Category Archives: Gadgets

Trying to “keep it fresh” (or is that “keep it real”?), I’m doing my show recap with a slightly different format. Here are my highs and lows of the show:

HIGH: Unquestionably, winning the Best of Show award with Bug Labs this year. All in all Bug Labs (whom I work with) had a phenomenal CES, which I’ll blog about over at the Stage Two blog in the next couple of days.

LOW: Panasonic’s 150 inch plasma. I’m probably going to end up buying a Panny plasma this year anyway, but I couldn’t help but shake my head with dismay at this screen (although it’s certainly using some impressive technology, I definitely give them credit for that). It’s just ridiculous from every perspective, and the utter waste in even creating the thing is astounding to me. Especially in light of…

HIGH: Philips’ eco-friendly plasma TV. Of all things to lose the Overall best in show award to, this was my pick. Good for them to set a good example for the CE industry. Hopefully this is the beginning of a big trend, as plasmas are about as non-green a gadget you can possibly buy.

LOW: No major new innovations. While I wasn’t following the news as well as I’d have liked, it seemed like CES ’08 was really about bigger (or thinner), faster, better, etc. No major new formats/platforms/technologies announced (other than Tru2Way, the terribly named tech that will probably be only minorly more successful than CableCard), no really new innovative device unveiled, just more of the same old, same old. Also, I (and others) think the show is just too darn big now.

HIGH: Watching the Bill Gates keynote AT the BlogHaus. I didn’t make it last year at all (perhaps due to location? Scoble – hint, hint), so it was fun to go there and see the bloggers’ reactions to the keynote. I tuned out as he spun Vista’s success, but it was definitely a lively environment for it!

LOW: “Gizmodogate.” I think more than anything else I’m disappointed in that group, as I know some of the Gizmodo staff individually. Seems like one of those moments where a funny idea went way way way too far. The idea? Funny. Doing it? Not Funny.

HIGH: Flying Virgin America from LV to SFO. In-seat videos and gaming, combined with AC adapters (and USB chargers) at every seat? As per the letter I just wrote to United Airlines (where I’m currently a 1K flyer), it’s pretty irresistible.

LOW: Not getting a day to just watch and walk the show floor. Last year I had 3 days to scout for cool technology for a client, as well as blog the whole time. This year I had 15 hour demo days. But at least I got my…

HIGH: Steak at Smith & Wollensky’s. This is an annual CES tradition of mine, and one I intend to continue for years to come.

LOW: CES 2009 reverts to the old-school Thurs-Sun schedule. AND it coincides with MacWorld. I’m sure some planners had very good reasons and intents, but the outcome is just miserable for everyone involved. Here’s a suggestion: can we begin a plan to shift CES from it’s current timeslot to one month later? It’d be nice for the 100,000 or so individuals involved in putting together demos and booths to have a December vacation once in a while.

And now to end on some very positive notes…

HIGH: Catching up with all my friends at the show, be they bloggers, former Sling Media coworkers, venture capitalists, press & analysts, or consumer electronics industry execs. Great to see you all again!

HIGH: Sneak preview of TuneUp Media at the show, as well as Splashtop winning a PC World “Most Innovative Products” award!

HIGH: Meeting some people in person whom I’d previously only known online. Especially some original Slingbox beta testers, and bloggers Shawn Morton, Doc Searls, and Engadget’s Ben Drawbaugh.

HIGH: Bothering my friends and family in a little grass roots attempt to win CNET’s “People’s Choice” award at CES. I even used Facebook and (oy) Twitter! Bug lost out to Motorola (and probably a few others). I think they have a slightly wider brand awareness…

HIGH: Not catching the CES Flu this year. Feel better, Robert and others!

UBER-HIGH: My CES Best Of Show Threepeat. More on that on my personal blog later.

That’s my wrapup of CES 2008, another one for the books! All my photos are online here. Now I wait for MacWorld, to find out exactly what my new MacBook Pro will be, as I will undoubtedly pick one up the first day I possibly can.

This is fun (more fun than being yelled at by everybody in my Apple post – yes, people, you’ve made your point!).  Bug Labs  (with whom I work) just got picked by CNET as a Best of CES contender!  For such a tiny startup, this is a wonderful honor, and the whole team is really energized (I’d say “psyched”, but that’s more for us in California, the New Yorkers wouldn’t be big fans of the term).

The company could also use a little help and support from the tech community, as they are up against some huge players.  So our David is taking on the Goliath by reaching out to get some votes for the People’s Voice award.   You can vote online here, or you can text in your vote (text PV14 to 26381).  Please use your proverbial slingshot to help the company out!!

UPDATE: I just noticed that CNBC/Donny Deutsch show is also polling for their favorite, and we’d love a little help there too!

OK, that’s a bit of a misnomer since a few of us live here, but Peter Semmelhack (CEO) and Ken Gilmer (head of software) came out to SF this week for our BUG+SF event. From 6-9pm on Thursday we had a big turnout of people interested in seeing hands-on demos of the BUGbase and a few modules. We had a great time, and thanks to everyone who could come (here are some pix on Flickr).

Friday morning Peter, myself and the rest of the Stage Two team, and some of my officemates (and colleagues and friends) from Echo Marketing went to the San Francisco Food Bank to volunteer for a few hours . With each BUG+ event we like to follow it up with spending some time directly giving back to the local community (I missed the one in Boston, but here’s Matt’s excellent writeup). Prior to joining Sling I was doing a lot of regular volunteering, but due to insane traveling those two years I really hadn’t done much since. It felt really good to get involved again, and it’s something we plan to do a lot more regularly. For those of you who need any incentive (beyond the fact that volunteering makes you feel really really good):

ONE in FIVE (aka 1/5, one-fifth, or 20%) of FAMILIES in San Francisco (the city, not the Bay Area) earn under $25,000 per YEAR. That’s 150,000 people. They need our help. Click here to read more and get involved.

Our group of 7 people was paired up with another larger group of 30. In under three hours we boxed and sorted 5 tons of food. The SF Food Bank has less than 60 people on staff, so it’s pretty easy to feel the impact that small groups like ours can have on helping getting things done. You can see more pictures here.

We went back to my office to get some more work done, and my friend Robert Scoble came by for a chat. And for those of you who know Robert, when we told him we had a working BUG to show, out came the video camera cell phone, and he got a bunch of fun, casual footage of Peter and I doing demos.

Overall, great trip at so many levels. Especially playing a little Rock Band before Peter caught his flight back to NYC.

I try to keep my clients’ work out of this blog (yet another reason for me starting a personal blog), but since this falls into gadgetland, I figured it’s okay to do so. In case that’s not abundantly obvious… Disclaimer: Bug Labs is a paying client.

This evening we put up a new version of the Bug Labs web site which incorporates real pictures of the BUG hardware platform. I’ve been working with the company since Winter of ’06, but I’m especially excited for the rest of the team, especially Peter, the founder. I vividly remember the first time I saw a production-quality Slingbox, and even back when the Denon NS-100 prototypes came out. All were extremely uplifting, proud moments. I didn’t play a part in designing the BUG, but I still have a great feeling about seeing the vision become a reality.

You can see all the pictures of the BUGbase and first four modules here, and the products page was updated as well. For more editorial opinion on the company, here’s coverage from Engadget, Gizmodo (ooh, video), Popular Science, Crunchgear, MAKE Magazine, and TechCrunch.

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time.  The birth of my son massively influenced my perspective on gadgetry, and a recent loss in my family has cemented this opinion.  The digital camera is the single product I own that is creating long term value in my life, one which cannot be measured by any known metric.

Without going into too many details because I try to avoid such things here (I’ll even skip ranting about a certain Vaio and how much you shouldn’t buy one), my 94-year-old grandmother passed away this weekend.  She’d fallen in July, and never recovered.  Thanks in advance for the sympathy, but that’s definitely not the focal point of my post.

My wife and I managed to hop on a plane a few day later, and we took dozens of photos and videos of her holding my then-three-month-old boy.  It’s barely two months later, and those pictures are already some of the most valuable in my collection.  I look forward to the day when I’ll sit my son down at the computer (or hopefully some very cool holographic virtual device that’s the size of a cell phone.  it should also have a lasergun in it, but I digress), and get to show him the time he met his great-grandmother.

Cell phones are very practical and probably are in the #2 slot for me (and I’m not counting cell phones with cameras built-in yet, not until they hit 5MP or higher resolution).  The computer doesn’t count as a gadget in my world.  MP3 players aren’t even close.

As I was once told, and very much like to repeat: the value of a photograph is zero the moment you take it, and gains infinitely over time.  What a good investment!

Bug Lab’s CEO Peter blogged yesterday about the “pizza tail“. No, it’s not an analysis of the long tail of pizza (featuring combos such as Peach+Anchovies+Potatoes or Corn+Pumpkin+Cinnamon), it’s an interpretation of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory applied to the consumer electronics/gadget industry.

I’ve spent the better part of 10 years designing gadgets for different companies, and there’s an unfortunately sad truth about the lack of successful innovation in the consumer electronics industry.  The key word there is “successful” as there are numerous entrants into the space, from Prismiq to Dash, from Presto to TiVo.  TiVo is a success in that it returned a lot of money to its investors and is still afloat numerous years later, albeit on questionable footing.  Prismiq won best in show at CES in 2003, then couldn’t sell enough units to keep the company alive. Dash is pre-launch, with an uphill battle ahead of them (though I *love* the concept), where they are taking on a rather entrenched industry.  Presto launched late last year, and again I feel it’s a good concept, with many barriers to “success”.

The common ground problem these companies all have to face?  Hardware.  It’s expensive with a capital every darn letter in the word!  Expensive to design, expensive to built, expensive to test, expensive to sell, expensive to support, you get the drift by now.

This leaves the field of innovation in hardware rather thin, thus creating Peter’s “pizza tail”.  In fact, the 4 companies I named above are truly variations on existing categories (TiVo=VCR, Prismiq=DVD player without the DVD, Dash=GPS, Presto=Printer).  When people ask me about the gadgets you can build with BUG, I actually prefer to leave the question unanswered.  I have a few ideas of my own, but I think the space between the categories will be defined by the first generation of Bug Labs’ customers.

I look forward to watching engineers, product designers, and entrepreneurs have the ability to innovate in hardware without facing the ridiculous cost and resource strains it takes to start a gadget company.  Until then, I’ll take a slice with Pepperoni+Mushrooms.  Okay, you can throw a little red onions on there too.