Tag Archives: CES
Q and A: Blogger Scoble sizes up the scene
Famed blogger Robert Scoble has about 800,000 followers on Google Plus, 240,000 on Twitter and 160,000 on Facebook. I caught up with him at SXSW to get his take on the latest show.
What are you hearing here? A lot of conversations here on the show floor are about what apps to use on the iPhone. Some people are using the SXSW app — and others are using Glancee or Highlight, which show you who is really close to you, who is walking by in the hallway. SXSW is a very unusual group of people — 40,000 people—but they’re off the chart in the use of smartphones. They’re very heavy influencers. A lot of them have blogs or really famous Twitter accounts. We just saw a country music star (Pete Stringfellow) walk by. The audience here is very different than CES
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Preview: Top camera trends for 2012
With two more major shows planned in 2012 (CP+ in Japan next month and the bi-annual Photokina convention in Germany this September) there are sure to be more blockbuster cameras on the way. It’s early, but based on what we saw in Vegas, some clear trends are emerging for the rest of the year and beyond.
One of the hottest cameras debuting at CES was the Fujifilm X-Pro1, which signaled the beginning of the second chapter in the tale of mirrorless compact system cameras (or CSCs). These non-DSLR interchangeable-lens cameras are tricky to explain to the average consumer, but the mirrorless technology that enables manufacturers to offer high-quality images in a smaller body has continued to gain popularity. They aren’t next-generation cameras anymore — they’re here now.
General camera buyers can already choose from as many quality CSCs as DSLRs. The
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Weird gadgets at CES: Motorized unicycle, anyone?
Some 3,100 exhibitors attended the show, and although there were plenty of mainstream technologies on display, the show attracted a fair share of off-beat gadgets. Here’s a roundup of some of the weirdest devices:
— SOLOWHEEL. Picture a unicycle without a frame or saddle, and you have the Solowheel. Not working for you? Ok, add this to the picture: footboards that fold out from the wheel. To ride it, you stand on the footboards and straddle the wheel. Lean forward, and the wheel engages a battery-powered electric motor that can send it —and hopefully its rider— zooming along at 10 miles per hour. The wheel has a gyroscope that helps keep the rider upright. In other words, it’s like a Segway with only one wheel.
Because of the rechargeable battery, which has a 15- to 20-mile range, the Solowheel weighs 26 pounds. That’s as much as a folding bike, but the Solowheel is more compact. It’s sold by Inventist LLC for $1,800. Its creator is a serial inventor, Shane Chen, previously came up with the AquaSkipper, a human-powered hydrofoil.
Who’s it for? Brave people with a good sense of balance, who want to utterly surprise everyone they meet.
—FOAM FIGHTERS. Toy companies are eager to link their products with smartphone and tablet games, creating toys that are an amusing blend of virtual and real. Foam Fighters are made of two sheets of thin foam, painted and shaped like World War II fighter planes such as the famous Mitsubishi Zero. Toss them in the air, and they fly like paper airplanes. Better yet, you can attach them to a plastic arm with a suction cup that, in turn, sticks to the back of an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, right next to the camera. The airplane shows up on screen, and if you download a free app, the fighter plane will look like it’s zooming around in war-torn skies, controlled by the movement of the phone or tablet. Foam Fighters go on sale in April. A pack of two, with a stand, will cost $10.
Who’s it for: AppGear is aiming at kids, ages 8 to 12, but it could appeal to frustrated fighter pilots of all ages.
— HAIER BRAIN WAVE. The Chinese appliance company brought this wireless mind-reading headset to the show, and demonstrated how it could be used to control a TV set. It holds one sensing pad to the wearer’s forehead and another that clips onto an earlobe. The big limitation is that the mind-reading capability (actually just measurement of brain waves) is crude. The set can only be used to sense if the user wants something to go up or down. For any other direction, you need the remote. In a demonstration of a simple maze-like game, the wearer guided a figure up or down with his mind, and right and left with the remote. Haier said it’s developing something that lets the wearer change channels by thinking about it.
Haier is selling the set in China, but has no plans to bring it to market in the U.S.
Who’s it for: No one outside of China, yet. Eventually, this could be a dream come true for the laziest of couch potatoes.
— EYE ASTEROIDS. Continuing on the theme of controlling electronics without moving, Swedish company Tobii brought its eye-controlled arcade game to the show. To play, you stand in front of it and look at a screen, where asteroids hurtle toward your battle station. It shoots laser beams at the asteroids you look at, destroying them. So yes, looks can kill.
The game cabinet contains cameras that track your gaze. The arcade game is really just a technology demonstration. What Tobii really wants is to have these gaze-tracking cameras built into laptops and other computers, so we can dispense with the mouse. But it does sell the game for $15,000.
Who’s it for: Arcade owners who want the latest.
— SIGNA POWERTREKK. This New York company showed off an alternative to batteries: a fuel cell the size of a big sandwich, powered by small, light “pucks” of a silicon-based material that produces hydrogen when water is added. The fuel cell is expensive, at $200, but the pucks are cheap, at $12 for three. Each puck will produce the equivalent of six AA batteries of electricity. That means it can charge an iPhone twice, through the included cables.
SiGNa will be selling the cell through outdoor retailer REI this spring.
Who’s it for: Campers, hermits and others who need to go a long time without electricity.
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Augmented reality and the future of driving
Las Vegas (CNN) — Imagine a future in which icons flash on your car windshield, hologram style, as your car approaches restaurants, stores, historic landmarks or the homes of friends.
Simply point your hand at them, and the icons open to show real-time information: when that bridge over there was built, what band is playing at that nightclub on the left, whether that new café up the street has any tables available. Wave your hand again, and you’ve made a restaurant reservation.
Mercedes-Benz showed off this vision of the future of driving — complete with augmented-reality and gesture-controlled features — this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show.
CES is the world’s biggest technology trade show, and carmakers are becoming a bigger presence here. Visitors climbed into a little cockpit at the Mercedes booth and took a brief, interactive and virtual ride through nighttime San Francisco — with the high-tech windshield as a guide.
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“Gesture is very intuitive. It’s very natural,” said Vera Schmidt, a user-interface designer with Mercedes who led demonstrations of the technology. “You point at something, and you want to know more about it.”
The technology is still crude, and at least several years away from finding its way into Mercedes vehicles. But it illustrates how automakers, while embracing current computer innovation such as dashboard touchscreens and voice-control interfaces, also are keeping an eye further down the road as well.
As digital tech — and our expectations for it — becomes more mobile, carmakers are taking notice. Many automotive designers here seem to have taken inspiration from smartphones, with their promise of being always connected and their vast menu of apps for every purpose.
“Cars are becoming platforms to participate in the digital world in a fully networked sense, just like your tablets can and your phones can,” said Venkatesh Prasad, a senior technical leader with Ford Motor Co.’s innovation division. “It’s our job to take those computing services people are used to at 0 mph and make them available at 70 mph.”
Yes, that sounds a little scary. And with escalating concerns about the hazards of distracted driving, automakers must walk a fine line between convenience and safety. Automotive engineers are continually trying to simplify their interfaces to cut down on the precious seconds that a driver’s attentions are diverted from the road ahead.
“All of our technology is voice-powered,” Ford product manager Julius Marchwicki told CNN’s sister network HLN. “So instead of fumbling with your phone … you keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.”
Sascha Simon, head of advance product planning for Mercedes-Benz USA, agreed: “We determine which apps should be in the car and which shouldn’t. We have these apps integrated in such a way that they’re actually relevant to you.”
For example, say you’re running late to a meeting and can’t call or text while driving. Mercedes’ messaging app will create a menu of logical missives based on your location and your car’s speed — “I’m stuck in traffic,” or “I’m just north of Bakersfield” — and display them on the screen.
You scroll through them and push a button to post the one that fits, instead of having to manually type the words.
Ford this week introduced five new apps for its pioneering Sync hands-free entertainment system, including Roximity, a daily-deals application that provides real-time discounts relevant to a driver’s location. Ford is so committed to morphing its vehicles into digital platforms that the company is recruiting developers to create apps for Sync and plans to open a research lab in Silicon Valley this year.
Meanwhile, Mercedes launched the second generation of its mbrace system, which connects drivers with the Web via customized apps that can be controlled by voice commands or on a dashboard touchscreen. Mbrace is now cloud-based, meaning it’s always connected and its software can automatically update itself.
Not to be outdone, Audi and Kia also have big presences at CES, and both announced updated versions of their Web-based dashboard entertainment systems.
The boldest advancements in automotive tech, however, may be a few years away. All the major car companies are working on systems that would allow vehicles to talk to each other about road conditions, weather and traffic snarls. For example, a car swerving to avoid a tire in the road could send an instant message alerting surrounding vehicles to the hazard.
Ford also is developing technology that takes a more holistic approach to driver safety and welfare. Instead of focusing on preventing collisions, for example, a car could help diabetic drivers by employing wireless sensors to monitor their glucose levels, said Gary Strumolo, Ford manager of vehicle design and infotronics.
Or a car could help allergy sufferers by monitoring for high-pollen areas, then recirculating air within the vehicle instead of pulling it in from the outside, he said.
Kia is testing something called the “user-centered driving concept,” which would emphasize safety by employing an infra-red LED and camera to monitor the driver’s face for alertness. The system would recognize whether the driver’s eyes are opened or closed, safeguarding against an accident caused by the driver falling asleep.
All these advancements may make driving more interesting. Or they may spoil one of modern society’s last refuges from the hyper-connected digital world.
Either way, they are coming soon.
“We’re working on a new generation of vehicles that truly serve as digital companions,” said Dieter Zetsche, head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, in a keynote speech at CES. “They learn your habits, adapt to your choices, predict you moves and interact with your social network.”
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How the Consumer Electronics Show lost its spark
Editor’s note: Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and professional skeptic. He is the author of “The Cult of the Amateur,” and the upcoming (June 2012) “Digital Vertigo.” This is the latest in a series of commentaries for CNN looking at how internet trends are influencing social culture.
(CNN) — No American city does unintentional irony quite like Las Vegas. And Las Vegas is always at its most unintentionally ironic during Consumer Electronics Show (CES) week, the January extravaganza that annually draws over 150,000 techno-tourists like myself to the seductively coercive city in the Nevada desert to pay homage to the hottest new electronic products on the planet.
This year, the unintentional ironies began as soon as we arrived in town. At Las Vegas’ palatial McCarran airport, we were greeted with a gigantic electronic billboard for Best Buy, a generous CES sponsor and the dominant consumer electronics retailer in America. It was a picture of a happy consumer being greeted by an even happier Best Buy sales assistant. Retail nirvana, the electronic billboard advertised; Best Buy, it promised, is the techno-consumer’s very best friend.
But in Las Vegas, of course, appearance is always the opposite of reality. So let’s imagine a rather different picture: Of an unhappy consumer being “greeted” by an even unhappier Best Buy sales assistant. Last week, in an article that went so viral that it elicited a panicked rebuttal from Best Buy’s CEO, Silicon Valley author Larry Downes explained why he believes the electronics retailer is gradually going out of business. “Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper,” Downes challenged his readers, before describing his own experience shopping there.
So how do those 150,000 CES attendees get from McCarran airport to the packed Las Vegas strip? We queue. We queue to catch a cab in improbably long lines that snake around and around the airport’s cavernous concourse. And queuing — or waiting in line, as my American friends like to say — is the dominant mode of being at CES. We patiently queue for cabs, we queue to get our show badges, we queue for food and beverages, we queue for buses to and from the packed conventional centers, we queue to check in and out of our hotels, we queue to squeeze onto the city’s packed monorail system, and, of course, we dutifully queue on our return to McCarran so that we can be x-rayed by the airport’s absurdly low-tech anti-terrorist machines.
The unintentional irony of all this queuing is twofold. Firstly, the whole message of CES this year was mobility. All the most seductive electronic products on show at CES promised to untether us from the world. Smaller notebook computers, now euphemistically called “ultrabooks“, were thinner and smaller than ever. New smartphones were even smarter and easier to slip into our pockets. Apps were more mobile, of course. While absurdly light tablet devices could be found on almost every table in every booth. So that’s the irony. The whole point of CES is to stand in long, frustratingly slow moving lines to fondle devices that promise unlimited freedom. CES, thus, achieved the impossible: it makes mobility immobile.
But it’s the second unintentional irony of all this queuing that is even more delicious. You see, the more CES attendees queue, the more they wait in line to see the blob of an exhibition that now spread over several gigantic exhibition halls and casino-hotels, the less there is to see. Yes, consumer electronics might be becoming more mobile — but apart from this inevitable development, there were very few really memorable new products or technologies at CES this year.
The “next big thing” this year, supposedly, was that televisions are becoming see-through as well as thinner and more social. But, like a dieting commercial featuring impossibly thin models, CES is always promising impossible thinness, particularly on its latest television screens. “Plasma schmasma,” as one jaded East Coast friend of mine repeats himself every year. How much more anorexic can television screens become, I wonder, before they double as gigantic Frisbees or cheese cutters.
And a “see-though” LCD screen? Yes, that seems about as “must have” as goofy gadgets at CES this year such as connected electronic scales for babies or ispeakers for the shower.
Meanwhile, “social” television has emerged as the ultimate mirage in the Nevada desert. Every year over the last ten years at CES, we’ve heard that television is going social. And then, every year, we go home from CES to watch our television sets alone via sets that have little, if any, social functionality. Then there’s that another perennial mirage at CES — 3D technology. This year, like every year in distant memory, I dutifully put on the plastic throwaway glasses to watch vertiginous 3D presentations. And this year, like every other year, I came away both dizzy and radically unimpressed with a technology that is neither essential nor affordable.
No, the big story of CES 2012 was what was happening elsewhere. While we all waited patiently in long lines to see nothing, the real technology news was being made back in Silicon Valley. Earlier this week, for example, Google launched Search Plus Your World in its attempt to socialize its search engine. Meanwhile, rumors continue to circulate about a radically new iPad from Apple — the world’s leading consumer electronics company that has never and will never attend CES and whose ghost hung heavily over Las Vegas this week.
Even Microsoft, a company that has historically invested millions of dollars at CES as a sponsor and participant, made news this year by announcing that this year’s event would be the last that its CEO would keynote. So, in future, without Microsoft and Apple (and Amazon, another innovative company that has never wasted its time in Las Vegas), it’s hard to avoid concluding that CES will — like Best Buy – gradually but inevitably go out of business.
Like Best Buy, I suspect, CES has stood still over the last 10 years while the world has radically changed. The future of this kind of event celebrating technological innovation is probably far far away from the ubiquitous clanging of Las Vegas’ slot machines. Just as all electronic hardware devices are becoming networked, so the future of CES is probably online, in the very networked world which is empowering our increasingly mobile gadgets. There, at least, there won’t be any queues.
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