Gadgets, Trends and Vaporware

me over the past several years, the Renaissance Festival. You know, that's not gonna be inflicted upon me this year, So that's I am free this year. I think that crazy and wacky in this case might be a terrible understatement. Yeah, well, it all depends upon I guess it depends upon how

jaded you are about the whole thing. Okay, first of all, we're talking about c S, which formerly was known as the Consumer Electronics Show, now known solely as c S. Yeah, so it's kind of like KFC yes or Prince Yes. So Prince was they was a symbol for a while and then came back to Prince again. He's just like pr in No, I don't even know. I don't even know I can't. I can't keep up with with the great one. We're talking now about c e S, which

is a giant consumer uh conference. It's a show where manufacturers come out and show off the stuff that they've been building in order to attract vendors who want to carry the sort of stuff in either their stores or through online or whatever. So it's kind of like a direct manufacturer's attempt to show off all the cool things that they plan on releasing over the next twelve months

or so. Sometimes you also see prototypes or proof of concept type things that are not meant for consumer use in the near future, but maybe two or three years down the line. Cool. So you're saying, once a year

in Las Vegas installs the world's biggest nerd magnet. Kind of I mean me, I would argue that Comic Con is an even bigger nerd magnet in the sense that it's more nerdy like because a lot of the consumer electronic stuff is just pure business, right, So, so a lot of people have this view that CS is a place where you walk in and everything is like the Jetsons, and it's all magical and you get to try everything and you get to carry it all home. You walk

in and everything is TVs. Yeah. The the way I describe it to people who have never been is, you know people who think, oh, that sounds like it's really cool. Like I understand what you're saying, and it's not that I don't see really cool things. But think of it

this way. Imagine that you walk into the largest mall you have, shopping mall that you have ever been in, ever, and every single square foot of that mall is a radio shack, and it's your job to look at all the shelves at radio shack and check out the three or four cool things per you know, square foot or so and ignore everything else. And it's also Black Friday.

So that's that's what the experience is like, because it's a it's a The most of of the booths are in the Las Vegas Convention Center, which has three point two million square feet of exhibition space, and most of that is taken up by booths at this at this convention and um so a lot of these vendors are

offering similar products to each other. They're big competitors. So Sony and Panasonic and Sharp are all there, and so you're gonna see a lot of the same types of technology booth to booth, although the implementations will obviously be different depending upon which one you're at. So you're you're not just seeing like cool, crazy gadgets that you've never seen before. A lot of what's at this big convention is the sort of next iteration of a technology you're

already familiar, a lot of prototypes. Yeah. Yeah, you'll see dishwashers, for example, or laundry machines. Laundry machines, yeah, or just more efficient ones. Where you're there, you're using far less energy than the previous generations did. So it's not that it's unimpressive or unimportant. It's just not the sort of thing you think of as like robot hands. Well, but I was going to say, you're also going to see some robot hands. Yeah, you do see some robot hands.

There's that mixed in two, and that I think is the the allure that CS has for a lot of people is that there are things at c e S that are kind of outside the box, or they're they're either a brand new technology or it's a technology that combines other things that have never been combined before, and it blows your mind Oculus is Rift, for example, basically debuted at cs A couple of years ago. Yeah, I was so upset that I missed out on that. I got to see it at E three the following E three,

but I didn't. I didn't see it when it's sort of debuted at c E S and after I left the show, I heard nothing but great things about it. But while I was at the show, no one told me about it. Well, but there's a lot to see, and you're also there with As of last year, there were seven hundred and fifty nine attendees UM, which you know there does security. They're top not okay, anytime you're talking about security in Las Vegas, top notch okay, I

mean of that. But that's over attendees, over fifty exhibitors, seven thousand media, eight hundred speakers, all from a hundred and fifty different countries. And within those groups, by the way, you also have cast systems. It's not it's not a joke because in in media you've got the the media and then you have the bloggers, and there's a little bit of I won't say there's like true animosity, but there's some snootiness going on. I can't imagine that nerds

get a little bit snooty sometimes. I mean, because there there are the the established media who are like, well, these aren't real journalists, and then there's the bloggers who are like, well, these people are working for a dead medium. So it's it's kind of interesting because I get I get kind of stuck between. I've always been put with the established media, which is kind of interesting because I've

only had that experience. Yeah, so apparently apparently, at least in the past, our food has been better, the food that they provide, which by the way, goes really fast. Because if there's anything that will make a journalist run, it's the promise of a free lunch. So you get to hang out with the cool kids, but they put kick me signs on your back. Yeah, kind of Yeah.

Over the last few years, that's been more integrated, so it's been less of a like, there's not so much of a stigma on the bloggers as blogging has become more and more important. But it's certainly one of those things where you it's kind of interesting. It's a microcosm of this weird world where old media and new media are trying to sort out what the future is going

to be. Yeah, So I would think one of the coolest things about going to uh a conference like this or convention show, whatever you call it um would be to go through and obviously you can't see everything, but to walk through and see as much as you can and get these general impressions of Wow, I'm I'm witnessing trends, right, you know, I'm seeing what's hitting what's hitting the ground right now, and what's going to fall away really quick,

and what's going to succeed. And I wonder if that helps train your intuitions for what kind of trends are just hype and what's actually going to have staying power. Like I bet you've seen lots of examples of things that were like it seemed kind of cool at the demonstration, but then disappears. Sure, yeah, I've seen both cases. Right, I've seen stuff where while I'm at c E S, I start seeing Usually it works in in a in

a cycle that lasts about two or three years. Right, You'll go to a CS, there'll be a few implementations of something that's kind of cool and you look at and you're like, wow, that's so different from everything else, And then you know, you either see that it's got the potential to do great things, or maybe it's just a flash in the pan, like, oh, that was interesting,

but nothing ever came of it. The next year, if it's one of those things that seems to have a little bit of traction at least in the minds of consumers, you'll suddenly see a lot more implementations of it, and now you're like, Okay, now this is a thing. The next year you'll see the refined implementations where you're thinking, now, this is something that I want. So it usually takes that three year cycle from first seeing it to really wanting it, and it doesn't always end up the really

wanting it category. Sometimes sometimes companies will stick with a technology and sometimes a way longer than they probably should. Yeah, and there's one of those in particular I'll talk about. But let's talk about some of the winners first before we get into the ones that didn't didn't take off. So you're talking about stuff that has launched at CES previous years. Either it is launched at C E S or it had its first big marketing push at CS.

In some cases, these products launched before the show itself started, but they were ones that you sees as the platform to get a lot of attention, so a lot like For example, last year was a big year for fitness trackers and activity trackers, which had started about a year or two before that. We've done an episode on those and I'm wearing one right now. Weirdly enough, got one for Christmas. Thanks cousins. It looks like it's a flex Is that a flex? Or Force? You got the nice one?

Those are cousins who really love you, Chris and Jesse. You guys are the best. I mean, flex is nice too, but the Force is more expensive. I know because I wait to put him on a Terry amount on my Lovely. It's a cot amount and it's come out. I know because I priced them. I was looking at those as a possibility for gifts anyway. So fitness trackers big thing, big thing, and last year they were big the year before, but we're really big last year and we expect that

that will continue inteen. Obviously, I'm not at c S yet, so I haven't seen them, but I expect to see lots of fitness devices like the Fitbit. That's that's one that a lot of people have heard of because it got a lot of buzz at CS and that's a great example of the technology that before CS, it was a very small market that was aware of activity trackers. You're talking about, you know, the athletes who are also early adopters, Right, it's a tiny niche because it's a

niche of a niche. But now everyone's heard of these things, and people who may have never really been interested in it before because they just weren't very active, but they love things like all the data you can get back. Suddenly they're getting into more active lifestyles because of these technologies. Oh they've they've also of course, um, you know, I think what's really driving the fitness tracker trend right now is the fact that these things are much more stylish

and wearable. And I mean most people don't even notice that I've got anything other than a bracelet on, and that's that's cool. Yeah, And and on top of that, they're adding other types of functionality, right, you know, it's it's not just a pedometer obviously, like a lot of these have multiple exactly how poorly I'm sleeping, that's great. Yeah, yeah, that's a big one. Sleep trackers. So but that's one example. E readers is another example, although you could argue that

e readers is both a winner and a loser. UM. E readers were one of those things that that we're showing up at C E S before they really took off. I mean, Amazon cracked the code on that one when they introduced the Kindle, but not at c S. Not c S, No, Amazon did their own events, and some companies like to do that. You know, some companies decide that they don't want to compete with all the other announcements that come out at CES and so they just do their own things. So Apple is one of those.

And now Microsoft is I mean until recently Microsoft was a big part of CS, but last year they pulled out. Yeah they ran the keynote for a long time, didn't so, uh, they are not part of it anymore. But the readers in general were huge. They we've seen a lot come and go, and then we've also seen a lot of tablets that have tried to take over the e reader space by incorporating that directly into the features that they

talk about. UM and tablets again another huge category I think with the e reader and tablet thing, correct me if you feel different, but it seems to be there's a convergence going on where we might be trending away from things that are exclusively E readers just towards yeah, sort of the tablet that well, you can watch movie on it, but it also, uh, you can read just

as well as any good E reader. We're certainly seeing that as the prices for tablets fall as well, right, because one of the differentiators, they're two big differentiators I think between e readers and tablets. One is, generally speaking, the price. Generally speaking, e readers are a couple hundred dollars cheaper than the comparable tablets. The second thing, and second thing is the battery life because a lot of the readers you use ink, which is much less power

intensive then using a backlit screen. That's the way most tablets us. Right. It's just a magnetic switch, um every time you turn a page, and so you're only using electricity when you actually turn that page. Right, So, anytime you're displaying something on a e reader, it's not actually consuming energy unless there's also a light or something incorporated into the e reader. So, uh, for people who wanted to have a device where they could read for days

on end, without having to recharge it. E readers also made sense. UH. As battery life gets better and tablets get more efficient at using the energy that is available to them, so that you know, the apps are not draining the battery within four hours of turning on the device, then we start to see the end the prices go down, We start to see those those differences disappear, and the functionality of the tablet becomes a much more attractive thing than you know, again the unitask or nature of the

e reader. So I think we will continue to see e readers start start to fade as tablets continue to take over that space. UM. I don't know that they're ever going to completely go away, because for some people that's exactly the advice they want, But I don't think it will be as as a big and a market as it has been. UH. Also, processors, obviously, they tend to debut at c s or at least they tend

to have the first public demonstrations like Intel. UH the Nehalem processor from a few years ago was a big one. That was all this multi threading UH technology that they had built into their processor, and since then they have built on that with the subsequent generations of processors. So if you go to Intel's booth, they'll have giant displays showing really complicated programs running at full speed, and they're like, this is all running off of one of our processors.

This this shows that it's capable of doing this heavy graphics lifting without a second, very graphic chuck card. So you know that kind of stuff that that's big. Also, streaming media devices very big at c e S. That's where I first saw the Roku. Uh, and there are a lot of other ones that are similar to the Roku where they take content that's on the Internet and

stream it to your television. We're starting to see TVs kind of take over that role themselves, a lot of smart TVs out there, but for a long time, smart TVs just weren't going anywhere at CES because they were

so limited. It was like a couple of um widgets that would be on your screen that might show you what the weather is or something along those lines, and everyone was like, this is so limited, it doesn't make sense for me to pay an extra five dollars for those TV set when there's not really it's not doing much for me. Yeah, it seemed like that's something that

probably had to wait on infrastructure to support it. Like now, you know, once you're smart TV can access Netflix or something like that, or Amazon or Hulu Plus or any of those type of services, and then till those apps got built out, right, Yeah, that seems like one of those interesting ways where PCs and computers actually played a good bridging role because people started watching streaming media on their computers and then through that they give you know,

these companies could actually pay to build out what they were providing. I really credit Netflix for building that out because Netflix was incredibly proactive on getting onto every single device that possibly could mobile PCs also making sure they were on They started making apps for things like game consoles, so I mean, whether you had a Nintendo console, a Sony console, or a Microsoft console, you could get a

Netflix app and watch Netflix. That was a brilliant strategy and it ended up being one that all the others started to follow. Rumor has it that this year some four K smart TV manufacturers are going to be announcing a partnership with Netflix at cs. It would not shock me at all, and you know that also will be interesting to see about the whole two K and four K TVs because there's very little content you can get

that actually runs at those resolutions. The televisions are capable of showing these super ultra high resolution images, but if you don't have a source for those images, they don't do much good. Well, it seems like a thing that you buy, hoping enough other people will buy one, that

they'll that somebody will make something to sell you. You just plug in your VHS, right, It'll either it it'll either be the next generation of you know, the next generation of home media, like a Blu ray drive or DVD play or something that is able to show it even greater resolution, or you have some incredible Internet connection allowing you to watch this content. I mean, it would have to be. Yeah, I'm wondering if it's really only

in like Google's like Kansas City in Austin and that's it. Yeah. So no, I mean, I'm sure watching a VHS tape of Highlander to the Quickening on a four KTV would be pretty cool. I don't want you to talk for the rest of this episode. I think it would be cool to Joe or wait now, are you talking about the original cinematic version of the renegade version? No? No, no, the original before they cut out all of the hilarious,

all the aliens, there could be only one alright. So uh and then finally, one of the last example I have on my notes is um oh lead displays or displays. So when I first went to c S, I think it was two thousand eight was the first year that I went. When I went to cs that year, I remember seeing an O L E ed display and I think it was so nis booth and it was an amazing eleven inch display. Yeah. And so now we're getting to the point where we're finally seeing this kind of

technology built into full size televisions. But you know, and it's it's much more power efficient. Uh, you get a great picture. But the manufacturing processes had not been refined back in two thousand and eight. There's been work done every year since. And also that a little leven inch screen would have been something like, you know, three grand. Yeah, so the price has also gone down as those manufacturing processes have refined over time. So, okay, so these are

all examples of of big winners from previous shows. Let's get some shot in freud in here. Okay, what what has totally failed? The big one? That's the first one on my notes is I think everyone would agree in this room would agree three D three three D televisions and three D displays is my shot in Freud Button because I hate three D. I've been on the record about this on this show before. I hate three D movies. I hate it. I just it just doesn't I don't

like it at all. And then the and the expense for consumer piece of equipment is just well, it's not just expense too, it's also the thought of extra equipment, right, because unless you have glasses free and I'll get to that, but unless you have glasses free, then you have to keep track of three D glasses. And if they are active glasses, then you also have to recharge them. You know, if you have a passive system. Those are polarized lenses.

The lights polarized in such a way so that one I gets one set of images, the other I gets the other seven images, and then your brain combines them to create that three D effect, right, I mean, yeah, this is a mean, I mean, that's fact and a migraine exactly. This is assuming people want to watch three D in their homes day after day anyway, which I'm

not sure they do. But see, I think that's the wrong way to look at this because the three D television isn't meant to suggest that all content displayed on that television is going to be in its three D capable. It's three D capable, meaning that for specific times, like let's say you're going to have a uh you, it's just you. You are you are a curmudgeon, and you don't like other people, but you love the super Bowl, and you want to watch the super Bowl in three

D so that you can get this immersive experience. And really, and you know that sports is a big deal with three D. If you've ever seen any footage of a sports event shot in three D, I guarantee you I mean is phenomenal. It is gorgeous stuff. I've seen the demo tapes where they've shot things like ball games or the Olympics, or in one case, a w w E wrestling event in three D, and in all cases it actually was really breathtaking. It felt like you were at

that place. But you you know, other things like a cooking show, you might not want to see in three D. You might there's no reason for it to be in three D. You don't need to see Emerald threatening you with a knife and shouting bam over and over again. You want for that? That the two D experience, Yeah, that's just the whole show. He just well, you know, he records multiple episodes in one day, so if you catch whatever one was shot last, he's a little punchy

on nipping at the cooking sherry. Um, just kidding. I'm not suggesting that in role actually does that. But at any rate, we want you to go making any celebrity chef enemies or no, Okay, I mean I'm I like eating. So the point being that three I think saying that at you know, you'd have to wear these glasses for anything you would want to watch on your on your

television is misleading. However, I don't think there's that many people who want to, you know, they don't feel like the three D experience is compelling enough or something that they would use frequently enough to justify going out and purchasing a three D television, unless it just happens to already be three D capable on top of all the features that the person actually is looking for. Uh so,

what's the deal with glasses free? So glasses free tends to use this technology where it's similar to a lenticular display. The the technology to split the image into two is actually on the screen itself. So, uh, your your left eye is getting one set of images. You're right eye gets the other set of images. And it looks like stuff can emerge from the television. It actually looks like

stuff can come out of the screen at you. So I've never tried this, but my guess is at the current state, it's very easy for it to look horrible. It actually can look great, but it tends to be You have to be standing at the right move You can move around a little bit, but if you if you all right, So imagine that there are Imagine that that the television is at the center of half of a pie. Okay, so or not the center, but like the the the edge of the half pie, a center

of half, the edge of half of a pie. Joe. So take a pie, cut it in half. Put a television flat up against the flat half of that pie. Okay, Now the rest of that pie is cut into wedges that I'll point towards the center of that television. You understand what I'm saying. Okay, So when you get to the outer edge of that pie. If you're standing in

the middle of any of those slices, everything's fine. But if you walk sideways so that you cross between the barrier of one slice and another, then you pass over this this point that's not good for you to be at for a glasses free display, and everything looks wonky and you start feeling sick, dear stomach until you move to the center of the next piece of pie, in

which case everything's okay again. So there are viewing angles that are ideal, and if you cross between those viewing angles then you get a terrible experience that looks awful, like you went from oh, this is kind of a cool, interesting experience to HP Lovecraft has invaded my television and the old ones are out to get me. So um, yeah, it's not a pleasant experience. Uh So they are limited.

They you can't have a seamless experience where you are able to pass left to right or right to left in front of your television and still have that three D effect go on without feeling unless you don't mind

glimpsing the color out of space. Right. There are also some three D televisions that convert two D to three D I don't really care for those either, because to me, instead of it making kind of a well rounded three D image, it looks like you're looking at a series of cardboard cutouts, some of which are closer to you and some are further away, so everyone looks like they're flat, but some of the flat people are closer to you

than other flat people. So I don't find those very thing shows Yeah, at any rate, lots of companies have pushed three D, and I can see why perhaps they have not um successfully pushed this technology. It's one of those things that a lot of people have argued that the the manufacturers are trying to force upon an unwilling consumer market. So it's people who just don't care about it, or they don't want it, or they don't feel like it's really well implemented, or maybe it's well implemented, but

the content just isn't there to justify it. So you've got a lot of people who are um who just don't care about this technology, and yet they're being told over and over you should care because look how amazing this is, and and it just hasn't really caught on

with a lot of the consumer market. So that's something we see year over year that just has not really taken off despite multiple efforts, and I started seeing lots of three D displays probably in two thousand nine, and every year since last year the emphasis had backed off a bit, but two thousand nine, ten and eleven, UH, definitely three D was a big deal. So you expect

to see even less three D this year. I expect that it will be incorporated into a lot more sets, but it won't be a feature that's being touted as one of the main ones. But that I expect. I will see more ultra high definition televisions this year, like a lot more two K and four K sets, and fewer sets that are that are promoted as a three D television. They'll still have it, they just won't that won't necessarily be the the top selling feature of those sets.

US still going strong last year were those tablet laptop hybrids. Yeah, there are a lot of them. I mean, I just don't understand. I don't think a lot of them have done well on the market. But there that's that was a big thing at CES last year was that you would see these UH laptops where you could either detach the screen entirely or fold the screen back on the laptop and turn it into a fairly thick tablet. I've seen those. They looked like something I didn't want to

have in my hands. Yeah, I mean, I like the idea of it, but again, it ends up making like you you end up looking like you're carrying the world's clunkiest tablet if it's one that folds back on itself, right, because you know, we're now used to Apple defining what

a tablet is supposed to look like. Whether you love Apple products or you don't, They're aesthetic has really dominated that market, and so you know, Apple has gotten to the point where, especially with like the the the iPad air, where it's super thin and sleek, comparing that to a device that has a full keyboard folded underneath it, you know, you can't help but look clunky in comparison. Uh. There was one that I loved. I wish I could remember.

I think it was a Lenovo computer. There's one I loved before this this trend took off that looked like a regular laptop had kind of this this colorful plastic back on it, and you could pop the screen off the laptop entirely and not only would it convert into a tablet. It would switch operating systems, so when it was plugged down, it ran I think originally it might have ran it was either Windows Vista or Windows seven.

It was several years ago. I think it might have been Windows seven, so it ran Windows seven, and if you popped it out, it ran Linux. So it would actually switch operating systems from one to the other in order to be able to save power and run different apps.

But it also was going to have technology in it that would allow you if you were watching something, say in a Windows based format on your computer, and then you pop the the screen out so you can take it on the go, it would open a comparable program so that you could continue watching whatever it was you were watching and pick up exactly where you left off. And this was a time where no one was really doing that yet, and I thought it was an incredible idea.

And it never made it to market in the United States. I think they sold the tablet version of it in China, but not the full laptop detatchable version. So that's another example. Um, do you guys remember netbooks? Oh? Yeah, I well I I technically still have a netbook somewhere I don't think I've turned it on in a few years. But do you remember netbooks Joe little babies? Yeah, tiny little laptops that barely did anything. Yeah, I mean generally, I guess

the smaller version of an already accepted thing is considered cute. Well, I mean for me, it was a weight issue and only really needing to like get on online and yeah and and run Microsoft word. A lot of the basic features that Netflix is our netbooks cover not Netflix, but a lot of the basic features that netbooks covered are now taken care of by tablets, so the tablet market

is pretty much destroyed. Also, laptops have gotten light enough that I mean for me it really was like a like a I can't carry around a ten pound laptop comfortably, so understandably. Now, I think the philosophy behind the netbook, even if that's not a very successful technology on its own, that philosophy of people are going to be doing more and more on the Internet. You're gonna need less power for native apps. Yeah, that I think that is truly

the future you're computing. But the format though is now like I said, tablet, But yeah, I agree entirely. Like the the idea of let's put the heavy lifting off the let's take the burden off the computer and put

it onto the cloud. I mean, obviously that makes sense because we've seen that carry on, Like even the upcoming consoles or the consoles that just came out, the PS four and the and the Xbox one, both of them have put a lot of the work onto cloud based services so that you don't have to rely so much on whatever the device itself can do. Um and they're still powerful devices, but they also are leveraging the Internet,

so we're gonna see that a lot more. But yeah, again, the netbook form factor was just one that I don't I think ultimately people found to be uh limited, Like it didn't give enough of a benefit over a tablet, and it was not terribly comfortable to use. If you ever used a netbook, like one of the really small ones, it's pretty cramped to type on them for more than a couple of minutes. So, uh, you know, I mentioned

tablet laptop hybrids and netbooks. Another specific product that didn't do so well was the Microsoft Surface tablet, which you know that was that was one of those things that people were thinking that maybe Microsoft could really make up some ground between uh it and Apple with this, with this Windows eight based tablet named after the same device that they had, a giant table device that they had shown off at c S a few years before. But yeah,

you know it still has never really taken off. Yeah, we talked about Windows eight and tech Stuff and about some of the downers of that story. So if you want to hear more, listen to our two thirteen year and review episodes over at tech Stuff. The Palm Pre a famous example of a device. Yea, the Palm Pre

is a little bit of prey for the media. I guess. Well, see, here's the thing is that when it came out, when when they showed it off at CES, yeah we all thought, oh wow, this is a viable editor to the iPhone. People still weren't sure about Android. When Palm Pre came out, Android was very young and it looked like engineers had built it and uh and the iPhone was the sleek, sexy kind of operating system and device all rolled into one.

Palm Pre comes out and people are saying, this looks like it could actually go toe to toe with the iPhone. But it took six months from when they showed it off at CS to when it finally came to market. Six months is a long time. Android made up a lot of ground in those six months. The iPhone had really solidified itself in those six months, and the Palm Prex never could catch on. It never got the traction. So while it was a big hit at CS, it

ultimately didn't succeed in the market and eventually Palm shut down. Uh. And you know, it was one of those things where Palm was betting everything on this device in the new operating system, the web OS, which was a Linux based operating system. Uh, and it just didn't pay off in the long run, unfortunately. And then the last one I have on here, it was actually the same year that the Palm Prex was shown off, there was this LG

smartphone watch thing. It was a watch, there was also a cell phone and had a little touch screen display. You weren't allowed to touch it. They only they had like, uh, they had representatives who would wear it and show it off,

but you weren't allowed to actually touch it. This is a lot of you would you would if it if it actually made it to market, you would be able to touch it because it was in prototype form, right, they didn't want they didn't want people to play with it and then discover that the features that were showing on the screen weren't actually implemented yet. That kind of thing, and it never came out in the US, and it

was a little bit ahead of its time. I think I think that you know, well, actually, let's let's talk about what we're expecting to see. Yeah, alright, Well, clearly there's all the different you know, iteration stuff that we talked about before, the technologies that are improving generation over generations. So we're gonna see a lot of ultra high definition television, so you're gonna see a lot of interconnected appliances things

like that. But I think for the purposes of this show, we like to look at the stuff that's really shaping the future. Sometimes it can be some mundane stuff, but we wanted to look at some of the crazier kind

of stuff we've already covered and forward thinking. Right, So one of the things I want to point out is that some of these appliances and things that might seem a little bit mundane start to become really cool when you consider that you might have an entire household of things like this all interacting, and that's what we talked about in our very first episode, the one about the

Internet of things. Yeah, and we're going to see a lot more of those sort of things, not just uh, I mean, we've already seen companies come out with their own appliances that all work within a single ecosystem, which is good, but not so great as the consumer being able to mix and match anything he or she wants, right right. Also, you know in the kind of case where Jonathan, I think that you're an Android user and

your wife uses Apple. Yeah, so if we were to say, let's say that we were to get devices that specifically worked with one but did not work with the other, that would not be terribly useful for us, or it would put one of you in a pis terrifying. I do occasionally like to use my app that lets me see if my living room lights are on with my wife is home and I'm away, and then if they're on, I like to dem them and make her wonder what's

going on. Um. She has done the same to me, by the way, she has turned the lights out on me while she was away, and I was thinking, like, do we lose power? No, the television still going what's going on? Then the flights are flickering, like, oh my wife is deciding to mess with me. So but the Internet of Things, I think it's gonna be huge this year at C E S. I think we're going to see a lot of things that are not specifically implemented

into end devices yet. I've already seen a lot of buzz about manufacturers who are going to bring out, uh Internet connected sensors that could be put into other products down the line, but they're just showing off what these sensors are capable of doing, and the kind of data they generate, and the software on the back end that allows you to actually look at the data in a meaningful way. In fact, big data is also going to be highly represented at CES, I think this year. Yeah,

so that's one one element. I'm sure I'll see tons of How about three D printing, Yeah, that's huge. I mean maker Bot always has a presence there. The very first time I ever saw a three D printer was a C E S. I think it was C E S two thousand and eight. I think it was a maker Butt And uh so you're gonna see a lot more three D printing, not just from them, but from

multiple companies. There's there's one that I looked at that looks like they're going to have a cool combination of a virtual reality implementation and a three D printer where you could design something in a virtual space and then print it out for real. So suddenly, you know, you can figure out exactly what shape you want in this virtual environment and then get that shape printed for real

zs so you really get that. So I means I could finally have my hand drawn lopsided sword of Death that I always drew when I was like, you know, when I was like twelve. I can't draw to save my life, So it would look like a twelve year old who cannot draw built this thing. I could end up with one of those after many, many, many hours

of printing. Actually, what I would suggest if you're going to print a plastic weapon is to create a brand new AX for the podcast and Mystical Acts has seen better days has but you know, with with the application of some superglue, I think it's doing okay. So moving on another thing, I know I'll see a lot of

our what they're calling wearables now you know this. These were like the activity trackers, the smart watches, things that are computers in some form or another that you wear as opposed to holding in your pocket or on your in your hands or whatever. Um So, a lot of them are going to be implementations of stuff we've already seen, things like smart watches, and there are vague rumors that Apple and or Google might premiere a watch or or show a prototype watch. It would it would shock me

beyond belief if Apple did it. If Apple didn't, they would do it in such a way where it would be like a quiet buzz whereas there's just someone who isn't identified as an Apple representative wearing a super cool watching than people are like, is that it is? That it because Apples just they don't play with the CS their own Google Google is kind of the same way. Google doesn't tend to have its own presence at CS, but occasionally they'll partner with some other vendor that uses

Google in its products, and so that's a possibility. Um I think that we're gonna see wearables that come in other form factors besides smart watches and activity trackers. For example, I'm hearing buzz about little cameras that you can wear in various ways that could be used mostly for security forces.

So while it's not a consumer product in the sense that knows people would go out and buy one, it could be something that ends up being implemented into UH the standard gear that a police officer has UM or a first responder, So that's a possibility. There may be some that are actually more consumer oriented, which again brings

up the whole question about privacy. Right, We've talked about that before, but it's essentially you know, Google Glass is a good example like that, and I hear that lots of competitors to Google Glass are going to be out in force. Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen quite a few press releases about various implementations of smart glasses, whether they are UH glasses that have a full display as opposed to Google Glass, which has the display that's elevated

in in in one corner. Um, there's some that might have augmented reality additional uses there. There may there's some that may have some virtual reality uses as well. I haven't booked any meetings with anyone yet, but I'm still

I'm still my schedule is still in flexible format right now. UM. I heard that Sony is working on a VR headset similar to the Oculus Rift or in competition with Oculus Rift U for the PS four that it makes sense, uh, from why I understand the any the development for Oculus Rift for consoles is kind of on the back burner.

They're really concentrating on PCs right now, so for consoles to remain relevant so that they don't run, you know, it makes sense for Sony to look into that directly because don't want if you're Sony, you don't want necessarily the PC market to pick up on all the gamers and then you see your your market share for PS four dwindle. So if you're able to be to create something that works as well as the Oculus riff but

for the Sony platform, that makes perfect sense. Um. I don't know that they'll show that off there, if this would be the place to do it. Yeah, and one of the Sony big wakes, it's going to be one of the keynote speakers. So yeah, And they always have a big invitation only press event on the opening day, like the press day, which is the Monday. Yeah. I have not been invited to that, so I might be

reading about it later. That's honestly at this point when I look at Monday schedule, UM, Monday is the one day where I'm booked from I think eight am till ten pm, so I don't necessarily need to add to it. UM. Also robots, I expect to see lots of robots. I remember when I first saw the parrot, a r drone, which was one that you could control with a smartphone UM and had a camera on and everything, and it

was it was really that was super cool. That was one of those devices that was not like everything else on the floor, so you paid attention to it because it's really interesting, and that their presence has grown year over year. Well, now we're starting to see lots of different companies come out with various types of robots, including flying robots. There's yeah, quad rotors, maybe some six or

eight rotors as well. Yeah, I'm hoping, I'm hoping. So there's a there's one company in particular that as they're designing these these flying robots specifically for the film industry, they're building high definition cameras into the robots so that you can use these to shoot films. So instead of using a crane shot, you might use a robot shot. That I mean that sounds amazing. And also I just had this moment of complete clenching fear for that extremely

expensive camera that you're mounting on this. I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure that the robot would be very reliable. I'm pretty sure they're not gonna put a phantom or a red camera on there. But I was also imagining the kind of stability you'd really need to be able to count on, Like I imagine this is a lot of rotors. Maybe maybe if you connected to some kind of steadycam

equipment so that it could kind of auto correct. Also, also there are there are stabilization software that can take a lot of the jitter out as well, So I think with a combination of all of those things you could you can make it a pretty smooth experience. So, I mean, i'll see for sure we're there. That's one of the things I plan on checking out. There's a whole section at CS is. Most of CS is just

kind of a crazy. It seems like chaotic, Like there's no rhyme or reason to the way booths are laid out. When you walk in, they just they take up the space that they take up, and that's it. So you might have to booths next to each other that are completely unrelated. One might have all these kind of crazy televisions and cameras in it, and the other one has like, uh, just a you know, remote control cars and lower end electronics.

But they also sees in the past few years have been trying to group together some of the more emerging technologies in an effort to get them more visibility, because otherwise they tend to get lost because they usually are smaller startup companies that can get easily lost between these enormous booths like Sony and Panasonic or or you know

those kind of companies. So they have one area called Eureka Park, which is all of their little startups that are really kind of crazy innovative companies, and they also have a robot section where a lot of the robot technology is gathered together. Some companies opt to go for just a space on the main show floor, but others will go and being part of these smaller groups because it means that they tend to get wider um attention

from the media and from vendors. So I also expect to see a lot of different implementations of user control interfaces, so the the connects really opened this up quite a bit with the success that they've had, at least the the success especially among the hacker community for Connect. But I expect we'll see more gesture controls, more voice control, and eye tracking. I got. I got to play with one of those a couple of years ago. They sat

me down. They had like an Asteroids type game part Asteroids part um was it a missile command um, and so it would track your eyes and you would have to stare at the stuff you wanted to blow up on the screen so that you could keep your your

little spaceship safe. And it worked really well. And they also showed it off for things like reading web pages where when your eyes would get towards the end of the web page, it would just very smoothly scroll up and your eyes would just follow it up and then it would stop scrolling once your eyes lifted at a certain level, so you can continue to read stuff like that. So I expect we'll see a lot of innovation there too.

One thing that I'm really excited that I think is going to show up in spades is steam box or boxes or boxing. Uh so, yeah, so you know, you know, it's interesting. I don't know Valve has an actual established space at c e S. There might be other companies that are building boxes that are specifically meant to run

the steam os. I don't know that I'm going to see any of the official steam box as well, and there it's possible, but that that that is by the way, it's estimated to be a hundred and fifty thou dollar minimum to set up a booth. And that's minimum, I mean, that's you know, which is why a lot of these companies. What they'll do instead is they'll rent out a suite in a hotel and then they invite people to come

by the suite and check stuff out. It also makes sense for some companies, like audio companies that want to show off their audio equipment. Well, C e S is really loud, so if you want to show off your audio equipment and really show the fidelity of your audio equipment, you kind of have to find a space that's quieter. So a lot of them will use suites so that they can show the stuff off. Um. I'm also psyched about some various car technologies that I think are going

to show up at the show. Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna be there'll be a lot of driver assist technologies. And also i'll alternate the fuel technology. You're going to be looking into some fuel cell stuff, literally looking into fuel cells hopefully. Yeah, yeah, that'll be a lot of fun. I'm actually really looking forward to that. I find the fuel cell technology to be pretty awesome, So yeah, there's

always going to be that kind of stuff too. There's actually um technically the show comes out while I'm at c E S, which means that the NDA should be lifted by then. Well, let's just say that there is a car company that has invited me to see their particular vehicle, which has a very sunny disposition. It's probably about as much as I can as specific as I can get. It's solar powered. There's a solar powered car that I'm gonna see anyway. What Yeah, there's a solar

power car that's gonna be on display. It's ees. Are you gonna get in trouble for saying this? No? No, because it'll be it'll be public by the time this episode goes live because everyone will have seen it. Then. It's in the middle of the North Hall, which is where most of the car and automotive technologies, like all the cars area stuff. Almost all of it is in the North Hall, so it's one of the noisiest places. That's also by the way where they put all the

media booths. So like Revision three, they'll be in the back of the North Hall again, I think. So I'm looking forward to seeing my Revision three buddies while I'm there. That's that'll be fun because those are distant coworkers that we never see otherwise. So yeah, yeah, I'm excited about hearing what you see. I hope you bring me lots of junks. I avoid swag usually because I don't like to pack it all up at the end of the trip.

But I I've also already promised Josh Clark and I have a long standing agreement that I have to bring him back at least one T shirt he will never wear per trip, so I've got to find one of those. Well, So I hope you find out what the future is going to be, like, Okay, come back and report it to us and then it will be in the past. But all right, yeah, and then we will share all the secrets of days to come. Sounds good, that's you know, that's kind of our job description. So we're gonna wrap

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