Any start-up company has to focus its limited resources to create a product that really really speaks to its target users. One place, however, were you should not cut corners is internationalization. Since its inception, Splashtop has been serving users as far from our California headquarters as Poland, Brazil, or Malaysia. In fact, if we look at where our new users came from in February, we see that the US accounts for under a half of our growth:

We have been stoking international use of Splashtop in a variety ways. On a very basic level, we have to enable users to type with a variety of local input methods. A big shout out here is due to the SCIM open source project that we benefit from. Thanks, guys! On an application level, we have been seeking out partners who enjoy popularity in their local markets. For example, Baidu powers our search in China, and Yandex - in Russia. Our Splashtop 2.0 product also incorporates a ton of local content from various markets where Splashtop is used.

Being international is a big deal for us. In fact, Cliff Miller, our Chief Strategy Officer based in Beijing, is out in California this week giving a keynote at the Worldware conference, which is all about global software strategies.

If you do software - whether in a start-up or in a large company, don’t forget that there is a big world out there beyond your borders - a world of opportunity!

Notice the Mirror app in the application dock - a must for a true fashion product.

To see lots of gorgeous runway photos and videos, make sure to visit the special site HP and Vivienne Tam put together for this product.

HP recently introduced the first multi-touch enabled tablet for business users - the HP EliteBook 2740p. It’s an ultra-thin convertible tablet that brings a fantastic interactive experience for the suits. It’s amazing how much more efficient one can be with a touchscreen. Daily tasks become more intuitive and faster. Gestures, taps, and swipes give applications so many more dimensions. I hate to say it, but a touchscreen may make work fun. But the coolest feature on the 2740p is the integration of Quickweb. Accessing the web in seconds with a touchscreen is just drool worthy.

HP also dished out new ProBook s-series and a new EliteBook 2540p with new designs clad in brushed aluminum and options for “caviar” brown or “bordeaux” red. Quickweb is also available on the new Elitebook and most ProBook notebooks.

At $699 and up, these are solid 15.5″ Intel i5 / i3 lappies with 4GB of RAM. And if you wear a suit to work, and “Caribbean Green” or “Hibiscus Pink” are not your thing, there is also a more conservative black design available.

Of course, we are most excited about the great “Web” button that Sony has been putting on its Vaio notebooks, and which launches you directly into the Splashtop browser. I am, in fact, writing this post on my Sony Vaio NW, which has the same button that gets me online in a few seconds without going through Windows.

What is in a product name? Everything! Would the iPod have been as successful if its name was iMP3? It is possible, but likely not. A good name lets you build a strong culture around it, so coming up with a good name is vital to any business. But sometimes what’s even harder is coming up with the translation of a name. We’re all aware of the marketing mishaps that come back to haunt companies. Just take Ikea, I could probably come up with a dozen product names that don’t work well in English.

We at DeviceVM need a Chinese name for Splashtop. Rather than having me come up with something that gets lost in translation, our China office would like to enlist some creative individuals that can help us come up with something. If you think you have what it takes to come up with a name and is fluent in Chinese we welcome you to join our contest. There’s a number of prizes that will be given away, but the deadline is February 5th so you better hurry. You can find more details about the contest here.

This just in: Laptop Magazine has awarded Splashtop 2.0 with the Best of CES award. We are all pretty thrilled about it here at the office. A big thank you to the team and all their hard work. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get Splashtop 2.0 to where it is, and this award just proves that it was all worth it. Here is what Laptop Magazine had to say:

“The Instant On operating system found in every notebook brand from ASUS to HP to Lenovo, won us over all over again by adding shortcuts, lots of shortcuts”

If you have not heard about Splashtop 2.0, here is the run down: better mobile 3G experience, customizable dock, instant search, and visual navigation of bookmarks and browser history. There is more info in my last post or you can check Laptop Mag’s in-depth video run through here.

It is hard to keep up with all the exciting news here at CES. It seems like every second there is something drool worthy that pops up. This year at CES there are definitely some drool worthy netbooks from your favorite manufacturers. Which leads me to some exciting netbook related announcements: Splashtop 2.0 is official, and on top of that our software will now be powering all of the popular netbooks from the leading manufacturers - Asus, Acer, and HP to name a few.

So what’s new in 2.0? Well it’s a significant step in every category: it’s even faster than before, has a better 3G connectivity experience, it’s touch optimized, and has a slew of other new features like:

• A redesigned application dock that let’s you add your favorite apps and sites.
• Ability to customize the look and feel of your desktop with stylish wallpapers and personalized packages.
• Instant search, which let’s you search even before launching the browser.
• Visual navigation of your favorite sites and history.

The new Lenovo Ideapad S10-3t, a touch-enabled netbook, will be the first to feature Splashtop 2.0.

Lastly I’d like to welcome the latest addition to the family - EeePC netbook line. The EeePC single handedly rocked the industry three years ago, and they continue to do so with the innovative swiveling tablet-netbooks like the EeePC T91MT, which of course includes Splashtop

It is only a day and a half until the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas. This year DeviceVM will be at Pepcom - Digital Experience showing off our latest technology. We’re going to have some exciting announcements coming soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks to AT&T and Radio Shack (The Shack), the X-120 is now available in the U.S. for the first time for $179.99 with a 2-year contract. For those not interested in a subsidized netbook, I picked mine up today for $399 off contract.

If you want to learn more about the X-120 you can take a virtual demo of it on LG’s site.  I’ll leave you with this video I took of Splashtop booting up for the first time on the X-120.

LG X-120 booting Splashtop

Facebook is a social networking platform, or so they say. Over 70 percent of monthly Facebook visitors spend their time viewing or uploading photos. And with over 21 billion photos uploaded, Facebook has undoubtedly become the de-facto standard for photo sharing on the Web. The team over at Facebook have done a phenomenal job in making the experience as simple as possible.

Flickr is another popular photo web app, and it’s the app of choice for many pro and pro-consumer photographers. Flickr offers a compelling set of features - simple but powerful editing tools, geotagging for photos, and versatile sharing tools. But the biggest draw for Flickr is it’s large community of users. It’s an amazing arena to share and showcase photographs to friends, family, and other photographers. And of course, with unlimited storage it’s a quick and easy way to do back-ups for your photos.

Fotki was built with a similar premise as Flickr. What started as a photo sharing site for a close circle of friends has blossomed into a photo printing, selling, and blogging site. The interface is slick and streamlined and makes browsing public photos fun.

SmugMug offers unlimited photos, unlimited storage, no ads, easy uploads, and sharing - it’s easy to see why it’s an up and coming web app. There’s an option for a Pro account where users can even sell photos as stock art.