gogobot, the super friendly social media travel site has just put out a casting call for their first-ever travel documentary.  Apply by February 8 2012 and if you’re the lucky chosen winner, you’ll be off to a six-day all expenses paid adventure with a gogobot film crew recording your journey.

Well, being somewhat of a ham and always open to travel, I thought I’d look further.

It’s open to registered gogobot users with over 10 original reviews of hotels, restaurants and destinations.  Check.

You have to be 21 years old.  Check.

Valid U.S. A. or E. U passport.  Check.

Free to travel from 20 – 27 of February.  Check.

Able to “handle rigors of extended travel including strenuous activity.” Check.

Able to work well in “stressful situations and in new environments with new people.”  Well, almost check.  I have this thing about small airplanes and sheer cliffs.  People stress I can deal with.  So that’s an  Almost Check.

And here’s the fun part.  You have to submit a link on youtube or vimeo to a one-minute video where you can explain why you should be selected and send it to casting@gogobot.com along with the form.  The winner is notified by February 11.  Sweet.

This company gets it.  They understand goodwill and connection with their public and the power of creative promotions.  They’re top of mind when it comes to recommendations and I’ve used them numerous times and contributed reviews as well.  While I don’t really care about earning badges, they have a good feel for rewarding their contributors.

So as long as they don’t have me dangling from a small plane or peering into a chasm from the edge of some glacier, this is an adventure I might consider.

While my husband resist my working on him, I still love taking things apart and finding out how things work.  I thought David Macaulay’s book, The Way Things Work, was a gift to inquisitive kids like me who always like to know what goes on inside of things.  Increasingly  I became fascinated by the digital world and cobbled together a PC or two myself…mostly in a big beige standard box.

So when chipmaker VIA just published its eBook,  Small is Beautiful: Ten Years of Mini-ITX, full of  the PC mods and projects people have created with the VIA Mini-ITX board, I was thrilled.  The 7″ x 7″ motherboard was unique in that it had a complete chipset:  audio, video, communications, and a built-in x86 CPU that used so little power that it immediately became the darling of modders who saw the potential of the board for robotics, car PCs, dorm PCs, and even in-wall PCs because it ran quietly and needed little cooling.  But then things got kinda crazy and PC enthusiasts latched on to the board and started shoving it inside things that were never meant to be a PC:  Accordions, model cars, gas cans, encyclopedias, even a model Millenium Falcon.   What VIA experience next was a flood of artisans who created unique cases, probably the most memorable being Jeffrey Stephenson’s cigar humidor PC and 1946 tabletop radio made out of splendid woods.

There were plenty of serious projects in the book too including SRI, which used the Mini-ITX for Centibots – autonomous robots that could be used in search and rescue where it was too dangerous for humans to venture.  And the DARPA Grand Challenge, another autonomous robot project, this time courtesy of the Department of Defense with a $1 million purse to the winning design.

I seized the VIA Mini-ITX and a lovely oak roll-top breadbox.  The Mini-ITX was easy, but my dexterity with a Dremel tool and woodworking was lacking.  My husband Russ had much greater luck with his World Vibrations radio station in a box, that continues to run his international radio station,  Connected Traveler Radio 24/7 with nary a blip on our utility smart meter.

So where does that leave us today?  Laptops are laptops and tablets are…well…tablets.  And they come in pretty standard configurations, though the quality varies wildly.  But you can’t take them apart.  You can’t modify them.  But with Internet Everywhere, we’re back in a place where things you don’t expect to be computers really are, with embedded PCs that will turn signs and kiosks into information devices (think of the display that recognized Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report) and guide someone with a Starbucks app on their phone to the nearest barrista.  Consider pill boxes that alert the user that they’ve not taken their pill that day (and tattle to the patient’s doctor).  Sensors and cloud computing come together with GPS devices that let parents track remotely track the travels of their children on a school field trip.

And now as computers becomes ubiquitous, we may take them  for granted.  That said, we tip our hats to the creative people who took the VIA Mini-ITX and ran with it.  Early.  At a time that art and computers were rarely seen in the same sentence.

When international banking exec, Jacques Mechelany would strap himself into a plane seat, he’d wonder about his three kids…what if this was to be his last flight?  Did he say what he wanted to say?  Were his affairs in order?  Would his kids really know who he is?

That’s when he decided to give up the globetrotting financial world and start I-POSTMORTEM, a company dedicated to making death better.  Hey, we’re all going to get there someday and the company’s two sites, I-Memorial.com and I-Tomb.net are designed to, as he says, “change the way people deal with death.”  We saw the sites – one for the the living to create virtual tombs for the dead and the other for the living to tell their own life  story for generations to come, leave posthumous messages, park their insurance policies and other documents securely, handle their social media passwords after their departure, and make sure the subscribers get the send-off they wanted.

Did I say subscribers?  Yes, that’s the model that Mechelany chose, and we think it’s a good one.  Like the insurance biz, subscriptions let a company like I-POSTMORTEM focus on their core sites and invest in the latest technology without debasing its sites to selling advertising.  I mean who wants casket sales ads and bereavement counseling ads dotting what should be an elegant tribute to a loved one or to yourself?

I-POSTMORTEM launched tonight at DEMO, one of Silicon Valley’s longest running tech darling events where VCs and media rub elbows with hopeful entrepreneurs aiming to wow the audience and get traction in the market, not to mention some bucks from interested investors.

I-Tomb.net is exactly that – a virtual tomb built for one’s ancestors or even more recently departed.  The tomb can contain pictures, videos, text and is placed online alongside other (some amusing and amazing historical tombs) online in the World Virtual Cemetery at www.i-tomb.net, where anyone can visit it from anywhere they can connect to the Internet.  (The company was showing Michael Jackson’s tomb, already adorned with virtual candles.)  Cost?  $50 per year.  That’s a heckuva lot less than traditional cemeteries and more convenient for families and friends than flying cross country to visit someone’s grave.

Then there’s I-Memorial – your own personal journey where you chronicle your life, record videos that can be seen after your passing – even record a video message for your child who  might only be three now but may open it on her 16th birthday.  You can use it like a vault to store sensitive documents- I-Postmortem partners with a Swiss data warehouse that boasts of some pretty sophisticated security.  $120 per yearfor an I-Memorial account.

You work on your I-Memorial during your lifetime – kind of like a multimedia journal.  And when you pass on, your death declarator whom you appoint like an executor, says you’re really dead (an email goes out to you to make sure that someone isn’t messing with you) and your I-Memorial turns into an I-Tomb and goes on the World Virtual Cemetery, unchangeable by anyone, and is viewable by the public or only by those you designate.   Your friends can place virtual candles, incense, and flowers as well as comments, video and music in your I-Tomb. (These get screened by the I-Tomb administrator before being published.)

When I first heard about this I felt uneasy.  It made me thing of our mortality, of things left undone.  But at the end of the day, it’s products like these that make us think about the process of life itself.  And when the little stuff is taken care of and we know we’ve said what we want to say to the people we want to touch, then doesn’t that really make life a bit sweeter?

“Tencent’s MTAA will strengthen our set of content management technologies and set a higher standard of mobile content security offerings.”

The relationship with ASC, the leading mobile app store provider in China, is the first strategic partnership Tencent has entered into since unveiling its Mobile Security Lab based on its MTAA (Mobile Terminal Assurance Architecture). Through the partnership, mobile applications and contents offered on the ASC-powered mobile app stores will be tested and certified using Tencent’s cutting edge mobile security engine before distribution to consumers.

“As a technology solution provider for mobile app stores, ASC serves some of the main mobile device manufacturers and content providers. We are committed to providing the highest quality of mobile contents to consumers. Copyright and security are the key issues we are dedicated to addressing since day one of our operations.” Said Neo Zhang, GM of App Store Connect. “Tencent’s MTAA will strengthen our set of content management technologies and set a higher standard of mobile content security offerings.”

“Tencent Mobile Security Lab has built a comprehensive framework for strategic partnerships, and is open to cooperating with mobile Internet industry partners. “ Said Ken Hu, Vice President of Tencent 3G Product Department. “App Store Connect represents some world-leading mobile device manufacturers including HTC and thousands of mobile developers with their high quality applications. Tencent Mobile Security Lab is glad to work with ASC to further promote mobile security in China.”

According to the data from the China Internet Association Anti Virus Alliance, over 1,600 mobile viruses or malwares have been identified, which infected 8 million mobile devices in 2010. Among which, viruses like “Virus Media” and “Phone Skeleton” infected over 2 million and 830,000 phones respectively during the year. The rapid development of mobile app stores and app download websites makes the spread of such viruses possible.

Industry experts remarked that coordinated efforts by the entire industry chain are instrumental for improving mobile security in China. App Store Connect is setting the pace and hopes that other mobile app store providers will introduce mobile security solutions to control the spread of mobile viruses at the source. Tencent and ASC will also promote QQ Phone Manager Application to provide security solutions at the end user level to further protect the smartphone users.

Every so often someone comes up with something so incredibly easy and so useful it just makes me smile. At the recent Connected Traveler Technology Showcase in San Francisco the inventor of the GoSmart Clip was showing a small plastic bracket that attaches to your car steering wheel or your golf bag or shoulder bag and fits just about any smart phone. It uses a ratchet to resize and release your phone. Nice for GPS – keeps it squarely on your steering wheel, which makes it impossible to use for texting, but plenty easy for more passive GPS and phone calls.

Often during international trips I find myself staring at the ceiling of the hotel room in the wee hours of the night, my body was telling me it is four o’clock in the afternoon. So I might as well catch up on email or do some writing but I don’t want to switch on the hotel light. That’s one of the features that I found attractive on the new lightweight netbooks from HP, not to mention the unusual peacock blue trim. I’m still trying to find where tablets fit into my life as a writer, and questioning whether I really need to lug around my full sized laptop. These seem to fit the bill.

From my own personal experience I can tell you that I don’t go on a trip without my Verizon MiFi device. It lets me get online from just about anywhere and also acts as a hub so we can circumvent the problem of the one-device one Internet connection limitation typical of many hotels. At the Connected Traveler Technology Showcase Verizon also showed a number of tablets with 3G and smart phones with 4G connectivity.  The HTC Thunderbolt (left) uses the latest Verizon 4G and turns the phone into a wireless router for up to five devices. You don’t really know how handy that is until you’re in a hotel room that charges exorbitant fees for slow connectivity and you have to fight over who gets the WiFi.  You both do.  Invite some more people to the room.  Hey, this makes it a regular connectivity party.

I use three displays in my office and truth be told, could even add another one. I like to spread out my notes, research and browser on one display while writing on the other. I also keep my social media and email on one monitor throughout the day. Mobile Monitor Technologies, showed the Field Monitor Pro, a portable display is light enough to be able to pack in a bag and can be set up vertically, horizontally or even hung on a wall. Its built-in keypad probably comes in handy for traveling accountants. While I probably wouldn’t take it on an overnight trip, I sure would when I plant myself down someplace for a week or so and need to get some serious work done. Wouldn’t be without it.

You get used to having connectivity to VPN into your office but you can’t always count on having it when you travel. So portable storage like the drives from Western Digital make a lot of sense, especially when you’re shooting a lot of video or photos or need access to your documents. What’s really nice though, is that these drives sync in the cloud so everything is updated between your portable drive and the drive in your office.  They showed their Scorpio Black hard drives for notebooks with up to 750GB of storage that give you the faster performance of desktop PC drives, yet don’t eat up a lot of battery life.  By the way, it isn’t that hard to open up your notebook and install a new drive.  Here’s how.

General Imaging showed a family of affordable digital cameras under the GE moniker, including dust-proof, shockproof, waterproof, even a prosumer camera with a 27 – 405mm lens that felt very nice in the hand. But the one that caught my fancy had a built-in pico projector that would be great on camping trips, shooting daytime activities and projecting them on the wall of the tent after sundown.

Also in the photo department is a nifty, inexpensive gadget that eliminates the problems of flash photos that wash out faces, lose background detail or create that oh so evil red-eye effect. The LightScoop was developed by professor Ken Kobre’ and fits on top of DSLR cameras and bounces the flash off the ceiling or the wall for much more attractive diffused light. Your background objects show up in your photos and everyone and everything looks a whole lot better.  At The Connected Traveler Technology Showcase,  Dr. Kobre and his wife Betsy set up a backdrop with a hula dancer in the foreground.  The demo showed how the Lightscoop illuminates the entire space rather than just the foreground object.

Everyone knows a traveler who keeps saying “You shoulda been there!”  Here’s a way they can put your in their shoes.  Or flippers.  Or ski boots: Wearable cameras from Liquid Image. These sports goggles come in a variety of styles, some even for underwater use. A switch on the edge of the goggles lets you shoot video or stills of your diving adventures, skiing, motocross just the way you see them. I was impressed with footage from a downhill skier that they used as part of their demo. It made me think about some of the triple black diamond runs that I haven’t conjured the courage to tackle—the video actually made it look do-able.

One of the most fun and interesting tech products on display at The Connected Traveler Technology Showcase was a GPS dongle from Traxxitt. Designed with an Apple-like look, the device comes in a variety of colors and lets you track whatever you attach it to in pretty darn close to real time on maps on your smart phone or PC. They spoke about schools in Brazil that are giving one to each young student on long-distance field trips, giving their parents a much more secure feeling knowing that they can see where their children are at any given time.  This interview explains how it works.

There’s a new kind of remotesourcing that is offering people an opportunity to keep their job while taking care of their kids.  Visit Anybot headquarters in Mountain View and you’ll most likely be greeted by a pleasant-looking robot with an even more pleasant voice belonging to Suzanne, who is actually at home with her pink fuzzy slippers and kids, and still gets her job done (quite nicely thank you very much) as executive assistant at the robotics company.   

Whether for receptionists, doctors, educators, executives or supervisors, robots like Anybot provide eyes, ears and a voice at offices, hospitals, schools, and overseas headquarters and factories, and represent the next evolution in video communications.  Users can manipulate the Anybot with cloud-based controls enabling the Anybot to be used for everything from remote meetings to inspections of factory assembly lines.  

The Anybot will be available for $15,000 in December.  That might not be peanuts in consumer electronics terms, but that gets eaten up pretty quickly by just a couple of overseas flights that one could save by making a robot part of the company team.

Ask me my opinion in a survey and I’ll usually decline, knowing that there’s some sales pitch attached, or my name and personal information will go into some deep repository to receive never-ending spam.  But there was something about the two freshly scrubbed kids in the Senado Square in Macao that made me stop, and willingly submit to their interviews.

This was not a solitary incident.  My husband Russ and I were interviewed no fewer than three times during our one-week stay in Macao: once on the square, once at the airport, and once at the EVA Airlines check-in counter, but more about that later.  The questions ranged from our lodging to how we spent time at this booming city whose massive lush casinos dwarf its charming and well-preserved Portuguese-Chinese historic district.  And the burgeoning middle class has money to spend, so these surveys will no doubt track and help Macao determine how to respond to the well-heeled throngs that appear to be bypassing Hong Kong and now flying directly into Macao’s international airport.  They even asked about our favorite food, which may help determine what is being served in one of the 30 restaurants in the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, one of the largest structures in the world (you could park more than 90 747′s in it).

There is no doubt that Macao is a success. And constant re-evaluation is key to that success – I remember being surveyed when I first visited almost ten years ago.  It’s hard to resist a friendly young person armed with a clipboard, but why did I find myself happily and willingly participating in a survey at the EVA Airlines counter?  The tablet PC next to the gate agent was very touchable in a way that a computer screen and keyboard could never be.  There was no jumble of wires, no Enter key.  Just a series of questions about our satisfaction with EVA’s service associated with smiley or frowney faces.  So while we checked in, we tapped the screen.  All positives.

Perhaps that’s the nature of tablets.  They’re friendly.  They’re relatively light.  They invite touching.  Maybe that’s why one in four people expect to replace their laptop with a tablet, according to a recent Zogby International survey.  The simple elegance of an integrated device with a clear friendly screen probably increased my likelihood to interact with it.  I’m sure there’s a survey for that, too.

I bought a 7” Pandigital Novel tablet from the Walgreen’s web site a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, Walgreen’s, not Wal-Mart.  I couldn’t resist.  It’s been relegated to the kitchen where it sits happily and usefully as a recipe and cooking method reference and easy webmail client.  In my opinion the Novel’s strong suit is not as an eReader, though it is marketed as one.  The screen is simply too hard on the eyes.  I tried to read and after 15 minutes had to stop.

It’s slow but acceptable, and it takes some time to get used to fingernail typing on its resistive touch screen (just when I’m just starting to master the touch on the iPhone.  I still prefer real keys.)  But for $149, it’s a nice, albeit heavy device.  It comes with earphone jack, speaker, USB, SD card slot and accelerometer.  It has a decent set of apps, access to the Barnes & Noble bookstore online, ability to manage Adobe Digital Edition eBooks, a photo gallery, plus nice things like Calendar, Alarm, Stocks, Facebook app, Contacts, and multimedia player.  And cheap enough that I don’t mind wiping marinara sauce and olive oil off its face when necessary.  I know I could hack it and speed it up, someone already has, and using the calibration utility has helped immensely. 

Why it isn’t marketed as a real tablet is beyond me.  Would that scare away what they think their target customer would be?  Why limit it to the very thing that is a weakness?  It has plenty of flexibility and for anyone who wants to play around with it, I’m sure they can load apps onto it.  And it’s easy to get to the browser and use web-based apps.  The ultimate tablet will be one that provides glare-free reading while also letting us use a browser and enjoy apps on the same (please not-too-heavy) device.

In this Wall Street Journal article by Don Clark, it appears that U.S. gadget sales  are headed for an uptick this year according to the Consumer Electronics Association.  Clark’s article cites the CEA as saying: “PCs will top the boob tube this year, with U.S. sales to consumers projected to grow 23% to more than $26 billion.”  While TV’s are on the downturn, the PC screen is on the uptick as people are viewing content more on their computers, notebooks and mobile devices.    Netbooks appear to be squeezed from both sides with pressure from tablets on the one hand and eroding notebook prices on the other. 

The CEA is expected to revise revenue projections for the CE sector up from 0.6% predicted in January to a 3% revenue increase.  We can only hope.