CES 2012 at Engadget

CES 2012 at Gizmodo

CES 2012 at Forbes

CES 2012 at CNET

CES 2012 at

We’ll be flying in late tonight and start our live show coverage tomorrow morning the keynotes from the ‘Silvers Summit’ over at the Retirement Information blog, Retire USA.    The Silvers Summit is a showcase of technologies focused on the senior market and will includes health care and lifestyle tech innovations.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be on the show floor looking for the “next big thing” and maybe even finding it.   One of the challenges at CES is the sheer size – thousands of exhibitors compete for attention and it’s impossible to give anybody much of your time.   However we’ll also try to send you off to the blogs that have large teams working CES as they’ll do a more comprehensive job of covering the show than we can here at Technology Report.   Some great CES Resources are:

CNET at CES:  http://ces.cnet.com/

Engadget at CES  http://www.engadget.com/

Gizmodo at CES:  http://gizmodo.com/5874370/we-are-liveblogging-the-hell-out-of-ces

—- Press Release from Consumer Electronics Association regarding CES 2012 ——–

Las Vegas, Nev., January 9, 2012 – With more than 100 products introduced at the CES Unveiled event last night and press day opening today, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)® announces that the 2012 International CES will be the association’s second largest show in history when show floor opens on Tuesday. For a sneak peek at the show floor before it opens, visitCES’s YouTube channel and for a look at the innovation from CES Unveiled, click here.

The 1.851 million net square feet of show floor will open tomorrow, as more than 2,700 companies debut the next generation of innovative products across all sectors of the consumer electronics industry. The 2011 show welcomed 149,529 technology attendees and spanned more than 1.6 million net square feet of exhibit space. The largest CES was in 2008, with a record-breaking 1.857 million net square feet of exhibit space.

“CES is the global stage for innovation,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CEA. “Every major technology company across the globe is participating in force at this year’s CES. While many exhibit on the show floor, others send key executives to conduct meetings, participate in keynote panels, or hold their own events in Las Vegas this week to take advantage of the braintrust of technology professionals gathered here.” In addition to the 2,700 exhibitors at this year’s show, every major tech company, including Apple, Facebook, Twitter, HP and Dell, is sending significant delegations to CES, the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow.

CEA expects this year’s CES will be the most innovative show on record, with more than 20,000 new products slated to be announced this week. While the doors to the 2012 CES show floor officially open on Tuesday, news has already started to leak highlighting new innovations and products before many of these companies have even held their press conferences:

• TV manufacturer Vizio is introducing a line-up of laptops and desktops, including two Ultrabooks.
• Nokia will debut the Lumia 900 smartphone, a Windows Phone with LTE support, to be sold at AT&T this spring.
• Lenovo enters the television market by unveiling the K91Smart TV running Google’s Android 4.0.
• LG Electronics announced a variety of LED-based TVs with bezels under 5mm in width for a nearly all-picture look, as well as a 55-inch OLED TV.
• Specialty glass producer Corning plans to introduce Gorilla Glass 2, a harder, thinner and more scratch resistant glass that could pave the way for the production of thinner and sturdier tablets and smartphones.
• Intel plans to offer a slew of affordable Ultrabooks in partnership with HP, Asus, LG and others.
• OLPC announced the XO 3.0 tablet, a tablet for the world’s poorest children.
• Tobii Technology showed new eye-tracking technology that allows users to scroll, play and navigate using their eyes and without touching a mouse.
• Parrot AR Drone 2.0, which was first launched at CES 2010, once again wowed attendees at CESUnveiled last night with better location and orientation sensors.
• SolarFocus’ Kindle e-reader case provides 50 hours of onboard reading light powered by a solar panel on the front of the case.
• 3M Touch Systems, a multi-user, widescreen touch table, allows for an impressive maximum 60 touch points and up to four split screens.

With more than 5,000 members of the press covering the International CES, this week is slated to be packed with new announcements from CE companies of all sizes. According to CNET, “this is the most preshow news we’ve seen in years, both in terms of formal announcements and flat-out leaks.” Breaking coverage of all the latest CES news can also be found at CESweb.org/news, and B-roll HD footage can be found at CESweb.org/press/CES-B-roll.htm.  Since 1967, CES has been the launch pad for several major technology innovations.

SyNAPSE Project AI Neuromorphic Chip

IBM’s Aug 18th Press Release announced another significant milestone for the DARPA SyNAPSE project, the world’s best funded and arguably the “most likely to succeed” approach to creating a general artificial intelligence.

The release notes that the new chips represent a departure from traditional models of computing:

…. cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember – and learn from – the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity.

To do this, IBM is combining principles from nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing as part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative. The company and its university collaborators also announced they have been awarded approximately $21 million in new funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project.

As we’ve noted here many times, another remarkable project is the Blue Brain Project in Europe spearheaded by Dr. Henry Markram.     That team has joined with many others and is in the process of applying to the European Union for substantial funding – perhaps as much as 1.6 billion dollars.    Although Blue Brain tends to shy away from stating that their objective is a general artificial intelligence,  I would argue that they should have that goal and also that they are much more likely to be funded by stating that goal in no uncertain terms.

Unfortunately there remain many both in and outside of technology circles who believe the search for a general artificial intelligence is either dangerous or a waste of time and money.   Both these scenarios are possible but unlikely.   Sure, intelligence can be dangerous but given human history compared to technology history it seems odd to argue that we are more likely to create a Frankenstein than a helpful machine process.    Computers don’t kill people, people kill people.

In terms of a waste of time and money, clearly we humans have overrated our intelligence for some time – probably since the beginning of self-awareness.   There are few rational reasons to reject the idea that we cannot duplicate processes that are similar to our own thinking in a machine.   The advantages of machine based intelligence are likely to be  substantial – probably on the order of a new human age with vastly improved resource efficiency, poverty reduction, and more.  Thus the costs – currently measured in the low tens of millions – pale in comparison to almost all other government projects – many with massively dubious and negative ROIs.

My take is that Google is very concerned about protecting it’s dominant and hugely profitable online advertising empire, and is working hard to find ways to make sure they can capitalize on the boom in mobile device usage.     However I think all parties are exaggerating the profits to be had in mobile.   Tiny screens mean far less real estate on which to advertise.  Also, difficulties with targeting, advertising fatigue, and many other factors suggest to me that even as mobile online use explodes the profits from this may not, although larger screens and more netbooks could help preserve the existing advertising streams indefinitely.

As always we’ll have to stay tuned to see how this new online landscape shakes out.

Reuters Reports on the latest Google v China cyber conflict

Today the Chinese Government actually warned Google about conducting itself in ways favorable to China policy *even if they leave the country* in what presumably is a threat to block Google search, effectively ceding almost all China searches to Baidu, China’s search giant which very ironically has a far more capitalistic bent than Google search.    On Baidu, companies can buy their search presence without Google’s higher levels of separation of advertising and natural search results.

The opportunity here for Baidu, and perhaps Microsoft Bing, may be extraordinary as Google’s search presence has been unassailable in the USA where it now appears they may throw in the towel in China, leaving the world’s largest and most potentially lucrative search market up for grabs even though it should be noted that currently gaming is a much bigger online market than search in Asia.   Also that Asia search portals are not nearly as lucrative as in the USA.     However this is likely to change as China’s newfound influence and affluence blossoms.

Wall Street Journal has a good summary of the early buzz. My take so far is that these are the key features in play:

“low price” “giant iPhone” “many applications” “high quality” “no still or video camera” “potential typing challenges”

This morning Apple launched what is almost certain to become the new tablet computing standard, the Apple iPad. Reviews will be coming in at a lightning pace today and we’ll try to summarize them later, but in the meantime here’s a great “Everything you need to know about the iPad” piece from the Gizmodo people.

Apple iPAD launches

There are more different types, sizes, and brands of computers at CES than you can shake a stick at, though Apple is always conspicuously absent. In fact the Apple Tablet somewhat overshadowed much of the innovations of the Las Vegas show because clearly the Apple Tablet is going to be the “one to beat”, especially given the lack of any clearly “superb” tablet offering at CES.

Although I have not done enough research to generalize much about the best new PCs I think it’s clear that the mainsteam trend is towards smaller laptops and netbooks with robust features. Costs are going down – features that would have been unheard of at any cost 5 years ago are now standard on even a modest PC. Battery life is impressive and getting better – one of the ASUS PCs shown here had a battery that lasted something like 10 hours.

ASUS also has a new interesting line of *very large* laptops with high quality speakers built into the sides of the chassis to the left and right of the screen. Although heavy, these will offer huge power and a “desktop” feel for your mobile computing. Still, I think weight is the key factor driving down PC size and predict it’ll be the netbooks that dominate the market for the next few years.

——   Guest Post by Dr. Henry Markram of the Blue Brain Project —-

IBM’s claim is a HOAX.

This is a mega public relations stunt – a clear case of scientific deception of the public. These simulations do not even come close to the complexity of an ant, let alone that of a cat. IBM allows Mohda to mislead the public into believing that they have simulated a brain with the complexity of a cat – sheer nonsense.

Here are the scientific reasons why this is a hoax and misleading PR stunt:

How complex is their model?
They claim to have simulated over a billion neurons interacting. Their so called “neurons” are the tiniest of points you can imagine, a microscopic dot. Over 98% of the volume of a neuron is branches (like a tree). They just cut off all the branches and roots and took a point in the middle of the trunk to represent a entire neuron. In real life, each segment of the branches of a neuron contains dozens of ion channels that powerfully controls the information processing in a neuron. They have none of that. Neurons contain 10′s of thousands of proteins that form a network with 10′s of millions of interactions. These interactions are incredibly complex and will require solving millions of differential equations. They have none of that. Neurons contain around 20’000 genes that produce products called mRNA, which builds the proteins. The way neurons build proteins and transport them to all the corners of the neuron where they are needed is an even more complex process which also controls what a neuron is, its memories and how it will process information. They have none of that. They use an alpha function (up fast down slow) to simulate a synaptic event. This is a completely inaccurate representation of a synapse. There are at least 6 types of synapses that are highly non-linear in their transmission (i.e. that transform inputs and not only transmit inputs). In fact you would need a 10′s of thousands of differential equations to simulate one synapse. Synapses are also extremely complex molecular machines that would themselves require thousands of differential equations to simulate just one. They simulated none of this. There are complex differential equations that must be solved to simulate the ionic flow in the branches, to simulate the ion channels biophysics, the protein-protein interactions, as well as the complete biochemical and genetic machinery as well as the synaptic transmission between neurons. 100′s of thousands of more differential equations. They have none of this. Then there are glia – 10 times more than neurons..And the blood supply…and more and more. These “points” they simulated and the synapses that they use for communication are literally millions of times simpler than a real cat brain. So they have not even simulated a cat’s brain at more than one millionth of it’s complexity.

Is it nonetheless the biggest point neuron simulation ever run?
No. These people simulated 1 billion points interacting. They used a formulation to model the summing up and threshold spiking of the “points” called the Izhikevik Formulation (an extremely simple equation). Eugene Izhikevik himself already in 2005 ran a simulation with 100 billion such points interacting just for the fun of it: (over 60 times larger than Modha’s simulation). This simulation ran on a cluster of desktop PCs and which every graduate student can run This is no technical achievement and certainly not even a record number of point neurons. That model exhibited oscillations, but that always happens so even simulating 100 Billion such points interacting is light years away from a brain.
see: http://www.izhikevich.org/human_brain_simulation/Blue_Brain.htm#Simulation%20of%20Large-Scale%20Brain%20Models

Is the simulator they built a big step?
Not even close. There are numerous proprietary and peer-reviewed neurosimulators (e.g., NCS, pNEURON, SPLIT, NEST) out there that can handle very large parallel models that are essentially only bound by the available memory. The bigger the machine you have available, the more neurons you can simulate. All these simulators apply optimizations for the particular platform in order to make optimal use of the available hardware. Without any comparison to existing simulators, their publication is a non-peer reviewed claim.

Did they learn anything about the brain?
They got very excited because they saw oscillations. Oscillations are an obligatory artifact that one always gets when many points interact. These findings that they claim on the neuroscience side may excite engineers, but not neuroscientists.

Why did they get the Gordon Bell Prize?
They submitted a non-peer reviewed paper to the Gordon Bell Committee and were awarded the prize almost instantly after they made their press release. They seem to have been very successful in influencing the committee with their claim, which technically is not peer-reviewed by the respective community and is neuroscientifically outrageous.

But is there any innovation here?
The only innovation here is that IBM has built a large supercomputer – which is irrelevant to the press release.

Why did IBM let Mohda make such a deceptive claim to the public?
I don’t know. Perhaps this is a publicity stunt to promote their supercompter. The supercomputer industry is suffering from the financial crisis and they probably are desperate to boost their sales. It is so disappointing to see this truly great company allow the deception of the public on such a grand scale.

But have you not said you can simulate the Human brain in 10 years?
I am a biologist and neuroscientist that has studied the brain for 30 years.  I know how complex it is. I believe that with the right resources and the right strategy it is possible. We have so far only simulated a small part of the brain at the cellular level of a rodent and I have always been clear about that.

Would other neuroscientists agree with you?
There is no neuroscientist on earth that would agree that they came even close to simulating the cat’s brain – or any brain.

But did Mohda not collaborate with neuroscientists?
I would be very surprised if any neuroscientists that he may have had in his DARPA consortium realized he was going to make such an outrages claim. I can’t imagine that that the San Fransisco neuroscientists knew he was going to make such a stupid claim. Modha himself is a software engineer with no knowledge of the brain.

But did you not collaborate with IBM?
I was collaborating with IBM on the Blue Brain Project at the very beginning because they had the best available technology to faithfully allow us to integrate the diversity and complexity found in brain tissue into a model. This for me is a major endeavor to advance our insights into the brain and drug development. Two years ago, when the same Dharmendra Mhoda claimed the “mouse-scale simulations”, I cut all neuroscience collaboration with IBM because this is an unethical claim and it deceives the public.

What IBM allowed Modha to do here is not only wrong, but outrageous. They deceived millions of people.

Henry Markram
Blue Brain Project

According to a report much earlier this year by Mark Harris at TechRadar, Apple is not only abandoning MacWorld  Expo but they are allocating massive space to showcase products at CES 2010 in Las Vegas in January.   The iLounge exhibit at CES  had 18,000 square feet as of the article’s publication in January.

“Leading Apple developers and retailers are excited to have such an outstanding stage at the 2010 International CES,”

“Whether they’re showing off iPod accessories, iPhone applications, or the latest and coolest new Mac products, they know that they’ll find the world’s largest audience at this great new pavilion.”

Historically Apple has had a very limited presence at CES events, tending to make a big splash at MacWorld instead.    It’s not clear why the big change this year and it seems odd for Apple to abandon one of their most prominent venues, but in the fast pace world of computing loyalties can change almost as fast as the technologies.

Some good troubleshooting rules of thumb are as follows if you suddenly experience a dreaded printer FAIL:

1. If you seem to be able to print text documents but cannot print things appearing in the browser, note that some printer / browser combinations won’t allow printing from within the browser window.   For example to print a PDF file from some Lexmark printers you’ll want to download the PDF first, then open it up in Adobe and then print.    Otherwise the document may come out blank.

Still not printing?

Some printers have good diagnostics so use those first, but I find that the generic Windows help often sends me down a garden path of confusion so consider trying these ideas first:

1.  Reconnect cables and reboot both system and printer.

2.  Confirm your have the correct printer driver installed.  The driver is the small program that allows your printer to communicate with your computer.   Usually the name of your printer plus “driver” at Google will quickly take you to a driver installation routine for most major printers.

3.  Confirm you have ink in the cartridge (for ink jet printers).   The simplest way to do this is often to install a new cartridge.   If it works then you are good to go, but if it fails then ink was probably NOT your problem before.