CES 2010

3D on display at CES

Every year in Las Vegas the crowds are treated to the newest gadgets in the world.  In years past I saw the first TiVo there, the first flat screen TV, the first color screen cell phone, etc.  In looking back 8 years - just as an example - I was then fascinated by the SideKick phone on T-Mobile, JamDat's mobile games, and more.  This year Andy Rubin was still making a mark on CES with Android/Google.   That was 2002...what could there be in 2010, eight years hence?

Well, there were more cell phones, more flat screen tvs  (but now in 3D), but a lot of the same.

While walking through the North Hall after registration, I was handed a nice freebie: an Energizer mobile phone charger.  With this device you can take any AA battery and charge your phone. Nice.  I was then handed a card that showed a little talk by Guy Kawasaki was starting in a few moments...so..wandered over the American Express booth to have a look.

When I got there he was eating a banana and waiting to go on.  Somebody handed him a copy of Art of the Start to sign, and we got going.  Like many professional speakers, he has a standard speech that he updates/tweaks and keeps giving it.  I've got to make one of those.  I've seen this speech on youtube and was thinking he'd have more new material, but he does this one so well, it was still a pleasure.

I asked him about life after Jobs at Apple and he basically said "well, it will go one of two ways.  First, it could be that there are bunch of 'little steves' that think they will be the next Jobs.  That would not end up well. Then, perhaps the culture has created enough inspiration to find a way to continue innovating with success."

OK - but his gut reaction (how should I know) I don't buy.  He knows as well as everybody else that it's going to decline rapidly as it did before.

Android

Android was everywhere.  The big buzz prior to the show was the new Nexus 1 phone from Google.  Yes.  The famous google phone...but that was more of a yawn after the Droid and HTC (who made the Google phone)  came out.  the word was that Nexus was more about the distribution channel and continuation of Google throwing more grenades at the carriers.

Well, it turned out to be a dud.  Remember when Google launched their first video portal? I do.  It sucked.  Then they purchased YouTube and that was that.  Well, this is not totally the same. Andy Rubin was going to put out a phone of some kind, but without the ID and other inputs.  This phone is not bad, it's just not that special.

Now, MOT put out another phone that was really functionally cool, and shows more MOT promise: the Backfilp.  This is another android phone that more room on the keyboard, and (as shown at right) lets you open it up and put it on the table so that you can watch a movie or other "read only" sort of experience. Some have not liked the fact that it's running Android 1.5 and not 2.0, but rumors are it will have 2.1 soon.  I liked it.

3D HD TV 

You could not miss all the big screen TVs, the glasses, the demos, etc. That was the buzz at the show that was the "shiny thing" that you could not miss.  I tried it, like everybody else, and it was fun. I'd not seen a soccer game in 3G before and it looks awesome.  But just like the first HD content was boring (Jay Leno in HD, for example) I don't see much value in the news being in 3D.  However, anything live and fast moving is truly extraordinary and I predict we'll see more of that soon.

Homeplug

It looks like, again only my opinion, the future of high speed in-home wireless/network communication will be at least part supplied by the power company.  And why not - it's the one thing that's in every home and It's truly a shock that they did not capture this market 10 years ago.  The systems on display can provide 200 Mbps throughout the home (not 10 -20 like 16g) and unlike 802.11n, it will work well in every room. Anybody with a decent size home knows that the coverage in the "outer area" sucks and many people have installed multiple units.  even then they have configuration problems.

So, keep you UWB, keep your 60 GHz, your 802.16m, keep it all...go with the power.

oh...what else...

I don't see why I'd want a tablet.  I did understand them the first time around.  The TechCrunch team really liked this one.

The end of Free

You ever discover a new, fast route to get where you are going? a path that was completed and was never open before and you seemed to be the only one that knew it? Then, like an imperceptible rotting, the route gets slower and slower, and finally, everybody knows it and it no longer qualifies for the special term "shortcut".  This can take a year, but  typically happens in a six months or so.

So it has been with the internet as everybody preaching ad-based revenue models, and over the past few years, here they've come and now you are routinely forced to view an ad to get the "free" content.  Well, if you're like me (you workout for at least an hour every day and do ironman triathlons;) you have a couple of HD TiVo's - and rant about the poor service your get from your cable company on on-line forums, but you would perservere.  As it turns out AT&T U-Verse cannot handle Tivo either or I'd have switched already.

After the New Year's day "Murdoch vs. TWC" bowl game, which is now in overtime, it seems that we all will be paying more - somewhere between $0.50 and $1.00 per "free" channel over the air that is received and sent along with the cable channels.  Probably not that much certainly as that would add like $5 to the average bill depending on the leverage of the broadcaster, but will be paying nonetheless.

I don't think this is bad.

AT&T, who sees so much of this, understands that those 5% of users that use 90% of the data need to pay their fare share.  No more free lunch, but people will be paying for what they are using, and some prices may actually decline.

Omnipresent Big Screens

Where isn't there a big flat screen TV?

As ubiquitous as they seem, you ain't seen nothin yet.  They will be EVERYWHERE.  The bathroom in the mall, every 10' in the mall, every subway car and station, vending machine, gas pump, etc.  Everywhere.  The implications for the wireless industry by 2020 have only mildly been evaluated...but if you think the iPhone sucks the network dry, wait until there are WAN supported LANs that are feeding all of these broadband sucking devices.

I'm typing this on my G5 Mac with a 30" Cinema screen (look above...i'm a normal human and my setup is not suitable for a magazine ad) As a means to watch a film, or multitask, it's phenomenal.  I won't admit what I paid for it in 2004, but it is truly a gift that keeps on giving.  I love it...but I love the TV in my family room more (we have no TV in our living room)...the Pioneer Elite FHD1 Plasma 50" monitor.  It's extraordinary. It also gets extraordinarily hot, and is quite heavy.  Green it's not.  Beautiful it is...and EXTRAORDINARILY expensive.  But it too is the gift that keeps on giving.  There is nothing quite like watching Zack and Cody on this precious monitor.

when I purchased these two monitors back in the middle of the decade they were extravagant...today they are par for the course. Well, the size is anyway. This week my 17 year old received a 32" 1080P flat screen TV for XMAS.  It costs me $250 at Costco.  20X less than I paid for the 50X plasma.  Wow.  The mid-90s extravagant purchase has become the typical TV. Was all this predictable? what are we going to display on all these monitors? Ads? Weather (like at the Shell station)? truly personal content (as in Minority Report)?

I met with the Chief Strategy Officer of AMD about five years ago in Austin.  AMD has always been, to me anyway, the "little brother" of Intel.  To me, AMD was always about Jerry Sanders.  He had driven the company to be one step ahead of Intel from a technology standpoint, but was in his own way a flamboyant businessman in what is truly an "engineer's world" - semiconductors.

but I digress.

Billy had it right on the nose: they have ramped capacity so much and so widely that the price has dropped to the cost of a nice dinner for two couples.  I must say that my plasma screen TV looks RADICALLY better than my 17 year olds LCD flat screen.  Not all 1080P monitors are created equal.

Back in 2004 Billy told me:

1. Big screen TVs, which China - even then - owned, would take over the earth and by the time of the olympics in 2008 would be "super cheap".  In late 2004 60% of the big screen TVs were made in China.

2. Billy thought Qualcomm's MediaFlo was dumb. He saw no market for wide-area broadcast video to mobiles.  He saw tremendous value for LAN distribution, but unlike Intel, they were non-investors in WiMAX.

where isn't  there a big screen TV?  as I mentioned, I purchased a "Proscan" LCD 32" LCD 1080p TV for my 17-year-old for XMAS from WalMat: $300.  Amazing.

So picture this: big HD tvs everywhere with IPTV or other Broadband wireless connections.  Hopefully broadcast



from the press:

For Orbotech, the sector with the most potential for strong growth over the coming two years is equipment for inspecting LCD TV screens of all sizes. Analysts are unanimous in their view that over the four major sales events of the period Black Friday, Christmas, the day after NewYear's day, and the Chinese New Year LCD screens were and will be among the big hits. Sales are not collapsing this year, nor is inventory too large - so expectations are that screen makers will put into effect the plans they have on the shelves to make large investments in new and existing production lines. Some investments have been announced and were put into action, and some are on the way.

The main driver for the LCD screen market, which will bring a lot of gains to Orbotech, is the plummeting sales of "old technology" CRT televisions in developing countries, primarily China, and the concurrent move to LCD screens. According to analysts, 2009 should see a sharp 40% drop in CRT television sales, compared with a drop of about 15% in each of the previous three years. That is, even if the overall TV market grows only 5% next year, the LCD niche will grow more than 22%. Nearly every expansion of a factory, or building of a new one (and in China 7-8 new factories are planned) means a lot of orders for Orbotech, since it has a market share of over 70%.

The 2009 Charging Mat Conspiracy

I ran into Paul a the airport last night and our desultory conversation on the recent Chargers victory morphed into a discussion of charging mats.  This is one of the tech industry's "buzz" products of this year and likely to be featured at CES in Las Vegas  in a couple weeks.  These nifty, efficient systems permit the charging of your gadgets without the hassle of connecting a power-charging wire.  That's right - a "wireless" technology. Brilliant!


Of course this is not an entirely new idea.  There have been lots of methods of charging devices that we use often and require virtually constant charging.  How many can you think of?  Well,  your car battery does not really count, but it's a novel system: the battery is needed only to start the car, after that a charging system consisting of an alternator, a voltage regulator and a battery.  Your car could run without the charging system for an hour, more or less, depending on what else you had running (such as the lights, heater, wipers, etc.).  But I digress.  


The car is a bad example because all the user needs to do is put gas in it and drive it.  The car tells you when to put gas in it.  If it needs a repair, it lets you know.  If it breaks, new ones have you push a single button and somebody comes and helps.  there are other items that need to be charged all the time, including the variety of gadgets below:


1. the battery for my drill - there are two, grab/swap and go
2. my logitech wireless mouse - it's an awesome mouse and I need to charge it (if I forget) once a week
3. electric tooth brush: this one (is also a clever one) and uses the same induction as the wireless mat
4. Cordless telephone: same principle as the mouse and drill battery; a stand with a physical connection
5. the Flip Mino HD - this one uses a USB charger, one button releases the USB connector

Then, there's the device I need to charge the most: my cell phone.  You would think the device that I touch the most, use the most (well the mouse is probably up there) and am always with me would have a desk style charger.  Nope.  With my cell phone (a Nokia flip) need to pry out a plastic piece the size of a pencil shaving with my fingernail to put in the mini USB charger:

Why is this? Why is the device that I need to charge the most often (plug/unplug at least once/day) is such a pain to connect?

I have concluded that there is a conspiracy by agents from the "wireless power mat" industry inside all phone companies to make it as hard as possible.  Otherwise why would it be this way?

Tired of Verizon Wireless?

I'm tired of Verizon Wireless.  But as we both know, there is little one can do against "the system".  Oh I could switch to At&T or T-Mobile or Sprint, but why bother?  From what I've read that's no better.

Today's debacle began when I decided to modify my contacts online rather than on my handset. I wanted to do that as I've got several different numbers for a person that i've mis-labeled.  When I'm at a trade show and I need to reach him I end up waking up his wife as I've got his mobile number stored as his office, his office stored as his home, his home as his mobile.  Anyhow, it SHOULD be a snap to fix this up on my hand-dandy desktop...BUT NO! When I went back to www.verizonwireless.com/backupassistant (as instructed by my handset) I'm redirected to the "welcome to back assistant" page which informs me I need to download this application to my handset.  Well, yea...duh...I did that last year guys.  And I've been using it since then...

so....once more into the #611 breach....

And I get customer care agent #1 (Shashandra from Atlanta) who I spend 10 minutes describing my problem too...until she gets (I think) the simple problem, whereupon I'm moved to Customer Care person #2, who never really understood this problem, who puts me on hold for 5 min so I can talk with the "expert" #3 who tells me to "delete backup assistant from your handset and re-download it and run it again"

gee thanks.  I never would have thought of that on my own.  pleasure to spend 30 min with Verizon Customer Care today!

so helpful.

Austin Wireless Conference

John Stupka doing the final speech

Kryon - automated tasks

Kryon makes simple tasks simpler.

There was a great skit on SNL years ago - "Mr Tea".  It was a take off on coffee maker ads, specifically Mr. Coffe.  Mr. Coffee offered "put in your coffee, add water, and Mr. Coffee does the rest".  This from non other than Joe DiMagio...I guess Marylin Monroe didn't make coffee.  Anyhow, the SNL skit took this a step further.  "Just get a tea cup, a bag of your favorite tea, some hot water, and Mr. Tea does the rest".  Well, duh.  that was the funny part. there was actually a plastic "funnel holder" you poured the hot water through to go into your cup with the tea bag already in it.

I'm not sure that this product quite goes that far.  I can picture it having a "don't know how to make a captial letter? Let Kryon hit the CAP key for you!".  But I digress....perhaps there's more to it.  We'll have to wait in see.  I do like the cool interface you type your question into.

Blackberry Storm..post Oct-09 upgrade: far from a perfect storm

 Well, it was that time of the year: a new software upgrade for my wonderful BlackBerry Storm.  I did receive an email - on the Storm - letting me know that I needed to go to http://verizonwireless.com/storm to get my new upgrade.

Huh? what happened to OTA upgrades (I thought)...anyway...I promptly got right on it and went to the website.  Whereupon I was a link "Upgrade Storm software", which took me to a....pdf file that informed me to go the verizon site to get my upgrade.  OK.  Now what.

I ventured the page and found a small non-obvious link in the middle of links describing the benefit of the upgrade - and I clicked on that.  Finally - a page that said (basically): you need firefox, not safari.

I forgot about the love affair between Verizon and Microsoft. So I went over to the Windows machine (Vista) and used - gulp - the newest IE (with Bing!) and tried it there.  The first time - no kidding - it crashed. the second time it downloaded a 25 MB file to my machine, and after going through the typical executable steps, I was up and running...and running...and..resting.  The process to load the software onto the Blackberry lasted - no kidding again - well over an hour. The entire process was over 90 min. 

the install process deleted Yahoo Messenger and AIM.  Deleted the Google Voice app too. 

Everything else appears to be intact.  I did have to long into viigo again.  And the softkeys now have an apple-esque "genie" effect.  Supposedly the touch controls on the screen have been improved, and other physical/interactive features, but I have not noticed anything earth shattering yet.  If I do, will add comments later:

Summary:

- need to use a PC, or, try with Firefox
- download is over 25 MB from Verizon
- tranfer to Storm takes over an hour
- you will need to reload some apps.  Read the log on the computer for details.
- prepare to be underwhelmed.