You've heard about the Samsung and LG seemingly paper thin 3D OLEDs (let me tell you they are amazing and the wall of 50+ LG 3D screens at the entry of the booth was mind boggling), but there were other small finds at CES that you may not have heard of so I will share them here.
The Intel keynote with CEO Paul Otellini showed us what the power of chips can do beyond the gorgeous ultrabooks that proliferated the show floor. Here we see the Adidas store footwear wall that was showcased in the London flagship Originals store and resulted in a 5% uptick in new product sales in two weeks.
Then we move to the futuristic with the Aerial 3D Display made by Burton - these
are laser lights that truly create Star Wars like 3D holograms in regular air (in other words they do not need to have another particles in the air like mist in order to be seen as most laser displays require). The laser lights can be interactive. Apparently, you can make the lasers interactive with the Kinect, and probably any other interactive device like a tablet or smartphone. The can go as high as 5M in the air and 3M wide. They can be multi-colored as long as they do only one color at a time.
This is the Printing Dress which was featured at the Microsoft booth. Made almost entirely out of paper, it allows you to tweet and display the text as art on the skirt. While clearly a prototype - if you pear closely under the hem of the dress you can see the massive keyboard which is not condusive to elegantly moving through a crowd - the barrier between thought to public communication has lost one more brick.
Robitics in small sizes had a presence at CES as shown by Cubelets produced by Modular Robotics. These are plastic building blocks that have sensors built inside and when you combine them, you can get the combinations to have different capabilities. Matt, who works for Cublelets, gives us a great demonstration. The Cubelets are available for direct purchase at the Modular Robotics website.
As you may have guessed, mobile devices are becoming the interface to our lives - they will (and in some cases already do) control our HVAC home systems, or TVs and radio systems, our car settings and garage door system, etc. etc. Shelby.TV enables your iPhone to become your social media interactive video remote control. Whew! That was a lot of things together. What they do is they gather your Twitter and Facebook feeds and see what your friends are recommending you to watch. They then pick up the links, and post the friend comment with the video so you know why it is showing up on your Shelby.TV. While you are watching, you can also comment and it will go back out to your social net. And all this interaction between you and the TV is done through your iPhone or tablet. The app is free on iTunes.
Another interactive I liked which was shown at the Verizon booth is the DNA Wall by Downstream which uses a mind mapping tool to display marketing information in a very dynamic way. If you check out The Brain, you will see it is exactly the same. I have used The Brain for a variety of projects for mind mapping a solution structure out, but also have used it for presentations. A great way to keep the visual dynamic and the content visually structured.
And to drive out out of this blog into the next, we have Romotive's little Romo's which is a smartphone based toy vehicle in which one smartphone resides, and then another smartphone can control it. It works with iOS and Android phones. Very cute, very fun and just $99 if you want to give it a go.
More CES highlights to come...
Twitter - Conferences - Culture: Not Everyone is a Total Tweeter
by Limor Schafman
I was just at two conferences in the past week that really showed different cultural takes on Twitter. The first was the We Media Conference which took place in Miami. Granted, the conference was by and for people in the media industry. Laptops were on laps at all times and fingers were a flying. Eyes were on the screens more than on the speakers. TweetDeck was the browser of choice from my over the shoulder observations, and We Media scored #1 and #2 on the days of the conference in the Twitter rankings.
Next I flew to Tel Aviv for the ISOC-IL (Internet Society of Israel) Conference. Cloud computing, video games, virtual worlds, IPv6, mobile web where some of the topics covered. Clearly a country and audience that is highly tech savvy. But what did I see? Several (but not everyone) with laptops, and I was one of the few twittering about the conference - habits are hard to break. What was everyone else doing? Shockingly, they were fully focused on the speakers, listening avidly and actively participating with their presence and attention in the session. I have to tell you, the "feeling" of the conference sessions was completely different. They felt grounded and focused, rather than the "there but not fully there" feeling I often get and have myself at conferences and gathering b/c I am tweeting or checking email or texting or... Speaking to the organizers, they had a tweet local and tried to get attendees to do it, but the attendees were not interested.
I don't know why this cultural difference exists? Israelis are as much on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and MySpace as any Americans. But the attention was different.
If you have clues as to why - would love to hear them.
Other notes on Twitter: check out Julia Angwin's WSJ article on How to Twitter which is a good primer on using Twitter and loved the Jon Stewart Twitter Frenzy video.
March 09, 2009 in Facebook, Internet, LinkedIn, Marketing, MySpace, New Internet, Social Networks, Tech Commentary, Twitter | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)