I wanted to take a moment to let you know about a new web site I’ve just launched, called mobiputing. As you can probably guess from the name, mobiputing is and will continue to be a sister site to Liliputing. But while Liliputing is focused on netbooks and mobile computing hardware and software generally, my aim with mobiputing is to cover the world of smartphone apps.

Right now there’s a pretty heavy focus on iPhone and Android applications on the site, because that’s where most of the development has been recently (and because I happen to have a Google Nexus One Android phone and an iPod Touch to test out new apps). But I’m hoping to touch on most of the major platforms, and I’ve already started lining up writers to help out with app reviews and recommendations for other platforms including WebOS.

While the netbook market was just getting started when I launched Liliputing, smartphones have clearly been around for a little while. But it’s an exciting time in the smartphone space, with Android phones like the Nexus One giving the iPhone some serious competition in terms of specs and available applications. And Microsoft is set to launch the most significant revision to its mobile operating system in a decade later this year.

Of course, I’ll also continue covering software development that’s relevant to the mobile computing space at Liliputing. So you can still expect to see the occasional post about Ubuntu, MeeGo, Jolicloud, Android, and Chrome OS. But if you’re at all interested in news about smartphone apps and operating systems, I hope you’ll check out mobiputing.

The 2009 Liliputing Holiday Giveaway has now drawn to a close. Over the past few weeks we’ve given away some awesome prizes, and I wanted to thank the sponsors once again: NVIDIA, Asus, GearZap, Ultimate-Netbook, and Lite-On.

And of course, thanks again to everyone who entered. Here’s a list of all the winners, many of whom should already have received their prizes:

• Cool Bananas netbook case from Gearzap – winner: Timm Hackett
• Universal Car Mount from Ultimate-Netbook – winner: Travis Moser
• Asus CrossLink cable - winner: Jason Lassourreille
• Asus O!Play HDP-R1 media streamer – winner: TashKavarish
• Lite-On eTAU208 USB DVD burner - winner: Bill Kilgore
• 16GB Zune HD with NVIDIA Tegra graphics - winner: Laurentiu Pirpiliu
• HP Mini 311 notebook with NVIDIA ION graphics - winner: Alexander Korobov

If you didn’t win this time, stick around. I’m sure we’ll have more goodies to give away in the year to come.

GottaBeMobile’s Warner Crocker has unveiled the winners of this year’s Ink Blot awards. While you could certainly make the case that this prestigious annual event is really just an excuse for Warner to make up funny categories for mobile tech bloggers and name friends and colleagues as the winners, I’m still honored to be recognized as “best netbook blogger.” Last year, Liliputing won for best new mobile tech blog. I’ll take this year’s award as a step up.

As always, Liliputing is in good company. UMPC Portal, jkkmobile, jkOnTheRun, and Joanna Stern all winning awards this year. If I were to add one category to the bunch, it would be “best site for breaking netbook news” it would be Netbooked, which has a habit of finding more interesting stories about netbooks and ultraportable computers before I wake up than most sites will publish all day. Of course, Peter from Netbooked is on the other side of the globe from me, which does give him a slight advantage when it comes to putting in a full workday before 7am.

I’d also throw in a category for best user community/forum, but I’d have a hard time deciding whether to give the award to EeeUser, MyDellMini, MyHPMini, or any of the dozens of other excellent communities that have formed around netbooks over the past two years.

I’m also a big fan of several netbook and mini-laptop sites that often don’t get the attention they should in the US, simply because they’re not written in English. Among these are Blogeee, NewGadgets.de, NetbookNews.de, and Eee PC.it, although that list is hardly all-inclusive.

What sites do you

I’m going to be traveling over the next few weeks and my friend and colleague Lee Mathews has agreed to step in and help me run Liliputing over that time.

Lee and I have worked together on Download Squad for some time, and long-time Liliputing readers may recognize his name, as Lee has written a few articles in the past, including one of the earliest articles about installing Windows 7 on the MSI Wind U100.

I’ll still be popping in as frequently as I can. You can’t get rid of me that easily. But you’re going to start seeing a lot more of Lee starting today.

And while the daily post volume might dip a bit until early December, I’ve got some really cool things planned including a series of pre-holiday gear giveaways, a few new reviews, and a kick-ass look at gaming on netbooks from freelance video game journalist Joe Rybicki.

So stick around. Things are about to get interesting. And CES isn’t even until January!

The Liliputing Product Database is one of the most comprehensive resources around for finding information about more than 100 mini-laptops that have been introduced over the past two years. But as the mobile computer space continues to evolve, I’ve decided to expand the database to include some of the more exciting thin and light computers that have started to appear.

Up until recently, my cutoff point for including a laptop in the database was that it had to have a 10.2 inch or smaller display. But many laptops with 11.6 to 12.1 inch displays are hitting the market these days, and some of them are cheaper than many 10 inch laptops. And while many have more powerful processor, a number of 11 and 12 inch laptops including the Acer Aspire 1810T, Asus UL20A, and Toshiba T115 are expected to get battery life that is as good, if not better than many netbooks. And most importantly, many of these 12 inch and smaller laptops still weigh 3.5 pounds or less.

I’m fairly certain I won’t expand the database to include 13 inch laptops anytime soon. As far as I’m concerned, a 13 inch laptop is just a laptop. And while there’s no good name to describe this new generation of thin, light, and relatively low power 11 and 12 inch laptops yet, I think they’re something new and exciting. Just like netbooks.

Adding these laptops to the database also gives it a bit more variety. I’d gotten tired of entering Intel Atom, GMA 950, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive over and over. Now you’ll find a number of machines with Intel CULV, AMD Neo, and other processors as well as NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics.

The database is still a work in progress and I still have a number of laptops to add. But if you haven’t checked it out in a while, you might want to take another look.

We’ve just rolled out an exciting (and long overdue) new feature for the Liliputing Netbook Database. You can now leave comments on any product page. Like the comments on the blog, the database comments are powered by Disqus, which means there’s support for threaded comments, ratings, and other features. And you can keep track of your comments by monitoring your Disqus profile.

You can leave comments by scrolling down to the bottom of any product page and typing away. You can also see how many comments an item already has in the top left corner of a page. And in a sidebar on the right-hand side you’ll see a list of recent comments from across the product database. I’ve also added a recent comment widget to the main page of the blog so you can see some of the latest comments left about specific products. Click any comment to visit the product page and join the discussion.

Special thanks to Chippy for implementing this feature.

We’re also working on changing the URL structure so that you can see something like http://products.liliputing.com/netbooks/asus/t91 instead of http://products.liliputing.com/products?id=467. This feature is still a work in progress, but here’s one cool trick.

Try typing something like http://products.liliputing.com/netbooks/asus and you should automatically get a comparison chart showing all the Asus netbooks in the database.

The same should work with other keywords like “gigabyte,” “touchnote,” or “eee.”

One of the things I love about running this web site is the conversations we get to have in the comments. But blogs are still a bit one-sided, in that I get to set the agenda. That’s why we also have forums, where you get to decide what you want to talk about.

Here are just a few of the things people have been talking about recently in the Liliputing Forums:

• Google plans Chrome-related OS for netbooks
• NY Times: choosing between netbooks and notebooks
• Samsung N510
• Hippies running supercomputers
• moblin or something else

If you want to join the conversation, there’s no time like the present to sign up.

I’ve been using an Asus Eee PC 1008HA for the past few days, and there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear. This thing is small. I mean, really really small. It’s thinner, lighter, and much easier to carry around than the Eee PC 1000H I’ve been using for the last 9 months or so. It also has a nicer keyboard, a slightly faster processor, and gets about the same 5 hours of battery life.

But there are a few disadvantages, (aside from the fact that it’s so thin that I’m sometimes tempted to throw it like a frisbee when it’s in my hands). In order to maintain the sleek aesthetic, Asus put plastic doors over the USB, VGA, and Ethernet ports. These doors are held on by little bits of rubber that feel like they’re bound to break eventually if you use these ports on a regular basis. You also need to plug in a proprietary adapter to use the VGA port, which is kind of annoying, but not a big hassle if you don’t use your netbook with a monitor very often.

The biggest problem is that aside from that proprietary VGA adapter which fits into the bottom of the case, there’s not a single component that’s easily removable: Not the RAM, hard drive, or battery. If those things matter to you, this might not be the right netbook for you. Fortunately Asus is expected to come out with a slightly thicker and heavier Eee PC 1005HA soon which will have removable components. But I have to say there’s something incredibly compelling about holding a netbook as thin and light as the Eee PC 1008HA. It’s almost cool enough for me to overlook the non-removable battery.

I’ll have a complete review of the Eee PC 1008HA in the next week or so. But in the meantime, you can find more photos of the netbook hanging out with my Eee PC 1000H at the Liliputing Community. For lazy readers, there’s also a slideshow after the page break, but you can also see higher resolution versions of the images at the Liliputing Community. And I suppose this is as good a time as any to remind you that the Liliputing Forums have been expanded into a whole social networking site. When you sign up you can create a profile page, follow other members of the Liliputing community, share your own photos, and participate in discussions about netbooks, nettops, technology in general, or anything else you like

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I mentioned last week that I had to take the forums temporarily to deal with a security issue. Here’s what it was: basically the site got hacked. As far as I can tell, someone used the forums to upload a script that made its way into the main web site and caused pages to load slowly. I think it may also have been attempting to do deeper damage by redirecting site visitors, but I didn’t see any evidence of this first hand.

The forums were the only section of the web site where users could upload files as avatars, pictures, or other attachments. And that’s always going to pose a security risk. So after thinking things over, I’ve decided to take a new approach in relaunching the forums. I didn’t want to bring you a stripped down forum that doesn’t offer personalization options. But I don’t have the time or expertise to wage a full out battle against malicious hackers. So instead I’m outsourcing the forums to Ning, a service that can handle threats in a more secure fashion. You can find the new forums by clicking the forums link in navigation bar at the top of this page. Or you can bookmark the new page for the Liliputing Forum.

As an added bonus, the new forums are part of a larger Liliputing Community site that offers users the ability to upload photos, videos, create personal profiles, and generally get their social networking on. There’s even a built-in instant messaging feature that will let you chat in real-time with other users that are online. Oh yeah, you can also post threaded messages in the forums section. I’m still tinkering with the new site, so feel free to share any suggestions, either here or at the Liliputing Community/Forum page. I’m even open to changing the name if you think “community” sounds too cheesy.

I didn’t want to make all the old posts that you’ve uploaded over the past few months disappear in a poof of smoke. So I’ve brought back the old forums as well, but just for archival purposes. You can still read over all of the posts at www.liliputing.com/forums, but I’ve disabled new member registrations and new posts from existing members.

I’d like this opportunity to point out/remind you of several things:

1. Liliputing is available through the Kindle store, which means Kindle users can receive blog updates wirelessly for reading in bed, on the go, on the toilet, or anywhere else.
2. You can, of course, use a netbook to read the site in most of those places as well, as long as you have internet access.
3. I have absolutely no control over the pricing, and I’d probably offer the blog for free in the Kindle Store if I could (but I will make a few pennies if you do decide to subscribe).
4. Amazon has decided to drop the price of a subscription to Liliputing from $1.99/month to $0.99/month.

I think that’s about it. Has anyone tried reading Liliputing on a Kindle yet? How does it look? If anyone wants to send me a photo of Liliputing on a Kindle hit me up through the contact link.