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 More»

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. More»

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 More»

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 More»

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?
More»

Labels: Bill Gates, Blogs, CES, Microsoft

Picture by Mykel Nahorniak
Picture by Mykel Nahorniak
Here is Bill Gates’ Keynote or here.
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Labels: Bill Gates, Blogs, CES

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 More»

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 More»

Labels: CES