Posts tagged with Computex 2008
Live From The Post-Computex Social Media Decompression Chamber
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 3:19 AM
Loading ...Back safely from Computex. Even though this was my tenth trip, this one will stand out for a long time for the high spirit of adventure it produced as a result of implementing many social media tools at once.
We picked a place thirteen time zones away to dive into the deep end of the social media pool. Metaphorically speaking, it felt like being in a tin can going to the moon. We were implementing lots of new capabilities at the same time that ultimately required lots of troubleshooting on the fly. It produced some early headaches and challenges but it turned out to be memorable, spirited, and a lot of fun.
Here’s the rundown on the experience, or should I say experiment, of all these activities.
First, the Nokia N95 phone, in my opinion, was a bust using it the way we wanted to use it. We wanted to be able to automatically capture, upload, and broadcast video with minimal delay. Amazing functionality, for sure, and I’m sure we’ll continue to use it in North America, but couldn’t get it to behave with the 3G networks in Taiwan. This made us dependent on unreliable Wi-Fi signals from the show floor and even back at our hotels. We resorted to using my Flip video camera, uploading that content into our YouTube account vis-à-vis the old reliable PC and using the help of the Flixwagon folks to back load the new content into our Flixwagon account. Two of our videos are still stuck in Flixwagon and won’t load into YouTube! (Check out “Pat Chats with Theo” & “Gigabyte’s Spider”).
We had to implement the same kind of workarounds with the Flickr account using the Nokia N95 phone as well. Frankly, the early troubles with the video impacted the attention we gave to Flickr, which deserved more. But we Flickred, it works, and we’ll do it better next time.
The live Mogulus broadcast of our press event also had mixed results. We implemented an up-rezzing transcoding engine on the live feed from a company called Kulabyte – a very promising technology. Feedback from the audience was mixed – I am told many were amazed by the high quality video streaming through their computers from half a world away. Some experienced a jittery picture. Clearly looks dependent on the capabilities of the end user PC, their network, their WAN, and we will continue to work with these companies to provide a reliable solution for our audience. You can check it out for yourself as the recording on-demand feature is available now. It looks great.
Twitter is still kind of an enigma to me, but it I think it has its place, and I am intrigued. It was kind of a like cross-breed between a mass phone text, a mass IM, and the Truman Show. Like many first-time cross-breedings, it was ugly at times. The Twitter network was down a lot, users were habitually complaining, and there is even a Twitter blog on the issues and reasons for the outages. Even with all the issues, we are starting to build a following. Translating that capability into an on-going business practice will take time and more experimentation.
Next, I didn’t need to spend much time following our Facebook page because it already integrates content from YouTube, FlickR, and Twitter. It is growing by itself and we’re hearing from many long time AMD fans from around the world expressing their feelings about why they like us…..and what they think we need to fix.
Finally, none of this “rise of the machines” stuff above worked without awesome “humans” ;> . I particularly want to thank Scott Carroll, our social media manager and Matt Davis, our PR manager for making everything work when the tech didn’t.
Here are quick & easy summary links to much of this content:
- YouTube AMD@Computex 2008
- FlickR AMD@Computex 2008
- Flixwagon AMD@Computex 2008
- AMD Unprocessed Facebook Page
- Follow AMD on Twitter
- AMD on Mogulus
Community-inspired innovation is awesome. I’m looking forward to continuing the use and implementation of these tools but doing so while playing for the home team in the states for a while… at least a few weeks
This is AMD@Computex 2008, signing off!
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Day 3 @Computex: The Innovation Cycle Continues
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 8:45 AM
Day three at Computex comprised of more 1:1 regional press interviews and spending more time, maybe too much time, on the show floor given security booted us out of the facility.
Although I had spent a good part of time interviewing some of our technology partners, it was now our turn to give interviews. The first one was with Bloomberg, and while they would have liked to dig deep into AMD’s financial matters, we confined our discussion to AMD’s products and competitiveness. We also talked with IDG on a variety of corporate areas. I have been meeting with Sumner for years and it’s so nice to catch up with familiar faces.
We also hosted a Japanese press contingent that freelanced for publications including PC Watch and MYCOM Journal The discussion focused on our “Puma” platform, the rationalization behind our AMD GAME!™ and AMD LIVE! ™ programs, and the benefits we believe they provide to different sets of customers. I personally like to think of AMD LIVE! and AMD GAME! as guiding posts to deliver a superior technology platform for mainstream gamers and media mavens. Some may disagree and call it just a sticker program or marketing ploy, but if it can help simplify a confusing buying decision, it’s easy to see the benefit. Again, we in the PC industry tend to lose perspective on the ocean that separates enthusiasts and mainstream customers in how each of them approach a solid buying decision. AMD LIVE! and GAME! fill a void in information availability and help save time and effort for the consumer looking for a great all-around digital media and gaming PC.
The final interview was with Hardware Zone out of Singapore. We chatted a lot about the future, or in my opinion, the questionable future for UMPCs and a lot about the mini-notebook spin and hype at this year’s show. As you know, I spent 30 days at home with a lot of different mini-notebooks, comparing full sized notebooks at the same price point, and blogged about my results here. I just hope that consumers get full disclosure when deciding between a mini-notebook and full-sized notebook at the same price point.
After our 1:1 interviews we met up with GearLive for a chat. These guys are awesome in that they sift right through the spin (B.S.) to get to the heart of the technology and the benefit it provides the end user. I absolutely LOVE that approach and wish more folks would adopt this. You can check out our interview with GearLive here:
…as we discuss the next generation notebook platform.
Jake Ludington from GearLive has great insights on the entire Computex show and he shares these insights on his blog here.
Finally, we met up with AMD’s Jacky Wong to talk about ATI XGP™ technology. This is AMD’s new external PCI Express® (PCIe) 2.0 graphics platform, designed to deliver enthusiast-class desktop graphic performance and true multimedia upgradeability to notebooks. The concept is real simple: If you have a notebook with an ATI XGP Technology external PCIe connector and you want some real incredible gaming performance, plug your notebook into an independently powered and cooled graphics “booster unit”, and you are on your way to gaming heaven. Jacky talks more about it here:
…and shows us a notebook connected to three additional monitors playing some cool games.
As we were giving our final GearLive interview of the show, the lights turned down and security entered our realm, a pretty good sign that it was time to leave. Matt Davis, my AMD compadre of the show, just flipped on the camera and we just started walking and talking, trying to summarize what we saw during the show. You can catch that conversation here.
What a Computex 2008 show…… Puma has been let off the leash and the industry’s cycle of innovation rules over anything else. It rules over spin and the giant blue hype machine… the truth always comes out in the end, or that’s what my grandfather the milkman and Christmas tree farmer told me when I was a mere four foot tall…….
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Day 2 @Computex: Innovation Book-ends
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 3:27 AM
Today was a huge day for AMD which was capped off with the launch of our next generation mobile platform, formerly code-named “Puma”. For me, it was really a tale of book-ends ranging from checking out some of the coolest technology on the show floor to sharing AMD’s innovation vision with Taiwan’s top 100 tech companies.
With so much technology on the floor, I thought the best way to bring you some of the coolest AMD stuff was to shoot it on video and pics so you can see for yourself. There were a ton of our next generation notebook platforms on the show floor with varying configurations. Check out these videos of new notebooks from HP and Acer and MSI. I especially appreciate MSI’s HDMI port so a user can connect their new AMD-based laptop with a single cable to their TV and get great video and audio. On the desktop front, I thought Gigabyte had a very cool Spider platform that you can see here. Not only was it cool, it was water-cooled with an AMD Phenom™ X4 processor and dual ATI Radeon™ 3870 graphics cards in ATI CrossFireX™ mode.
There were also some unique desktop form-factors as well. Acer had a very cool Aspire L5100 SFF desktop, and at less than 1 liter, it was only slightly taller than my business card. I like SFF but I really love big cases, and Thermaltake had some wicked AMD LIVE!™ and AMD GAME!™ chassis on display. You can see all these below.
The highlight of the day was the launch event of our next generation mobile platform. We had over 400 in attendance and from the feedback I received, we hit the mark with our customers, partners, press and analysts. I caught up with In-Stat’s Jim McGregor and asked him his thoughts about the mobile market and AMD’s platform which you can find here:
Finally, if you missed the event live, you can view it on-demand at Mogulus.
My final event of the day was providing the keynote speech to Business Next’s 2008 Taiwan Info Tech100 Award Ceremony and Forum. The forum included high level executives from Taiwan’s top 100 industries and government officials from what was described to me as “The Executive Yuan”. The theme of the entire forum was “exploring the power of innovation “ and covered a variety of topics from strategy to research and development, operating and executive management……the main point being that innovation has been the key point of technology competition with distinguished companies. One of the biggest treats was the greeting from Taiwan’s Vice President, R.O.C., Mr. Vincent Siew. This certainly isn’t something that I experience every day. It was also an honor to speak alongside Mr. Johnny Shih, Chairman of AsusTek, Adam Judd, senior vice president of Asia Pacific at Juniper, and Mr. Charlie Lee, Tainan factory director of Corning. They really know how to do big events well in Taiwan and this was no exception. Here are some pics below…..
So there we have it, Computex day two, a day of mobile innovation, and certainly a day of innovation book-ends.
(1) From left to right speakers are Mr. Adam Judd, senior vice president of Asia Pacific at Juniper; Mr. Patrick Moorhead, vice president of Advanced marketing at AMD; Mr. Johnny Shih, Chairman of AsusTek; Mr. Charlie Lee, Tainan factory director of Corning.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Day 1 @Computex: In The Beginning….
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 1:17 PM
Day 1 was uneventful, with the exception that I somehow managed to lock myself into my bathroom. Some people may have said, “Someone doesn’t want me going to Computex” and stopped while they were ahead, but I am a man on a mission and cannot be deterred. I am no longer in the bathroom, in case you wondered. Thank goodness for bathroom phones. :> 
The Computex show floor didn’t open until 9:30 am and Day 1 for me was mostly about show planning and press interviews. I met with Bloomberg, CNET Asia, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Ming Pao Daily News, and the Hong Kong Economic Times for about an hour each. We talked about a variety of items, but one item that we continually discussed was the present and future of mobility. There was a lot of interest in the AMD platform codename “Puma”, but since it isn’t scheduled to launch until June 4th, I couldn’t divulge too much so we could save something for the grand announcement.
We talked about the concept of these expensive mini-notebooks a lot. It’s so interesting how, in my opinion, every trade show needs to have the “shiny new red wagon”. The irony is that many never gain market traction and either die or are reformed as something else. I was around for the first tablets released on Windows in the early 90’s and someone reminded me about diskless and wireless web tablets (Miro). For this show I am witnessing the feeding frenzy around inexpensive, low performing (versus full size) mini-notebooks. See my comments on those here. Last year at Computex, the big new thing was UMPCs…… and it was very hard for me to find many of them on the show floor this year.
So I did get the chance to walk the show floor for a few hours and it was interesting. It’s like system builder heaven…… chassis, motherboards, cooling solutions, memory, new storage…….. running out of breath just thinking about it.
At this year’s show, among many things, we are bringing out our new AMD LIVE!™ Home Cinema, which in simple words, is a cool reference design for a living room home theater PC. The specific configuration we’re demonstrating at Computex has a couple of cool features, specifically a digital audio amplifier from D2Audio (which hits what some would call audiophile specs) and a new liquid cooling solution we worked on with NoiseLimit Inc. We’re showing how the digital amp and a quad core AMD Phenom™ processor can all live like a happy family together in a VCR-sized chassis. Check out the interview here on the overall specs and benefits. We also were pleased to have NoiseLimit swing by the booth to tell us how they have innovated for the AMD LIVE! Home Cinema program. You can check that out here.
Finally, I took a look around another booth. I will leave it to your imagination as to who’s booth it was. What I saw there was a demo of Second Life and HD running on their new integrated chipset which was too jittery for me to enjoy. I was yearning for an AMD 780G chipset system with a quad or triple core AMD Phenom™ processor around that time. At my house at least I can run full Blu-ray movies with no hiccups at 1080P splendor and play some really good games like HL2 at decent frame rates.
Doing all this on a mobile platform could be even better…..and that’s what tomorrow is about…. i.e.: our next generation “Puma” platform. I will keep you posted…..and as I requested last time and you came through, let me know what you would like to see and I will try to get it on film.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
(4.43 out of 5)