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HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral
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Category: CES
January 13th, 2009
Sling will compete in crowded field as founders move on
The Krikorian brothers and other top execs at Sling Media deserve to take some time off - soak up some sun in Maui or maybe take an extended cruise. Not only did they create some of the most revolutionary television technology since TiVo, they also got out just in time - right before that place shifting concept gets shadowed by networking technology. The executives have left or will soon leave parent company EchoStar, which acquired Sling more than a year ago.
Sling, of course, is best known for its Slingbox, which allows users to access the content on their home TVs - whether live or DVR-recorded - from a remote location. Recently, it introduced Sling Catcher, a device that allowed that same content to be transmitted to other sets within the house. And now, it also offers Web-based television content over the Internet at sling.com. These are all good things - and the company was recognized at both CES and Macworld with Best of Show honors.
But that’s not to say there aren’t challenging times ahead for Sling and its product line. The wireless network is increasingly becoming mainstream and content is moving online. In some cases, content is streamed from a hosted site somewhere. In other cases, it’s stored on networked home storage devices for accessibility by all of the home’s computers. At CES, the buzz was all around TVs with built-in Web connectivity, a breakthrough that creates many opportunities and possibilities in a networked environment.
At some point, Sling - at least in its current form - could become a victim of its own concept. Web-connected devices that bring content into the home - from Apple TV to Vudu - are starting to pop up, creating a new competitive landscape for viewer attention. As technology evolves, viewers will no longer be tied to a single set, or even a specific home DVR to catch up on their favorite shows. Whether it’s from the back bedroom or a hotel room on the other side of the country, networked television content will someday be accessible with a log-in and a few clicks. At the very least, that does away with the need for a product like Sling - again, in its current form.
No, that won’t happen tomorrow. But digital content technology keeps evolving - TiVo hasn’t even been on the scene for 10 years and DVR is finally starting to become a household acronym. Hopefully, EchoStar will continue to innovate around Sling and build even more momentum around the brand and the months and years pass by. In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye out for the well-rested and refreshed Krikorian brothers, who will likely be working on another disruptive venture soon enough.
January 12th, 2009
The Best of CES 2009, for business
While most of the crowd at CES 2009 in Las Vegas was drooling over TVs, digital cameras, car tech, and home theaters, TechRepublic scouted out the best new technologies for businesses. Here’s our list of the top biztech products at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
See also: The general Best of CES Awards, from TechRepublic’s sister site CNET.
ASUS Eee PC T91 Convertible Tablet
With its first Eee PC - one of the big hits at last year’s CES - ASUS helped launch the worldwide Netbook market into the stratosphere in 2008. This year at CES, ASUS unveiled a new model called the Eee PC T91 that features a touch screen and a flip-down convertible tablet display. ASUS has tweaked the tablet interface so that you can use a standard stylus but also made it a touch screen that responds to human hand gestures.
The T91 runs on a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom processor, is an inch thick, weights about two pounds, and has an 8.9 inch screen with LED backlighting. Plus, it includes a built-in TV tuner and GPS. The product will be released during the first half of 2009 but pricing information has not yet been released. With all of the features being packed in to this product my fear is that the price will be so high that it will no longer be priced like a Netbook, but ASUS CEO Jonney Shih said that the company is committed to making the price very attractive.
January 9th, 2009
Apple at CES? Don't believe it.
I wouldn’t believe any buzz that might surface this weekend about Apple looking to “go large” at CES next year, now that Steve Jobs and company have dumped Macworld. No way. First of all, how do you give credit to something like that when the only source of information is a blogger who’s citing an unnamed source with “friends who work at Apple.” (No link love from me. I’m sure you’ll find it if you Google it.)
Come on. Really? Cubicle gossip? I know the Apple rumor mill tends to run wild with all sorts of crazy predictions. But this one makes no sense - at all. Why would Apple opt for CES, a venue where even the largest tech companies struggle to be heard above the noise, when it was the king of Macworld? Why haul all the way out to Vegas and pay travel expenses for the staffing entourage when Moscone is just a short hop up 280 from the home office in Cupertino? And what would Apple gain by making a splash at CES? Customers? (Got ‘em and still growing.) International exposure? (Is there anyone on the globe that hasn’t heard of Apple or the iPod?) Press attention? (Haha. I won’t even make a comment on that one.)
I’ll say it one more time: trade shows are so 20th century - at least for a company like Apple. Sure, I think CES has some life left in it still. I’m not so sure about Macworld, though. And some trade shows still make sense. OracleWorld, LinuxWorld, Dreamforce and IDF are a few that I hit in 2008 and they seemed to be attracting their specifically-targeted audiences.
Also see: What does Apple’s MacWorld departure say about future of trade shows?
Lastly, I was originally going to not post anything on this rumor and help spread it. But I decided that, if people Google this rumor over the weekend, I’d prefer that a counter-argument post also be listed in the results.
January 7th, 2009
Verizon picks MSFT search, gets ready for Kindle killers
Between the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and an investor conference in Arizona, Verizon Wireless is making headlines today on issues ranging from a mobile search deal to plans for Kindle killers to Monday morning quarterbacking about the launch of the Blackberry Storm.
Reuters is reporting that Verizon Wireless has chosen Microsoft to provide search services for its cell phone subscribers over search competitors Yahoo and Google. At a Citigroup conference, Verizon chief executive Ivan Seidenberg said that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would announce the deal during his keynote speech at CES tonight but provided no other details because it was Ballmer’s announcement. The matter came up as Seidenberg talked about the growth in data services on mobile devices, compared to voice services.
Of course, as mobile phones become more like computing devices with standalone applications, users are less dependent on the defaults: things like browsers and tools such as search engines. Sure, Microsoft won - but that doesn’t mean I have to use it. Google, for example, has a nice mobile search app for smartphones such as the Blackberry and iPhone, as well as a mobile version that can run on a mobile Web connection. Still, it’s a big score for Microsoft to be the default, as some people will simply use what they’re given (which explains why so many people continue to use Internet Explorer for PC web browsing.)
During the same conference, Seidenberg was asked his opinion about the launch of the Blackberry Storm and specifically the problems that plagued it. Interestingly, he awkwardly paused before saying that he didn’t want to “throw my partner under the bus” but then proceeded to do just that by saying that Verizon could have sold a lot more Storms had there been more of them to sell. Spinning it forward, he said that the company is caught up now and have the devices to meet the demand. Overall, he thought the launch was “successful.”
Finally, a Verizon executive has hinted that the company is positioned to work with companies who will launch competitors to Amazon’s Kindle this year. Users would be able to download content such as books and newspapers over the wireless network. Tony Lewis, who runs a program that helps third party vendors certify their products to work on Verizon’s network, told Reuters in a pre-CES interview that he believes mnufacturers will still roll out products - even non-essentials like e-readers - in this turbulent economy. From the Reuters story:
He said that brisk sales of Kindle - which costs $359 on Amazon.com where buyers are told they have to wait seven to nine weeks for their device to ship — showed there were still consumers out there who were willing to spend on wireless devices even in a tough economy.
“I just don’t see us using the economy as an excuse to say there’s not growth here,” Lewis said. “Even in a down environment I believe there are consumer electronics providers that are ready to do business to get their products to market in 2009.”
January 6th, 2009
Motorola: We'll take your water bottles and make a phone
Motorola has unveiled a mobile phone made out of recycled water bottles.
Motorola on Tuesday introduced the MOTO W233 Renew a 3G phone that’s 
made from recycled water bottles. It’s a bit gimmicky, but Motorola can use all the buzz it can get at the Consumer Electronic Show this week.
Here’s the pitch:
MOTO W233 Renew delivers the quality you expect from a Motorola device while empowering you to reduce your carbon footprint. Not only is the plastic housing of Renew made from plastics comprised of recycled water bottles and 100 percent recyclable, but it is also the world’s first carbon neutral phone. Through an alliance with Carbonfund.org, Motorola offsets the carbon dioxide required to manufacture, distribute and operate the phone through investments in renewable energy sources and reforestation. The phone has earned Carbonfund.org’s CarbonFree Product Certification after an extensive product life-cycle assessment.
While any product that claims to be carbon neutral wants me to run directly to the footnotes, Motorola could be on to something. The W233 will first launch in the first quarter on T-Mobile. Is there a market for an eco-phone?
December 16th, 2008
What does Apple's MacWorld departure say about future of trade shows?
I had already scratched CES off of my January calendar but was starting to book meetings for MacWorld, leaving time open for the Steve Jobs keynote speech, of course. 
But now that Jobs is sending in a second-stringer for the big spotlight event, I’m starting to wonder if I should even bother to show up for the trade show. I suspect there won’t be any real news there, seeing how the best that the Apple rumor mill has been able to round up is an iPhone Nano, new Mac Mini or a netbook. Without Steve Jobs and his “one more thing” at the keynote, it just seems like a waste. (photo credit: CNET)
Initially, I wondered if Steve Jobs’ absence had anything to do with his health. Ever since Jobs appeared at a conference looking unusually thin and frail earlier this year, bloggers and analysts have been asking for a health update on Jobs, a pancreatic cancer survivor.
Previous coverage:
Apple says report of Steve Jobs heart attack is false
Will Tim Cook be the next Steve Jobs?
VIDEO: Is Steve Jobs slowly passing the baton?
Bloomberg publishes Jobs obit but why?
But, when Apple dropped its bombshell announcement that Jobs would not deliver the keynote and that the company would not return to the annual trade show in 2010, I found myself thinking more about the ripple effect that would be created, not just for Macworld but for trade shows, in general - especially technology trade shows. In a very brief press release, the company summed it up best:
Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways. Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.
I hadn’t really thought too much about it but it only makes sense that the Internet’s next victim would be the trade show. Think about the outreach tools that companies have at their disposal these days. Webcasts have become online events where people from around the globe can attend without booking a flight, hotel room or restaurant reservations. Viral videos are being produced by companies to showcase their products and technologies in real-world environments. Brand names are creating loyal followings via “fan memberships” on social networking sites such as Facebook. And, increasingly, there are smaller intimate shows that cater to crowds with specific interests - conferences dealing with social networking, cloud computing, open source and more. Those shows reach the audiences they want to reach and the bank doesn’t have to be broken to participate.
But what a devastating blow to local economies. Without Apple or Jobs, Macworld is pretty much a bust - and that means fewer people have reason to attend. That, in turn, means that hotel rooms are left empty, restaurants never start a waiting list, cab drivers keep circling around in search of a fare and even the bars might think twice before killing happy hour specials. Think I’m exaggerating? Try to find a hotel room in Las Vegas during CES week and you’ll find plenty of choices - and some real bargains. Historically, Las Vegas hotels during CES are all but sold out by early November. This year, the Vegas economy will feel the pinch.
In previous years, one of my biggest reasons for attending CES was the Bill Gates keynote speech. But this year, it’s Steve Ballmer instead of Gates. And I don’t know that there’s really anything on the Microsoft radar that warrants a trek to Vegas - Windows 7 is still a year away and Windows Mobile is getting clobbered by Apple, RIM and Google. And if there’s any real news out of CES, I’m sure I’ll read about it - in real-time on blogs, Twitter or Facebook. But I don’t need to be there.
Yes, I’ll still be at Macworld - but not because it’s a must-attend show. Apple and Jobs, within hours, pretty much killed that feeling. Instead, I’ll go because Moscone Center is only a short walk from my San Francisco office. Otherwise, I would just feel guilty submitting an expense form for a trip like that - especially in this economy.
November 10th, 2008
Is tech headed for a Bah Humbug holiday season?
In this video clip, ZDNet correspondent Sumi Das and I talk about what sort of forces - everything from Circuit City’s Chapter 11 filing to news that Windows 7 will make its debut in time for next year’s holiday season - will dictate the mood of this holiday season. Even the state of Las Vegas hotel reservations for the Consumer Electronics Show in January is keeping a dark cloud over the industry.
January 11th, 2008
Gizmodogate: Get a sense of humor folks
Gizmodo turns off a bunch of TVs at CES to liven the joint up and you’d think that their scribes lit Bill Gates on fire for the page views.
The angst over Gizmodo’s hilarious prank is borderline ridiculous:
- Judie Lipsett at Gear Diary calls the prank “total and utter crap.”
- Webware’s Rafe Needleman worries about blogger access at future CES events given the show organizers favor journalists anyway.
- And others have various degrees of worries about a prank that apparently is worth the No. 2 spot on Techmeme (it was No. 1 earlier). There has to be something else more important going on.
If I were to hazard a guess, I’d reckon that the people that are so aghast about Gizmodo’s prank are in the minority. This post is dedicated to the rest of you that got a big chuckle out of the stunt.
The big takeaway from this angst is that bloggers are becoming much like a lot of journalists–worried about not annoying vendors so they can keep their access, which more often than not just gets you an interview with a CEO that speaks gibberish. What would happen if Gizmodo’s prank banned all bloggers from CES? Not a lot in the grand scheme of things. You’d get a few less embargoes, a little less vendor spoon feeding and you’d have to sneak around and use the back door at the show. In other words, you’d have to do all the things you should be doing anyway.
Would I have done the same thing as Gizmodo? I honestly don’t know. But I do know once I got my paws on the clicker I wouldn’t stop at one TV. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t been to CES yet (along with the fact I can’t recall any super significant stories from the last week in Vegas).
Update: Gizmodo’s TV killer has been banned from CES. Portfolio.com and Rafe have the details. As for me, I do seem to be in the minority on this one and have been shouted down accordingly. Our own Ed Bott has the best rebuttal (sorry Josh). What’s truly amazing that this Jackass-ish stunt has gotten so much digital ink. There had to be something else going on today that was more important. Right?
January 9th, 2008
OLPC's Negroponte seeks truce with Intel and deal with Microsoft
During a presentation at the Consumer Electronic Show this afternoon, One Laptop Per Child’s Nicholas Negroponte didn’t address the recent rift between Intel and his organization.
Nicholas Negroponte and his baby, the OLPC
Intel recently unhooked itself from the OLPC board of directors, and Negroponte was not shy about blasting the chipmaker last week:
Despite OLPC’s best efforts to work things out with Intel and several warnings that their behavior was untenable, it is clear that Intel’s heart has never been in working collaboratively as a part of OLPC. This is well illustrated by the way in which our separation was announced single-handedly by Intel; Intel issued a statement to the press behind our backs while simultaneously asking us to work on a joint statement with them. Actions do speak louder than words in this case. As we said in the past, we view the children as a mission; Intel views them as a market.
News.com’s Michael Kanellos has some good fodder he picked up during Negroponte’s CES presentation:
Two of the individuals with OLPC sat directly behind me, and they talked extensively about the disagreement and their interaction with Intel before the speech. (To recap, Intel joined OLPC after a long public argument, but then recently pulled out.) I checked their badges to make sure they were with OLPC. Here are some of the highlights.
“They are so arrogant.”
“Did you meet Swope (Intel exec Will Swope)? He was unimpressive.”
“Working with Microsoft is a joy by comparison.”
To be fair, there’s probably not a lot of love lost on Intel’s side. Chairman Craig Barrett, before the brief alliance with OLPC, often criticized the device. A number of companies are also chilly toward Negroponte. One Taipei executive told me that people in the last year have started to blame declines in Quanta Computer’s stock on its association with OLPC. Contract manufacturer Quanta makes the OLPC and even built an entire manufacturing line for it.
Negroponte said on Tuesday that would welcome Intel back to OLPC, and denied that his group insisted that Intel abandon its Classmate PC, which could be perceived as a rival to the OLPC XO machine. Negroponte has cozied up to Microsoft as well, and said OLPC is working with Microsoft on a dual-boot version of the XO laptop that could run Linu or Windows.
See also: Larry’s review of the OLPC
January 9th, 2008
A deeper look at surface computing
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, ZDNet director Josh Taylor looks at the latest iteration of Microsoft’s surface computing platform, which includes applications for drawing, interacting with media, and manipulating photos that are instantly taken from a digital camera. It’s cool and will be available in the spring. Everyone should have one of these…someday. Watch the video
January 9th, 2008
Everex debuts $399 ultramobile PC
At CES, Everex is launching a $399 ultramobile that will be sold through Walmart.com starting January 25. The low-cost Everex CloudBook uses the open source gOS V2 Rocket operating system and VIA 1.2GHz C7-M ULV processor, same as the $199 Everex gPC.
The Cloudbook is designed for Internet usage, not for heavy duty graphics applications. Like the gPC, it will come with software or links to FireFox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Google Documents & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Google News, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Google Product Search, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xine Movie Player, RhythmBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3.
The unit weighs 2 pounds and is 9.06 x 6.73 x 1.16 inches. It has a 7-inch TFT screen with 800 x 480 native resolution, and has a 30 GB drive and 512 MB of DDR2 533MHz SDRAM. The Cloudbook averages averages 5 hours of battery life with its lithium-ion battery, according to the company, and also includes a 1.3-megapixel Webcam.
For input and output, the Cloudbook includes a DVI-I port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a RJ45 Ethernet port, headphone/line out jack, microphone/line in jack and 4-in-1 media card reader. For connectivity it offers 802.11b/g and Ethernet.
The gOS is based on the Ubuntu 7.1 Linux desktop developed by an open source startup of the same name. “The gOS is an alternative operating system that makes it apparent that Google is your entire computing experience,” said gOS founder David Liu regarding the release of the gPC in October 2007. “When you make Linux look pretty and put ton of Google apps on it, you pacify it for consumer. You could say gOS is Google inspired but not official stamped.” gOS uses the Enlightenment window manager and has taken cues from Apple in designing the interface.
See also: CNET.com ultramobile reviews
January 9th, 2008
CES: Big thinkers and disruptive technologies
The Consumer Electronics Show about the size of 36 football fields and exhausting, and so are the names of some of the conference sessions. I attended “Big Thinkers and Disruptive Technologies: Today’s Thought Leaders and Tomorrow’s Technologies,” with panelists Dave Habiger, CEO of Sonic Solutions; Levy Gerzberg, CEO of Zoran; Shane Robison, executive vice president and chief strategy and technical officer at HP; Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group; and Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer at Facebook. Tim Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, moderated the session.
Each panelist offered a few disruptive technology ideas, which were predictable and clearly in support of their business strategies.
Chip maker Gerzberg said the next explosive, disruptive technology will be evolutionary and related to the availability of smarter silicon, which is what his company produces. He envisions life extension through technology, via what he called “consumer medical electronics.”
Algorithms in silicon can recognize faces, which he said could lead to enabling the blind to recognize people. Smart pacemakers with GPS could alert medical professionals to location and automatically stimulate the heart at the onset of a heart attack. People can swallow a tiny camera that transmits images via RF to a diagnostic device.
HP CTO Robison talked about a shift from device-centric to connection-centric computing. “Instead of one product that does everything, the question is how to make sure all the
products support the service interfaces we want to use,” he said. “We really have an opportunity to have a wide range of devices that can be used anytime anywhere and in any context, and support access to services we are interested in.”
Robison also sees a disruption in the traditional publishing model, eliminating inventory and warehouses as on demand publishing becomes more mainstream. HP already has services for printing books on demand.
Facebook’s Van Natta called the open source software movement one of the biggest disruptors. Facebook was built on a number of open source products and the social networking company contributes to various projects. Van Natta said that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg only had $85 to spend per month on hosting, and if he had to pay for software he might not have started the company.
He also brought up another disruptive area close to Facebook’s heart–identity and reputation on the Web. “We think there is movement afoot that is all about the socialization of the Web,” Van Natta said. “So much of what we do is influenced by friends and people important in our lives and people with certain credibility. We believe that social network is not building a new niche or vertical but will permeate everything on Web and unlock things we don’t do today.”
He gave the standard example of Facebook’s photo applications, which he described as a “fairly inferior product” compared to the competition, lacking editing tools and other basic features. It is highly successful because it is “infused with people important to you, and you have control over who does or doesn’t see your photos.”
Van Natta also said that the future isn’t about walled gardens. Facebook made a diplomatic move this week in joining DataPortability.org Workgroup, which is working on specifications to enable users to have their identity, photos, videos and other personal data discoverable and shared between vendors and applications. Google, Plaxo and Yahoo are also members.
There are significant design and engineering issues around data portability, which is apparently why Facebook is taking its time coming up with solutions. Users should have the right to export their “friends” from one service to another, but friends should also have a way to manage who can export their data and what data is accessible.
Terry McBride’s Nettwerk Music Group produces music and manages artists, including the Barenaked Ladies and Avril Lavigne. He has some interesting ideas about further transforming the music industry, starting with getting rid of all DRM. “When music is free
[from DRM] there will be a tipping point, where price will compete with free,” McBride said. “iTunes at 99 cents represents 10 percent of the market. Ninety percent is free, so the value is more like 10 cents. Imagine a drop in price to 25 cents and you capture 50 percent.”
Basically McBride thinks that dropping the price and eliminating locks on the content will make all parties happy. It remains to be seen if a quarter a song would compel those who don’t pay to start. “You should be able to ping a song to friend or allow them purchase songs, so there should be 200 million retail stores, but the industry has to give up control,” he said.
McBride has been experimenting with Barenaked Ladies, allowing fans to purchase a digital version of a concert on USB stick or online immediately after it concludes, and adding all kinds of extras. “We made about the same as selling 5 million albums last year,” he said.
Sonic’s Habiger touted his company’s latest services based on the recently approved industry specifications set by the DVD Copy Control Association for recording electronic downloads. With the new specification, Sonic’s Qflix lets content owners release titles for custom production and sale over the Internet while maintaining the copy protection used for commercially mass-produced DVDs. Users can burn DVDs legally with the new specification and tools. “It changes the entire landscape of distribution,” Habiger said. He added that it’s not clear if consumers will be comfortable owning content in the cloud and that unlike the direction the music industry is headed, some kind of rights management has to exist but it’s not clear what it will be.
January 7th, 2008
Intel's Paul Otellini touts the 'personal' Internet and Smash Mouth
Intel CEO Paul Otellini used his CES keynote to describe the future of the Internet as bringing the information and tools users need at any given time for any given personal situation and to rock out with Smash Mouth.
The next phase of the Internet is beyond push media and RSS, and more proactive, predictive and context aware, Otellini said. He dubbed his vision the “personal” Internet.
As a demonstration of this more advanced Internet, Otellini created a scenario of traveling in China, using a device that with GPS and mobile broadband allows you to navigate around cities easily, getting instant translations of signage in foreign languages. He also demonstrated real-time speech-to- speech translation (from Chinese to English and vice versa), and EveryScape, a Web application that provides full panoramic views of cities as a way to get around and find locations.
Getting back to Intel, Otellini said the point of the demo was the need for exponentially more powerful processors and exponentially lower power processors, capable of performing real-time translation and augmented reality on mobile devices.
He also said that we need higher levels of broadband connectivity and penetration, and search needs to move from searching for information to finding information proactively. “The problem is that the Internet needs to know about you, so the impetus on the industry is to provide the security and privacy consumers need to enable this kind of service,” Otellini said.
This more “personal” Internet also needs much improved user interfaces, with gestures, motion and facial expression.
To demonstrate some of the user interface concepts, Otellini brought Smash Mouth lead singer Steven Harwell on stage.
With help from eJamming (peer-to-peer virtual jamming in real time) BigStage (life-like avatars with expressive gestures), Virtual Heroes (realistic virtual humans) and Organic Motion (motion capture), Smash Mouth performed what Otellini called the first ever live virtual jam session.
Otellini isn’t offering anything new in his vision for the future, but unlike most keynoters offering visions of the future he backed it up with a compelling demo using existing and near term technologies. Mere mortals can’t seamlessly and easily duplicate the synthesis of products that Otellini’s team put together for the demo, but he expects the barrier to be removed in the next three to five years.
While Otellini was playing to the consumer electronics crowd, he could have shown scenarios for health care, education and other domains that show the potential to harness the Internet in more advanced ways with existing technologies and those on the near horizon.
Otellini left the audience with a quote from Intel founder Bob Noyce to ponder: “Don’t be encumbered by history, go off and do something wonderful.” For Intel the wonderfulness is expressed in selling billions of transistors per second.
January 7th, 2008
CES video: Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft
The highlight of Bill Gates’ CES keynote was the funny video about what the Microsoft Chairman’s will do after he moves out of day-to-day operations to focus on his philanthropic foundation. SlashGear taped the video from the keynote and put it on YouTube. I’m not sure how long this video will stay up, given all the celebrities (protective of their brands) who are playing along with Gates for laughs.
January 7th, 2008
Jerry Yang offers sneak peak of Yahoo's future: Life!
Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made his inaugural CES appearance, outlining how he plans to evolve his company ahead of the curve and to become an indispensable starting point for consumers’ Web experience, which has become richer and more complex over the last decade. “We call this Life with an exclamation point,” Yang said. “At Yahoo we want to be most essential starting point for your life,” and “take the complexity of the Web and simplify your life through very powerful technologies.”
Yang said that more people use Yahoo as their starting point, via Yahoo Mail, MyYahoo. search and the Yahoo home page. We possess so much of basic tools and services to make life on the Web simpler, he proclaimed.
For the first time, Yang showed what the company has been up to in developing a next generation user experience that unites it various services in a social context. Yang labeled the demo a sneak peak and not a product announcement, but it is very well thought out as a service the integrates email, structured data, social context, tags and a variety of other applications.
Yahoo Mail (communication services) serves as the hub, but the interface also includes third-party applications and social context. Connections are contacts, and based on frequency and volume of communications email is reordered on the strength of the connections. The page also includes updates from connections, showing what is relevant rather than just relatively static inbox.
Third parties applications can be accessed via the interface as well are recommended services from friends. My Conversations is a way for Yahoo Mail and an inbox to digest various threads, Yang said. He gave an example of planning a dinner for CES. You can drag the thread into a map and it will bring up the profiles of those on the mail, note preferences (for food in this case) and suggest restaurants in the area. You can also take an email message and pop up the profiles of those on the message, and extract an address from email and show it a map.
David Filo came on stage, talking about openness and integrating Zimbra (acquired by Yahoo last year) and opening up Yahoo’s platform more broadly to other developers.
“You will definitely see pieces this year, but we need to make sure security is there with the apps,” said Brad Garlinghouse, senior vice president of communications and communities. “We are leveraging the user interface and data to create new functionality.” In part, the new functionality will come from Zimbra, he noted.
Yahoo also announced a new version of its Yahoo Go mobile platform. “The future is about making the Web experience simpler and more efficient for everyone,” he added. As evidence of that goal, Marco Boerries, executive vice president for Yahoo’s Connected Life experience, demoed enhancements to the Yahoo Go platform (version 3.0) for mobile devices. He showed widgets for email and Flickr that make it much easier to compose messages and share photos. Yahoo Go 3.0 also remembers what users did last with their mobile widgets and has a carousel for easier navigation.
Yahoo also revamped its mobile home page to make it easier to navigate. We are opening up the Yahoo home page to the entire Internet,” Boerries said. Yahoo “openness” is in its “Snippet Gallery,” which are feeds and services that can be embedded in Yahoo pages. MySnippets offer previews to services, such as weather, news, stocks and sports, that you use in a single screen. Yahoo Go 3.0 will be supported on 30 devices when it goes into beta. Version 2.0 is supported on 300 devices.
“As part of our strategy to enable an ecosystem target at billions of users, we have to support the greatest number of devices,” Boerries said. Yahoo Go will work on any phone that has a browser supporting HTML or XHTML.
Yahoo is also opening its mobile platform to outside programmers, allowing them to create mobile widgets that can be embedded on Yahoo Go. Viacom, MySpace and Ebay were announced as partners building widgets for the Yahoo Go platform.” Widget developers and advertisers can also take advantage of Yahoo advertising tools as part of the mobile experience.
Yahoo is also working with Motorola, LG and Access to run widgets natively on their mobile devices, Boerries said.
Yang took over as CEO about seven months ago, and is tasked with bringing Yahoo back to its former glory in the Web universe. Yahoo’s stock price has plunged by about 18 percent as Google shares have risen more than 20 percent during Yang’s reign as CEO. The notion of being the starting point for billions of people on the Web isn’t much different from the original concept underlying Yahoo. But the new version of Yahoo Go and the sneak peak of the next generation communications hub demonstrate that Yang and company might rise up again.
January 6th, 2008
Gates gives CES keynote swan song--no fireworks
At his annual Consumer Electronics Show opening keynote address, Bill Gates made a few announcements as he prepares to head into the sunset…sort of. In July this year Bill Gates will no longer be part of the day-to-day operation of Microsoft.
He has been gradually moving into the background over the last few years, ceding his chief software architect role Ray Ozzie in June 2006. This 10th CES keynote will be his last, he said opening his keynote.
“The transition has been going well with Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie,” he added, as if he would characterize it any other way.
Gates will remain Chairman and focus on global health and education issues via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “This will be the first time since I was 17 I won’t have full time job, running Microsoft,” he said, and showed a very funny video of himself figuring out what to do in retirement, with guest stars Brian Williams, Jay Z, Matthew McConaghy, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Al Gore and assorted Microsoft executives.
In his CES keynote, Gates outlined some of the progress the company in making in its consumer electronics businesses. He said that ten years ago he was talking about the automobile PC, handheld PCs, and Internet TV, which have all evolved greatly. “The first digital decade has been a success,” he declared, noting that it is just the beginning and that software in the second digital decade would be more user-centric, using rich client and Internet services. Microsoft’s view is that the software future is dual-headed, the client and cloud as complementary.
Gates outlined three major themes for the second digital decade–high definition displays with 3D experiences and high quality video and audio, connected services and the power of natural interfaces.
Gates had a vision early of those themes, but his quest to make the Tablet PC, Media Center PCs and natural interfaces, such as speech and touch, more mainstream has not been realized. In 1999, Gates said:
I also think speech recognition, although we’ve been talking about it for decades, is finally going to get to the point where it really is quite usable. That could be anywhere from, say, two to six years away, and the extra power, the software that understands the grammar, will help get us over the threshold where this is commonplace.
I’ve also talked about this tablet PC, and that’s the thing I see coming soonest, because handwriting recognition software has improved so dramatically, this I see only a couple of years away, drawing on the great advances in portables that we saw over the last year.
We’ll also see the smaller form factors in a variety of places. The device that is just an electronic book, so it’s like that tablet PC, but instead of being able to create documents and edit and annotate them, it will be less expensive because all you can do is read.
Gates noted progress in his quests in the last year, including Vista topping 100 million users, mostly gained through people buying new systems. Windows Mobile phone sales will grow to 20 million this year, he said.
Gates mentioned Silverlight, Microsoft’s competitor to Adobe’s Flash and AIR, and announced that Microsoft (MSN) and NBC will team up on Web coverage, hosting more than 3,600 hours of live and on-demand events and allow users to customize the experience in the Silverlight environment. “It will let us illustrate why TV will be different,” Gates said. Microsoft and NBC will share revenue on the ad supported site.
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, came on stage and talked up the latest news in his group. He said Microsoft has shipped 17.7 million Xbox consoles, with more annual revenue than Nintendo and Sony for its console. xBox Live has passed 10 million members, six months faster than expected, Bach said. He announced that ABC and Disney will bring their TV shows to the xBox Live this month, and MGM is bringing its film library to the platform. British Telecom will allow users to turn an xBox into a set-top box.
For the Windows Media Center, Samsung and HP will create adaptors that lets their flat-screen TVs act as Media Center extenders.
Microsoft’s Tellme division, which provides voice-enabled search for mobile devices, will integrated with GPS to offer new services, such as buying movie tickets through the Tellme phone interface.
The new versions of Zune are doing very, very well, Bach said, and it’s becoming an alternative to the iPod and differentiated by Zune Social, which allows users to discover music. Microsoft will offer the Zune in Canada by the spring, Bach said, extending outside the U.S. for the first time.
Gates showed new software from Microsoft Research that does visual recognition of faces and other objects. Pointing at a movie theater could show users what is playing, or zeroing in on a restaurant could trigger more data, such as a menus and setting up a reservation.
For a finale Bach and Gates rocked on GuitarHero with Slash.
January 6th, 2008
CES: 1.8 million square feet of gadgets
I have arrived on the scene in Las Vegas, in preparation for joining the 140,000 people exploring the 1.8 million square feet of exhibit space inhabited by 2,900 companies. The festivities kick off tonight with a keynote by Bill Gates, who isn’t expected to make any earth shattering announcements on behalf of Microsoft (more to come from the keynote).
The quiet before the CES storm
In addition to Gates, high profile speakers includes Toshihiro Sakamoto, president of Panasonic AVC Networks; Intel CEO Paul Otellini; Comcast CEO Brian Roberts; Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors; Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Nicholas Negroponte of One Laptop per Child (the $188 XO laptop); and Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association.
The usual array of celebrities will make brief appearances shilling for sponsors, including Danica Patrick, Michael Douglas, Kevin Costner (playing in a rock band) and Boston Red Sox star David Ortiz. Yoko Ono will be at the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus for an hour. Monster Cable is hosting a concert with Mary J. Blige, Sheila E. and Prince, the “solo artist.”
We’ll have coverage on ZDNet of some of the keynotes and new products, including those that have cross-over appeal, for personal and business use.
For other coverage of all the gadgets at CES, check CNET.com, which will be broadcasting some live events and covering dozens of the hottest products.
CNET TV gets ready for wall-to-wall coverage of CES
January 15th, 2007
An exegesis of the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates keynotes
Todd Bishop has come up with a new way to look at the keynotes from CES and Macworld. For the recent keynotes by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Todd, a Seattle PI tech reporter and blogger, ran the speeches through a tag cloud generator, ranking commonly used words, and more interestingly with UsingEnglish.com's free textual analysis tool, which provides word count, unique words, number of sentences, average words per sentence, hard words (three or more syllables), lexical density (difficulty level of the text–low index means easier to understand) and the Gunning Fog readability index (gives the number of years of education that the reader hypothetically needs to understand the text–shorter sentences written in plain English achieve a better score).
Based on the results, Jobs' keynote, primarily introducing the iPhone, was much more accessible (easier to grok) than Gates' keynote, which dealt with Vista, Office, Xbox, PCs and home servers. Jobs, by far the better speaker, in fact a legendary presenter known for creating a reality distortion field, clearly has mastered the art of the communication…
January 12th, 2007
Video: David's adventures at CES
For your viewing pleasure, we've collected more than 20 videos from David's visit to CES. He covers everything Wi-Fi rabbits and tasers to ultra mobile PCs and large LCD and plasma displays.
January 12th, 2007
Best non-iPhone gadgets of the week
Lost amid the hoopla surrounding Macworld and iPhone has been a bevy of gadgets highlighted by David Berlind in the Testbed at CES.
Here are some of my favorites:
Samsung releases solid state ultra-mobile Q1 with no moving parts.
Berlind: Samsung launched a successor to its popular Q1 ultra mobile PC (UMPC) called the Q1P SSD. It's the first Q1 to use an SSD solid state flash memory-based hard drive in place of a conventional rotational media-based hard drive. With SSD, there are no moving parts and the results are faster boot times as well as a much improved resistance to shock.
Nabaztag is a digital WiFi rabbit that will jump pretty high for you
Berlind: The Nabaztag is a digital WiFi rabbit. From an
industrial design point of view, Nabaztag looks like a plastic rabbit. But he (or is it she) is so much more. Inside the rabbit is a WiFi radio that allows it to communicate through any hotspot to the Internet. It's also over this WiFi connection that Nabaztag receives its programming and customization instructions from Violet's Web site where Nabaztag owners can go to program the rabbit to do certain things.
Berlind: If you're one of those road warriors that prefers an 
external mouse to the touchpad or pointing stick used on pretty much all notebook computers, then MoGo Mouse may be for you. It's a wireless Bluetooth mouse that collapses into a form factor that's so small that it fits into a PC Card slot.
Black Diamond’s ruggedized Switchback ultra mobile survives the CES “drop” test
Berlind: Among the UMPCs here at the show is Black Diamond's Switchback PC (pictured above left). The company claims that it's the world's first rugged UMPC. According to the brochure for the rugged UMPC, the Switchback and take beating. It's waterproof, shockproof, dustproof, vibration proof and it can sustain temperatures ranging from 32 to 122 degrees without going down.
Taser’s hot pink consumer model used to immobilize CES showgoer
Me: Consumer Taser. Immobilized CES folks. What's not to like?
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.
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