TECHNOLOGY REPORT » gaming

CES 2012 Press Releases

Joe Hunkins — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:29:12 +0000

CES 2012 Press Releases

12/15/2011 -	Western Technology Companies Have Largest Domestic Presence at the 2012 International CES
12/13/2011 -	Southern Tech Companies Unveil Innovation at the 2012 International CES
12/8/2011 -	Winners Announced for the Visit Me At CES 2012 Exhibitor Video Contest
12/7/2011 -	YouTube’s Robert Kyncl to Deliver Entertainment Matters Keynote Address at the 2012 International CES
12/7/2011 -	Midwest Technology Companies to Showcase New Products at the 2012 International CES
11/29/2011 -	Northeast Technology Companies Expand Presence at the 2012 International CES
11/17/2011 -	2012 CES Innovation Power Panel Keynote to Feature CEOs of Ford, Verizon and Xerox

Is BigDeal a Big Deal? Nope, it’s more like gambling

Joe Hunkins — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 23:29:34 +0000

BigDeal.com is a strange website that really begs for more explanation from the founders about their motivation, though I think it can be summed up as a way to try to disguise gambling as shopping.

My first reaction to the site was to be impressed – at first glance BigDeal is along the lines of an “auction” where participants bid on items as a clock ticks down. Adding 30 seconds to the clock for bids near the end of the timeout period seemed to make it more fair, allowing others to participate.

The incredibly low pricing on things like iPads seemed too good to be true and alas as with most things internet … it was not only too good to be true, it almost seems too bad to be legal.

Participation in this auction is the junky part of BigDeal, because *it costs to bid*, and it can cost a lot. Participants purchase “bid tokens” for 0.75 per token. Since auctions can have an unlimited number of bids the low prices the products finally sell for are not very relevant – bidders may have spent even more than the *full price* on the item simply getting in their bids. BigDeal mitigates this disadvantage to some degree by offering some bidders credits on bid tokens to then purchase items for full price, but I think an average item fetches them a remarkable amount in bid revenue – sometimes far more than the full value of the item.

So Big Deal is not so much shopping as it is gambling. Bidding is betting here, and your odds of winding up with a “big deal” … do not appear to be good at all.

Update: Here’s an January article from TechCrunch that addresses the issues very well in my opinion.

No Touch Computing via 3D Sensors

Joe Hunkins — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:44:48 +0000

The San Jose Mercury News has a summary today of the advent of “no touch” computing that will be coming fairly soon thanks to three dimensional sensors that represent the world to the machine in a much richer fashion than simple flat, 2 dimensional models. 3D sensors will allow people to interact with many devices in a much more natural way – for example via simply looking at a screen and moving your hands you could have dramatic control over a gaming environment.

The Mercury News seems to be suggesting that useful applications are about 5 years out but I’d guess we’ll have robust no touch devices within 3 years and high quality direct brain control within a decade. Braingate is already using brain control and Emotiv has developed a commercial version brain control device that uses theta waves that are read froma sensory “cap” with about 16 sensors. The Emotiv headset will be available to consumers this year.

Mercury News article

Onlive online gaming coming to a cloud near you.

Joe Hunkins — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:16:21 +0000

Onlive, in stealth development for the past seven years, launched as a beta today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. We’ve not done any testing but the claims of this service are quite extraordinary and unless they fail to deliver on the promises this could actually become something of the gaming revolution Onlive claims to be as they plan to move console users off their expensive devices and into the cloud and compete very directly with the shrinkwrapped video game market, providing instant streaming and downloads of the latest major games. Onlive allows users to access most popular console video games, download and play them over broadband on a computer or TV using a special adapter.

Historically console games have had perceived advantages over PC based games but Onlive suggests they’ve bridged that gap and that their massive server infrastructure combine with special coding of the applications such that a normal computer equipped with broadband will see outstanding game play.