Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a law of all things tech and last week
Speaker 1: was c e S one, which for many reasons was
Speaker 1: very different from ce S events in years past. For
Speaker 1: one thing, this c e S was fully virtual, so
Speaker 1: instead of dominating the Las Vegas Strip, the event switched
Speaker 1: over to a series of press conference streams from various companies.
Speaker 1: Reporters who normally would be spending time wandering booths and
Speaker 1: securing on location interviews and occasionally trampling me if I
Speaker 1: happened to get between them and free food. We're instead
Speaker 1: covering press releases and video streams, though a few also
Speaker 1: had a chance to get some hands on time with
Speaker 1: some of the technology when companies would ship stuff to them.
Speaker 1: But in one way, I suspect c e S T
Speaker 1: one will be like many other ce S events of
Speaker 1: years past, and that some of the things that were
Speaker 1: shown off there are never actually going to make it
Speaker 1: to the market. That can be a little frustrating for
Speaker 1: some people, including myself. I mean, it is the Consumer
Speaker 1: Electronics Show after all, or at least it used to be.
Speaker 1: You actually are not supposed to call it that anymore.
Speaker 1: In fact, the official c S media kit includes the
Speaker 1: sentence quote, please do not use Consumer Electronics Show or
Speaker 1: International ce S to refer to the event. End quote.
Speaker 1: I'm not actually sure which year marked the official point
Speaker 1: where c e S no longer really stands for anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, as an initialism, but the Consumer
Speaker 1: Technology Association, that's the organization responsible for throwing the event,
Speaker 1: that Consumer Electronics Show is really too narrow a focus
Speaker 1: for what c e S is today. I mean, a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff you find at c e S
Speaker 1: doesn't really fit the mold of consumer electronics. Some of
Speaker 1: it will never see the light of the day as
Speaker 1: a as a consumer product. Some of it's meant as
Speaker 1: an enterprise product. Some of it doesn't really have a
Speaker 1: physical form. You might be talking about apps, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you're talking about stuff that is related to electronics, but
Speaker 1: itself is not an electronic So I get why they
Speaker 1: wanted to get away from that specific name. So in
Speaker 1: this episode, I thought I might cover a few gadgets
Speaker 1: and technologies that got time on the showroom floor of
Speaker 1: c E S. Events in the past, but they never
Speaker 1: made it to something that consumers could actually purchase. And
Speaker 1: I might mention a couple of examples from this past
Speaker 1: c E S. I actually already alluded to this in
Speaker 1: a previous episode of tech Stuff when I covered the news,
Speaker 1: I talked about Razor and Project Hazel and Project Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: So those will probably come up again, and I'll probably
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of things that haven't been shown
Speaker 1: off at CES, but had a similar path in that
Speaker 1: they were announced but never actually emerged. So let's jump
Speaker 1: on in. Also, I recommend that you look up some
Speaker 1: of these on your own, especially if you can see
Speaker 1: the pictures of them, because a lot of them are
Speaker 1: really fun to look at. Now, sometimes we see a
Speaker 1: product that isn't bad, it's just ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: The implementation of the technology might be a little on
Speaker 1: the crude side, and the price tag might be a
Speaker 1: lot on the high side, and so an idea, while
Speaker 1: a good one, might not go very far. That might
Speaker 1: be why the robot called Genus never really had a chance.
Speaker 1: Genus that's g e in Us, debuted at c S NREE.
Speaker 1: The robot looks a little bit like a pedestal on wheels,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to some of the robots that Samsung
Speaker 1: showed off at the c E S one like uh
Speaker 1: like the bot Handy robot. However, the Genus robot is
Speaker 1: a little more angular. It's not quite so smooth and
Speaker 1: round as the other robots are. It's also quint essentially
Speaker 1: eighties in style, so I recommend you check it out.
Speaker 1: The promotional pamphlet for Genus said it is quote fully
Speaker 1: programmed for beginners, yet is programmable for advanced users end quote.
Speaker 1: Now clearly, the Robotics International Corporation, which was the company
Speaker 1: behind Genus, saw how personal computers were beginning to take
Speaker 1: off in the consumer market, and they knew that they
Speaker 1: would need to remove some of the barriers of entry
Speaker 1: for the average person, that is, the average wealthy person.
Speaker 1: Because this robot, depending on the options you picked, could
Speaker 1: cost upwards of twelve thousand dollars in nine three, and
Speaker 1: when we adjust that for inflation, that's more than thirty
Speaker 1: thousand bucks today, a princely some I mean you could
Speaker 1: buy a car for that. Anyway, Genus was to have
Speaker 1: a lot of cool features that we would later much
Speaker 1: much later, seeing products like the Roomba. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to be able to learn your home and map out
Speaker 1: the environment and learn where obstacles were so it could
Speaker 1: avoid bumping into things and maneuver around. It could return
Speaker 1: to its charging station on its own when its batteries
Speaker 1: got got really low. Uh. It could even be equipped
Speaker 1: with a vacuum. So gosh, I mean it was a roomba.
Speaker 1: I mean not really. It wasn't like an official roomba,
Speaker 1: but you get what I mean. The technology behind this
Speaker 1: was pretty impressive for the day. It included stuff like
Speaker 1: a computer system with at least forty eight whole killer
Speaker 1: bytes of memory. Yalza, had a CRT display, had an
Speaker 1: optional keyboard so you could program it if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: had passive smoke detectors, motion detectors, and more. But Genas
Speaker 1: never got much further than its debut at c E
Speaker 1: S and Robotics International Corporation would dissolve sometime in seven. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the product was far too ambitious for the time.
Speaker 1: It was certainly an indicator of where things would eventually
Speaker 1: end up, although it would take a couple of decades
Speaker 1: and we're still seeing companies like the aforementioned Samsung introduced
Speaker 1: large robots at c E SE So that trend continues
Speaker 1: as well. We don't tend to see those large robots
Speaker 1: actually getting adopted into the consumer market, but we see
Speaker 1: a lot of that technology kind of trickled down into
Speaker 1: other implementations like roomba. Speaking of Samsung and robots, we're
Speaker 1: still waiting on Bali, that's the spherical robot that the
Speaker 1: company showed off at C E S For that matter,
Speaker 1: we're still waiting on scout About. What's scaled about? You ask, well,
Speaker 1: it's about always being prepared if I remember correctly. Huh,
Speaker 1: how was a joke? No? Really, The scout About was
Speaker 1: the name of a line of robots Samsung showed off
Speaker 1: at C E S N. The scout About robots look
Speaker 1: like little domes on wheels. I read one review that
Speaker 1: said it looked like little motorcycle helmets that were scooting around.
Speaker 1: They could roam autonomously around your home and the purpose
Speaker 1: of the scout About was to monitor your home for
Speaker 1: the purposes of safety. It was to have ultrasonic sensors
Speaker 1: as well as a passive infrared system, and it would
Speaker 1: let the robot sense everything from sounds to the presence
Speaker 1: of smoke. And it also had a temperature sensor. If
Speaker 1: it were to detect a danger like a fire or
Speaker 1: someone breaking a window to gain entry to a house,
Speaker 1: it could sound an alarm and phone home to a
Speaker 1: security service, which then could coordinate with authorities. Samsung said
Speaker 1: the plan was for the robots to hit the market
Speaker 1: by early spring of nine, with a price of where
Speaker 1: between a thousand and fifteen hundred dollars. So again, this
Speaker 1: is that would be somewhere between eighteen hundred and dollars today. However,
Speaker 1: the scout about never came out. Now, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that last year's Bali robot will also never come out,
Speaker 1: Nor am I saying that Samsung's bought Handy robot demonstrated
Speaker 1: this year's virtual c e s will never come out.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't hold my breath. All that being said,
Speaker 1: I think it's only fair I point out that, at
Speaker 1: least in some cases, it's not so much about a
Speaker 1: specific product, but rather the advancement of the technologies that
Speaker 1: power that prototype or concept. So, in other words, the
Speaker 1: bot Handy, which Samsung showed off picking up a bottle
Speaker 1: of wine and pouring a glass of wine for somebody,
Speaker 1: or another video where it showed the robot filling up
Speaker 1: a dishwasher. It's not really necessarily about the row bot.
Speaker 1: It's showing off something that actually is pretty darn cool,
Speaker 1: and that's the fact that the AI guiding this robot
Speaker 1: gives the robot guidance on how hard or soft the
Speaker 1: robot's grip should be whenever it picks up something. You know,
Speaker 1: we humans get a pretty intuitive grasp on that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff to use a pun, but for robots it's different.
Speaker 1: A robot doesn't innately know how tightly it needs to
Speaker 1: grip something, and so it might approach a cinder block
Speaker 1: or a breeze block for you folks in the UK,
Speaker 1: and a delicate champagne glass with the same amount of
Speaker 1: gripping force. That would probably not work out so well.
Speaker 1: It would either be two week a grip for the
Speaker 1: cender block and so it wouldn't be able to pick
Speaker 1: it up, or it would crush the glass and it's
Speaker 1: mighty robotic hand. Either way, not exactly the result you're
Speaker 1: looking for now. All that being said, the scout about
Speaker 1: was being demonstrated as if it were actually about to
Speaker 1: go on the market, so that particular example doesn't really
Speaker 1: fit into the hole. This is more about showing off
Speaker 1: a technology than making an actual product kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So maybe that was Samsung learning its lesson Sometimes the
Speaker 1: stuff we see at c S is really just meant
Speaker 1: to grab our attention period and doesn't indicate a sincere
Speaker 1: desire to bring a product to market. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that was the thinking that went into the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: robot marketed by Sharman that is, the toilet paper company,
Speaker 1: and it was called robot because that's genius but not
Speaker 1: genus anyway. The company had a booth set up complete
Speaker 1: with a toilet where you could test out this robot,
Speaker 1: though you were encouraged to, you know, not actually use
Speaker 1: the toilet. The things you learned after experience. So you
Speaker 1: would sit on the throne and you would call out
Speaker 1: for precious t P allegedly by using an app on
Speaker 1: your smartphone, and a little two wheeled self balancing robot
Speaker 1: with a face plate that looked kind of like a
Speaker 1: a semi abstract bear face, you know, very like like
Speaker 1: children's drawing kind of bare face. The robot also had
Speaker 1: little ears on top of it that the toilet paper
Speaker 1: roll would sit between and it would wheel out with
Speaker 1: that roll of toilet paper on balanced on top of
Speaker 1: its head. Uh, you know, flat side down obviously, otherwise
Speaker 1: it just roll all over the place. And there was
Speaker 1: no way to see how the robot, which had no arms,
Speaker 1: is just the wheels and a box, and the toilet
Speaker 1: paper roll would be on top of the box. There's
Speaker 1: no way to see how the robot would get the
Speaker 1: roll of toilet paper balanced on its head in the
Speaker 1: first place. I'm pretty sure there's just some poor booth
Speaker 1: attendee behind the scenes whose job it was to place
Speaker 1: rolls of toilet paper on the self balancing robot before
Speaker 1: it would wheel out of its alcove to the rescue. Again,
Speaker 1: this was never really meant to come across as a
Speaker 1: real product. It was more of a marketing gimmick. It
Speaker 1: is too bad, however, because as we saw in getting
Speaker 1: hold of toilet paper was sometimes a challenge, and it
Speaker 1: would be really useful to have a robot bear do
Speaker 1: battle for you in grocery stores to get t P.
Speaker 1: But that was not meant to be Moving on in
Speaker 1: five two years after Genus rolled around at CS Commodore,
Speaker 1: the computer company that had been a real contender in
Speaker 1: the early days of home computers revealed a portable computer,
Speaker 1: and what's amazing is that this one did not weigh
Speaker 1: a ton. A lot of the early portable laptops were
Speaker 1: portable in name only. They typically had a handle like
Speaker 1: a briefcase, and it required a strong back to lug
Speaker 1: around places, But the Commodore l c D tipped the
Speaker 1: scales and a smelt five pounds or about two point
Speaker 1: three kilograms. The Commodore l c D looked a bit
Speaker 1: like a truncated laptop, or maybe like a typewriter connected
Speaker 1: to a small flip up l c D screen. That
Speaker 1: screen could display up to sixteen lines of text, and
Speaker 1: it could run a subset of software that was programmed
Speaker 1: for Commodore computers, but the l c D was not
Speaker 1: fully compatible with the Commodore desktop line. Had a Rockwell
Speaker 1: sixty five C one O two processor running at a
Speaker 1: blistering one mega hurts clock speed. It boasted thirty two
Speaker 1: kilobytes of memory, but it was expandable up to sixty
Speaker 1: four kilobytes. Now. While the company didn't announce a price
Speaker 1: for the planned product, analysts estimated that it would have
Speaker 1: likely retailed for around six hundred dollars, and in that
Speaker 1: would be let's see, for today's money, about one thousand,
Speaker 1: one forty bucks. This project became the victim of internal
Speaker 1: politics at Commodore, or so the story goes. So. The
Speaker 1: way the story works is that the CEO of Commodore,
Speaker 1: Marshall Smith, was talking to John Roach, the CEO of Tandy,
Speaker 1: another company that was selling computers, and during that conversation,
Speaker 1: Roach told Smith that l c D s were going
Speaker 1: nowhere fast baby. Subsequently, Smith decided to cancel the Commodore
Speaker 1: l c D project, along with all other l c
Speaker 1: D related projects at Commodore, and legend says that only
Speaker 1: five prototypes of the Commodore l c D were ever made,
Speaker 1: but only two of them have ever been officially verified.
Speaker 1: Let's jump around in time a bit more and head
Speaker 1: up town. I was actually at that ce S. One
Speaker 1: of the ways that companies will try to stand out
Speaker 1: from the crowd is to tap celebrities to announce or
Speaker 1: endorse products. I was not the celebrity. I'm not a
Speaker 1: celebrity at all. But these celebrities, these real celebrities, will
Speaker 1: make an appearance at ce S for what I believe
Speaker 1: could be described as here, let me check my notes,
Speaker 1: um yeah, a truckload of money, at least I assume. So.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have no idea how much Slash was
Speaker 1: paid to come on stage and two thousand eight to
Speaker 1: play the opening riff of Welcome to the Jungle for
Speaker 1: Bill Gates and then just disappear and smoke. But I
Speaker 1: bet he was paid way more than I made that
Speaker 1: entire year. Anyway, In eleven, a different celebrity showed off
Speaker 1: a product to all her little monsters. Yep, Lady Gaga
Speaker 1: was at c s Inn. I'm actually really upset I
Speaker 1: didn't get to go to the event where she announced this.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to see it. I wasn't terribly familiar
Speaker 1: with Lady Gaga, but I knew spectacle when I heard it,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately I was elsewhere. Anyway, she was partnering with
Speaker 1: Polaroid to allegedly design and then unveil the g L
Speaker 1: twenty glasses, a pair of very boxy looking sunglasses with
Speaker 1: a built in camera and a digital display that was
Speaker 1: also built into the frames. And I guess that with these,
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga could become the Papa Rozzie. Oh lah ah,
Speaker 1: poker face there, I've exhausted my Lady Gaga knowledge. Anyway,
Speaker 1: While Lady Gaga could wear the glasses and look fashionably weird,
Speaker 1: I think most of us would just look weird wearing them.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't matter because a year later there were
Speaker 1: still no g L twenty glasses on the market. Polaroid
Speaker 1: claimed to still be planning a rollout, but another year
Speaker 1: went by, and another, and by fourteen, Lady Gaga had
Speaker 1: bid au Revoir to Polaroid and the two had parted ways,
Speaker 1: still no glasses. Lady Gaga's involvement with the project definitely
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention, but in the end, there
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be much of a payoff, and depending
Speaker 1: upon the terms of that partnership, it may have been
Speaker 1: a big loss for Polaroid, which I think is a
Speaker 1: shame because I still have a soft spot for Polaroid cameras.
Speaker 1: We've got more gadgets that never made it to prime
Speaker 1: time coming up, but first let's take a quick akee
Speaker 1: and now for the that Smells funny category for c
Speaker 1: E S gadgets that never went anywhere. And I'm being
Speaker 1: literal here because I want to chat about the I
Speaker 1: smell from the company Digita Sense. Yeah, this was a
Speaker 1: real thing. I think of this as sort of the
Speaker 1: Internet generation version of smellow Vision. This one made the
Speaker 1: news back in two thousand one, so this was way
Speaker 1: before I ever went to c E S. And I'm
Speaker 1: sorry about that, because I wish I could have seen
Speaker 1: it in action. The device looked like a little pod
Speaker 1: with a shark fin like protrusion, and it had vents
Speaker 1: through which sense could pump. The idea is that you
Speaker 1: would load this thing up with some cartridges filled with
Speaker 1: scented oils, and the device would heat up specific oils
Speaker 1: before using a fan to blow the smell out of
Speaker 1: the sense. By heating different combinations of those oils, it
Speaker 1: could produce different sense and it would connect via USB
Speaker 1: to a computer. Now, just imagine the possibilities. You're on
Speaker 1: your computer, you're checking out possible vacation destinations online, and
Speaker 1: you're looking at a beach in Hawaii, and then your
Speaker 1: nostrils detect the scent of an ocean breeze. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: even a hint of coconut there. Or maybe you're playing
Speaker 1: a video game and you're rushing through a burning building
Speaker 1: and you can actually smell something that resembles would smoke,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're looking at an ad for cookies and
Speaker 1: you smell I mean cookies. You know, it definitely falls
Speaker 1: on the gimmicky side, But at the same time you
Speaker 1: can kind of see how incorporating smells into other computer
Speaker 1: activities could really increase a sense of immersion. The team
Speaker 1: behind the ice Smell included Joel Lloyd Bellinson and Dexter Smith,
Speaker 1: both of whom had backgrounds in business. They envisioned a
Speaker 1: database of smells with an algorithm that would best match
Speaker 1: sense to whatever it was the computer was, you know, encountering,
Speaker 1: so that way you would have a relevant smell. So
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just have, oh, that smells like burned rubber
Speaker 1: while I'm looking at daisies. That would make no sense now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. They also envisioned a world in which people
Speaker 1: would need to purchase refills for those scented oil cartridges,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to how printer companies really count on
Speaker 1: you having to order lots of new printer toner cartridges.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for the team, the idea received a little
Speaker 1: more than ridicule, even for the name I Smell. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind they were launching this or trying to
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, That was two years before Apple
Speaker 1: had even launched the iPod, so they were actually anticipating
Speaker 1: the eye trend. The company failed to release anything to
Speaker 1: market due to a distinct lack of consumer interest, and
Speaker 1: it faded away, and it really stinks. How about another
Speaker 1: category now, This one could be called the old bait
Speaker 1: and switch, or in this case, the belt and switch.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about Belty, which was one of those
Speaker 1: weird gadgets that gets a lot of buzz because you know,
Speaker 1: it's not another big screen TV or fitness tracker. That's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons a lot of these gadgets get
Speaker 1: a lot of coverage. It's not just that they're weird,
Speaker 1: it's that they stand out because it's not yet another
Speaker 1: version of something that we see all the time. BELTI
Speaker 1: appeared in and it was a smart belt. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the thing that holds up your trousers. BELTI was supposed
Speaker 1: to be able to make automatic adjustments all on its own,
Speaker 1: tightening or loosening as the occasion demands, such as when
Speaker 1: you go from sitting down to standing up or vice versa.
Speaker 1: Small motors inside the buckle would activate and increase or
Speaker 1: decrease the tension on the belt accompanying the smart belt
Speaker 1: was of course an app, and together belt and app
Speaker 1: would track activity and give you a running tab on
Speaker 1: your waistline, just in case you were worried that you
Speaker 1: were starting to feel a little too good about yourself.
Speaker 1: And it was going to market for around four hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: This version of BELTI, however, failed to materialize beyond the
Speaker 1: demo models that shows like c S, it was supposed
Speaker 1: to go to market later, and instead the Belty that
Speaker 1: would ultimately come out was a very different device. You
Speaker 1: can buy a Belty today, but it is a ratchet
Speaker 1: style belt, so you can make minor adjustments, but you
Speaker 1: have to do so manually. There's no motorized buckle doing
Speaker 1: it for you. The smart part of the belt, the
Speaker 1: current Belty, is that it has a built in battery recharger,
Speaker 1: so you can charge your phone on your belt and
Speaker 1: plug your devices directly into the belt buckle. I guess
Speaker 1: to give them more juice. Now, My guess is that
Speaker 1: this recharging battery and the belt is itself a lithium
Speaker 1: ion battery and noing how those can sometimes be a
Speaker 1: little dodgy. I'd be a bit hesitant to strap one
Speaker 1: right up against my pants. I mean it's probably okay, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, phones don't usually spontaneously combust unless it's the
Speaker 1: Samsung Galaxy Notes seven. And yeah, I'm gonna skip BELTI
Speaker 1: but hey, Jonathan, I hear you ask. Yes, that's right,
Speaker 1: I can hear you. How about you talk about a
Speaker 1: product that was demonstrably a bad idea and that is
Speaker 1: why it never came to market. Okay, I guess I will.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Mattel Aristotle because who boy? Was
Speaker 1: that a bad idea and the reaction to it would
Speaker 1: ultimately lead Mattel to cancel launch plans for this device.
Speaker 1: Mattel unveiled the gadget at c E S And if
Speaker 1: you really want an easy way to describe this thing,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is say it's Alexa, but
Speaker 1: you know, for kids, shout out to the Hudsucker proxy
Speaker 1: for that one. Anyway, it was a smart home assistant
Speaker 1: similar to Amazon Echo or Google Home. Bundled with the
Speaker 1: smart speaker device was a camera, and the whole package
Speaker 1: was supposed to retail for three dollars. The back end
Speaker 1: of the system included stuff like image recognition algorithms that
Speaker 1: could recognize specific things within a child's room. Those specific things,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll surprise no one could include other Mattel toys.
Speaker 1: I'm going to paint a picture for you. Not the
Speaker 1: Mattel ever said this, but this is just something that
Speaker 1: I imagined when I was reading up on it. So
Speaker 1: think for a moment that you're a little kid and
Speaker 1: you're in your room, and then suddenly the smart robot
Speaker 1: that lives in a speaker says to you, Hey, little
Speaker 1: so and so, how about you go pick up that
Speaker 1: Hot Wheels car and play with it? Room? Room? That
Speaker 1: sure is fun, isn't it. Man? And you know what
Speaker 1: helps would be fun if you had the super Ultra
Speaker 1: Deluxe Stunt Spectacular Hot Wheels set. Then that car would
Speaker 1: go really fast and you would be the most super
Speaker 1: awesome cool kid in the universe. Hey, how about we
Speaker 1: ask Santa for that this year. Yeah, that's a great idea,
Speaker 1: you had, so and so. All right, So I'm definitely
Speaker 1: taking some major poetic license here, but you get to
Speaker 1: where I'm going right, The idea being this could easily
Speaker 1: become a tool that Mattel could have used to try
Speaker 1: and convince kids to get more Mattel toys. Numerous critics
Speaker 1: also pointed out the other very glaring problems with privacy
Speaker 1: that a connected device complete with webcam would represent for parents.
Speaker 1: And the fact is, Mattel did plan for the smart
Speaker 1: device to allow you to do stuff like place orders
Speaker 1: for things like diapers, for example, because Aristotle could switch
Speaker 1: from child mode, where it would play with kids, to
Speaker 1: adult mode, and then to up into Amazon's Alexa Assistant. Now,
Speaker 1: I found all of this particularly surprising, not because the
Speaker 1: company would try to tap into that market that I
Speaker 1: think was inevitable, but rather because Mattel had already been
Speaker 1: burned pretty badly with a Barbie doll called Hello Barbie
Speaker 1: from earlier on. This WiFi connected doll was vulnerable to
Speaker 1: being hijacked. According to a security researcher named Matt Jakubowski,
Speaker 1: they could turn into a surveillance tool and spy on kids,
Speaker 1: and that is beyond terrifying and so, faced with some
Speaker 1: very tough questions, including some coming from politicians, Mattel decided
Speaker 1: to scuttle the plans for Aristotle later in Alright, I've
Speaker 1: talked about failed products, marketing, gimmicks, and stuff that falls
Speaker 1: somewhere in between, But how about something that was called
Speaker 1: a scam. I mean, that's what some people said the
Speaker 1: Phantom console was all about. And I've talked about the
Speaker 1: Phantom and other episodes recently when I talked about Google Stadia.
Speaker 1: In two thousand four, the company behind the Phantom in
Speaker 1: Phinium Labs, showed off the Phantom at c e S
Speaker 1: at the Windows Embedded Devices stand only it wasn't switched
Speaker 1: on or connected to anything. It was really, you know,
Speaker 1: a box. At this point, there was already speculation online
Speaker 1: that in Phinium Labs wasn't totally on the up and up.
Speaker 1: There were message boards filled with threads by users who
Speaker 1: claimed to have visited the listed office address for the
Speaker 1: company only to find unoccupied space. There were investigations into
Speaker 1: the people behind the company, but the fact that the
Speaker 1: company was part of c e S and associated with
Speaker 1: Microsoft made people wonder if perhaps it was legit. Despite
Speaker 1: those early misgivings. At c e S two thousand five,
Speaker 1: in Phinium Labs would appear at the Nvidio booth. Visitors
Speaker 1: to the booth had a chance to actually play games
Speaker 1: on the console, but those games had already been installed
Speaker 1: on the device, which meant no one can see how
Speaker 1: long it would take to download a full game to
Speaker 1: the Phantom. That's what the Phantom was meant to be.
Speaker 1: It had no optical drive. You were to download over
Speaker 1: a broadband connection all the games you wanted to play
Speaker 1: on it. It also meant that people would point out
Speaker 1: that this made the Phantom no different from any other
Speaker 1: kind of computer, because there are already computers that run
Speaker 1: the games that were running on the Phantom. So, as
Speaker 1: far as anyone knew, the Phantom so far consisted of
Speaker 1: a fabricated case that could be around an otherwise mundane
Speaker 1: collection of PC parts. The Phantom missed launch date after
Speaker 1: launch date, and eventually it was clear that it was
Speaker 1: never going to come out at all. Whether it was
Speaker 1: all a hoax from the beginning or it was just
Speaker 1: a case of a product languishing in development remains an
Speaker 1: open question. I'd like to think that the team working
Speaker 1: on the Phantom were sincere in their efforts. I have
Speaker 1: suspicions about some of the business leaders, but I also
Speaker 1: suspect that the engineers at Infennium Labs were really trying
Speaker 1: to make a good, robust system. Infennium Labs would eventually
Speaker 1: produce actual products, but they fell into categories like keyboards
Speaker 1: and stuff, not actual consoles. One thing I've seen at
Speaker 1: numerous c e S shows are devices that claim to
Speaker 1: read your brain waves and generate a response based on them.
Speaker 1: That response could be anything from an app encouraging you
Speaker 1: to relax if it senses that you know you're being
Speaker 1: really tense and anxious, or it could be a game
Speaker 1: where your concentration affects what's going on. I'm reminded of
Speaker 1: a game called mind Flex that I saw at ce
Speaker 1: S one year. This one actually came out, so this
Speaker 1: is something that did make it to market. This was
Speaker 1: a toy from Mattel, or at least you know, distributed
Speaker 1: by Mattel, that used a column of air to suspend
Speaker 1: a ping pong ball as if ball were levitating. A
Speaker 1: fan inside the game's base would provide the column of air,
Speaker 1: and you would wear a headset and by focusing, you
Speaker 1: could cause that column of air to raise or lower
Speaker 1: the ball. Essentially, what you're doing is changing the RPM
Speaker 1: speed of the fan that's generating the column of air. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a rotating playing field would introduce various obstacles, and only
Speaker 1: by making the ball move to the correct height would
Speaker 1: you be able to get through all the obstacles. The
Speaker 1: headset relies on e G. Readings of brain waves, or
Speaker 1: at least that's the claim. Now there's some disagreement about
Speaker 1: whether or not it really works the way they claim
Speaker 1: it does, or if it just presents the illusion of control.
Speaker 1: But I don't see why it wouldn't be at least
Speaker 1: theoretically possible assuming you had decent sensors because e G.
Speaker 1: S you know, picking up e G. Signals through the skull.
Speaker 1: That's a little tricky. But anyway, let's get back to
Speaker 1: what I really wanted to cover, and that's the Harry
Speaker 1: mind Blink, which in some ways sounds similar like the
Speaker 1: mind flex. This was a device that had a wearable
Speaker 1: component to it. You would put on what looked like
Speaker 1: a plastic headband, had a wire attached to it that
Speaker 1: would lead to an atari console and you try to
Speaker 1: control a video game using not your thoughts. Despite the
Speaker 1: name mind link, you weren't, you know, focusing. Instead, you
Speaker 1: were using the muscles in your forehead. The band had
Speaker 1: infrared sensors that would pick up the movement of those muscles,
Speaker 1: so by tensing or relaxing your forehead, you could send
Speaker 1: commands as if you were holding some sort of controller. Uh,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't work with just any game. It's not like
Speaker 1: you could hook this up to an to play any title.
Speaker 1: They had specific titles made for this device in particular. Uh,
Speaker 1: the inputs are pretty primitive, so they were more like
Speaker 1: the type of controls you would have with a paddle
Speaker 1: based game like Breakout or Pong or something like that.
Speaker 1: The mind Link was supposed to come out in nine four,
Speaker 1: but you know it didn't now. At the time, Atari
Speaker 1: was also dealing with the total collapse of the home
Speaker 1: video game market because the industry had suffered a catastrophic
Speaker 1: failure in nineteen eight three due to many different factors,
Speaker 1: including a saturation of the market and some supremely bad
Speaker 1: business decisions, along with a lot of just garbage systems
Speaker 1: and games. And no one was coming out of this
Speaker 1: sparkling clean. Everybody had made some dumb decisions leading up
Speaker 1: to this, and so the mind Link was never actually
Speaker 1: meant to be. Besides, I hear a lot of users
Speaker 1: would actually get really tired after using it for just
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes because they were scrunching up their
Speaker 1: foreheads like crazy, just to get through a game which
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like much fun. Okay, we've got some more
Speaker 1: examples to chat about in a bit, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. Of course, not every gadget that
Speaker 1: fails to make it to market debuts at c S.
Speaker 1: In fact, some companies preferred to announce their latest innovations
Speaker 1: well outside the c e S trade show window because
Speaker 1: it can be pretty hard to get noticed in all
Speaker 1: the hoop la at c e S. And there are
Speaker 1: a few examples of concepts and prototypes that we learned
Speaker 1: about elsewhere that likewise never became a product that you
Speaker 1: could actually buy. So I thought it would cover a
Speaker 1: couple of the more notable ones we learned about these
Speaker 1: examples outside the c e S show floor. And sometimes
Speaker 1: the stuff we see announced is coming out of a
Speaker 1: company that is going through a tumultuous time, and the
Speaker 1: reason that the gadget never makes it beyond the showroom
Speaker 1: floor is because of big changes inside the company in
Speaker 1: an effort for it to remain relevant. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what happened to the Commodore l c D, It's kind
Speaker 1: of what happened to the Atari mind Link, and it's
Speaker 1: also kind of what happened to the Palm Folio, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a genuinely neat idea back in the day.
Speaker 1: As the name tells you, the device came from Palm Incorporated.
Speaker 1: Palm was known for being a leader in personal digital
Speaker 1: assistance back in the day, and for those young uns
Speaker 1: among you, a personal digital assistant in those days was
Speaker 1: kind of like a primitive smartphone, only without the phone part.
Speaker 1: You would use one to manage your contacts, take notes,
Speaker 1: keep your calendar, that kind of thing. And typically you
Speaker 1: would physically connect these early PDAs to a computer, usually
Speaker 1: using some sort of proprietary cable or cradle, and you
Speaker 1: would synchronize data from a computer program to your p
Speaker 1: d A. But by two thousand seven, when Palm announced
Speaker 1: the Folio, Palm had progressed from the simple PDAs of
Speaker 1: the past and was not making smartphones like the Trio. Now.
Speaker 1: These smartphones catered more to working professionals than to the
Speaker 1: mainstream crowd, kind of like BlackBerry. Palm was a brand
Speaker 1: used mostly by white collar executive types plus some nerdy
Speaker 1: tech journalist types that I know, though there was some
Speaker 1: adoption beyond that niche market. One such line of smartphones
Speaker 1: from Palm as I mentioned was the Trio line of devices,
Speaker 1: and the Folio was meant as a companion for handsets
Speaker 1: like the Trio. The Folio was a very small laptop,
Speaker 1: categorized as a sub notebook. In fact, if it had
Speaker 1: just come out a couple of years later, we probably
Speaker 1: would have called it a netbook. The computer didn't have
Speaker 1: super hefty specs. It was meant to be a versatile,
Speaker 1: lightweight device that had a long battery life. It used
Speaker 1: Lennox as its operating system. It had two hundred fifty
Speaker 1: six megabytes of memory, a four hundred sixteen mega Hurts processor,
Speaker 1: and an l c D display. It was meant to
Speaker 1: be paired with a smartphone. It had WiFi, what functions
Speaker 1: like email would work in concert with the phone, rather
Speaker 1: than going from the Folio to the WiFi network directly.
Speaker 1: It was a bit of an odd duck in that regard.
Speaker 1: Palm marketed the device as an alternative to heavier laptop
Speaker 1: computers and pointed out that pairing it with a smartphone
Speaker 1: would give users Internet access even if there were no
Speaker 1: WiFi networks available in their area. The pitch was really
Speaker 1: toward business users who travel a lot, as the device
Speaker 1: suspects didn't fill many people with confidence that you could
Speaker 1: use it to do other stuff like, you know, watch
Speaker 1: videos or anything along those lines. But then that's not
Speaker 1: the purpose that Palm was pushing it for. The Folio
Speaker 1: never made it two stores. Palm actually canceled it, choosing
Speaker 1: instead to focus on refreshing its smartphone technologies. Palm was
Speaker 1: in a bit of an existential crisis at the time,
Speaker 1: with analysts suspecting that the company would either go out
Speaker 1: of business or accept some other companies offered to buy
Speaker 1: it out. In two thousand eight, Palm showed off the
Speaker 1: web OS operating system that's web OS and introduced the
Speaker 1: Palm Pre smartphone at that year's ce S. That's the
Speaker 1: product that actually did make it to market, but the
Speaker 1: Pre failed to gain much traction in a market that
Speaker 1: was already being dominated by Apple and the iPhone. And
Speaker 1: it didn't help that Palm had signed an exclusive deal
Speaker 1: with Sprint as the mobile carrier that limited the amount
Speaker 1: of people that Palm could reach because it was only
Speaker 1: for Sprint customers. In Hewlett Packard announced it was acquiring
Speaker 1: Palm for one point to billion dollars in an all
Speaker 1: cash deal. HP would later end all support for Palm
Speaker 1: and web os devices, and it seemed like Palm was
Speaker 1: well and truly dead. But in a company called TCL
Speaker 1: revealed it had acquired the Palm brand name, and so
Speaker 1: the name lives on, though you could make an argument
Speaker 1: that there's very little connective tissue to the old Palm company.
Speaker 1: Tc L, by the way, was one of the companies
Speaker 1: that this past c e S showing off concept smartphones
Speaker 1: with expanding O LED screens, kind of similar to the
Speaker 1: LG rollable. While we're on the subject of innovative portable
Speaker 1: computing devices, let's talk about the Microsoft Courier. Like the Folio,
Speaker 1: this was a concept that we learned about outside of
Speaker 1: c e S, with most reports about the prototype device
Speaker 1: appearing in late two thousand nine. This predated Apple's launch
Speaker 1: of the iPad, which makes it even more impressive. Really,
Speaker 1: the idea was for a dual screen portable computer device
Speaker 1: similar to a tablet, but really more of a booklet.
Speaker 1: The device could fold into a closed position like a book,
Speaker 1: with the two screens facing one another. The device included
Speaker 1: a touch screen that users could interact with using either
Speaker 1: their finger or a stylus. The pitch for Courier was
Speaker 1: that this was meant to be a device to allow
Speaker 1: for content creation. It was meant for creatives who had
Speaker 1: less of an emphasis on traditional productivity applications. And that said,
Speaker 1: it as distinct from Microsoft's mainstream strategy. It ran on
Speaker 1: a modified version of Windows, and ultimately the fact that
Speaker 1: it didn't fall right in line with Microsoft product strategy
Speaker 1: kind of doomed the courier. Also, a different team inside
Speaker 1: Microsoft was working to develop a Windows variant for tablet computers,
Speaker 1: which would represent a forked development path, and that in
Speaker 1: general is a bad thing if you want a cohesive strategy.
Speaker 1: By Microsoft had killed the project. Now, I mentioned Razor
Speaker 1: and its Project Hazel, which is a smart mask within
Speaker 1: n certification that we we don't really expect to see
Speaker 1: come to market. There's also Project Brooklyn, the smart gaming
Speaker 1: chair concept that has a rollable display that extends from
Speaker 1: the back of the chair over the head of the
Speaker 1: person who's sitting in the chair. Then it stretches the
Speaker 1: screen out right in front of them at head level.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to see either of those
Speaker 1: in the real world, at least not in those forms.
Speaker 1: But Razor has a history of doing this, not that
Speaker 1: I think the company is trying to pull a fast
Speaker 1: one or anything. It's often using some pretty ambitious designs
Speaker 1: to help push the general industry forward or to propose
Speaker 1: alternatives to how things are traditionally done. The fact that
Speaker 1: these projects might not ever hit the consumer market is
Speaker 1: kind of a drag. But in the process of creating
Speaker 1: these projects, Razor is pushing designers and engineers to think
Speaker 1: beyond their normal parameters, and that can often lead to
Speaker 1: technologies we actually will see out in the wild, although
Speaker 1: they often do not resemble the audacious projects that spawned
Speaker 1: those technologies. Take Project Christine, for example. This was a
Speaker 1: really cool idea that Razor floated in two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: It was a PC design with an incredibly modular approach.
Speaker 1: So imagine a stand. This is your base computer unit,
Speaker 1: and in the stand you could plug various modules, like
Speaker 1: a module that has a CPU in it, or one
Speaker 1: that has a specific GPU, or maybe it's a power
Speaker 1: supply module or a memory module or its storage. You
Speaker 1: can mix and match. You could create a customized PC
Speaker 1: to your liking, and you wouldn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: stuff that otherwise is a big part of building your
Speaker 1: own PC, like is this processor compatible with this motherboard,
Speaker 1: all that would be taken care of for you, and
Speaker 1: the modular design means it would be easy to swap
Speaker 1: out components. So let's say your graphics card is getting
Speaker 1: a little bit long in the tooth. You could unplug
Speaker 1: that module from your base tower and swap in a
Speaker 1: new GPU module or maybe multiple GPUs, and each module
Speaker 1: would have its own cooling system. According to Razor, it
Speaker 1: was active liquid cooling, and it also had noise cancelation
Speaker 1: so it would run quietly. What it did not have
Speaker 1: is a release date. And again this isn't to really
Speaker 1: lay fall at Razor's feet. A project as ambitious as
Speaker 1: Christine would require buy in from more than just consumers.
Speaker 1: Razor would have to partner with the various companies that
Speaker 1: were making GPUs and CPUs and memory cards and power
Speaker 1: supplies and all that other stuff. There would need to
Speaker 1: be a coordinated effort to build out modules that were
Speaker 1: compatible with the system. And you know that just didn't happen.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of inertia to overcome in the PC
Speaker 1: space to make something like Christine a reality. I think
Speaker 1: it was a really interesting idea, one that could be
Speaker 1: transformational if enough companies agreed to make components that would
Speaker 1: fit the modular standard. But I'm also not surprised that
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of buy in on that front,
Speaker 1: because pretty much everyone wants to be the one to
Speaker 1: define the standard rather than the one who has to
Speaker 1: conform to the standards that were made by somebody else.
Speaker 1: Another Razor project that wild crowds but did not transition
Speaker 1: to a consumer product was project Ariana, a projector. This
Speaker 1: one was really wild. So this projector had two three
Speaker 1: D cameras that would actually be used to scan the
Speaker 1: room you had it in, so that way it would
Speaker 1: create the perfect projection. And then when it was time
Speaker 1: for you, to, say, play a game, the projector would
Speaker 1: communicate with that game and effectively extend your viewing area
Speaker 1: beyond the borders of your display. So you're still playing
Speaker 1: your game on your computer looking at your computer screen,
Speaker 1: but the projector extends that view beyond what you see
Speaker 1: on the screen, so you can kind of see, you know,
Speaker 1: beyond the edges of the frame. It's really an interesting notion.
Speaker 1: The projector would also create interesting lighting effects to coordinate
Speaker 1: with the game and enhance your experience. It really did
Speaker 1: sound super nifty, I'm sad this one never really made
Speaker 1: it beyond the conceptual stage because it sounds truly immersive. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it would also be a little on the unfair side.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're able to extend your view beyond
Speaker 1: what most people can see, maybe then you could, if
Speaker 1: you're playing a competitive game, see players before they could
Speaker 1: put possibly see you. I guess that might be a
Speaker 1: thing that could be an issue. But how about Project Valerie.
Speaker 1: This was a Razor concept laptop that featured not one,
Speaker 1: not two, but three screens. The screens would sit in
Speaker 1: a stack, so you could use it as a single
Speaker 1: screen laptop, or folding arms could extend a pair of
Speaker 1: extra displays, one to either side of the central screen.
Speaker 1: Razor called it a way to create surround view with
Speaker 1: a resolution of eleven thousand, five twenty by two thousand sixty.
Speaker 1: That's a crazy resolution. They also called it twelve K
Speaker 1: because it would be a four K screen of four
Speaker 1: K screen and a four K screen. You could get
Speaker 1: a real panoramic view of a game this way, or
Speaker 1: maybe you could use it so that you're playing a
Speaker 1: game on one screen, you're looking at BS over at
Speaker 1: Twitch on a second screen, and then you're monitoring chat
Speaker 1: on your third screen, which would make this laptop the
Speaker 1: portable video game streamer rig of Dreams and wonders. But
Speaker 1: Valerie also never came to market. There are some multi
Speaker 1: screen laptops out there these days, but they tend to
Speaker 1: be in a very different form factor than what we
Speaker 1: saw with the Valerie concept. For example, the Asus r
Speaker 1: O g ZI Furus Duo fifteen, which has a main
Speaker 1: display and then just mounted above where the keyboard is,
Speaker 1: there's a little hinged system that tilts up a bit
Speaker 1: where you have a touch screen display. That touch screen
Speaker 1: is very wide, but it's also very short, so it's
Speaker 1: not like a true it's not a second screen that
Speaker 1: that mirrors the size of your primary screen. It's uh
Speaker 1: an additional workspace, really a touch screen workspace. I don't
Speaker 1: know how useful it is. I don't know how well
Speaker 1: it works as an extension of your main screen, but
Speaker 1: it is interesting that we're seeing some actual consumer product
Speaker 1: versions of a laptop that has more than one screen.
Speaker 1: It might not be the enormous beast that Valerie was,
Speaker 1: but it's a step in that direction. And that's all
Speaker 1: I've got for today's episode. Clearly, there are countless other
Speaker 1: examples of products that were announced at one point but
Speaker 1: never ever made it to the consumer market. Uh. They're
Speaker 1: probably a lot more failures out there than successes. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's tons that we never heard of, and
Speaker 1: that's just the nature of things. If you're trying something new,
Speaker 1: it's not always going to work. But I do like
Speaker 1: the spirit of innovation. I like the creativity. I like
Speaker 1: the audacity of some of these projects that uh never
Speaker 1: made it. I'm very curious what what the world would
Speaker 1: be like if the I smell had really taken off.
Speaker 1: I hate to think of what some of my favorite
Speaker 1: websites would smell like. I guess I don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that. If you guys have to do questions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me and let me know what you
Speaker 1: would like me to talk about, whether it's a company,
Speaker 1: a trend in technology, a specific tech and how it works,
Speaker 1: or anything like that. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an i Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
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