Still trying to digest my first CES experience here in Las Vegas, though I'm certainly very glad I made it to here this year. Unlike internet conferences, CES brings a staggering number of exhibitors (2700), press and bloggers (4500), and consumer electronics industry folks (140,000). It's really become *the* global gathering for companies large and small to see what's going on, meet up with suppliers and vendors, and try to grab as much buzz as they can among the thousands of competing products and devices. Although I've hardly come close to seeing everything I'd have to say the real standout here for are the uses of technology in vehicles, and the notion that the car is now a big drivable computer. The heavily computerized Chevy Tahoe called "Boss", which won the Darpa Autonomous vehicle challenge has been giving rides on a test track. I didn't get one yet but people I've spoken with were very impressed. Cars, phones, glasses, etc etc as lifestyle computing devices all help to blur the distinctions between people, data, and devices. Broadly speaking I think this trend is one of the most significant in history, with an end game that is approaching at a ever increasing pace that will merge programs and people and our devices seamlessly. Labels: boss, CES
 President Paul Kagame is here from Rwanda - I think the only head of state in attendance. He spoke in an interview session after the Negroponte Keynote, and then again at one of the panel discussions about International Development. This is for me the most exciting and provocative topic here at the CES Conference. Kagame said that 93% of Africa's 800,000,000 people are basically not served by advanced technology, and thus this represents a huge opportunity in terms of the market as well as having humanitarian implications. Kagame also discussed a medical tracking software they now use that he feels has dramatically improved health care in Rwanda. I'm not sure but I think it's part of the Rwandan program called " TracNet". Paul Meyer, an noted innovator in technology and international development, noted that mobile phones are the PCs for the developing world, and also that even the poorest countries may have an opportunity to "leapfrog" past issues that have slowed or thwarted first world technological progress. Despite the contrast between the excesses of Las Vegas and the spartan conditions of most of the developing world it has been inspiring to see innovators working to bring the benefits of technology to far more people around the world. Technology's finest hour will be when it brings better lives to everybody, and brings everybody closer together. Labels: CES, globalization
CEO, Sanjit Biswas, of startup Meraki at CES 2008 speaking about bringing technology to developing world.  Meraki was a real standout here at CES in terms of bringing cheap, powerful innovation to the connectivity space. They are using mesh networking to bring cheap connectivity to remote areas like a Chilean fishing village (see this mesh network real time at Meraki.com). Surprisingly they are also after some pretty big markets such as San Francisco, where even Google is conspicuously failing to bring free ad supported wireless broadband. One reason they may succeed where Google is failing is what TechCrunch noted about a week ago: The company expects that it will only cost a few million dollars to cover all of San Francisco, compared to the $14 to $17 million estimated for the Earthlink/Google plan.
They've also got a portable solar power supply. Power is a critical factor in the developing world where you want connectivity in places that often lack good infrastructure. Labels: CES
Here at CES it seems to me two very powerful themes are technology as a *social and lifestyle experience* and technology as a *mobile experience*. At the MMORPG gaming session it was noted that games in many ways were the first online social experience and continue to be a powerful and dominant social force in the online world. Dr. Lars Buttler of Trion (formerly with Electronic Arts) was very optimistic about the future of gaming, and along with others felt that current distinctions between console and PC would break down but the social nature of gaming would increase, including ways to move between multiple games. Buttler also suggested that the European market has been underestimated in gaming. Also notable is the fact that the search advertising market in Asia appears to be only about 25% of the gaming market. This contrasts with North America where search revenues are driving things more than gaming. The most impressive things at CES I have seen:Motion-enhanced driving cars created by D-Box. These simulate the driving experience in an arcade fashion with a high powered HP gaming enhanced PC plus an elaborate car simulator and 1-3 monitors. Very cool, but at something like $14,000 depending on configurations so it will be well out of range for many. D-box, from Quebec, won an innovation award for this. A similar "virtual transport" product that also won the innovation award is the flight simulator, Dreamflyer. At about $2800 this seemed conspicuously cheaper than D-Box. I think this is partly due to D-Box’s real motion in the carriage vs Dreamflyers virtual motion on screen, though I’m not clear on the details of either product yet. Alienware debuted a prototype gaming / immersion monitor (a picture of it below - sorry about quality) that won’t be available until middle of the year. The monitor was simply awesome looking - stretching *around* the viewers head in an arc of 45? degrees and about 60 inches wide by 16 inches tall. It’s like having 3 high resolution screens stiched together in an arc. Very impressive, and looked like a killer environment for hardcore gamers. Cost not determine yet but this has got to be a big ticket item. I think the gaming glasses some are showing off here are more likely to get widespread use due to much lower cost. More on the glasses later as I think that is a really provocative technology that is finally going to see some widespread adoption.  Labels: CES
 Bill Gates gets to the office as usual.  He gets to work right away.  He takes a break and takes up singing.  Bono, do you need a vocalist?  Would you like a Zune with that?  Jam on! I think Bono will like that chord!  Wow! The fans are going to love this!  He should stick to his day job.  Hey Al, I am great at speeches and blogging.  My campaign can do without long speeches.  How about campaign refinance?  So George - did you like the movie?  The Men in Black.  He gets some acting lessons.  Are you seriously doing this?  He heads to Hollywood. Break a leg! Labels: Bill Gates, Blogs, CES, Microsoft
 Tonight at CES Bill Gates delivered his final CES Keynote (and perhaps final in the industry). The crowd pleasers were a very self-deprecating video where Bill was turned down for jobs by celebrities and notables from Hilary Clinton to Bono to John Stewart, and a Guitar Hero contest where Gates brought in "Slash" -playing live- as his Guitar Hero proxy to win a bet. The key business announcements included a partnership with NBC to deliver video online for *every single sport* at the Olympics - some 3600 hours in total and I think he indicated close to real time. Also impressive was Microsoft’s work with partner “Tellme” and MS mapping to bring powerful voice and map navigation capabilities to the mobile space. They noted that mobile advertising will be some (11 billion?) by 2011, and that although MS feels PCs will remain very important it’s clearly the mobile phone space where a lot of key innovation will be seen. Back at Microsoft's MIX06 I noted that Microsoft had not yet embraced the social media revolution that clearly was going to come to dominate the online experience. I think they have now done so, but they may be too late. The demos of something called “Zune Social” were neat, but I noted the key feature was the ability to integrated with a Facebook profile. I’d argue that Open Social (or some variation on that theme), that is very largely company agnostic, will ultimately prevail. I didn’t get the idea Zune Social would be a big winner over time. (posted from the CES Bloghaus! Thanks Seagate and Podtech!)Labels: Bill Gates, Blogs, CES
Hello to Webguild folks from CES in Las Vegas. This is the first time I've attended this conference of the latest and greatest in consumer electronics. I'm posting this from the North Hall of the Convention Center where sessions have begun but exhibitors are still frantically assembling the huge displays for the exhibit halls, which open tomorrow. I kind of snuck in behind the scenes where SONY is assembling what looks like a very spectacular interactive exhibit - I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow when it opens. The big story here so far is SONY's Blu-ray "victory" over Toshiba's HD-DVD. It appears some of the many HD-DVD folks have already left the conference and I believe a press conference was cancelled that would have announced new innovations in HD-DVD. I'm not clear if the rumor has been confirmed that Warner's decision to go exclusive Blu-Ray was based primarily on a 500,000,000 payment from SONY. Labels: CES
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