CES show w/ Ashley Esqueda

be beaten down, but never defeated. No, never, never. Uh So, Ashley, I've asked you on the show so that we can kind of talk about some of the stuff that was unveiled at c E some of the big themes that happened during the show. And this is gonna be a real discovery for me personally because I was confined to a very small, relatively speak section of the show and didn't get out nearly as much as I wanted to. So I was in the same boat. So I got to see via all of my colleagues out reporting what

they were looking at. That's kind of how I was to except for me, it wasn't colleagues. It was peers because no one else from how stuff works was there. So yeah, but it was it was still you know, one of those events where every single year that goes by you can identify some big trends that happened at CES. So for a few years ago, like example, a few years ago, it was three D, right, that was the

big thing, and unfortunately that has gone away. Yes, people have finally given up on pushing three D. I think. I think listening to the consumers say I don't want that for two or three years, finally got the message

through just such a hassle. I mean, it's it really blows my mind that anybody ever thought that was going to be a really lucrative business model, because I can't think of a single person who's like, Okay, I want to buy this three D TV, and I also want to buy these two pairs of glasses that run on battery power, and oh I'm going to need four of them because you have a family of four. Like, there

is not a universe in which people enjoy that. Yeah, I mean, the only use case I really could see was for gamers who had, you know, a lot of disposable income and they want they wanted to have the ultimate gaming you know, console set up to console. Even then it's like buy a monitor. Yeah, you know, Steam, get your get your video card. I'm the same way, I think the same way. It's to me, it was one of those things where the benefit was not enough to outweigh the hassle that I have a hard time

just finding my remote control. Yeah, unless these glasses laying around and you know, like the four K televisions are so nice that they are. The picture quality is so nice. It almost gives a feeling of three D because you honestly look like you could just reach right in and grab whatever's on the screen. That's true. That's so many people have described it as being three D like I mean, I even even Wally Fister, the cinematographer I got to

talk to. He said, when you get to this level of clarity that's essentially three D, you get the illusion of depth. I mean, nothing is coming out at you, but everything looks like it has real presence, like you could like like like it is just a pane of

glass between you and the hobbit or whatever. Right, It's it's just like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where all of a sudden that was all you know, that the candy bar was there, and it looked real and then they reached down ground is it's like it feels like that a little bit. Yeah, yeah, And then Mike TV of course following along and we can have a whole discussion justin Willy Wonka, and I'm somewhat tempted

to because CS is exhausting. But but four KTVs, that's definitely one of the big themes that went through this year. Every major television producer was putting their four K sets on display, and all of them, of course claiming that their sets are more better than everyone else's. It's in four K and my four K, so you can four

K while you four K. That's right, that's right. I mean I was there and uh and one of the things that I saw beyond the four K was beyond four K, we're already talking about the next generation, whether that is quantum dots, yep, using the quantum dot approaching, trying to get to a point where we've got eight K resolution. And I know a lot of people might be saying, like that sounds crazy because we don't really have that much four K content yet except on sites

like YouTube or Netflix. But the truth is that Japan is going to try and start broadcasting eight K signals by the end of two thousand sixteen. Yeah, And the other thing is is like maybe this is sort of maybe this is kind of like a jump between you know,

seven twenty eight. So it's like maybe four K is the seven twenty of this generation, right right, It's it's one of those things where again, the other part of this is that it allows us to have larger screens without depreciating the quality of the image on those screens.

So when you get to a point where the manufacturing costs are low and we see the prices of the television sets come down as well as adoption rates go up, it means that we can all create that crazy home theater experience that normally only hip hop artists were able to do. So yeah, yeah, or you know Bill Gates, which is super nice. I mean, just there have been so many great advances in how we consume content over

the last even you know, five years. I always it blows my mind that the iPad is just five years old in February. That's always the thing that kind of reminds me that it's been so much so fast, right, I Mean I made a prediction, a famous prediction just before the year before the iPad came out that if it did come out, it was going to fail. So it just shows how I have my finger on the pulse of technology. Well, you know, sometimes we have to

fail to move forward. That's true. And also, to be fair, no tablet in the history of tablets had ever now it's true, it's true, had ever been popular or gained any kind of mainstream acceptance. Um. And then of course, you know, when the name came out, people you know, regarded that with lots of derision. I Pad, how stupid. Yeah, that's true. Well we were all proven wrong on that one.

I'm okay with that because it's it's led to an interesting world, especially really pushed the development of mobile applications and mobile devices. And also I would argue that the success of the tablet and the rise of the mobile device also gave rise to another big trend at CS wearables. Oh man, there were so many they had wearables for dogs. They did. I could not believe it's I mean, we were barely getting getting into or we barely scratched the

surface on human wearables. Now we got dog wearables. Yeah. I love that that. We're seeing lots of experimentation in this. I mean, I think where you see the maturity as far as wearables go is in the health and fitness field obviously. Oh yeah, that's where they really got their start. I'm wearing a a fitness tracker right now because I mean I'm a sheep. Also, I really like them. I

think it's really cool. I love the idea of quantifying my activity so that I can look at and make an assessment as to whether or not I'm doing well or maybe I need to push myself harder. I always need to push my self harder, by the way. Uh. But but this is that's definitely the realm where we're really seeing wearables take off now. Granted, in two thousand fifteen, I don't know, did you ever get over to uh the Sands, you know, I was so bummed I did

not make it over to tech West. So, for for anybody listening, C E S has just continued to grow exponentially. And there was a I remember a few years ago there was a point where Microsoft decided they weren't coming anymore, and a lot of people started predicting like, oh, this is the death of CS, like it's gonna start getting smaller and we're going to have these you know, one off events like Samsung and and Apple do everyone's going to start doing those. There's no point now and completely

the opposite of that. I mean, it has grown exponentially in the last few years to the point where now all of the startups and all the weird kind of quirky stuff three D printing and drones and just all kinds of things are over in the same convention center. So they're using the Las Vegas Convention Center, Mandalai Bay, uh,

the Sands, the Venetian. I mean, it's huge. Yeah, And there's also some companies that'll set up in suites and hotels around the streets because they don't they don't necessarily want to dish out the money they would need to put down to have a booth. Well, maybe they don't even need a booth. Maybe we just say, well, we just want to invite select members of the press and industry buyers to come to our suite and see what

we have happening. That's true. I did get a chance to experience the Nintendo we you for the one of those meetings. It was before they had really started to unveil it and had just only talked about a little bit to the press, and so it was a couple of years ago when I got to do that. But that that's you know, that was a rare event for me. Usually I'm not on those lists. I'm not sure how I got on that one, but it was awesome. I need to find out how to get on those lists.

I there's some sort of secret society that I need to find out how to get it, like the Skulls, but it's like for tech. I need to figure out how to get into that. Yeah, I'm usually only invited to the ones like here's a new thumb drive. Well this is I'm not gonna I'm not gonna poo poo your thumb drive. But we made these computer cases and they're super fascinating. You should come see them. Here's here's a here's a smartphone case for a brand that you

don't own. Well, thanks fantastic. But getting back to the wearable, some of the crazy ones I saw. I went to c E S unveiled and I saw the Belty. Everybody loved Belty this year. I think Belty was this year's haptic feedback fork. Oh yeah, the happy fork. Yeah, there's a there's a happy knife now too. If you didn't see that, there's happy fork and happy spoon or knife or I don't know whatever. It is so ridiculous. These are These are some of the more kind of quirky things.

The ring that there was a ring of really bulky ring with a little button in the bottom that you pressed and you cold gesture and things like that. It's very strange of The ring is one of those, uh from why I understand it had a very contentious kickstarter campaign, one of those where uh, it got funded and then it was a really long delay between when when the

funding happened and when anything else was happening. I can kind of sympathize with people who backed the ring because I have backed two different smart watches and one regular but cool watch, and none of the three have been finished yet. So that was that was more than a year ago when I backed them, So I totally get it. But I think it's definitely like one of those situations

right well. So a good example of this is um Indie Goog had a very controversial crowd fund called the He'll Be I don't know if you're familiar with this this one. I'm not familiar with. This is the one that claims that it can measure your glucose based on like your skin, Like it's it's so weird, like sweat you can measure your glucose. This has been kind of a holy grail in Diabee d S Technology, blood sugar level healthcare forever. And this company is owned by like

a Russian cake shop owner. Like it's all very shady. The whole thing is very very shady, and and all of the science having to do with this is like kind of bad, shaky science that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. So I think, And they've raised you know, over a million dollars and and it's so I mean, for me, it seems so clearly a rip off but a scam. But I just, I mean, I just don't know. And they were at c E S and they were like, oh, yeah, here's our device, but

you can't use it. This is just what it looks like. Yeah, there's I've seen some of that. Like it's really interesting that that's the world we're in now, because again kind of a look back at what it's like to go to c S a few years ago. The only companies that you would see at c S. If you were in the main convention center, you would see lots of big name companies and maybe a few distributors as well,

but those be the only ones you'd see. If you go to the Venetians and sands, you'd see smaller companies, or you would you were interested in um Audio hardware, which was often featured at the Venetian where you would go to a suite and they had more control over the environment because it's very noisy at c e S, so so it's hard to set up like a high fidelity experience on the c e S floor. But you

didn't see a lot of independence out there. You saw, you know, there were areas where there'd be lots of tiny companies that had very small booths and they would just be jam packed, usually ones, a lot of them from Asia, for example. But these days now we're in the era of crowdfunding where we're seeing independent projects that have crowdfunding backing, they don't have like the backing of a giant corporation, actually actually have a significant presence at

c e S, which is pretty amazing. Yeah, and I almost wonder, you know, it's like, especially with a crowdfund it's like, are you using the money that we just

gave you for a booth? Like, like, I have concerns here, like especially the ones that are just have these like giant booths and you're just like, you know, I gave you a hundred dollars to give me, you know whatever, and now you're here with you know, a skateboarding ramp and you know, confetti cannons and T shirt guns and I'm a little concerned about where my kick starter funds are going to. Yeah it might be like you're not

such a great tech company, but you're an amazing marketing company. Yeah, exactly, and I just yeah, it's very weird to sort of see. But tech West was really cool because it was a lot of those companies, a lot of hey, we were on Kickstarter, Like three Doodler was there, um, and they had a successful Kickstarter. They unveiled the newest like version of their three D pen, their three D printing pen, which looks a lot better than the original first jan version,

which is really cool. But yeah, it was it was really I always like going to see yes and seeing those which is like the success stories. You're like, gosh, like okay, there they are like I backed this on Kickstarter, or I saw this on Kickstarter and I told my friends about it. And now they're a successful company and they're super excited to be here. Uh they love being there and they like being in the position that they're in because they have a little bit of name recognition,

which is always nice. But then on that same note, there's still you know, fresh, and they're still they have stars in their eyes about you know, making it big, and it's just they're so enthusiastic about being there. And that's one of the things I really love about cs is, especially over in Tech West. Now there's so much enthusiasm and so much excitement over there. I mean that place was buzzing all week long. Yeah, it's cool. I spend most of my time there and uh so I got

to see a lot of these little companies. There are some big companies over in Tech West as well, because that was where they put some of their zones. C e s will also create zones that have related products kind of grouped together to make it easier to see them. That was really smart. It is really smart. It doesn't work for the big companies because they're just too big. They don't want to split up their their presence. So like for wearables, for example, one guy I ran into

had this great saying. He essentially said, uh, every everyone here has a wearable. Every booth here has got something in it that's gonna be a wearable or it's gonna be used in wearables. You know, It's pretty much true. So you could go to the Big Boots and see examples of that, but you could also go to tech West and see companies that were specifically oriented around a particular product or a group of products. Um same sort

of thing with three D printing. That was huge over at tech West, and you know, one of the one of the most impressive displays of three D printing. It's been a long time coming. I mean we I remember when I went to my first c E S maybe it was even my second one. I saw a maker Bot for the first time and it was one of the early early models, and I think it was the only three D printer that was on the floor that year,

and it really blew me away. And now there's just an entire section of tech West dedicated to it, full on section, and they had not only you know, three D printed jewelry and three D printed objects, toys, things like that. But they also had three D printed food, which it's like three D printed chocolate and three printed candies, and that just blows my mind. I mean they also they had the full three D scanner where you could go in scan yourself and get a print out of yourself.

I know it was tough for me because I showed up and they looked at me and said, we don't have enough plastic. So I just turned around and walked. But then I went straight to the fitness trackers and they said we can help you. Don't worry, it's all okay.

Another big trend, obviously, one of the things that you see a lot of at c S, which is kind of funny considering that it comes so close to the Giant to show that happens in Detroit is there's a lot of car technology on display, and this year, one of the big ones I covered for Forward Thinking the announcement that Toyota is has released all of its fuel cell vehicle patents more than five thousand, six hundred though

the worldwide to be used royalty free, license free. Yeah, it's it's absolutely a brilliant savvy move on the part of Toyota for multiple reasons. One is that if you want to bring around a world where hydrogen is a legitimate fuel source for vehicles, you can't depend on one

company to make that change. It's just too big. You can't hold all your right And you know a lot of people have pointed out Elon Musk did something very similar by releasing the patents related to the Tesla, and that too was a really brilliant move in my mind, it's great to have both of these technologies moving forward. I mean, in many ways they're competing, but if you look at a battery operated vehicle and a fuel cell

operated vehicle, they're both electric cars. It's just one is getting its electricity from a storage chemical stored battery, another one is getting its electricity from a hydrogen fuel cell, and and it's good to have both. It maybe that in the long run one ends up winning over the other, but I think having both is incredibly beneficial, particularly if we maintain the demand that the electricity that is going to power our vehicles ultimately comes from a clean source.

That's the big challenge with both of those types of technologies right well, and especially with gas prices coming down quite a bit, it's they I know that. I believe I read they started selling them the Hummer again. Yes, so, which is a little disappointing, but I mean at the end of the day, it's sort of one of those things where it's going to be it's a challenge. It's always a challenge because when this is an expensive people

don't think about needing economical cars or clean cars. And so, if I'm not mistaken, the reason why the Volkswagen Beetle was so popular, uh in the seventies is because of the gas shortages, people needed these like economical cars. They started they stopped driving those giant boats that we remember from the fifties and the sixties, and they started moving towards smaller cars. So that's how we kind of started

getting smaller cars. And now we're moving towards these sort of eco friendly vehicles, uh, you know, emission free and all this great stuff. And man, there was so much awesome stuff that I saw at CS that how to do with vehicles. I mean, the concept car for Mercedes, the f O was unbelievable. It looks like it's something out of a science fiction film. It looks like it came right out of minority report. You just get in. It's got these four captains chairs. You could swing around

three hundred sixty degrees. It's self self driving, I mean, and of course you know they're like, this is for you, this is we're way out in the future. But I mean it's okay. I think of it this way. I remember two thousand like it was yesterday, So it's now, that's another fifteen years of like, I feel like it's gonna be here like tomorrow. That's I am perfectly on board with the autonomous car revolution. Yeah, that that was

one of those concepts. I saw the pictures afterwards. I never made it out to the North Hall, which kills me because I wanted I wanted to do a walk through and really see. The North Hall, by the way, is where all the automakers have their their booths. You tend to have major automakers have booths there, and then all the like super loud boomy based stereo companies, and

then in a whole bunch of like phone accessories. Yeah, because that's exactly where you want to show off your phone accessories, next to the gigantic wall of sound that's just playing bass at you. Yeah. Of course, Uh, one thing I didn't see a lot of this year. But again, it could just be that I didn't have a chance to really walk the floor. But I'm hopeful that perhaps I'm I'm right. I didn't see a lot of booth babes there weren't. You know. There's a there's a list

going around after the show is over. I don't know if you saw it. Uh. It was a list of companies that had them, and I want to say none of the major companies had them at all, which was really that made me very happy. Yeah, so so booth babes, for those who don't know, these are women who are hired to try and entice people into a booth. Usually they typically are are dressed in revealing or sassy or sexy clothing of some sort and uh and they they tend to be uh kind of treated as like these

this is an added decoration to our booth. It is like a decoration. It's really depressing, it really is. I sat next to a lady who old such a role on a on a bus a shuttle bus once and we had a really good conversation and she was genuinely an interesting person, and it hurt me because I thought she doesn't have any opportunity to actually engage in meaningful conversation because that's not what her role is. And I'm glad to see that that trend is starting to fade away. Yeah, yeah,

me too. I'm glad that it's it's finally people are starting to realize, like it's much better to have knowledgeable people in the booth because most of the people there are not, especially in Vegas. It's like it sounds weird. It's like they're not there to pick up chicks, you know.

It's like it's that's fine, and that's you know, if you want to, if you think that will bring people into your booth, like whatever, But what are you gonna do when none of them can talk intelligently about your product? Like then they just leave. So so they get their picture and they leave, and it's just it's kind of that.

It's kind of that fast food sort of feeling of content like out of booth, that you go to a booth and they might draw you in with something, but if somebody can't actually talk to you about a product, you know, you're gonna leave. You're gonna get you're gonna a quick picture of whatever it is that you were looking at whether it's a person or some gimmick, uh, you know whatever, and then you're gonna split because nobody

there can actually tell you about anything. So I'm really glad to see that they're really going out of their way. Like at l g UM, everybody was so knowledgeable and well trained, and they knew exactly where to direct you if you weren't sure about something or if you had questions. I mean, they were very good. Like I was, I was very impressed with lg I mean, all the big ones, Sony Samps Song, I mean, they're all very very good. Yeah,

and Tells Booth was really great. I mean all of the major players had a lot of super knowledgeable people who were friendly and also just really had an enthusiasm for the product that they were discussing or whatever they were assigned to talk about. So that was great. It was really nice to see that. Yeah, that's nice. I mean it sounds it may sound to my listeners here that we're crowing about something really simple, But here's the thing,

it's not always like that. At c E S. There are times where you go there and the person who you're talking to clearly doesn't know they might know like a tiny laundry list of features that the product has, but they can't really answer any deeper questions or or they'll still get a little list. They'll hire people who are who do that for a living. I mean it's in booth guys or girls, and then they don't really

train them deeply on product. They just say here are the main bullet points hit and and here's a real quick overview of how the product works. Well. The problem with that is is some people really take that to heart, and you get you can always get some really good people who have been hired in and who have been just trained for you know, half a day on a product, who are really into it and they're excited about it.

But then you also can get the people who are not, who are just you know, there for a paycheck and they say, well, oh and here's the phone or here's the TV or the washer and dryer or whatever it is. They're like, yeah, it's really nice, and that's it. That's all you get because they didn't bother paying attention during training, right right. Uh. Another big kind of theme that was running through this is one that I am really excited about, while also I get a little uh nauseated by it's

it's virtual reality. I love virtual reality. I love it in concept. In practice, there are times where I definitely get a little loopy and uh feel a little weird. I think that my main disconnect is if I play anything that has a first person perspective and it has a very convincing immersive world, and I turned my head

and everything is fine, that's cool. The problem I get is as soon as I start to move, if I have to use a controller to move, then the disconnect from using the controller versus my head looking around as if I'm standing up because my body is staying still, but the input I'm getting through my eyes and my ears is that I'm moving. That's what my stomach says. Okay, listen, I gotta take a quick break here, Yeah, and we'll recons Yeah, there was you know, there was a lot

of virtual reality at the show this year. So not only was Oculus there with a huge booth, I might add, yeah, I guess getting bought by Facebook gave him a little bit of spending money, well, spending cash. Yeah. They had a huge booth full of great demos, fantastic demos, with the newest version of the Rift the Rift headset. So the it's Chris, It's not. Let's see Chriscent Bay. Is

that the newest one, Christopher Cove Crescent Bay. Um, So, Crescent Bay is the one with the headset to three you know, three D sound as well as the actual virtual reality headset. And it was so good, so fantastic. And then Razor came out with os VR, so open source virtual reality, including a headset and also just software so you don't have to use the headset with the software vice versa. You could use one or the other or both. That was fantastic. A lot of open sourcing

has been happening recently, which makes me very happy. And then um, and then we saw, you know, we we know that Sony's working on Project Morpheus. Wasn't at CS, but it exists. And then Samsung's got their Milk VR, which is sort of a separate service, and then they have the Gear VR, which is the headset that you can use with a Note three or a Note a Note Edge, the Galaxy Note Edge. Yeah, they also had

that on display at the Oculus booth. If you weren't if you weren't willing to wait in the very long line to try out the rift. You can just wait in the very short line to try out the Samsun one, which is what I did because I was on a schedule. But yeah, seeing that this is finally becoming something that's actually within the realm of the consumer reach is really exciting.

I mean, I I remember the era when the term virtual reality was first bandied about in the late eighties early nineties, and I remember the backlash that the industry suffered when it didn't quite measure up to our expectations. Um, when are when we when we thought we'd be plunged into a digital world and it turned out we would be shooting a polydectyl uh monster. Yeah. I remember those at like the county fair. Yeah, where you'd go and you'd pay like five dollars or ten bucks and then

you got five minutes inside this VR sort of. It was like a little platform that had corners and then you put on the headset. Was very weird and very terrible. Yeah, the headset was suspended by cables because it was too heavy to just put on. Yeah. Now we used to have one of those that are our local mall and uh and yeah, you would pay for a five minute experience and if you were to pay for more than five minutes, you were either a glutton for punishment or

you had an iron stomach. Because and also everybody in the line hated you because it was everybody. There was always a huge line, right because because it was new thing. Well, now that new thing is finally getting to a point where we can actually see a time when we'll have it in our own homes. And uh, you know, obviously there are a lot of people out there who have the developer kits, who have been playing around with it

for a while. I didn't do that because my philosophy is that developer kits are primarily for developers, and I should wait, um, because I want to have the experience that's going to be most suited for consumers as possible. I say that I'm also the owner of a pair of Google glass so apparently I can't always hold myself to that, but um, but yeah, it was great seeing that kind of stuff on display and seeing it's so close to being a mainstream product. Um. One of the favorite,

one of my favorite things that I encountered. I didn't get to visit them when they had it all set up, but I actually ran into the team that was behind it. While I was on the plane going to c S was a company, a little group called Serenetti and Serenetti had created a cooking robot. I told you about this when we met up at SO. The idea behind this is that you've got a robot that cad, stir and

cook food. Uh. It's it's got a robotic arm that can actually rotate and stir the food properly, specifically meant for lots of different types of stuff like uh like foe or pad tie, that kind of thing. And all you do is you put the ingredients in the robot, and the robot adds the ingredients at the right time. It continues to look after the food as it's cooking. Does it all automated, so it cooks your whole meal

for you. And what I thought was brilliant about this approach was that as I was talking to the creators, they were mentioning that their business plan wasn't to just sell the robot. That if that were all it was, then that would be a real challenge. Their business plan is to set up a subscription based service where you subscribe to get meals that the robot can cook, so you get the ingredients, You load the ingredients into the robot. The robot cooks your meal, and what you're paying for

really is the subscription to the food service. And these are high school students, genius. What are we doing? What are we doing with our lives? I don't know, Ashley, They're gonna be millionaires. Like it's like a robot. It's great. I could add two of those kids together and they still wouldn't be as old as I am. And they're gonna be millionaires. I feel so deeply unsuccessful when I hear that these stories. I'm just like, well, uh, it was a good try, right, had a good run, had

a good run. I'm just gonna give up. Yep, you need me, I'll be in the bar if you need my robot makes my dinner. I'll be doing that. My my bartender is drinking next to me because he's out of a job now is making us both drinks and making us dinner. Yeah. There were some other things that

were on display at CES that got some buzz. Uh. There was a computer from HP, the HP stream Mini, this tiny, little hundred eighty dollar computer that just has basic outputs that looks like it's gonna be you know, a super desktop killer for a lot of consumers who just want to have you know, your basic PC operations. They don't necessarily want to have it as you know, this will be like their home computer that lives at home as opposed to a laptop. I really like the

design of it. I didn't get a chance to play with it at all, but I thought that was interesting. I thought the fact that Parent has an in dash system it. Yeah. You know, this is a company that I almost always associate with their their drones and their robots, but they do have an entirely separate branch that develops technology like this. So yeah, this is an in dash uh operating So they called it an infotainment system. Yeah, and it includes like you know, the various apps, the

phone app and music apps, things like that dash cam control. Uh. Yeah, it's really cool. I'm curious how distracting it is to a driver who's wanting to operate such a thing, but that is pretty neat. They did say it would be compatible with both car Play and Android Auto, so you'll be able to interact regardless of whether you have iOS or Android. Uh, You'll be able to interact with it by voice, so sirie, you'll be able to give Siri commands or um Android Audibilla talked to Google now, which

I think is great, And honestly, I don't know. I don't know why any automaker or even third party um third party company would make any in Dash anything that is not cross platform compatible. Right, Don't don't take that proprietary approach where you're trying to lock people into an ecosystem,

because that's just a recipe for failure. Well, cars are such a long term commitment for most people that it doesn't make any sense to do it that way, because what if you switch from iOS to Android, or what if you know, you upgrade next year and your Android phone isn't supported by that in Dash system, Like, it doesn't anything that, It's just it's a it's a much better idea. I was just talking about this to somebody who is very excited about cross platform because of that.

He likes to switch back and forth between iOS and Android, so which I would find incredibly nerve wracking and anxiety inducing, but um, he loves it, and so for him, he's like, this is great because I don't have to feel like I'm locked into a certain type of phone while I own this this car, right, Yeah, this is the same argument I make for all the smart appliances that only we'll talk to other smart appliances from that same company.

It's I mean, I totally get it, totally understand why manufacturers do this, but it's not a great experience for consumers because it means that we are locked into one manufacturer's form of appliances, even if we really like one, but we would prefer a different manufacturer for something else, Like oh, I love the dishwasher from this company, but I really like the washer and dryer from this other company. But I want all my stuff to talk to each other.

It's really challenging. We've got a lot of companies that are trying to come out with um platforms that can allow for some cross communication that it requires a lot of jerry rigging really to make sure that things that are designed to speak with one language can talk to something that's designed to speak with a different language. That being said, the smart home was another huge trend at CES this year, probably the biggest I've ever seen it. Yeah, yeah,

every year, I mean, smart home just gets crazy. Whole automation is Oh boy, it's gonna be ups in the next maybe five years or so, because it's going to be kind of an arms race between all these companies, as you were just saying, to like not necessarily lock you into an ecosystem, but to make products that you're gonna want to buy over anything else, Right, Yeah, And I mean we've seen this really changed dramatically over the years.

It wasn't that long ago when you could you could do home automation, but it meant spending a huge amount of money getting contractors in there. There were very specific companies that were in the business, and they were not necessarily named brands that the average consumer would be aware of because it was a very very niche market. And now you've got big companies that are offering up all

sorts of components. Some of them are offering up entire systems, so it will affect multiple things in your house, like your locks and your lights, your windows, uh, you know, climate control, all that kind of stuff. There are other ones that are you know, their focuses on a specific piece of that that, but they can work within a larger network. It's an exciting time because now again the average consumer can actually look into it and if you're

only interested in automating your locks, you could totally do that. Like, you don't have to go and invest in a ten thousand dollar renovation of your home to get it automated. Now you can get these bits and pieces. Um, I have Internet controllable lights, so I could turn my lights on anywhere in the world. It's amazing. Uh, but that was one of those things that I got from C. E. S. H two years ago, and that was an early implementation

of it. Now we're starting to see things like the Hugh lights, which give you way more options than what I had. Um. But it's exciting because now we've got like we're the Internet of Things has become something more than just a buzzword. We're actually starting to see some

examples of that. What I'm really excited to see is after that five years of craziness that you're talking about, seeing the software side reaching a point where our houses are no longer waiting for us to send a command to them in order for them to do something like dem the lights or adjust the climate control. Our houses will be anticipating what our needs are before we're even aware of it, and adjusting themselves for us so that

we can live in Star Trek. Yeah. Yeah, and well we've already seen a little bit of that with like Nest. So it's it learns your patterns. It kind of knows, you know, when you come home and when you need you know, when you get up, and there's like, I know, there's a lot of inner connectivity with Android home um

and also home Kit, which is iOS uh. They like one of the examples they have given was, okay, so you have your you know, your wearable and when you wake up, it realizes you wake up, and then it sends a message to your thermostat to like turn up the heat, and so I think that will kind of be It's sort like I'm really I hate the phrase, but Internet of Things like it definitely is that. Um That's what I always think of when I think of

Internet of Things. It's just all these different devices and gadgets and installations working together to sort of make your life more comfortable without you even needing to tell it to do so, which is always my favorite part of technology. I mean, if if I could have anything in the world, it would be you know, my question is when will

we live the Jetsons? And so this kind of stuff always is very reminiscent for me of the Jetsons and oh Man, like finally, someday I'm gonna be able to get on a conveyor belt and it's gonna dress me and brush my teeth, wash my hair and style it for me, and then Rosie the Robot's gonna have my breakfast ready to go. I want to live in that world. Although the the styling of the hair sounds particularly painful in my case, I don't think that would work so well.

But they just put a beautiful sheen. It just wax it a little bit, just to send you out in the world, little polish to the dome, just like when you brush your teeth and you get that little like being in the commercials. I'll just I'll just you know, it's me and Mr Clean all the way. Uh, that's that's I want to live in that world. I want to get to that point. I think we're we're definitely

gonna see a lot more examples of competing standards. It's gonna be a messy, messy uh five years, Like, it's not gonna be it's not gonna be smooth sailing the whole time. I think it's gonna be worthwhile once we get to the other side of that. But it does mean that we're going to have some time to really, you know, slog through some some unpleasantness I think in the in the short term. So, Ashley, was there anything at c e S that you saw? You know, I haven't.

I've only brought up some broad categories. But was there anything you saw that really you just thought, now that's either crazy or that's awesome or crazy awesome or anything like that. One thing in particular, well two, Okay, so there are two things in particular that I really liked, which was the first one was at Panasonic. They have this beauty bar like mirror. It was I keep calling

it the magic mirror. They have this mirror where you would sit down and it would scan your face and tell you, oh, you look dehydrated or these you know, you have bags in your eyes. You need to like supplement your diet with these things to like help your skin be better. And then you are able to actually do in real time because you would see this like sort of smaller reflection of yourself in the mirror. You're able to see uh, makeup and facial hair, and it

was it just very well done. The facial tracking was unbelievable. I really wish I had seen that. I also would love if I were designing that, I would definitely go with like the stereotypical uh overbearing mother. I do Santa with glad ass where she just insults you at every turn. Be effective. Um. So there was that and I love that, and that was great. We have a couple of videos

about that on c net. And then there was the other thing I really enjoyed, which definitely was it had no purpose other than having people see it and go oh like, which is the flexible television? Did you see this? That was not what I thought you were going to say? Yes, there was this l G, and I think a couple one or two other boots had flexible twos, but LG in particular was the one that I saw. They had a TV that would flex from flat to curved. There

was a four K TV. It was stunning. It was just so weird and cool and you just looked at it and everybody. I had to do tours at CS, so I was taking through these groups of tours and that was the thing where everybody just went oh like wow.

It was that moment. Yeah, whenever I've led a tour myself in the past, and you whenever you have to do this sort of thing, whenever you get the chance to lead people on a tour, there does become this moment of I have got to find the one breath taking thing on this floor so that that if all else fails, they'll be that moment. And if I can end as close as I can to that, everyone will think it's the most amazing tour ever. Exactly, I'm giving away our secrets here now. The thing I thought you

were gonna say, so I was totally wrong. But what I thought you were going to say was the Intel spider dress. See, I loved that too. It had no purpose beyond just looking really cool. Yeah. So for those who don't know, first of all, I can't believe you didn't see any news on this because it was one of those things that was so eye catching. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is it

drew attention and it got people talking about it. But it was a three D printed dress, as I recall, is like an outfit that had actuators that had these little spider arms at the shoulders. They look like spider appendages that can extend outward and look all scary. Is literally looked like a loot drop from World of Warcraft. It looked like you know Tier three, uh, Tier three shadow priests shoulders. It was that was that was exactly

what it looked like. It was so cool as all white and then they had these glowing kind of nodules in there, and then they had proximity sensors in the chest area, so as soon as somebody would get close, these actuators would like lash out and keep people at bay, and then and then as soon as people backed away would the actuators would relax and kind of retract in and calm down. And uh man, it was just so cool.

It was more of a like a bodice with a with a silver skirt um, but the bodice and the shoulders were all three D printed and it was run off the intel Edison chip and it was so so cool to see in person. Yeah, it looked to me like hr Geiger and the Parisian fashion consultant had had had drinks and thought, hey, wouldn't this be cool? Uh? It was really really arresting. Um kind of design. You definitely need to go check it out if you have not seen it, Just do a search for Intel Spider dress.

It will pop right up. Uh. It was really and of course the models that they had wearing it, they had their hair swept up in a very dramatic up due that that made it look very sci fi sci fi and I fully fully approved of it because I thought, well, this, this feels like I'm in a deleted scene of Dune or something. It was fantastic. I loved it. It was so cool to see. So for those people who have not been to C E S, So how many times have you gone? Ashley? This is my fifth year. Okay,

it was my eighth year. Uh so can you put into words what it feels like on that last day when you've just finished your last um, last appointment or last uh you know, the last thing that you had to do before you are done with C E S. It's it's like it's like going on a Vegas bender, except instead of alcohol, instead of getting wasted on alcohol and partying, you're wasted on technology and exhaustion. That's exactly

what CS is like. I Uh, I don't know how I managed to do it this year, but somehow I actually managed to avoid catching the C E s crud that goes around usually. I did not catch it either, and I was very happy about that. I think this is the first year where I didn't feel like I had a cold for the week following C E S. I mean, you've just come into contact with so many people, and the show is so huge. It's hard to explain to someone who has never been how big this is.

But the Las Vegas convention centers, it's like nearly two million square feet just for the convention center, and then you've got the other places like the Venetian, the Sands. Just getting from place to place. Yeah, I explained to people this. I say, uh, so, you know how gross your phone is and they're like yeah, And I'm like, okay, you're pretty much the only person who touches your phone

and it's disgusting. They say yeah. I'm like, now, imagine handling a phone that's been touched by forty people in the last five hours. That's how people get sick at C E S. So my advice to people who always go to any convention where you're touching stuff controllers like E three controllers or devices or anything that has to do with human touch or people are around it a lot. Always wash your hands the second you leave a booth. Always telling like, the second leave booth, just go wash

your hands. It is a two minute detour and literally makes the difference between not getting sick and getting really really sick. Yeah. The weird thing about CS is it's one of those conventions where there's a line for the men's room, but not of the ladies. That's my favorite part. That's what I like about being a nerd in technologies. Whenever I go to a convention, there's never a line in the bathroom. Well, John, why do you think I

got into this industry? I was just about to say, like, it's it's good that you are able to identify the real positives of a particular career path. Uh so so readily because I didn't make I didn't get obviously, I didn't give any thought to that, and then there I am stuck in line. Um. Yeah, this was a fun conversation. Actually, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Uh, you know, just to kind of give an overview of

what C was like. I know we didn't dive into a lot of different product details, but really I just wanted to kind of give listeners an idea of what the general tone was, what it was like. It seemed pretty, uh, pretty together this year. I didn't have any problems. It seemed like everything seemed to run fairly smoothly from my perspective, which was nice. I didn't have any issue was checking in anywhere I got, you know, everyone seemed to get

through things. I did make the mistake once again of getting between the press and free food, which you would think at this point I would be able to avoid. But don't ever do that, He'll say, you'll lose your arm. Yeah. Sometimes I just don't have enough peripheral vision. So sometimes I think I'm safe and the next thing you know, I'm I'm right in front of a buffet table and that was that. That was that, That was it unveiled

for sure. I remember that very well. I too. They made this terrible mistake of putting this dessert buffet table right in the middle of a very small corridor with a lot of startup stuff in it, So journalists were like rushing the table. Not a lot of things were being covered in that area, but it was just it

was a real mess. Yeah, that that particular area was where some of the really kind of niche weird stuff was sitting and uh and just imagine that You've got the narrow sort of hallway area of a larger room, like the bigger part of the room is just behind you, and you've got your in this narrow hallway, the center of which is dominated by a table covered in food,

surrounded by piranha like press members who are starting. And all you want to do is get to the end of that hallway, do a loop and come back because there's no exit out that side. You are you are committed once to go down there. And yeah, it was, it was. It was really depressing. Yeah, so but we survived once again. We live to fight, Live to fight another c e s and we didn't even get sick. We didn't even get sick. Yeah, I don't even know

why I'm complaining. I'm just being I'm just being ridiculous. Ashley. Where can people go to find your work? Well, I am always on Twitter, so the big social media person and Twitter is my number one social media network. So

I'm at Ashley a skeather there. And then if you want to see the daily geek talk show that I host with kill Anonymous, it's called Tomorrow Daily and you can actually instead of going to sne net and kind of looking through all the different categories, which can be a little tough to find, you can go very easily to Tomorrow Daily dot com and it will take you

right to our show page. UM and if you if you want to check us out on YouTube, you can do that too, or on the s net uh s net channel there and of course iTunes and UH and we do a video version of the podcast as well. It's it's audio or video. We film it everyday Monday through Thursday. It's a great time. We have a lot of fun. I'm all about positivity and and have you know,

just basically leaving with a smile on your face. So if you've if you've left and you had a good time after watching the show, that's mission accomplished for us. So come have fun with us. It's Tomorrow Daily dot com and UH and and feel free to drop me a line on on Twitter. Awesome. And Ashley really is a great person. She had me on on a show very long time ago. This has been a long time coming having her on tech stuff. One of the sharpest people I know and tech journalism. I always love talking

to you. Thank you again. And guys, if you have any questions or you have suggestions for future episodes, you can always reach me, text stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook. For Twitter, the handle there is tech Stuff hs W and we'll talk to you again. Really South for more on this and thousands of other topics, does it have stuff works dot com