I went to CES 2014 and all you get is this lousy PDF. Here's a quick scouting report of sights and thoughts from CES. It was both overwhelming and underwhelming, but the highlights include: wearables, 3D printing, connected cars, and lots of bluetooth speakers and iPhone cases. OK, those aren't all highlights.
9. CARS
Connected car is table stakes
In-car experience is ripe for innovation and disruption
Robust app ecosystem matters. Car makers balancing safety, control
against a desire to be the App Store of cars.
What is the Connected Car connected to? What makes it useful?
Who pays for connectivity? Everybody wants you to pay $10/month.
Alternative energy vehicles go from unlikely to inevitable in next 10 years.
Autonomous cars are almost here.
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16. The Sense 3D scanner does a good job of
scanning people and environments. It has
very nice model-editing software.
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17. 3D
• 3D
tech is progressing rapidly. MakerBot is on its 5th generation.
• 3D
printers are diversifying and specializing. Competing technologies
offer different resolutions, color capabilities, speeds and fidelity.
• Scanners
and software are becoming viable. Photoshop just
announced support for 3D printing.
• Printers
are getting better and easier to use. This is key to wider
adoption. Early generation printers have been too troublesome.
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19. The Neptune Pine is its own phone,
but is a little ridiculous.
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20. Burg Smartwatches also require no
smartphone and strike a balance between
fashion and functionality. They showed a
diversity of designs, from this screen-centric
version to analog watch face models with
subtle icons for phone and text functions.
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21. The Filip is a kids
smartwatch that
lets parents keep
track of and
communicate with
their wandering
tykes, an electronic
leash with kidappropriate
communication
capabilities.
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22. Everybody has a fitness tracker. Ironically, I
lost track of them. I can’t remember whose
tracker this is. Maybe Garmin’s?
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23. June by Neatmo is
a wearable sensor
that can measure
your sun exposure.
It looks like jewelry,
not technology.
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24. Fitness trackers are
evolving from
monitoring activity to
enhancing
performance. The
Sensoria smart sock
helps runners
improve their form.
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25. The iHealth wrist blood
pressure monitor pairs
with your smartphone to
give you blood pressure
readings. Devices once only
found in hospitals and
doctors offices are going to
be found in homes and on
consumers…
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26. …or even IN
consumers. This
implantable sensor
can monitor blood
glucose levels.
Attached to an
embeddable
insulin pump, it
can automatically
regulate insulin
levels. No more
pinpricks or shots.
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27. “I never want to look
at reality again.” The
second generation
Oculus Rift Crystal
Cove offers gorgeous,
stereoscopic virtual
reality and less
nausea-inducing lag.
Yeah, you look like a
geek, but if you’re
sitting in your
basement gaming,
who cares?
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28. Sony’s smarteyeglasses were pretty lame—a
green text overlay on live action.You can do
better, Sony. And it needs a better name too.
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29. WEARABLES
• Smartwatches
are happening.
• Two
models are vying—smartphone paired and smartphone
replacement
• Fitness
trackers are commonplace. App ecosystem is key.
• Next
gen devices move from fitness tracking to performance enhancing
and coaching.
• Serious
medical devices are becoming consumerized and will change
medical monitoring and treatment, in realtime.
• Glasses
are the next wave and will involve a variety of form factors and
uses.
• Implantables
are next. We are Borg. Resistance is futile.
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30. The LG TV section could
have been an entire
tradeshow unto itself.
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33. Netflix will stream the next season of House of Cards in 4K Ultra HD. Their new
codec cuts the bandwidth requirement for streaming 4K in half.
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34. TV
Sony’s PlayStation Now will stream games to consoles, TVs and devices.
GameStop is the new Blockbuster.
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35. TV
• There
were a helluva lot of TVs
• They're
big, smart, curved and ultra HD
• Netflix
and Sony rewriting the rules in content delivery. These changes
matter more than curved TVs.
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36. Beam showed off telepresence robots, who
roamed the floor talking to attendees.
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37. eInk showed off
low-power shelf
talkers and luggage
tags that can be
reprogrammed via
NFC. This tech has
applications instore too, in the
form of
updateable shelf
labels.
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38. The Flir turns your iPhone
into an infrared camera. The Flir costs more
than your iPhone.
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41. "It's kind of like having a dentist actually
watch your brushing on a day-to-day basis,"
proving that not every Internet-of-Things
concept really needs to see the light of day.
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42. Marissa Mayer’s keynote was inspiring and
entertaining, but I’m skeptical about the
strategy of Yahoo becoming a content
company. news digest app, while pretty and a
good format for digesting news, decided that
Velveeta was one of the most important
stories I needed to know.
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43. If you took away the
iPhone case
exhibitors and the
bluetooth speaker
makers, CES would
be about half the size
it is.
Some case makers
are trying harder to
get noticed than
others.
(and I thought I was
cynical)
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