CES South Hall

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

It’s hard to describe the size of CES becuase it’s really, really big. This is a photo of *part* of the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. There’s also a North Hall and Central Hall, the Hilton Venue and the Sands Venetian Convention Center (though that venue was a lot smaller than last year.

Still, the early numbers suggest attendance was up this year even as total exhibit space appeared to be somewhat smaller and the “party food” metric suggested that folks may have been scaling back somewhat despite the fact that this is generally considered the largest and most influenctial technology conference of the year (there is some dispute about that I understand as some conferenences have more attendees, though I think CES remains the largest in terms of exhibit square footage.

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Cirque du Soleil’s KA – backstage at MGM

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Before the CES show began I toured Cirque du Soleil’s KA theater at the MGM Grand. This is one of the world’s most technically advanced theatrical productions and the tour gave us some amazing insight into how much work goes on behind the scenes in this amazing show.

There are actually more technicians *behind the scenes* than in the large cast of about 75 performers and musicians. Advanced Technology is everywhere at this show.

Tomorrow we’ll begin a two part series on the amazing technology behind Cirque du Soleil’s KA.

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ZigBee Energy Control

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Monitoring and controlling energy use has become a major theme in technology and several CES vendors had devices, chips, and standards that worked to monitor and control energy use for appliances.

A question I’m working to answer with more research is whether the best approach for this type of home energy control are the solutions proposed by some of the high end exhibitors at CES – Control4 and Zigbee , or the very simple yet elegant “smart socket” approach taken by USA / Beijing’s “i-Sockets.com” where very inexpensive sockets communicate with the home PC and allow control of things plugged into these sockets via the PC and even remotely over the internet.

Another inexpensive “smart socket” approach is from Picowatt, featured as a CNET CES top pick

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Twitter at CES

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

The rise of Twitter as a business tool was a major theme at CES 2010 as well as at many hotels and attractions in Las Vegas, most of which are now using Twitter to communicate with potential and current customers. Several vendors were using Twitter “retweets” to get buzz and take advantage of one of the potentially most cost effective “viral marketing” tools on the internet – Twitter.

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CES Unveiled – the Pre CES Show event for Press and Bloggers

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Well, it’s time to bring some order to the CES Coverage now that the hundreds of photos are uploaded and the frenzied week of new technologies is over.

I’m always disappointed in how little “Web 2.0″ there is at CES. In 2008 – the show year before the bubble burst and when big money was flowing very freely for big internet players – we saw a large number of major displays by internet companies like Yahoo and Godaddy. Last year and this year it seemed hard to find many “mostly internet” companies at CES although an interesting exception to this was COPIA – a brand new social networking website for book lovers that also provides a line of e-Readers. I’ll have a separate report on COPIA as it’s an interesting idea and approach that I think is designed as much to be aquired by Amazon than to become a separate player in the online book space.

Another exception to the “little Web at CES” rule is the rise of Twitter and Facebook as key marketing tools for many of the businesses there, as well as the fact most are bringing forms of interconnectivity into the equation. So we’re seeing the internet in huge use as something to *enhance* existing technologies more than as standalone websites. Is this simply because CES is mostly a consumer hardware show?

Will we find that the future of the internet is primarily how people relate in pure online environments or in how they interconnect their devices and flow their lives online?

Stay tuned….tuned online that is.

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CES Intel – Brilliant

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

The best exhibit at CES, Intel’s brilliant “World View” showcased their new super fast processor, an Intel Core i5s i7 though not sure which model.  Wikipedia on Intel Core Processors.

This display was probably the most imaginative and appealing I’ve seen – a huge double touch screen that collected data in near real time from web sources like Flickr and Twitter, added images to smaller rotating cubes on the screens that could be touched to expand the data source. This was a beautiful way to display a clever Web 2.0 application.

Here’s a Video from the team at TechViShow though I think videos don’t do this justice as it’s something of a 3D real time device.

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Lenovo Hybrid – the screen pops out as a Tablet PC

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

With a screen that can be removed and become a separate tablet PC, the Lenovo Hybrid, expected to be available about May 2010, was one of the most impressive PCs at the show.

However as many have noted the PC tablet market may be largely at the mercy of Apple’s new tablet. If Apple can become another “must have” device, it may be hard to compete with them in the tablet realm.

However this tablet is no slouch. I had him demo the 1.6 pound screen as a pdf reader and it seemed to work well – rotating the page as needed and offering good touch responsiveness.

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CES – The Roadies Take the Stage before the show

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

One of the most remarkable things about the CES show here in Las Vegas is how fast the exhibits are put up in the few days before the show and how fast they come down – I think most are out by Sunday evening and the show closes at 4pm on Sunday.

Most of the technology is complicated yet for the most part glitch-free, though there are always conspicuous examples of troubles such as the Hilton power outage just before the Steve Ballmer keynote and some connectivity problems throughout the halls as the system strains under a very high bandwidth load during the show.

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Hovering

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

The Hovering Drone seemed to be a big hit here at CES but despite watching two demos I was not all that ovewhelmed with this, though it’s not clear to me how the camera and video gaming software integrate with this device which may make it more impressive.

The flight was even and stable thanks to four fans and controls seems very crisp.

The device will be available soon so be sure to start looking over your shoulder because the kid next door may be videotaping you from his hovercopter.

Video from Wired

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Crystals at CityCenter

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Note: Aria Resort, Vdara Hotel, and Crystals are sponsors of Technology Report’s CES Coverage.

If you have time after CES you’ll want to check out Las Vegas’ newest major development, CityCenter. Crystals, Vdara Hotel, Mandarin Oriental, and the Aria Resort and Casino are the newest major additions to the Las Vegas landscape.

A tram connects the Bellagio with Crystals which is located next to the Aria Resort and to the Monte Carlo Hotel at the south end of the complex.

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