TECHNOLOGY REPORT

Although Chinese companies have been strongly represented at CES for many years, I think we’ll continue to see China work towards a kind of “national brand” where the emphasis is a bit like the “made in USA” approach here in the USA.

This may be a challenge given the political climate here in the USA where both parties maintain the stance of “fearing China’s economy” even as they recognize our economies are intertwined almost beyond recognition and in general offer many “win win” relationships between consumers and companies in both countries.

Culturally, China is only beginning to learn the ins and outs of the American hype machine, leading to some amusing pitch lines and displays that might benefit greatly from a Las Vegas style makeover. That said, it’s kind of “charming” to see the more subtle and respectful business tactics of Asia here in the USA. For example the passing of business cards is done with a bow and both hands.

Here from the official CES site, CESWeb.org, are several links to articles before and during the show.   I’ll follow this up with a list of some of my favorite articles about the themes at CES I found most interesting, to wit:

Rise of the Ultrabook / Thin Notebook / Hybrid Tablet

Slow but powerful ongoing convergence of internet with electronic devices of all types, especially mobile ones.

Does anybody really care about 3D TV?  Really?

Green tech skepticism is not a crime.

Internet TVs and YouTube keynote packed at the conference that hardly even talked about the social media and the internet 5 years ago.

—————-   More press about CES —————

From ZDNet, January 12, 2012

“CES 2012: 10 Facebook Platform integrations”

From PC Magazine, January 12, 2012
“Great Audio Gear at CES 2012″

From Tulsa World, January 12, 2012
“Thin ultrabooks trend at 2012 Consumer Electronics Show”

From Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2012
“At CES, TV makers show off lighter, sharper sets”

From San Francisco Chronicle, January 12, 2012
“CES’ Eureka Park shows cutting-edge products”

From USA Today, January 12, 2012
“‘Smart’ TVs and other products proliferate at CES”

From The Irish Times, January 12, 2012
“Show time for electronics as record numbers exhibit at CES”

From Forbes, January 12, 2012
“CES 2012: Camera Makers Fight Back With Smart Devices”

From CNET, January 12, 2012
“Post-show report: Big OLEDs dominate TV news at CES 2012″

From Huffington Post, January 12, 2012
“Carmakers Count On Tech To Transform Autos Into Companions “

From BBC, January 11, 2012
“CES 2012: Environmentally sound technology on display”

From The Washington Post, January 11, 2012
“CES 2012: New smartphones, ultrabooks unveiled”

From The Mercury News, January 11, 2012
” inShare Magid on Tech: At CES, a new golden age for cars is beginning”

From The Seattle Times, January 11, 2012
“CES 2012: Gallery of new TVs — big, thin and bright”

From The New York Times, January 10, 2012
“CES Gets Started”

From NY Daily News, January 10, 2012
“CES 2012: Tech companies go ‘All in’ for Las Vegas convention”

From Daily Tech, January 9, 2012
“CES 2012: Samsung’s Series 5, Series 9 Ultrabooks Bow in Las Vegas “

From Las Vegas Sun, January 8, 2012
“2012 CES: Celebrity list includes Bieber, Snooki, 50 Cent, LL Cool J, Overeem”

From USA Today, January 8, 2012
“Yahoo and Tom Hanks to announce Net video project at CES”

From The Huffington Post, January 8, 2012
“5 Big Gizmo Trends for CES 2012 “

From CNET, January 8, 2012
“Leak Week makes CES better (opinion)”

From EE Times, January 7, 2012
“Hot parties at CES 2012″

From TechRadar, January 6, 2012
“Why we’re crazy about CES 2012″

From The Denver Post, January 6, 2012
“CES 2012 preview – robotic blocks and the show’s new spotlight on startups”

From The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2012
“Big Gadget Show Expecting a Blowout”

From The Huffington Post, January 5, 2012
“Eureka Park And Green Innovation Coming To CES 201″

From Variety, January 2, 2012
“Kudos cornucopia set for CES”

From CNET, December 30, 2011
“Eight things I’m looking forward to seeing at CES”

From PR Newswire, December 28, 2011
“Finalists Announced for Mobile Apps Showdown; Winners to be Announced at 2012 International CES, January 12″

From PR Newswire, December 28, 2011
“Finalists Announced for Last Gadget Standing; Winners To Be Announced at 2012 International CES, January 12″

From Engadget, December 21, 2011
“CES 2012 to feature 94 startup companies in ‘Eureka Park TechZone’”

From CNET, December 20, 2011
“CES setting up its own startup alley”

From TechRadar, December 20, 2011
“CES 2012: what to expect Updated: Phones, cameras, computing, TV, gaming and more”

From CNET, December 19, 2011
“Faster phones and more Ice Cream Sandwich at CES 2012 “

From CNET, December 19, 2011
“CES 2012: The unlikeliest car show”

From CNET, December 19, 2011
“Clouds everywhere, voice control, home integration, and health: How software will bring it all together at CES 2012″

From Twice, December 19, 2011
“Home Audio: What’s Coming At CES 2012″

From CNET, December 19, 2011
“Predictions for CES 2012″

From Spike TV, December 16, 2011
“This Year’s CES Could Be the Year of the Tablet”

From CNET, December 16, 2011
“Better 3D, voice control, more apps: How CES 2012 will advance the TV”

From Spike TV, December 14, 2011
“The Greatest Celebrity Moments in CES History”

From EE Times, December 14, 2011
“CES: USB wall outlets power up consumer devices”

From Spike TV, December 13, 2011
“The Things We’re Most Looking Forward to Seeing at CES 2012″

From EE Times, December 9, 2011
“Top 10 CE innovation gadgets at CES”

From TechRadar, November 29, 2011
“CES 2012: Gary Shapiro talks tech”

From TechRadar, November 22, 2011
“CES 2012: what to expect”

From Mashable, November 18, 2011
“Ultrabooks Get Ready for Their Close-Up at CES 2012″

From PCWorld, November 16, 2011
“CES 2012 Gadget Preview”

One of the cleverest exhibits at CES was energy management company NRG, who used a combination of touchscreens, interactive exhibits like the hamster wheel above, and an electric DeLorean Sports Car to showcase their energy saving technologies.

New York Times online at CES 2012

The Google-owned online video service Youtube gave this morning’s keynote here at CES 2012.  It wasn’t all that interesting except for one amazing statistic.   They’re serving five billion hours of video per month now.   This would amount to about an hour of video for every person on earth old enough to access youtube.   I want some verification because that number is hard to believe, but if true it represents a shift in consumer media consumption that is simply staggering.

We all knew things were moving from offline to online media, but this suggests that online video adoption and usage is happening faster and with more gusto than all but the most enthusiastic online evangelists would have predicted.   In fact YouTube’s  Robert Kyncl noted how they have been constantly revising projections based on higher use than expected.

How will this trend affect us?    Probably in some very dramatic ways.   Heavy capital TV networks may increasingly see advertisers shifting to highly targeted niche markets, lowering the quality of network productions as money dries up.   Meanwhile more and more user generated content is pouring online, diverting more  attention away from traditional media.   The end result in terms of the content landscape?   I’m guessing we’ll see even more of a ” race to the bottom” in terms of content, where low quality lowbrow content will push out the better stuff.  Yet “high quality TV” has always been something of an oxymoron anyway, so nobody should lose any sleep as we watch our watching habits shift from our favorite TV drama to our favorite online personality’s content channel.   In fact I’d predict that we’ll even see some great quality, low cost shows come out as the barriers to entry fall away and millions more clever content producers flood the online landscape with …. more stuff.

Portable TVs at CES. This is one of those ideas that seem pretty crazy to me. That said, in technology things rarely shake out as they first appear.

The concept here is the portable television, weighing from 5 to 12 pounds, that you carry from room to room or …. wherever so you don’t miss a minute of your show.

This is an interesting contrast with the much more prevalent concept here of a connected home where WIFI allows you to stream TV all over the house. In that scenario you’ll keep the TVs in place but have one in every room.

As this indicates, we’re a LONG way from true convergence, where the devices all integrate in a more robust fashion.

Seems that a *smart phone*, a small tablet or notebook/ultrabook computer, and a nice TV seem to be becoming the key indispensable devices to own. I’m thinkig we can probably manage three things successfully even as many innovators seem to believe we need full convergence where those devices, plus many others in our lives, communicate in real time all the time. More on that later…

Surface Computing at CES. It’s been around for some time, but like touchscreen technology (which took decades to become mainstream), surface computing will be commonplace in the near future. I’m not clear if these coffee tables are ready for market but I think its just a matter of time. These use the Microsoft surface computing application and would seem to be ideal for things like TV navigation, slide shows, and more.

As a cheap car guy it’s hard for me to get too excited, even about a very beautiful auto like this, but the technologies involved are very impressive, even as they are arguably not very scalable to the mass market yet. For example the roof is a solar panel that adds about 200 miles of range per year to the vehicle. The Fisker can only travel about 50 miles on a single charge but also has a gasoline assist which boosts the range to hundreds of miles. Since most travel is in the form of short commutes it does appear the Fisker would work fine for urban commuters. Others will effectively be using the gas assist (which does NOT run the engine, rather it charges the battery to run the engine).

Samsung’s out in full force at CES 2012 with some good technology combined with great promotional power. “Blogger buddies” are roaming around the show inviting press to the Samsung blog lounge.

Here, a street artist creates a charicature using a galaxy tablet, which is then printed or placed on a t-shirt as a giveaway. Line was too long for me to do this but I enjoyed some coffee at the espresso bar.

Although I haven’t had a chance to compare other models yet, the Samsung high end notebooks are very impressive – comparable (and clearly designed to compete with) the Macbook Air, perhaps stronger in some features. The Samsung Ultrabook line is also powerful but at much lower price point they don’t have the same “wow” factor of the slim notebooks. More on all this later.

I’m a big fan of Showstoppers so here’s a preview of the companies we’ll see there tonight at one of CES very best events.   Showstoppers showcases several companies at a tasty dinner event at the Wynn.

These are often those that don’t have a huge presence othewise.

—— Press Release —–

Fisker cranks up the amps with the first public appearance of the Karma electric sedan since deliveries began in December. Raytheon and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are bringing a patrol car to demonstrate laptop computer technologies that enable deputies to investigate crime scenes, chase down suspects and answer calls for help faster.

Here’s a quick look at just some of what’s coming from 120+ exhibiting companies:

• 3D tools for configuring dream homes, from Blu Homes.
• A look ahead at smart and dumb entertainment devices, from Boxee.
• It’s not grandma’s sewing machine – but it comes from Brother.
• A preview of Cadillac’s revolutionary in-vehicle data and entertainment system.
• Android-powered tablet computers from E FUN – and Windows-powered tablets from Kupa.
• The world’s smallest PC – on a USB stick – from FXI Technologies.
• Ultrabooks, touch screens, laptops and workstations, from HP.
• A giant 55-inch touch tablet, from InFocus.
• Interactive digital textbooks and educational software, from Kno.
• 20+ new products from Lenovo.
• Quick-connect photo lenses for the iPhone, from Olloclip — and panoramic video tools from Kogeto.
• Radio for a connected world, from Pandora.
• Eco-friendly hydrogen fuel cells from SiGNa Chemistry that can power anything from a smartphone to a laptop to a refrigerator.
• The smart yard, from The Toro Company.
• Mobile video conferencing – sweeter on Ice Cream Sandwich — from Vidyo.

There’s a lot more. Click here to preview the hot companies with cool products coming to ShowStoppers @ CES.

Check the ShowStoppers NewsDesk blog as it goes live and streams details starting 10 January.