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CES Tidbits
Various newsbits from the Consumer Electronics Show: Verizon promises cell phone TV; USB flash drives get more useful; Transmeta promises a fanless media center device, sometime; things you can stick on your iPod; and a tech site offers a photographic overview of day 0 of the convention.
Oh, now I get it. Nerds.
Well of course there isn't, silly! According to the write-up, this is Day 0 of the convention! Wouldn't a story about an event that doesn't exist violate some basic law of physics?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
In case you missed Microsoft's less than successfull opening event on Wednesday, hosted by Conan O'Brien and including two full system crashes and other glitches, the torrent is still available on my blog.
:)
Some good laughs in there (not only Conan's perfomance).
Flash storage manufacturers SanDisk and M-Systems are slated to announce Friday at CES a new USB standard called U3, which enables users to carry, store and launch applications directly from a USB flash drive without installation.
Do we really need "a new USB standard" to allow apps to run without installation? I've been doing this on my Mac forever. I know that this can work on Windows if you write the program correctly. Why the need for a giant consortium?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Great, now people can not only talk on the phone, but also watch tv on their cell phone while they drive.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Why wouldn't I want to use Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 instead?
Is it just me, or do the display tables look very amateurish? I have never been to CES before though so...
Digital cameras that act as cell phones?
Handheld gameboy clones that play MP3s?
Mp3 players that play videogames?
Cell phones that play MP3's?
Cell phones that play videogames?
Mp3 players that take digital pictures?
Gameboys that make phone calls?
If I left off any of the the ridiculous convergence that makes up so much of tech buzz these days, let me know.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Like, your ass.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think that video attachment for the iPod looked pretty cool. I've not seen a HD-based video player that has a clamshell design. It makes a lot of sense (protects the screen and keys and kind of makes double to space for keys and screen)
I read the press release for this a day or so ago, but didn't know it would be this cool.
My wife and I have been talking about getting a pair of portable DVD players for the kids - or, as I call it, "sanity preservers" so during the 10-12 hour drive to Grandma's house, Dad doesn't kill them after the 6000th "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"
I can take their entire "Angelic Layer" and "Magic Knight Rayearth", rip the DVD's to AVI's and then slap them onto an iPod. 20 GB of data should store about 60 movies (at about 300 MB apiece) - plenty to store an entire season at once, with room left over in case Daddy wants to watch one of "his" movies while Mommy drives for a little while.
No worrying about the DVD disks getting lost in the car or damaged (a problem since the cartoons belong to Daddy who gets very upset when they get scratched), and since the 5 year old is now listening to her own music she can either watch her movie or listen to something.
Very cool idea from Nyko. Depending on the cost, I can see myself snagging one of these things.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Gee, we've had apps launching from CDs and before that floppies since, what, before 1980?
Seriously, I wish more vendors would put "try me"/no-install versions of their apps on their distribution media, so I could use my apps without the bother of installing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...I think it should read "things you can stick your ipod into". Although maybe then slashdot would start setting off adult filters...
Hot girl at the CES. Notice that she's got a tag on which means she's one of the show attendants. What a great way to market! (I'm so there next year!)
Is this just a clever dupe of the story on vaporware?
Also, did anyone else find the list of coming attractions to be a bit underwhelming?
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
All: Day-0, day-ay-ay-0
All: Bill Gates come and he wanna go home
All: Day, he say day, he say day, he say day,
All: He say day, he say day-ay-ay-o
All: Microsoft come and he wanna go home
Boys: Hack all night on a drink a'rum
Girls: Daylight come and he wanna go home
Boys: Hack manana till thee morning come
Girls: Bill gates come and he wanna go home
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
In the /. world, Microsoft's media center is already fanless.
These guys seem to think that it's smart for K/M to put their image stabilization technology inside the camera body instead of the lenses since it'll make the lenses less expensive. Nice thought.
I would point them to the lesson Contax learned when they put autofocus inside the camera body for the 35mm SLRs (the film plane moved back and forth in a mechanical box inside the camera to achieve focus). It was a great solution and allowed full autofocus with all of those great Contax lenses. It also died in the market.
For some reason, most photogs seem to want motors in their lenses. I don't understand it, but that's the way it is.
Sounds just like what they did with Windows 95. You put an autorun.inf file on the disk and as soon as the system sees it, it starts.
What's the market for this anyway. Am i going to have to carry one dongle for each application?
Surely it'd be better to work on a standard for applications that run from removable media... require that they run from a single exe file and create some sort of sub-registry on the removable device - that'd make it easy for people to handroll their own usb functionality.
Don't even respond unless you have a USB thumb drive with an embedded commodore joystick. Begone with you!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
me: "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"
dad: "yes, get out."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it us US who screw MICROSOFT.
I find it a bit disheartening that so much of the success of these products will depend on the success or failure of the content. Finally, when I heard Conan's lame double entendres about flacid penises (as in the Microsoft intro) that shook me out of my interest in what was presented at this convention. More and more I'm coming to the conclusion that products that allow the common man to produce content are far more interesting, revolutionary, and important than the evolutionary products shown at the Consumer Electronics Show to allow you to consume the content of others. The products at CES that catch my eye are ones that allow me to create or enojy the creations of others, unfortunately I think I'll see more of that sort of thing at NAB in April than I've seen at CES so far.
Please, tell me that I'm wrong and point out some great consumptive and productive tech that's made its debut.
So it's like setting up Auto Run.. for USB. will it require new hardware or just software reconition?
0-day conventions! l33ch!
They were working on it, but it got complicated when it was revealed that SCO had filed an patent on the hours from 02:00 - 11:00 AM.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Samsung announced a cell phone with TV tuner, but probably it will be disabled by Verizon request in order to force the consumers to buy content from Verizon Wireless.
Couldn't load the article in Camino. To save others the trip to another browser:
Here is the picture of the device. The caption below the picture reads:
Nyko's MoviePlayer promises to transform an iPod into a fully fledged portable media viewer.
Bringing video playback to the iPod
By Jørgen Sundgot, Wednesday 5 January 2005
Beating Apple to the punch, little-known peripheral manufacturer Nyko has unveiled an iPod accessory which enables the popular audio player to play back videos on a 3.5" display.
At the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nyko Technologies has announced the MoviePlayer, an iPod peripheral which gives owners the ability to play back video stored on an iPod on a 3.5" display. Currently at the prototype stage, the company says the accessory is slated for release in the spring 2005, utilizing a portable cradle concept to connect the accessory to an iPod.
The MoviePlayer will connect to the iPod via the dock connector and draw upon its storage capabilities, delivering video playback on a 3.5", 16-bit TFT display as opposed to the small, monochrome display of the iPod itself. The accessory also includes built-in stereo speakers, although whether users will be able to utilize headphones is still unclear.
Offering a dedicated user interface, the MoviePlayer will according to Nyko allow for both music and video playback, as well as photo viewing, using a navigational interface which appears similar to that of the existing iPod scroll wheel. According to the company, included software - compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X - will convert any audio, video or image file to a format compatible with the MoviePlayer.
An additional three hours of playback can be had from the rechargeable Lithium Ion battery of the MoviePlayer, according to Nyko's claims, allowing users to watch "several full-length movies on one charge". To protect the screen when not in use, the MoviePlayer closes clamshell-style, protecting both the accessory itself as well as the connected iPod.
In related news, Nyko Technologies also announced several other iPod accessories, including a button relocator which moves all basic control functions from the face of the player to the top; a speaker dock; add-on, rechargeable battery packs for both the iPod and iPod mini under the iBoost moniker; and more. According to Nyko, all of its products will be launched in early 2005.
Pricing and availability for the Nyko MoviePlayer will be announced closer to launch.
According to the company, included software - compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X - will convert any audio, video or image file to a format compatible with the MoviePlayer.
I call BULLSHIT. But if it can play the shows I get off my TiVo without me having to do any manual conversion, then I'm all in.
Somehow I think DRM'd files will not work, as well as multitudes of other formats like divx, but who knows, maybe they are really good at this stuff.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
I ran into a cool booth at CES, they're got this software that'll let you send pictures straight from your cellphone to your computer at home, and share those pictures from your home computer out to your friends without uploading them anywhere. Their name was Avvenu and they're going into beta pretty soon!
So how IS Ashlee Simpson enjoying CES?
I don't care how "nifty" it is but from an IT point of view having any "hot-plug" device used on a computer in the enterprise automatically running things an unvalidated source (the hot-plug device itself) is a security risk. Where did the USB device come from? What does the USB device really do? If a user can't answer some simple questions about this they sure aren't added it to a machine on the network. I will not allow users pluging strange PCI cards into their machines that aren't quite sure what they do. Why should I allow USB to do the same thing?!?
Why are these guys pushing to make this "standard"?? Thanks for more tracking and security headaches guys for the sake of "convience".
Advantages: can be held in one hand
Disadvantages: only for people who like really tiny naked people (naked Thumbalina anyone?)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Anyone know the odds that any of these will become Vaporware?
Wired News Vaporware Top 10 for 2004
Still seems like a hokey idea to me - I understand that cell towers work a lot like cable qams so multicasting to people in unused bandwidth makes a lot of sense (I don't know if it really works this way - just guessing) - but I honestly think that the market for this is tiny (maybe just the guy at sports events with the portable LCD TVs keeping track of other games)
On a slightly different topic India seems to take phone competition to wonderfull - I want to see the billboards offering 1c cellphone calls here!! Every little village seems to have an I-net cafe/ISP (a router and a couple of PCs) offering really cheap access - I bet there are more ISPs in India than all the US and Europe combined at this point - plus cheap overseas calls to anywhere in the world for pennies (isn;t VOIP wonderfull ...)
Not only that, but "Oakley Thump" has to be the worst name anything like this has ever had. What next? "Hey! check out my new Brantley Whap shoelaces! They store digital pictures!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
how about Cat Swartz's coverage at CES for engadget. just watch how Kevin Rose of G4TechTV drools all over her 30 seconds into the clip
my blog
Back to the days of the boot sector virus and infected "floppies" Yay!
Vehicle Stars used car search is my current project
I just had to comment on USB drives: This week's "Crossing Jordan" (which is often lots more fun than CSI) had them find a thumb drive on an FBI agent, which
a) Had a huge amount of data (50GB? A terabyte? I don't remember, but it was ridiculous) (cough)
b) Had USB *and* firewire (cough)
c) Had *serious* encryption, yet they broke it in an afternoon (cough, cough, bird flipped at screen)
Why must you insult our intelligence? Bad enough they have to scroll through fingerprints on-screen, and show web pages appearing instantly. At least get somebody to check your facts!
Design for Use, not Construction!
image 01
What's David Bowie doing with that geek playing pocket pool?
I find it interesting that an IM client is the top-billed supporter of U3.
TerraIM has been able to run without install since it was created (and fits on a 3.5" disk) plus has offline messaging through DoorManBot, etc.
Why is it that AOL is just now allowing this with ICQ, and only through a new standard?
Send offline messages on AIM with DoorManBot
Woo Hoo - I say it's time for some Silicon and Silicone!
Can anyone else confirm this news? If they could co-ordinate the two events they would get Even More Attendees...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Let me tell you about a guy with an MBA from Harvard I know who grew up in Midland, Texas -- aka the Ass End of Nowhere. He was absolutely brilliant, particularly with human relationships.
Now if you spoke to this guy, you'd never believe he graduated from college, much less got through grad school at the finest institution of higher education in the USA. He actually used that to his advantage. I saw him do this time and time again... he'd slip into the backwards Texas drawl, mess up some word or speech on purpose, and then people would think, "Oh, what a stupid hick." Of course, at this point, they were at his mercy, just like the lady and the vendor in the tale you describe.
Only this guy one-upped your gal and then some. He became President of the United States this way.
Twice.
Yes, the porn convetion is at the sands expo center (just 1 mile or so from the LVCC, where CES is at).
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
SNOW. No, not the rapper from the early/mid 90s, but that white stuff that falls from the sky. Kinda odd, considering that Las Vegas is a desert climate - it reaches about 110F in the summertime.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Verizon promises cell phone TV
How about a cell phone that works instead? I wish cell phone manufacturers and service providers would produce cell phone service that actually functioned correctly, without static, cruddy audio quality, dropoffs, dead zones, inexplicable signal loss, and so on. Why can't they focus on that before adding more crap that doesn't actually work? I'd pay a lot for cell service that was reliable (i.e. didn't drop my calls at least 50% of the time) and had decent sound quality (i.e. so I can tell what the other person is saying).
Has anyone seen or have info about this jacket with the display on the back? Cool.
Check out that tricked out case
That Fossil wristPalm (TM ;) is HOT! Replace the USB connector with BlueTooth, run PalmVNC against an iPaq running Familiar, toss in a headless NAS unit, all BT'd together, and we're wearing our 'ware! Now to spread those other form factors around into a mithril mail vest, and the geek has finally arrived in its natural environment: the 21st Century.
--
make install -not war
In other news, Wired Magazine has just compiled the list of candidates for Vaporware 2005...
Some are pretty suck ass but that isn't uncommon. I live in Vegas so I get to lots of these shows. CES is bigger than most but it isn't especially anything special.
I for one was pretty bored. There was really nothing new at the show. No exciting new technology. This year seems to be rehashes of existing technology in various cute packages.
Take time to get your picture taken with all the cute girls working at various exhibits. That's about the only thing worth doing at this years CES. I especially liked a few of the hotties posing in the auto section and the alien girls at the Sapphire Tech exhibit. If you get pictures why not post the links here? I'll try to do likewise.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I've seen Live CDs for Mac old and new, BSD, DOS, and even Windows 2000 and XP.
Heck, I think the old Mac OS 9 and earlier install CDs were "live."
About the only common home-computer OS I haven't seen one for is MS-Windows NT and 9x/ME.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
SOME camera card media have write-protect tabs.
Personally I wish every card-reader had a "read-only" switch for use with cards that didn't have them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Whatever. Have your former boss stroll by the Olympus booth.
My company is providing the lighting & scenic for their booth.
Aerosmith (well, okay, only Steven Tyler), Cheap Trick, The Black Crowes and others are the scheduled entertainment.
Who cares if you don't like their music... it's the lights that matter.
I'm suprised I don't see any news about Sonos and their wireless music system. Uses a mesh network to wirelessly serve music from any networked device to any zone in your house. All controlled from either your PC or a wireless controller with full colour LCD. Certainly on my wish list... maybe we'll see a more complete round up of CES later.
~ Crummy
Of course, if you don't already have an Archos, it would seem an iPod box would make the wiser investment, since you can basically do what you want with it, rather than be limited to certain "allowed" formats.
http://www.nyko.com/nyko/news/?c=65&i=106
Bringing your mosaic ideas to life. Mosaiclegs
Simple - just to fuck with YOU. And everyone like you.
And then you continue to "misunderestimate" his "strategery" and then something else he wants come to be.
So who is stupider, someone who mispronounces a few words or the people who continue to be duped into thinking a Harvard graduate is actually stupid in the same way a forty year-old fry worker at McDonalds is stupid? "Odd!" they say, "He just keeps beating us! How could someone with no intelligence manage this feat, for we are so mighty in intellect?"
I'll vote on the guy actually running a country. Literally.
Posting anon because, hey, it's Slashdot!
Nice to know where Cat eneded up, I always liked her on TechTV - it makes me think more highly of Stuff that she works there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, there's the PS2 game Rez, and the Sinulator...
I suppose a "tidbit" is a post-Janet-Jackson "titbit" ? Less etymologically correct anyhow.
IIRC, back in the late 90's, both the CES and the pron convention shared the same building--CES on the ground floor, and the pron convention on the second floor.