James and I got an early look at Vringo’s newest beta for Android phones. Vringo takes ringtones a step beyond by adding video to the tones. Their catalog has a large number of free Vringo’s and the newest ones from Marvel Comics are $2. Better yet is the ability to record, upload and share your own video ringtones right from your Android handset. I gave it a try and it was drop-dead easy to do. I called mine “Annoying Kevin” and you’ll see why in this video demo. Now I think I know why James hasn’t joined my Vringo buddy list.

From what we’ve seen, there may be some minor kinks to work out with how Vringo and Google Voice interact, but hey: isn’t that what a beta is for? Up to now I haven’t been a big ringtone fan — although I do use the CTU phone ring on my Palm Pre — but video ringtones on a larger screen seem appealing, now that I’ve seen them up close. While Vringo is just now landing on Android, it’s already available for a veritable cornucopia of handsets — you can see if your smartphone or feature phone is supported here.

By the way: when I did the video demo, I wasn’t sure if the beta was open to all Android handsets. I just heard direct from the Vringo folks and you have the green light! Hit it up at http://android.vringo.com and start creating some video ringtones. Just don’t make ‘em annoying like mine, ‘k?

My very first Tablet PC love might have found new purpose in life. It was late in 2004 when I purchased a Toshiba M205 with the then very usable 1.5GHz Pentium M processor. Ah… but that was back in the days of XP Tablet Edition. What about 2009 and Windows 7 on this bit of hardware?

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate on the device and find it to be quite useful! My battery won’t really hold a charge, but what was once relegated to a dusty corner in my closet is now a journal-type device with all of the inking features of Microsoft’s newest operating system. Would I use this on a daily basis as a production machine for all of my needs? Nope. But I don’t have another large Tablet PC with an active digitizer, so this is fine for note taking and web surfing around the house. Yes, I could have easily stayed on Windows XP Tablet Edition, but I thought this was a good learning experience.

The initial Windows 7 install didn’t provide me with Wi-Fi, sound or some other updated drivers, but some nosing around on the web got me what I needed without too much hassle. In fact, Windows Update was a big help here, although I had to use an Ethernet cable for the initial connection. I’m impressed at how Windows 7 is moving along on hardware that’s five years old. The 32MB of video memory is a bit of challenge, but otherwise, I think my M205 has found new life with a new OS!

The HTC Hero on the Sprint network in the U. S. takes the Android platform to the next level with the special user interface. In this video you will see the “chinless” Hero and see for yourself how much the HTC Sense interface adds to the package. There is a brief cameo by the Palm Pre to show how the Hero’s web browsing compares to that on the Pre.

I’ve shown the Viliv S7 UMPC on video before, but felt it was worth it to show off the touch interface that Viliv is installing on its UMPCs. The MID touch interface is a program launcher and UMPC control that’s designed to be operated totally by touch. In this video you will see the interface, along with some special Viliv utilities including media players and the FastWeb browser.

We’ve been getting plenty of comments and email questions asking about Windows 7 on a netbook. I do have the final release of Microsoft’s newest operating system installed in a dual-boot method on my Toshiba NB205 netbook, so here’s a short look. There’s no intro, I just dive right into with from a cold boot so you can see how long that takes. Everyone uses their device differently, so there’s no concrete method to show how Windows 7 will work for you on your netbook, but a glimpse of multitasking might be useful.

In the video, I open up Google Chrome, along with a few tabs, Microsoft Word and Excel and finally run a WMV-HD file or two through the paces in Windows Media Player. Again, basic stuff to give you a feel for how the pace of the operating system as we move through different apps. I have the Aero features turned on and show them as well. Bear in mind that I do have 2GB of RAM in my device. I was tempted to run with just a 1GB stick, but for $25 or do so, I highly recommend running Windows 7 with more RAM in a netbook. Even so, I think you’ll see very little of the lag that we saw with Vista on early netbooks.

One of the things I have been enjoying is using the Tablet PC to stimulate the creative process for writing projects. Our friends at WebWorkerDaily recently extolled the virtues of pen and ink mindmapping for writing projects and they are absolutely right about that. Mindmapping is a great free-form way to capture ideas on paper and then run with them. Doing these maps with pen and ink definitely stimulates the creative process, far more than doing them on a computer. Unless your computer is a Tablet PC and you can do it with digital ink using MindManager.

For me the advantages of ink mapping on a Tablet are outstanding. I can capture ideas as they flow, just like on paper, but I also get to use sophisticated tools to organize the ideas once captured. In this five minute screencast I lay out a simple map for a real article I’m kicking around. You get a chance to see the ideas flow in real-time, duly captured in ink on the Tablet. Once the ideas are captured into a simple mindmap, you’ll see how I can turn it all into an outline in ink with one push of a button.

The ThinkPad x200 Tablet from Lenovo is the company’s first foray into the world of double digitizers. The x200 has both a Wacom active digitizer that works with a special pen for inking on the screen, and a two-finger touch digitizer for direct manipulation of the interface. Windows 7 has special features for touch input and Lenovo has pre-installed Windows 7 Pro on the x200 I am evaluating.

In the video you’ll see a brief tour around the convertible notebook, along with a demonstration of using the x200 in slate mode with touch. I show eReader for e-books, Zinio for reading magazines and the uBoard keyboard for quick text entry via touch.

Evernote is a true platform agnostic, note taker / collector supreme. It runs on just about every mobile device out there and makes grabbing information a snap. I show the basic operation of the program and demonstrate how it makes it easy to find nuggets of information. Of course, Evernote is cloud-based, so information grabbed anywhere is instantly available on all of the devices you might use. Pay attention to the security aspects Evernote raises for those in the habit of leaving sensitive documents up on the computer screen. I show how I can capture a full page of a document on a computer screen in a second or two, and have a searchable copy of it on every device I use. You may find it unsettling.

Regular readers know that I couldn’t do without Skype. The voice over IP service has been a daily staple in my routine since early 2005. Since I use it so much, I’m a perfect candidate to test out new Skype accessories like the FREETALK Everyman USB headset I have on loan. I was initially skeptical because of the headset’s low, $22.88 price tag. But as they say, the proof is in the pudding. After using the Everyman headset for Skype over the past few weeks, it’s easily worth every penny and then some. Have a quick look — and listen — to the audio quality.

I am a Twitter fool, and I know from the growth the social network has experienced that I am not alone in that regard. Twitter can be a very useful tool if it is used correctly, and the desktop program TweetDeck helps me leverage the service to my benefit.

TweetDeck’s strength is the ability to display multiple columns at once, each tuned in to capture a particular subset of the Twitter noise. The program helps me focus my attention on the little area of the Twitterverse that will do the most good. TweetDeck is an Adobe Air program, so that means it runs exactly on Windows as it does on OS X. Since I am largely platform agnostic, that’s a good thing. There is also an iPhone version of TweetDeck. I have tried that but quickly gave it up as the narrow little phone screen does not lend itself well to multiple columns side-by-side. YMMV.

In the video I show my TweetDeck setup, and give a brief explanation of how I use this to get the most out of Twitter.