The VERY popular iPhone 5 video is a hoax, but it’s still worth watching. Although this is not a concept phone as suggested, the “laser keyboard” and “holographic screen” technologies are not necessarily out of reach in the near future.
Since 1967, the Consumer Electronics Show – CES, has been one of the key events in the world to showcase new consumer technology. CES alumni will enjoy the archive of historical photos over at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/internationalces/sets/72157627123633017/with/6244564172/
Two extraordinary technology items this week are the identification of a new “goldilocks planet” named Kepler-22b. Kepler-22b may have attributes so similar to earth it could harbor life that is “like us”. This isn’t the first such planet, and researchers in this field are increasingly optimistic about finding many, many planets that could harbor life something like what evolved here on earth. Generally they are looking for stable temperatures that allow for the presence of liquid water, thought to be a good “breeding ground” for the building blocks of evolution – increasingly complex molecular structures that change through random mutations over long periods of time into simple and then into complex organisms… like us.
SETI, the “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”, has been around for some time but thanks to new funding and tech and discovery advances it will have a better chance of success. Many believe that other life is more than 99.99% likely (we are NOT that special!), but *finding it* with our primitive technologies is going to be difficult.
CES 2012 is the world’s top technology conference, and it brings over 100,000 industry insiders and about 2500 technology exhibitors from all over the world to a city that is already one of the world’s top tourism destinations, Las Vegas. The CES conference is usually the biggest of the year in Las Vegas, and it tends to fill all of the strip hotels. However, if you need a nice room at the last minute OR you are traveling on your own dime, OR you want to do your company a favor and stay inexpensively, consider the many excellent downtown hotels in the area known as “Fremont Street”. Ironically, the look and feel of Freemont Street is a lot more like the Las Vegas many know from movies, even recent ones. Unlike the strip where the hotels – several of the world’s largest – have thousands of rooms in sprawling resorts that can be as long as a city block, in downtown Las Vegas you’ll find much smaller venues. Recent renovations of several of the properties in the Fremont Street Area as well as the addition years ago of a massive overhead canopy with a spectacular hourly light show have made the downtown area a lot more appealing. On top of that, the wildly successful Zappos shoe empire will soon move its offices to this area in the hopes of helping to rennovate and stabilize the economy of downtown Las Vegas.
Here are some nice travel tips from the CES Official Website, CESweb.org : CES Travel Tips
Although CES conference buses do NOT serve the downtown hotels (at least I’ve never seen that in my several years at the conference), you can catch “the deuce” bus pretty much any time which will take you down the strip to the Venetian where CES has a very regular shuttle back and forth to the Convention Center. Taxis are more expensive but also a quick way to get to the Convention Center. I’d recommend you avoid trying to take the city bus from downtown to the Convention Center or to the Monorail station at the Sahara because the transfers can be tricky and they don’t run nearly as often as “the deuce”.
The Deuce costs $3 per ride (a bit ironic, since I believe the name originally referred to the $2 fare), or you can purchase a daily pass for $7 or a 3 day for $15. There’s also an express strip bus that runs a similar route to the deuce. Information about that is here and you should print out this route map to orient yourself between the strip and downtown, a distance of a few miles: http://www.rtcsouthernnevada.com/transit/route/stripdowntown/stripdowntown(09-18-11).pdf
Ford’s Alan Mulally Talks Technology
Copyright Technology Report , use with credit.
The CES Innovation Power Panel happens at 9am on January 11 in the Las Vegas Hilton Theater. The panel will feature three top American CEOs who will discuss the roles that innovation has played in the success of their respective companies.
At the 2009 CES Mulally impressed the crowd with Ford’s technology and forward looking corporate world view. I asked him then if Ford would be “needing bailout money” and he answered that he didn’t think so. Impressively, Ford never did take any bailout money. In fact some sources suggest that Mulally recently had pressure from no less than the President Obama to pull an advertisement that mentioned how the other car makers took bailout money. The format was the Ford “press conference” where a Ford buyer mentions he did not want to buy a “bailout” money car. Here’s more on that issue: http://www.autoblog.com/2011/09/27/ford-yanks-bailout-ad-amidst-controversy-w-video/
Biographies of the Innovation Panel CEOs at CES 2012 from CES Website.
Ursula Burns, chairman and CEO of Xerox Corporation, has been with Xerox since 1980. She began her career with the company as a mechanical engineering summer intern before working her way up to lead various organizations including Xerox’s global research as well as product development, marketing and delivery. She was named CEO in July 2009 and has since been instrumental in driving the acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services, which has transformed Xerox into the world’s leading enterprise for business process and document management. Burns has been recognized for her leadership by both Fortune and Forbes magazine’s “Most Powerful Women” lists. Also, under Ursula’s watch Xerox has been named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s ”The World’s 25 Most Inventive Companies.”
Lowell McAdam was named president and CEO of Verizon Communications in August 2011, having previously served as the company’s president and COO. He also held key executive positions at Verizon Wireless since its inception in 2000, and built the company into the industry’s leading wireless provider, with the nation’s largest, most reliable wireless voice and 4G broadband data network. Additionally, he has served as vice president of international operations for AirTouch Communications. McAdam currently serves as chairman of the Verizon Wireless Board of Representatives, and on the board of directors of Verizon Communications.
Alan Mulally, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company, joined Ford in 2006, after serving as executive vice president of The Boeing Company and president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He is known for his innovative and focused industry leadership, while working to transform Ford into a lean, global enterprise. He has served as a past president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and is a former president of its Foundation. Mulally was named Chief Executive Magazine’s “CEO of the Year” in 2011, “Businessperson of the Year” by the readers of Fortune Magazine in 2010, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2009 and “Person of the Year” in 2006 by Aviation Week magazine.
Here at Technology Report we’ve always been fans of ASUS for their innovative designs combined with power and low prices. Their early netbooks were among the first in that line, and now they appear to be coming up with a tablet that will exceed the iPAD in some specifications, including a very clever detachable keyboard that solves one of my main concerns about tablets – they are MUCH harder to write with than a netbook, desktop, or laptop unless you plug in a keyboard, making them … cumbersome. ASUS appears to have solved this challenge with a very thin, light, and sleek detachable keyboard that appears to also act as a cover, making this device – to my frame of mind – a lot more logical than the standard format tablet computer. We’ll have more at CES where I’m sure ASUS will be showing these off a lot:
Here at Technology Report we really enjoy covering the Computer Electronics Show “CES” held early every January in Las Vegas. CES 2012 is the most influential consumer technology event in the world, where thousands of vendors meet with hundreds of thousands of industry insiders to exhibit, sell, pitch, plan, and enjoy the latest and greatest gadgets available to the consumer market. For attendees CES is a window into what’ll be big and what may be a bust in consumer electronics in the coming year.
CES isn’t really “cutting edge” technology in the sense that this is a showcase of what’s going to be marketed to the masses in the coming year rather than stuff from “test labs”. However some of the exhibitors like Intel, IBM, and Microsoft will usually have some amazing displays using the best processors and display technologies.
CES 2012 won’t just be about exhibits. CES is also a major computer conference also and there are *hundreds* of conference sessions about topics from international development and technology to USB technical specifications. This year we’ll be looking to cover both general topics and also focus on technologies that affect seniors and retirement lifestyle choices. Retire USA is a blog about retirement options and retirement topics for seniors who are seeking general retirement information and also choosing new places to live.
One of the strangest posts in the tech blogosphere is yesterday’s rant at TechCrunch, suggesting that blog owner AOL may shake up things and remove TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington:
techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/the-end/
TechCrunch has arguably been the most influential technology blog for some time, especially for startup news and inside information. Spawned by Silicon Valley insider Mike Arrington, TechCrunch has been a key source of news, inside information, and gossip about the Silicon Valley Startup scene.
The AOL dispute appears to have come from concerns over potential conflicts of interest by Arrington as he launches a new venture capital fund that will support companies covered by TechCrunch.
These are Facebook facts as described by the company in August of 2011 – if you read this post later than that it’s likely most of these numbers have *increased*. Very notable in my view is the huge number of “active users”, the huge collective time they spend online, and the fact that mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile, though this last point does not necessarily mean that use will increase as far more people flow into mobile use – rather it may simply indicate that early adopters in mobile are more active users and thus mobile use will trend along the lines of regular use as more mainstreamers start accessing Facebook on mobile devices.
Facebook Facts:
More than 750 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
Average user has 130 friends
People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Social Media Activity on Facebook
There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
Facebook’s Global Reach
More than 70 translations available on the site
About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
Facebook’s Social Media Platform
Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with Facebook Platform
People on Facebook install 20 million applications every day
Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites
Since social plugins launched in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day
More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook, including over 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites
Facebook’s Mobile Exposure
There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products
