What’s easier; sending a Facebook message a relative, or sitting down and having a face-to-face conversation? Many Brits would say that a Facebook message is the best way to communicate with loved ones. A recent study by Flip (makers of the MiniHD camcorders) indicates that nearly one-third of participants prefer Facebook to face-to-face meetings with relatives, some even saying their social media correspondence is more effective than a sit-down chat.

The study goes on to say that 1 in 5 participants keep track of relatives via social sites like Facebook, as well as email, with 1 in 10 saying their face-to-face encounters with loved ones are meaningless. With these stats, one would think that there’s a growing trend towards online family reunions. Does no one hang out in the real world with their family?

There may be a twist to this trend. Nearly 30% of the study’s participants feel they know more about their family members as a result of social networking and email. Is social networking making us more inclined to socialize in the virtual sense, and is that a good thing?

There have been studies showing the inclination towards virtual communication as replacing some of our physical realm meetings with others–it’s the byproduct of our technological advances. But with people beginning to show that their preferences are towards virtual communication, we have to wonder if technology is affecting us in a negative or positive manner.

The correspondence is easy and can be done in one’s own time parameters. The passive means of broadcast-communication means that family members need do nothing more than check their own newsfeeds to see what you’ve been up to. There’s not much trying involved with keeping up with friends and family anymore. And particularly when it comes to family, there’s the added emotion that becomes involved with family versus friends, and the fact that oftentimes it’s your friends that you’d rather spend your “personal hang out time” with.

Will virtual communication become an accepted means of family-time substitution? Is this passive broadcast style becoming a reasonable way to show our family love? Perhaps. As we can see, it’s merely a matter of public sentiment towards the technological products we’ve created in these past few years. It’s up to us which attitude we’ll take for the future.

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by Brian Solis

Originally published on Intel’s InsideScoop blog. Disclosure, I’m an Intel Insider.

With CES right around the corner, I wanted to take a moment to spotlight some of the hottest gadgets to debut in 2008 – especially before we look forward to the most anticipated products set to hit the streets in 2009.

2008 was an almost overwhelming year rich with advancements and innovation that practically warrants a top 100 list to do it justice. However, I’ll focus on the products that specifically had a direct or indirect impact on my day-to-day workflow, personal entertainment, and also those few products that are currently sitting on my wish list.

Without further ado, let’s just jump right in. Listed in no particular order:

Jawbone

Jawbone’s second-generation Bluetooth headset absolutely rocks for me. I upgraded from the bigger, bulkier first generation model the very day the new unit arrived in stores. It lives up to its promise, providing a personal NoiseAssassin (TM) to kill surrounding noise allowing you and the personal on the other end of the line to speak and hear clearly.

Credit: Brian Solis

Flip MinoHD

The Flip camera line emerged practically out of nowhere to create a market for easily capturing high quality, Web-ready video and sharing it through email or YouTube, MySpace, and AOL. The new Flip MinoHD adds high definition video to the mix, allowing just about anyone to shoot and share HD video, taking advantage of YouTube’s new HD support.

Apple TV with Boxee

Apple TV is not new, but the ability to integrate (read: hack) a new DRM-free media dashboard and entertainment social network called Boxee transforms the Apple TV into a full-blown library and player for all of your movies and music, even for those not purchased through iTunes. It provides support for almost every format so that you can enjoy all of your content in one box.

Blackberry Storm

Dubbed as the first real threat to the iPhone, the sleek and elegant Blackberry Storm, stormed the market recently. It’s the first touchscreen Blackberry available, and while it’s unique to those considering a Blackberry product, and as, will do very well with consumers, I’m not quite sure it’s a threat to the iPhone. Perhaps it’s the iPhone for the Windows-centric workforce.

MediaGate 450HD

The Apple TV for the rest of us. The MediaGate connects directly to your HD TV via HDMI and provides a wireless connection to seamlessly stream or transfer media files directly from you main PC. Like the Apple TV with Boxee, The MediaGate 450HD system offers a visual dashboard for you to manage and enjoy your libraries of movies, pictures, videos, and music through your TV.

OPPO

Forget the debate over Blu Ray and HD DVD, most of us have collected dozens, if not hundreds of standard definition videos over the years. The OPPO DV-983H 1080p is an up-converting DVD player with ABT and 7.1CH Audio that transforms standard DVDs into HD-quality, breathing new life into your existing movie investment.

Zink

I was introduced to Zink at a past DEMO. Zink, which stands for Zero Ink, offers a printing solution for digital photographers to print pictures without ink cartridges.

At the heart of the ZINK Technology is the patented ZINK Paper, an advanced composite material with cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals embedded inside, and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside. The crystals are colorless before printing, so ZINK Paper looks like regular white photo paper. Heat from a ZINK-enabled device activates the crystals, forming all the colors of the rainbow.

Wii Fit

Wii is still one of the hottest products of 2008 and also one of this season’s hottest gifts. It’s a combination of fitness and fun in one, balance and pressure sensitive controller board. It’s not only for exercise and yoga, it can also be used for any game where your stature and agility are instrumental in navigating through the experience.

Livescribe

Also previewed at DEMO, Livescribe is one of the most sophisticated and natural solutions on the market today. Livescribe is a paper-based computing platform that turns plain paper into a computer screen and bridges paper and digital. The solution features the Smartpen, a Montblanc-size computer with advanced processing power, audio/visual feedback, and memory for handwriting capture, audio recording, and applications. The complementary Dot Paper features Dot Positioning System (DPS), technology, enabling interactive, “live” documents using plain paper printed with micro-dots.

Livescribe’s first key application is “Paper Replay.” When taking notes during a discussion or lecture, the smartpen records the conversation and digitizes the handwriting, automatically synching the ink and audio. By later tapping the ink, the smartpen replays the conversation from the exact moment the note was written. Notes and audio can also be uploaded to a PC where they can be replayed, saved, searched and sent. Additional applications will be available for download from www.livescribe.com.

Credit: Brian Solis

Tesla

Zero to 60 in under 4 seconds with a top speed of 125 mph and a redline of 14,000 RPM, this all electric sports car is redefining the automotive industry. With a price tag of $109,000 and a waiting list consisting of an A-list from Hollywood and the tech industry, Tesla has become Silicon Valley’s media darling by offering an eco-friendly vehicle that can travel up to 244 miles per charge. This car has been on my wish list since I attended the grand opening of the dealership in Menlo Park. you’ll be pleased to know that this sleek roadster will only cost you pennies per mile.

Credit: Brian Solis

Apple 3G iPhone

For the second year in a row, I joined Robert Scoble as we ventured to the Apple store in San Francisco to witness the debut of the new iPhone, well, and to also purchase a few. The iPhone 3G delivered on the promise to offer an all inclusive personal entertainment and productivity experience now supported by mobile broadband connectivity. The new phone also marked the debut of the iPhone App Store, which is further fueling the frenzy by providing a mobile marketplace for application developers and consumers. Apple claims that the App Store has served more than 300,000,000 downloads to date. The iPhone has done nothing short of completely reinvent the user experience, inspiring almost every consumer electronics company to rethink product designs, interfaces, and usability.

Photo Credit: Brian Solis

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

As a photographer, this has been on my list well before its official public release. And, now that it’s finally available and shipping, I’m forced to continue my wait until production can meet the phenomenal demand.

Canon’s update to its full frame EOS 5D features a stunning 21.1-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with DIGIC 4 Image Processor, a vast ISO Range of 100-6400 (expandable to ISO L: 50, H1: 12800 and H2: 25600), plus EOS technologies like Auto Lighting Optimizer and Peripheral Illumination Correction. Perhaps most notably, it features full HD video recording at 30 fps. View sample videos here: http://tinyurl.com/5zsljo.

The 5d Mark II can also shoot up to 3.9 fps, offers 9 AF points plus 6 AF assist points, a new 98% coverage viewfinder, and a 3.0-inch Clear View LCD (920,000 dots/VGA).

UPDATE: My 5D Mark II arrived today. After shooting the first picture and HD movie, the auto focus on my 35mm prime Canon L series lens gave out. Hmmm. The picture and the video are incredible however.

Intel Atom Processor
Yes, while I’m an Intel Insider, I’m almost positive that Intel’s new Atom Processor will make many “Best Of” lists for 2008. It’s yet another breakthrough, which serves as a catalyst for innovation in mobile computing, social networking, and collaboration.

The Atom is Intel’s smallest and lowest power processor processor to date and powers the latest Mobile Internet Devices as well as the rapidly emerging category of netbooks and nettops.

Designed from the ground up, 45nm Intel Atom processors integrate an astounding 47 million transistors on a single chip measuring less than 26mm, making them Intel’s smallest and lowest power processors to date.

Looking forward to seeing you at CES 2009 in Las Vegas along with the rest of the Intel Insiders! (Note:  See Intel Insider stories featured on the Consumer Electronics Insider site.

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words and pictures by Brian Solis

BusinessWeek released its report on the 25 most influential people on the Web today as determined by the magazine’s staff.

Congratulations to our friends as well as those we have yet to meet in person for making this prestigious list. I’ve included pictures of those that I have on hand.

Here are your influencers, in no particular order:

The Seeker: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft

The Marshall: Mitchell Baker, Mozilla.org

The Innovator: Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com

The Searchers: Sergey Brin, larry Page, and Eric Schmidt, Google

The Investor: Jeff CLavier, softtechvc

The Papa Bear: Paul Graham, ycombinator

The Muckracker: Arianna Huffington, HuffingtonPost

The Adviser: Joi Ito

The Mastermind: Steve Jobs, Apple

The Filmer: Jonathan Kaplan, Flip

The Communicator: Loic Le Meur, Leweb, Seesmic

The Trader: Jack Ma, alibaba.com

The Publisher: Matt Mullenweg, WordPress.org

The Mogul: Rupert Murdoch, Myspace.com

The Community Organizer: Craig Newmark, craigslist

The Traffic Driver: Gabe Rivera, Techmeme

The Poster Boy: Kevin Rose, Digg

The Adult: Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook

The Edutainer: Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

The Money Man: Peter Thiel, Clarium Capital, The Founders Fund

The Crafter, Maria Thomas, etsy.com

The Advocate: Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia

The Crowd Sourcer: Jimmy Wales, Wikia, wikipedia

The Blogger: Evan Williams, Twitter

The Fighter: Jerry Yang, Yahoo

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