quicker.

Article Written by: Mike Burgondeeeeee.