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Not-So-Live at CES 2010

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En route to Vegas, I got myself completely ready for “liveblogging” CES 2010.  My plan was to walk the show floor, find interesting stuff, and either make a quick video or take a picture and blog.  In order to achieve this goal, I had the following technologies prepped:

  • My Droid Eris.  I was fairly confident that the Verizon network would hold up well during the show, giving me 3G bandwidth when and where I’d need it.  Further, it has a 5MP camera – good enough for CES picture taking. Usefulness: 9/10.
  • Ardica jacket w/Moshi Power Pack. Stage Two is doing some consulting work with Ardica, so they gave me a jacket to use during the show in order to keep my Eris charged (since the battery while doing 3G connectivity drains ridiculously fast). Usefulness: 10/10. And as a bonus it kept me warm outside!
  • Flip minoHD. As my backup to my Droid, I had a Flip ready to make all sorts of interesting videos, just in case. Usefulness:2/10. I only made one video with the Flip, but it did work when I needed it.
  • WpToGo (Android App). Gave me near-perfect mobile access to the WordPress blog. Usefulness: 8/10
  • Ustream Broadcaster (Android App). Gave me live videostreaming directly from the phone. Usefuless: 9/10
  • TwiDroid (Android App). Gave me access to Tweet and monitor Tweets. Usefulness: 9/10

Right now you’re probably thinking “well golly jee, Jeremy, it sure sounds like you were set up as the ultimate mobile blogger. What ever could have gone wrong?”

First, while the network connectivity far outpaced my iPhone friends, it still just wasn’t good enough for really watchable mobile video. My friend “Tivoboy” sent me a note that said “live stream is cool and novel, but vid quality is poor doesn’t make for real viewing or ANY future use.”  After receiving that (4 videos later), I pretty much stopped.  Here’s a sample video:

So, now that I was reduced to still imagery and blogging, I ran into the next hurdle: I’m amazingly slow at typing on my Eris, and CES is really busy.  Every time I took a pic, I wanted to upload and write right away, but in reality I pretty much had to keep moving.  So I decided to keep the major storytelling for after I returned, and used Twitter for any “real-time” updates.  I’ll spend the rest of the week getting all the content online (depending on how much MW2 I end up playing).

Overall I thought it was a pretty decent CES.  Nothing outstanding, but then there really hasn’t been much amazing to see at CES in years anyway.  It’s the fundamental branding problem of the show.  Further, the rapidity at which content was shared by Engadget and others radically diminished the in-person wow factor.  When you already know about the various 3DTV, ultra-slim TVs, netbooks, tablets, e-readers, and everything else that’s being shown, it takes a bit away from the in-person showiness of it all.

I think this is the fundamental challenge to keep the show interesting and excited for the attendees (beyond their busy schedules full of meetings).  By Friday afternoon (day 2) when I was walking the show with Robert Scoble and Rocky, we had already seen everything we wanted to see.  This is compounded by the (and forgive the word) “lemming-ness” of the big players.  Once 3DTV was pre-established to be a hot thing, it became the only thing, and as a result, boring.  You simply can’t get excited by 5 different demos of the same technology (especially not one that many of us just aren’t excited about).

The Third Age of Gadgets nears its end

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The iPad TabletMac MacTouch iSlate will supposedly launch next year, and with it comes the end of an era.  For that statement to make any sense, I should probably backtrack a bit and give a little explanation.  While considering the impact of this product (should it even exist beyond the labs in Cupertino, that is), I’ve been thinking back on the history and evolution of gadgets.  Incidentally, I’m only considering electronic gadgets, but not including computers (or laptops) nor kitchen-related items (pretty much everything in the modern kitchen is some kind of gadget).  I’ve grouped them (in my own mind) into three major phases, and in pure Tolkienish geeky wonderfulness, I’m calling them Ages.

The First Age

Definition: For sake of discussion, I’ll define the First Age of Gadgets as starting with calculators and LCD watches (and, of course, calculator watches).  Sticklers will quickly point out something I’m missing, but in my opinion that’s when the concept of “gadgets” really got kicking.  These products (1) required batteries and (2) did one thing, typically pretty well.  These early gadgets were typically fairly functional in nature, not very gimmicky or showy.  They were also workhorses as compared to modern products – you can drop most “old school” products and not fear for significant damage (probably directly related to LED or single-line LCD outputs).

Timeframe: roughly the early 1970s all the way into the 1990s. That said, many products came out in the ’90s that would still be considered First Age gadgets, per the definition above.

Defining gadget: tie between Walkman and Game Boy.  Both effectively defined a product category, and still do to this day in most respects. It’s far too easy to argue that the iPod is just a “modern” Walkman, and ditto for the DS/PSP.

Memorable gadgets: Mattel Football, Atari 2600, NES, Speak and Spell (the first DSP was inside it), the Polaroid instant camera, and HP calculators (they could graph stuff!), DiscMan (also great, but not as revolutionary as the WalkMan).

The Second Age

Definition: In a nutshell: USB connectivity and/or card reader integration. Slightly more detailed: the Second Age of gadgets is about products that were able to connect and/or share data with a computer (but did not include WiFi) and/or cell phones.  Gadgets started becoming a little more pervasive, a little more mainstream, a lot more pop culture. In addition to the gadgets themselves, the category of gadget accessories really began to boom (chargers, carrying case, rechargeable batteries, etc).  This was also the dawn of the gadget blogs. I asked Peter Rojas, founder of Gizmodo, if he could recall why he launched the site: “It was an experiment, something Nick and I started almost by accident.  I don’t think either of us thought blogging would become as big as it did. People are a LOT more interested in gadgets now than when I started Gizmodo in 2002 – it’s become part of pop culture.”

Timeframe: late 1990s to mid-2000’s.  Obviously there were definitely earlier cell phones and we still have completely disconnected gadgets coming to market today, but this is still a fairly definable time.  Interesting, I referred to this timeframe in another “look back” kind of post last year.

Defining gadget: tough call, but it’s the iPod. No other device was so utterly perfect at the concept of end-to-end interaction between the device and the computer.

Memorable gadgets: TiVo, Motorola StarTac and RAZR, PalmPilot and Palm V, Sony PlayStation, Rio mp3 players (especially the Karma), Casio Exilim and Sony U10/U20 digital cameras, Creative Nomad Jukebox, Garmin Nuvi.

The Third Age

Definition: Internet access and connectivity. Devices had either built-in Internet access, or some hybrid method of interacting with the Internet to share content, data, or services.  In many cases Third Age devices are simple evolutions to their predecessors, but some innovated distinctly enough so that there’s no blurry lines.  Just as the USB-only devices evolved to a point of wacky ideas, we’ve already seen the same thing begin to occur in the current era.

Timeframe: mid-2000’s to 2010.

Defining gadget: This is a debatable call, but I’m going to go with the BlackBerry. It truly ushered in the notion of a converged device with phone and Internet access, and was the major game changer of usage behaviors with regards to mobile devices.  Obviously the iPhone has had its own impact, but one could argue that (1) the BlackBerry is a clear success, and (2) the iPhone might never have come out without it.

Memorable gadgets: iPhone (see, it’s there!), Xbox 360, Harmony 880 remote, Slingbox (disclosure: I built it, so I’m biased, but I think it belongs on the list!), Sonos (disclosure: I have worked with Sonos in the past, but again, I think it’s hard to argue that any other product has so well integrated the Internet and personal media and home gadgets), Eye-Fi (like it or don’t, but it certainly opened new concepts), the Flip, the Kindle. Oh, and of course the Twitterpeek (just kidding).

The Fourth Age

Regardless of the iSlate, we are at the brink of a new generation of gadgets that utterly change the way we think of technology and mobility. Internet access and data synchronization/sharing will be considered ubiquitous and pervasive across new devices.  I consider gadgets like the FitBit right on the fringe of what I’m talking about – designed for a connected life, but don’t focus on a typical way of being used. My expectations for what I’m calling the Fourth Age of gadgets center around three major changes and improvements in displays, inputs, and power.

Displays: I assume we’ll be seeing flexible display surfaces (folding, roll-up, etc) that change the way we physically interact with a device.  The concept of a hard, flat screen (even a touchable one) seems very outdated to me. I think the real revolutionary tablet will be the first one with some form of flexible display (and my money’s on Apple for making this happen). I also foresee better use of microprojectors to remove the need for an on-board display at all.

Input: Next generation products should have inputs much more interesting than just a keyboard.  Let’s assume the concept of gestures is one good starting point, but it really needs to be taken further than the pinching and scrolling effect.  I’m also anticipating more use of optical recognition (like Natal uses) to simple “watch” the user control a device – gestures are even more interesting when you don’t have to touch a screen. Voice recognition and input is basically already here, but yet to be fully put to work (thanks David for that suggestion). Another is more interesting uses of accelerometers and motion sensors, where a gadget is interacted with simply by how you move it around.

Power: I consider batteries, even the most modern Li-Ion ones, one of the key deficiencies in gadget design. Batteries create massive inefficiencies in cost structure, environmental impact, and product usage. As a stopgap solution, I am a fan of the wireless charging concepts, but that’s really just a big bandaid in my opinion. We are right around the corner from making rechargeable fuel cell based devices very feasible. This is a good step, but I’m anticipating some more monumental leaps.  As per my thoughts on flexible displays, I think the materials sciences engineers out there are cooking up some very innovative solutions to make gadgets last longer, weigh less, and be notably cheaper to produce.

For a little sanity check, I asked Josh Topolsky, Editor-in-Chief of Engadget, his opinion:

“I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface of what’s possible in mobile computing (non-laptop, non-traditional computing, that is). Smartphones are in their infancy, tablets are non-existent; what we’ve seen in demos only just begins to show the potential in this space. When manufacturers can add the horsepower and bandwidth needed to those devices without sacrificing battery life or design, our perception of computing will shift dramatically. Multitouch interfaces and UI concepts that involve more than just moving boxes around on a screen will completely upend our ideas about how you interact with the machine; gadgets like the iPhone and Surface have already sparked that fire. In just a few years (say, less than five), I expect that using a laptop or desktop computer will seem quaint, or worse: antiquated.”

Personally, I’m excited about the future.  I’m just ever-so-bored of the current state of gadget affairs.  The iPhone has just sucked the life out of real innovation, and everyone’s playing a pretty boring game of catchup, with the occasional attempt to one-up Apple.  The problem is the giants of CE are acting like big sluggish organizations, and the cost structures have been prohibitive to enable startups to find easy paths to success, with few exceptions to these rules.  Hence why we in the Third Age we have One Phone to Rule Them All.  But 10 years ago we’d have bet on Sony, not Apple, to lead the revolution.  I wonder who will lead us on the road ahead (and if we’ll see it at CES 2010?).