Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: in there everyone, and welcome to text stuff. I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and I'm Lauren and I'm tired. Why are you tired, Jonathan?
Speaker 1: Because I just got back from last wages. I went
Speaker 1: the c e S two thousand fourteen in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 1: C e S, of course, formerly known as the Consumer
Speaker 1: Electronics Show, now known only as c e S, the
Speaker 1: biggest trade show on the face of the planet, possibly
Speaker 1: in the Milky Way. It's where lots of different electronics
Speaker 1: companies come together to show off the stuff what they
Speaker 1: have and some of the stuff what they do not
Speaker 1: have yet but think it might be pretty cool perhaps
Speaker 1: in the future. Yeah. So one thing I want to
Speaker 1: say right at the very top of this show is
Speaker 1: that some of the stuff you see it's c S.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of our listeners probably have never
Speaker 1: been to a ce S. You probably because it's a
Speaker 1: professional organization. Yep, it's it's it's industry to be either
Speaker 1: media or a buyer for a company or etcetera, or
Speaker 1: an exhibitor of some sort. Industry associate is what some
Speaker 1: of them are called, UM, which I think is the
Speaker 1: most vaguely defined of all the different groups. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a place where they'll show off stuff, not just
Speaker 1: the stuff that's coming out. They'll show off stuff that
Speaker 1: has already been out but maybe hasn't hit widespread notice yet.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's stuff that you've heard about for a
Speaker 1: few months but you haven't had a chance to actually
Speaker 1: see or get your hands on it. So some of
Speaker 1: the things that I actually have in my list of
Speaker 1: stuff that I saw and personally experienced while it's c
Speaker 1: e S. If you've been paying really close attention to
Speaker 1: the tech news, you'll be like, well, I am pretty
Speaker 1: sure I heard about that in the spring of Why
Speaker 1: are you talking about now? Well, I'm talking about now
Speaker 1: because now is when I finally got my grip a
Speaker 1: little hands on it. So now, when I went to
Speaker 1: ce S, I was specifically going in my capacity as
Speaker 1: host of another show called Forward Thinking. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you guys have not checked out Forward Thinking, you should
Speaker 1: go do that. We also have an audio podcast, and uh,
Speaker 1: not only am I on that audio podcast, but Lauren
Speaker 1: you're on that audio podcast too. That is extremely correct.
Speaker 1: Also joining us on that podcast is Mr Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: who is a writer for the video series. Yes, he's
Speaker 1: one of the In fact, I would call him the
Speaker 1: head writer. Yes, And so I went there kind of
Speaker 1: looking at technologies that I thought were sort of in
Speaker 1: that vein bringing the future into the present, which meant
Speaker 1: that I didn't spend as much time looking at a
Speaker 1: lot of the technologies that really dominate some of the
Speaker 1: main floors at c S well, although also I would
Speaker 1: argue that some of the main technologies that dominate the
Speaker 1: floors of CEES are things that we have seen so
Speaker 1: frequently and just add infinitem that it gets to a
Speaker 1: point where it's like, I don't care about your four
Speaker 1: K television or your new smartphone or your new tablet.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't if it doesn't do something different, why
Speaker 1: why am I looking at? And even the break dancing
Speaker 1: stuff is getting a little old, folks, let me tell you,
Speaker 1: um no, but you know you're totally right right, Like
Speaker 1: you'll hear that after every CES about a I think
Speaker 1: the day after c e S is over, you hear
Speaker 1: all the journalists lamenting like where was all the cool
Speaker 1: stuff now? Not that four K televisions aren't cool, they
Speaker 1: are gorgeous, but you know when Here's the other thing
Speaker 1: is that you know, you go to five or six
Speaker 1: enormous booths. These boots are dominated by these four K
Speaker 1: televisions that are everywhere and every kind of shape and
Speaker 1: size that you can imagine. Some of them are even flexible.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about one of those. Um they are, uh,
Speaker 1: they're really cool when you see them, but after you
Speaker 1: see a few of them, it feels like you're just
Speaker 1: seeing the same thing repeatedly, and it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: which uh manufacturer you start with. And this isn't to
Speaker 1: say that all four K televisions are equal, but just
Speaker 1: that after you've seen a few, it feels like you're
Speaker 1: seeing the same thing as place after place. So let
Speaker 1: me let me explain to you guys before we go
Speaker 1: into some of the specifics of the technology that I saw,
Speaker 1: what it is kind of like to go to a
Speaker 1: c E S. It sounds like like a calming spa
Speaker 1: that you go to to sort of collect yourself. And well,
Speaker 1: let me let me shatter the illusions you have, Lauren.
Speaker 1: First of all, so the main hallways at CEES are
Speaker 1: at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which has three point
Speaker 1: one million square feet of exhibition space. So lots of space.
Speaker 1: Right that, that area is divided into three main halls.
Speaker 1: You have the South Hall, which actually has two floors,
Speaker 1: both of which are huge. You have the Central Hall
Speaker 1: that happens to be where all the really big name
Speaker 1: manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic, LG, Samsung, those are all in
Speaker 1: the Central Hall, I think. You have the North Hall,
Speaker 1: which is mostly automotive tech and then some other stuff.
Speaker 1: But beyond that you also have space at the l
Speaker 1: v h which is now called the Las Vegas Hotel,
Speaker 1: used to be the last Vegas Hilton, so they've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of booths there. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: international booths, but they have other stuff there as well.
Speaker 1: Then you have the Venetian and the Sands Expo Center.
Speaker 1: At the Venetian itself, within the towers, you have a
Speaker 1: lot of the audio uh manufacturers, because it turns out
Speaker 1: that showing your super high fidelity audio system in the
Speaker 1: middle of a noisy convention hall doesn't necessarily give a
Speaker 1: person a real sense of what it's capable of doing,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of them that will have
Speaker 1: a suite at the Venetian. Then you have the Sands
Speaker 1: Expo Center, which is another convention center that has uh
Speaker 1: it had the let's see that one had the Eureka
Speaker 1: Park area. Wearable tech was there or they actually call
Speaker 1: it fashion tech, which that was fun, had fun there,
Speaker 1: and then robotics. There was some robotics stuff there as well.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's it's so what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: this is spread out throughout basically the entirety of Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: at least the Strip. Well yeah, yeah, there's other parts
Speaker 1: of Las Vegas than the Strip, I'm aware, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but the Strip itself is dominated and if you even
Speaker 1: if you are talking about all the different exhibition space.
Speaker 1: After hours, there are lots of meetings and parties. I
Speaker 1: didn't go to. I went to one meet up slash
Speaker 1: party thing. It was the Discovery Digital Slash Revision three
Speaker 1: meet up because I'm part of that, so I went
Speaker 1: to that, but I didn't really go to any of
Speaker 1: the other parties this time. I did go to some
Speaker 1: of the press events, but those were really to give
Speaker 1: you an opportunity to see some of the smaller companies
Speaker 1: that otherwise you might overlook because you're, you know, waiting
Speaker 1: between two booths that are the size of your house.
Speaker 1: You might miss the one that's the size of a cubicle. Sure,
Speaker 1: And and just to give you an idea of the
Speaker 1: scope of the number of people that go every year.
Speaker 1: UM total attendance last year was a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: two thousand, seven hundred and fifty nine people. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would I would suspect that for two thousand fourteen was
Speaker 1: probably about the same. Those are the jections that I've seen.
Speaker 1: I've seen projections around. Yeah, it doesn't. It didn't feel
Speaker 1: like it was more crowded to me, So I felt
Speaker 1: like and most it was probably, you know, around the
Speaker 1: same number. So let's talk about some of the stuff
Speaker 1: I actually saw and some of the stuff I didn't
Speaker 1: see but happened at CES. Because here's the thing. As
Speaker 1: one person, it is impossible to see everything. You're just
Speaker 1: not going to and and next year I'm hoping to
Speaker 1: be able to to go and help him out with that.
Speaker 1: That was sweet. If one of us could cover, like
Speaker 1: even if we're talking about still covering major sections, like
Speaker 1: one of us takes of the Nation and the other
Speaker 1: one takes the Las Vegas Convention Center, that's still means
Speaker 1: seeing a lot more than we would otherwise because you know,
Speaker 1: having one person to do all of it is really difficult.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the four K televisions. So four
Speaker 1: K that's essentially talking about you know, ultra high definition, right,
Speaker 1: so it's not exactly four times the resolution of a
Speaker 1: ten A d P television, but essentially like the biggest
Speaker 1: issue with four K TVs right now, I mean, apart
Speaker 1: from the fact that they're still fairly expensive. Although I
Speaker 1: think Visios announced a thousand dollar one. I think it's
Speaker 1: k TV, do not have the size information on it,
Speaker 1: but um, but being that they are the most popular
Speaker 1: TV manufacturer in the United States, this announcement supposedly has
Speaker 1: a bunch of other companies kind of scared. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't that long ago that four k's
Speaker 1: were just prototypes and they were saying, when it comes
Speaker 1: to market, it's gonna be a ten thousand, twelve thousand
Speaker 1: dollar television. Right Uh. Now, we're starting to see them
Speaker 1: get down in the one thousand to two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred dollar range for some of the quote unquote bargain brands,
Speaker 1: and then the more premium brands are probably closer to
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars, So still expensive, but at a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: You're talking, you know, about something that is within the
Speaker 1: reach of a much larger potential audience. But here's the
Speaker 1: caveat I would give all of you. Getting content for
Speaker 1: your four K television right now is a bit of
Speaker 1: a challenge. It is. Although Netflix had a really interesting
Speaker 1: announcement about that the show Did you hear about this?
Speaker 1: I did? I did? Netflix talked about streaming in four K? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they They said that House of Cards Season two will
Speaker 1: definitely be streaming in four K, and that every original
Speaker 1: Netflix series from here on out is going to be
Speaker 1: shot in four K UM. Furthermore, that Breaking Bad is
Speaker 1: going to be remastered and released for streaming in four
Speaker 1: K and UM. Basically after that, all of these smart
Speaker 1: TV companies on the show floor announced that they will
Speaker 1: be supporting a four K Netflix app in the future.
Speaker 1: And also we should point out that that a lot
Speaker 1: of these televisions can also upgrade and incoming image. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's like interlacing. You're you're adding more pixels into it,
Speaker 1: so you're artificially making it a higher definition picture. I
Speaker 1: will tell you that by looking at what you could
Speaker 1: certainly see the difference, like I've often said that between
Speaker 1: two K and four K, it's really hard for me
Speaker 1: to detect the difference. It's still true, but um, you
Speaker 1: can tell that's sharper. A four K television is definitely
Speaker 1: sharper than say, an HDTV. It did, however, bring up
Speaker 1: some concerns which I very Cattalie talked about with a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who was looking at the TVs with me,
Speaker 1: where she and I were focusing on the makeup of
Speaker 1: the people on screen because you could see where it
Speaker 1: was clumping. Oh, Jonathan, why would you? Why would you
Speaker 1: do that when you yourself are filmed and aren't you
Speaker 1: filmed in four K? For forward thinking, I am, and
Speaker 1: that's exactly why I was looking at it and pay
Speaker 1: because I was thinking, one day, the stuff I shoot
Speaker 1: could be on one of these screens, and this is
Speaker 1: what I'm going to look like. I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: maybe you shouldn't be catty about it, Cattie, not not
Speaker 1: about the person, but rather about the technology showing all
Speaker 1: the flaws. I'm saying, makeup karma, man, makeup car no, no no, no, no.
Speaker 1: I totally get that. I totally get that. Like I
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't want to be able to see
Speaker 1: all the pores of a person. I don't blame the
Speaker 1: person for the pores. I blame the technology. Um So
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit freaked out by that too. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that I need that much detail of realism
Speaker 1: when I'm watching. I don't know, can you are? Let
Speaker 1: me let me let me give you a title of
Speaker 1: a show, and I want you to imagine that title
Speaker 1: that show in ultra high definition. Okay, Real Housewives of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Real Housewives of Atlanta, ultra high definition. Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: I think I think we're going to need a replacement host.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's that was one of those things where
Speaker 1: I can imagine it for certain things being incredible, like sports,
Speaker 1: forget it, sports sports. They had some sports footage showing
Speaker 1: on some of these TVs and it looked like you
Speaker 1: were on the field. I mean it was beautiful. And
Speaker 1: I'm not a big sports guy, but even I was
Speaker 1: getting excited seeing this kind of thing. And uh and
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't know, like like really really
Speaker 1: visually arresting films, like I could picture getting pretty excited
Speaker 1: about watching like a Julie Tamar movie on fork or
Speaker 1: or giermol Pan's Labyrinth and four K would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Or if you're a ridiculous stener like me, like a
Speaker 1: David Cronenberg film, that sounds the whole good, terrifying, wonderful.
Speaker 1: When you have to clean the viscera off the screen
Speaker 1: of your television, you know, it's truly aversive. Well. One
Speaker 1: of the TVs that I wanted to mention in particular
Speaker 1: was a Samsung eight five inch television that was bendable.
Speaker 1: They were they had a lead screen and it could bend, yeah,
Speaker 1: like bended the push of a button demand you could
Speaker 1: bend it. And the idea curve TVs, by the way,
Speaker 1: one of the big trends. Oh yeah, yeah, especially last year.
Speaker 1: I think that everyone was like, it's curved and people
Speaker 1: were like whatever, you know, how do I mount that
Speaker 1: on my wall? Um? But the idea of the curved
Speaker 1: screen gives you a wider viewing angle, right, because that's
Speaker 1: one of the problems with the flat screens that you
Speaker 1: start getting off to the side a little bit. And
Speaker 1: if you're like me, like like my living room and
Speaker 1: kitchen are next to each other, and that it's a
Speaker 1: very wide kind of room. So if I'm in the
Speaker 1: kitchen preparing something. I can see where the TV is,
Speaker 1: but I can't really see what's on it because of
Speaker 1: the angle I'm at curve TV, I would be able
Speaker 1: to see a little bit more, and so this one
Speaker 1: could actually go from flat to actual curve by pushing
Speaker 1: the button. And at first everyone thought this is just
Speaker 1: a pro type, it's just on display sea and then
Speaker 1: they announced that it was going to be on sale
Speaker 1: later this year. Yeah, second half, So that's something that
Speaker 1: that might have been one of those things where they
Speaker 1: were judging the response on the show floor deciding whether
Speaker 1: or not to go forward, or it could have just
Speaker 1: been that we were playing coy the whole time. I
Speaker 1: don't know. So yeah, TV is huge obviously, so I
Speaker 1: wanted to get that all the way because that's that's
Speaker 1: the thing that you're going to see the most of
Speaker 1: if you were to walk into, say the central hall.
Speaker 1: But let's move on. How about some of the more
Speaker 1: funky ones, because we had people actually right in and say,
Speaker 1: can you cover some of the strange tech that was
Speaker 1: out there? How about polarized contact lenses? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw that one in a vega. Yeah, it looks like
Speaker 1: if you were to look at the actual lens. They
Speaker 1: look like regular contact lenses. They're floating and solution, except
Speaker 1: they have like a little silver disc. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that it's a polarized contact lens that you wear
Speaker 1: in in you pair it with a pair of augmented
Speaker 1: reality glasses. All right, this isn't polarization with the purpose of,
Speaker 1: for example, UM cutting down on UV light the way
Speaker 1: that a pair of polarized sunglasses would be UM. This
Speaker 1: is this is specifically for watching tech, allowing you to
Speaker 1: focus on two different focal ranges simultaneously. So and and
Speaker 1: the way that it works I think, uh was that
Speaker 1: if you have a filters in these micro lenses, they
Speaker 1: can focus the display of a of a digital readout
Speaker 1: onto the center of your retina while focusing the ambient
Speaker 1: light that you're getting from the rest of the world
Speaker 1: on the surrounding area of your retina. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So let's say that I'm wearing these glasses and I'm looking,
Speaker 1: you know, off in the distance. Let's say that you're
Speaker 1: you're thirty feet away from me, and you're waving to me,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, I've got my Twitter feed
Speaker 1: up because you know, I'm me, of course. So normally,
Speaker 1: the way it would work, let's say if it's with
Speaker 1: Google Glass, I would put my focus on the screen
Speaker 1: that is physically closer to my eye, but I would
Speaker 1: adjust so that it was looking at that focal length.
Speaker 1: You would be out of focus right right I. You
Speaker 1: would just be a blurb bouncing up an on waving,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't even know. I just be mildly distracted
Speaker 1: while I'm looking at all the replies of that funny
Speaker 1: thing I just tweeted. But with this approach, you would
Speaker 1: be in the same focal length. My brain would essentially
Speaker 1: say that if I were focusing on you, I could
Speaker 1: also at the same time focus on the stuff that
Speaker 1: was coming through on the Twitter feed. And uh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: So to be able to be able to focus on
Speaker 1: something that's literally right in front of your eye and
Speaker 1: something that's further like twenty feet away at the same
Speaker 1: time is kind of phenomenal. Yeah, and this is definitely
Speaker 1: in the research kind of stages right now. But the applications,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the technology that could make augmented
Speaker 1: reality work. Yeah, yeah, if if if you want to
Speaker 1: have something that's not just a tiny little screen that
Speaker 1: you have to look away from the world. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that you can wear while you're driving or something
Speaker 1: like that. That's pretty neat. So I got to hold
Speaker 1: the contact lenses. They didn't let me put them on
Speaker 1: because they only had the one pair. Another big thing
Speaker 1: that was shown off, actually it's not big, it's mall.
Speaker 1: But another thing that was shown off quite a bit
Speaker 1: where the throw projectors. These are the ideas of, you know,
Speaker 1: a projector that you can put in a room that
Speaker 1: will project against a wall or a screen. And they
Speaker 1: had a four that Some of them were really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Sony had a four K throw projector that you can
Speaker 1: put up right next to a wall. It was kind
Speaker 1: of like a little pyramid and it leaned back would
Speaker 1: project the display directly against the wall. You had put
Speaker 1: it in front of four K resolution. I think it's
Speaker 1: like thirty dollars, So you know, it's just a just
Speaker 1: a quick joint to the mortgage company to put a
Speaker 1: second mortgage on my house and I can get one
Speaker 1: of these things. Um. But it was really kind of
Speaker 1: a neat idea. And of course these are the sort
Speaker 1: of technologies the prices will fall as manufacturing processes and
Speaker 1: improve and demand increases. Sure, I imagine that this will
Speaker 1: be a luxury item for a good period of time,
Speaker 1: because even pretty conventional projectors right now are still not
Speaker 1: pretty expective. Yeah, and you know that there's an obvious
Speaker 1: attraction to them because you're not limited to the size
Speaker 1: of a television screen, even a big TV screen. You
Speaker 1: can go. You can go even bigger than the biggest
Speaker 1: TV screens that are conventionally available. And you don't have
Speaker 1: to figure out, how do I support this enormous piece
Speaker 1: of technology, because it's just rejection. Yeah. And and when
Speaker 1: you're I mean, at a certain point, you're you're cutting down.
Speaker 1: I would imagine on a little bit of the energy
Speaker 1: of running a a l ED or a LEAD. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: the components for an l D and O LEAD are
Speaker 1: are not cheap all the time. That's true too, especially
Speaker 1: if you want to go to AMMA lead. If you
Speaker 1: go to m LAD, then you get talking serious cash. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Oculus Rift had a new prototype, yeah, the crystal
Speaker 1: cove version. This one actually had on it some little
Speaker 1: sensors on the outside that allow a camera to help
Speaker 1: track your motions to make it even more precise, right,
Speaker 1: A separate camera that you that you mount somewhere in
Speaker 1: your room, and it's got a little the little motion
Speaker 1: tracker like stickers almost around the set kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're you've got uh like a golem
Speaker 1: there on your eyes. And using that technology, it will
Speaker 1: let the wear um like like lean over a ledger,
Speaker 1: peer around a corner in its in the game world,
Speaker 1: right right, it gave even more points of articulation within
Speaker 1: the virtual world. Now. They were quick to say that
Speaker 1: the the consumer Oculus Rift may or may not ever
Speaker 1: use the same sort of technology, right, This is all
Speaker 1: in prototype still so and also there's no telling that
Speaker 1: this particular prototype is going to go to developers anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Oh sure. Yeah. Um other features that this one had
Speaker 1: I read about and and led display, higher resolution um
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, high lower latency, lower latency, less motion blur um.
Speaker 1: Palmer Lucky said specifically about that that manufacturers have been
Speaker 1: starting to take him seriously since he you know, raised
Speaker 1: over seventy five million dollars in funding and funding over
Speaker 1: the past year. So and that there and that that
Speaker 1: has helped him, um create some dedicated parts for this
Speaker 1: device as opposed to just hey, let's Hey, let's let's
Speaker 1: show did this talent into into this, so that that
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. And another headset. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of different headsets that were on display at CES, but
Speaker 1: the only other one that I personally got a chance
Speaker 1: to take a look at was a Sony headset. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're wearable HDTV right yeah hmz T three q uh
Speaker 1: just rolls off the tongue. So this this is not
Speaker 1: for gaming, you know. Oculus Rift is mainly for gaming
Speaker 1: virtual reality kind of approach, although they've talked about other
Speaker 1: potential applications, but that's the main focus, right, This one's
Speaker 1: not that way. The idea is that you're there as
Speaker 1: a passive observer for entertainment, So in other words, you're
Speaker 1: watching movies and television on this thing. But but my
Speaker 1: movies are television that have been filmed with like a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy degree field of view that you can
Speaker 1: kind of look around in. It's yeah, it's kind of designed.
Speaker 1: The idea is that sort of creates a representation of
Speaker 1: sitting in a movie theater looking at seventy five ft
Speaker 1: wide screen. So I imagine that you're saying, in the
Speaker 1: best seat in the house, there's no and sitting in
Speaker 1: front of you, but you're and you're viewing a mute
Speaker 1: a movie. That's what it's supposed to be. That that's
Speaker 1: the experience that's supposed to be. Like. So as soon
Speaker 1: as I saw this, I thought, I wish I had
Speaker 1: this whenever I got on a plane, because I could
Speaker 1: drown the rest of that world out watch a movie.
Speaker 1: It's all right there. I can watch whatever I like.
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about, you know, someone leaning over and
Speaker 1: watching my movie I bought, or putting their feet up
Speaker 1: on the back of your chair, or they might do
Speaker 1: that anyway, but at least I won't be aware of it,
Speaker 1: because I'll be lost in a fantasy world of some sort.
Speaker 1: I don't know what movie I would pick to be
Speaker 1: the first one. I'd want something really spectacular, though maybe Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a little independent film made back in nine
Speaker 1: seven that had some people running around with laser swords
Speaker 1: that I might want to watch. But you know, i'd
Speaker 1: figure something out. Um, what about the pre O v
Speaker 1: R Body suit? Did you get a chance to see this?
Speaker 1: That's not one that I got a chance to look at.
Speaker 1: Tell me all about it, all right, So imagine that
Speaker 1: you have a Basically, it's a harness. It's a harness
Speaker 1: that even has arm straps that go down with sensors
Speaker 1: on your head, on your your torso, on your arms, uh,
Speaker 1: and it is designed to sense all the motion. And
Speaker 1: it was being used in a game that they had
Speaker 1: shown off specifically at c e S that was a
Speaker 1: zombie survival game because zombies um and the way it
Speaker 1: worked was that it could track all your motions in
Speaker 1: real time, so it's a motion tracking suit that you're wearing.
Speaker 1: I thought this was really interesting. I wasn't really sold
Speaker 1: on it, mainly because I think now that we've reached
Speaker 1: a level of sophistication with camera technology like the Connect,
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely convinced that something like this is necessary
Speaker 1: for you to be able to have that kind of
Speaker 1: level of immersion. But you know, even if it's not necessary,
Speaker 1: there were some tricks that I think would be harder
Speaker 1: to pull off with a camera based system. So in
Speaker 1: one of the little videos, they show this guy who's
Speaker 1: just very casually killing zombies off left and right. He
Speaker 1: picking up a Batwin nails in it, and he's got
Speaker 1: a handgun at one point after he's just blown up
Speaker 1: a bunch of zombies on a bridge. One zombie starts
Speaker 1: shuffling onto the screen to the character's left. All right,
Speaker 1: so here's the guy standing in space. He's looking at
Speaker 1: the screen. He sees that there's a zombie shuffling off
Speaker 1: to his left. He raises his right arm, puts it
Speaker 1: behind his head, and then does the gun move so
Speaker 1: that his gun and this character on the screen pulls up,
Speaker 1: plots his gun behind his head and does it behind
Speaker 1: the head shot and kills the zombie. And at that point,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, maybe a camera would have trouble
Speaker 1: with having the right algorithm to track exactly where the
Speaker 1: arm is and to know that the arm is gone
Speaker 1: behind the head. Right. Getting that level of specificity off
Speaker 1: of especially UM infrared related cameras, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a little bit difficult. UM And I don't think that
Speaker 1: that's the only I was doing a little bit of
Speaker 1: reading UM and I'm probably gonna do a blog post
Speaker 1: over on the aforementioned for thinking about this. A MEO
Speaker 1: arm band, which is a similar it's a more compact
Speaker 1: device than this one. Sounds like um it's it's just
Speaker 1: a little stretchy bracelet that you can put on your
Speaker 1: forearm and uh, and so you could have it track
Speaker 1: very small motions like like like pretending to pull a trigger,
Speaker 1: uh that you didn't. You wouldn't have to make quite
Speaker 1: such a big gesture for a camera to pick up
Speaker 1: right right. Yeah, And there was a lot of motion
Speaker 1: tracking and eye tracking technology on display at ce S.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun looking at that stuff
Speaker 1: and playing with that stuff. Um. I was really impressed
Speaker 1: with the fact that some of these companies have created
Speaker 1: algorithms that allow them to use even super cheap webcams
Speaker 1: as a connect like motion sensor. Now, so I was
Speaker 1: looking at one that it was built directly into a laptop.
Speaker 1: It was not a special webcam. All it was doing
Speaker 1: was running the motion tracking software. But you could do
Speaker 1: connect like gestures and control stuff on the computer. So
Speaker 1: to me, it's really remarkable that we can even develop
Speaker 1: software that can overcome the limitations of the hard wear.
Speaker 1: And then you think, well, if you were able to,
Speaker 1: you know, do that software for hardware that specifically designed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when when that was one of the companies I talked
Speaker 1: to specifically was talking about that. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about robots. I got to see a lot of
Speaker 1: different kinds of robots. Yeah, Parrot had a bunch of
Speaker 1: new mini drowns out. Yeah, they had the little Sumo
Speaker 1: jumping robot. Uh yesh. Sumo robot is like a imagine
Speaker 1: imagine a sphere has wheels on either side, and part
Speaker 1: of the sphere, like the back of the sphere is
Speaker 1: a little elongated that's got a little stubby tail. The
Speaker 1: tail is just long enough so that when it tilts backward,
Speaker 1: like when it when it rotates back against its axis
Speaker 1: to the ground, so it can actually put push the
Speaker 1: stubby tail against the ground and jump and it jumps
Speaker 1: like two ft high. They did Parrot did a a
Speaker 1: a display where they had this stage set up and
Speaker 1: every fifteen minutes or so they would do maybe even
Speaker 1: ten minutes or so, they would do a demonstration where
Speaker 1: the robots would roll out onto the stage, a couple
Speaker 1: would jump up on the stage. Of the stage itself
Speaker 1: was elevated more than a foot off the floor, so
Speaker 1: some of the robots would jump from the floor to
Speaker 1: get up on the stage. A couple of would jump
Speaker 1: up onto neighboring drums, and then what they would do
Speaker 1: is they'd use the little tail to drum a rhythm,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile the flying Parrot robots, the little mini drums
Speaker 1: would come out and do a little choreographed maneuver all together,
Speaker 1: and it was all done to a song and it
Speaker 1: was really well done, very charming. So a Parrot, of course,
Speaker 1: is the the company that created the parrot a r drone,
Speaker 1: the one that has a camera you can control with
Speaker 1: an iPhone. I remember the very first time I saw that,
Speaker 1: and it blew me away. And they're just continuing to
Speaker 1: build in this space. They do other stuff too, It's
Speaker 1: not just robotics, but that's probably the most visible thing.
Speaker 1: It's the chance they do. But another robot that I
Speaker 1: got to see was there there's a company called Modular Robotics,
Speaker 1: and they build robots that are meant for kids to
Speaker 1: play with, where imagine building blocks, but the building blocks
Speaker 1: have within them all the components of a robot, and
Speaker 1: when you snap them together, they make those connections based
Speaker 1: upon the way you build them. So if you build
Speaker 1: them with some sort of actuating arm, they can move
Speaker 1: the actuating arm. You can put a sensor on them
Speaker 1: so that they react to a specific change and stimuli. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so if you like have a motion sensor and
Speaker 1: you move in front of it, it will move because
Speaker 1: of the actuators and the sensors you put on it
Speaker 1: and it all. It's completely modular, so you can build
Speaker 1: whatever kind of robot you want. I got to play
Speaker 1: with one that ended up being like a remote controlled
Speaker 1: vehicle that all the controls were on a tablet and
Speaker 1: they were done in slighter form, and it was a
Speaker 1: little difficult to get the hang of it first because
Speaker 1: to control the left wheel uh and one. And if
Speaker 1: I wanted it to roll four word compared to where
Speaker 1: I was standing, because there was really no forward or
Speaker 1: backward on this petular device. But if I wanted to
Speaker 1: roll forward based upon where I was standing the left wheel,
Speaker 1: I'd have to slide the slider up. Right wheel, I
Speaker 1: have to slide the slider down so it would also
Speaker 1: turn in the right direction. And then if I reversed
Speaker 1: one of those, it would start spinning in a circle.
Speaker 1: And then if I reverse both of them, I could
Speaker 1: make it roll backward right like if I may. If
Speaker 1: I made right go up and left go down, it
Speaker 1: would roll back toward me. Took some time for my
Speaker 1: brain to learn, but both of those were great examples
Speaker 1: of technology designed to uh to teach kids about engineering
Speaker 1: and technology and creativity. Uh. And that was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I honestly, I played with them quite a
Speaker 1: bit and I had a lot of fun. Um. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: we've got a ton more stuff to talk about at CES,
Speaker 1: including some things that I didn't get to see, but
Speaker 1: we'll we'll touch on. But before we talk about all that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright,
Speaker 1: so we're back, uh and I'm really back, which is nice.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I got to see because
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking was the you know, that was the show
Speaker 1: that was representing Forward Thinking sponsors Toyota, Right, and Toyota
Speaker 1: actually sponsored all of Discovery Digital this year, which was
Speaker 1: great and it meant that I got to have some
Speaker 1: really up close and personal encounters over at the Toyota booth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Toyota had a bunch of the main thing if
Speaker 1: you have watched the Foward Thinking videos that you will
Speaker 1: have noticed is that Jonathan got to see a bunch
Speaker 1: of prototypes of fuel cell technology, which was great, you know,
Speaker 1: to see a fuel cell vehicle design as well as
Speaker 1: their their plan for fuel cells. Fuel cells, I mean
Speaker 1: This is an idea that's been around for more than
Speaker 1: a century, but it's been really hard to get that
Speaker 1: as a viable alternative to other types of car options, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got electric cars and you've got gasoline cars.
Speaker 1: But the problem is is that as as a fuel,
Speaker 1: hydrogen or unbonded hydrogen is a little bit tricky to
Speaker 1: get ahold of, and so you've got some energy problems there,
Speaker 1: and and the the technology itself, the materials science involved
Speaker 1: in it, has been catching up. Yeah. For one thing,
Speaker 1: the materials that you need to build a reliable hydrogen
Speaker 1: based fuel cell are expensive. You know, usually you have
Speaker 1: a very rare metal catalyst like platinum, and that's that
Speaker 1: makes the whole thing more expensive. But Toyota has been
Speaker 1: working really hard to reduce that. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of fun. I won't go into more detail because you
Speaker 1: can always go to forward Digging and watch the video
Speaker 1: if you want to. Yeah, yeah, did you also get
Speaker 1: to see Toyota's Eye Road Did you did you hear
Speaker 1: anything about that? Yeah? The super crazy the little like
Speaker 1: miniature smart car. Oh yeah, I got to watch that drive.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's this is a this is a three
Speaker 1: wheeled almost like like scooter or motorcycle kind of car.
Speaker 1: UM that goes up to about twenty eight miles per hour,
Speaker 1: can go thirty miles on a single charge, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a fancy motorcycle. They're talking about using
Speaker 1: it in UM mostly in other countries right now as
Speaker 1: a just really great, you know, inner city transportation method
Speaker 1: that has a really small physical and carbon footprint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could. You could park three of these in one
Speaker 1: regular car space. Really, I mean, it's there's that tiny.
Speaker 1: They had a circular area where there was a pedestal
Speaker 1: in the middle with one of these on the pedestal,
Speaker 1: and then every so often they would have someone drive
Speaker 1: out in one and around the pedestal. I remember when
Speaker 1: I was watching them drive this around, thinking to myself
Speaker 1: that the guy who was driving it seemed to be
Speaker 1: not having the best time in the world, like it was.
Speaker 1: He had no expression on his face, like just just
Speaker 1: driving this thing, And I'm like, this looks like it
Speaker 1: is the most fun thing to drive has ever been invented.
Speaker 1: And I can't believe this guy doesn't have the biggest
Speaker 1: grin in the world. And that's that's what I heard
Speaker 1: from people who got to test this thing out that
Speaker 1: it was a little bit precarious feeling, but also so
Speaker 1: much fun and so zippy. It was pretty exciting to watch.
Speaker 1: BMW also had a self driving car test and and
Speaker 1: they were doing this. They were letting folks take test
Speaker 1: drives in this automn made a car on a wet
Speaker 1: track with sharp curves and like basically at full tilt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like signing a waiver before you go into an exhibit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I would have signed up for
Speaker 1: that one, but I'm fascinated that they did it. Yeah. Bosch,
Speaker 1: the company Bosch, which by the way, we should do
Speaker 1: an episode about Bosch at some point. There, hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old company. Um and they build a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that is making this autonomous cars
Speaker 1: and Internet of things of possibility. They actually sponsored the
Speaker 1: Gold Lot, which is was adjacent to the North Hall.
Speaker 1: That was where a lot of the actual car demos
Speaker 1: were taking place where you could see them being driven around,
Speaker 1: including autonomous driving. So that was really cool too. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I saw, I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of these Actually it's a little thing called a
Speaker 1: steam box. Um. Yeah, steam boxes. They're finally a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, now that we definitely need to do
Speaker 1: a full episode on those down they're actually out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there were some you know, I I go
Speaker 1: back and forth on steam Boxes. I think it's a
Speaker 1: neat idea. I think there's also some big limitations, but
Speaker 1: I'll save all that for a steam Box episode. I'll
Speaker 1: just say that if it's a Linux based operating system
Speaker 1: that's running open g L and most of the games
Speaker 1: in on Steam are direct X games that depend upon Windows,
Speaker 1: I wonder how big the library is gonna be for
Speaker 1: actual Steam os that but that will be a discussion
Speaker 1: will have in another episode. Yeah, there was also the razor. Christine,
Speaker 1: did you see this thing? Oh yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: modular PC and and okay, modular PCs have happened before,
Speaker 1: but this is using PC I express to wirelessly connect
Speaker 1: and sink modules and and like like like the GPU,
Speaker 1: the solid state drive, the CPU, the RAM, the power supply. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just imagine imagine a tower that has slots in
Speaker 1: it and you have cartridges. Essentially, it's what they look like.
Speaker 1: The cartridges represent the different aspects of the computer, like
Speaker 1: it's GPU or its memory or whatever. And then you
Speaker 1: slide those in, and so since it's modular, if you
Speaker 1: want to upgrade, you take one out and you replace
Speaker 1: it with the new one. Really interesting approach, cool design.
Speaker 1: If some people say it kind of like a tree,
Speaker 1: other people said it's just like a weird tower thing.
Speaker 1: The one two things I would I would give as
Speaker 1: caveats to this is that one Razors is mainly being
Speaker 1: shown as a gaming computer. I would imagine it's going
Speaker 1: to come at a premium price. I would imagine they
Speaker 1: haven't announced that price as of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: which probably means that it's really high. Yeah, plus plus. Again,
Speaker 1: it will depend upon the configuration you design, right. But
Speaker 1: the other thing is that you're limited because even though
Speaker 1: it's modular, it's limited to the modules designed for that computer. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not like you can just go to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: your Fries Electronics or whatever and put whatever you want,
Speaker 1: and then you can't crack open the case, slide one
Speaker 1: card out and put another one in that you bought
Speaker 1: from some discount store. You're gonna have to get the
Speaker 1: module either from Raiser or from you know, some third
Speaker 1: party vendor. But I think that for a certain segment
Speaker 1: of PC gamers. That could be very attractive. Yes, it
Speaker 1: could be. It could be, and you know, it may
Speaker 1: mean that it's not important to you, especially if you're
Speaker 1: someone who has lots of discretionary income, in which case
Speaker 1: send me money. Alright, So then let's talk about three
Speaker 1: D printers. Ah, yeah, I heard that was out in
Speaker 1: for Oh Boy, maker Bot one of my favorites. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have to remember when I get home, I have
Speaker 1: a figurine printed by MakerBot that I have to bring
Speaker 1: to the office because that's Josh Clark's present from c
Speaker 1: e S. He gets he gets a little grouchy if
Speaker 1: I don't bring him back something. It has become a
Speaker 1: tradition that I bring him back something from c S
Speaker 1: every year. He's very gracious about it, he reminds me frequently,
Speaker 1: which has had to happen more this week because I
Speaker 1: just haven't put in my bag yet. Anyway, three D
Speaker 1: printers maker Bot was out there big time. One of
Speaker 1: the coolest things they had. They introduced a brand new
Speaker 1: three D printer for the consumer that they called their
Speaker 1: Industrial Strength three D Printer, which allows you to print
Speaker 1: objects that are up to twelve inches by twelve inches
Speaker 1: by eighteen inches just huge for a three for for
Speaker 1: a concerned um cost about sixty for that. But again
Speaker 1: this is for someone let me maybe like small businesses.
Speaker 1: I love the range of consumer consumer costs for you,
Speaker 1: and I totally understand that is that is way less
Speaker 1: than an industrial three D printer of that size or yeah,
Speaker 1: like like if you look back two or three years,
Speaker 1: you're talking thirty thousand, forty thousand dollars to that. But yes,
Speaker 1: still still a chunk of change. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say like it's cheap, but it was definitely impressive
Speaker 1: to see they had printed an entire like uh kind
Speaker 1: of like a space marine style helmet that you could
Speaker 1: actually put on your head because that's how big it was.
Speaker 1: It was all in one piece too. They didn't have
Speaker 1: to print it in pieces and put it together. It
Speaker 1: was all one piece. It's got a heated chamber, so
Speaker 1: it maintains structural stability while it's printing. It's really crazy.
Speaker 1: And it also has connectivity with apps. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you start a print job and then you know,
Speaker 1: it tells you like it will give an estimated time
Speaker 1: of when that print job is going to be finished.
Speaker 1: It prints the resolution if you want to print the
Speaker 1: highest resolution, it's a hundred microns. So that's how thick
Speaker 1: each level is, which is pretty tiny. Right. So let's
Speaker 1: say you've wandered off and it suddenly runs out of
Speaker 1: the filament that's using. They'll send you a message saying
Speaker 1: you need to reload the filament. You go and you
Speaker 1: reload the filament and it'll start the print job again,
Speaker 1: or it tells you that the print job is over.
Speaker 1: It'll send you in a push notification, especially if you
Speaker 1: need to send another print job to the printer. So yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of neat stuff. But they were not the only
Speaker 1: three D printer company there. There were lots of them.
Speaker 1: There was a whole section in the South Hall just
Speaker 1: for three D printing, and there was even a robot
Speaker 1: rolling around the show floor. They had a three D
Speaker 1: printer on top of it. There's a robot with a
Speaker 1: three D printer printing out in three D as it
Speaker 1: rolled around. It was a little it was a little much.
Speaker 1: I also didn't put down here the the robot that
Speaker 1: was a grill cleaner. The grill cleaner robot. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: just imagine instead of it having wheels, it has these
Speaker 1: steel brushes that turn and it just rolls all over
Speaker 1: the place on your grill and for your for your grill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets all up in your grill and cleans it robotically.
Speaker 1: Lauren is shaking your head at me. Just you can
Speaker 1: take that down in your little bingo sheets. Okay. So
Speaker 1: also while I was there, there was an announcement from
Speaker 1: my favorite, uh smart watch company, Pebble. Yeah, did you
Speaker 1: see the announcement that they had They came out with
Speaker 1: Pebble Steel. Oh that was that was officially announced there, Okay.
Speaker 1: And I knew that it had been on the show
Speaker 1: floor and that everyone was really impressed with it. And
Speaker 1: when I finally got around to looking up pictures of it,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this thing I want. Like previous
Speaker 1: previous Pebbles, I was like, that thing is aesthetic, but
Speaker 1: this I was like, no, I want to be wearing
Speaker 1: the Pebble Steel is the one that's it's meant to
Speaker 1: be more like a luxury watch. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a steel or leather band or a combination of the two.
Speaker 1: It's got a really slick little gorilla glass display that
Speaker 1: that the cases is steel. Um. It runs about two
Speaker 1: It's a little more expensive, but I think that they
Speaker 1: also had announcements about an app store and software update. Yep,
Speaker 1: so there's going to be more of a of a
Speaker 1: uh an ecosystem there. That's the word I wanted to say,
Speaker 1: ecosystem along with Pebble, which that'll be exciting because that'll
Speaker 1: go for all Pebble watches, not just the Pebble Steel.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're wondering, does Jonathan plan on
Speaker 1: getting a Pebble steel? Jonathan plans on getting a Pebble
Speaker 1: steel because sometimes you got a dress fancy that will
Speaker 1: go with the other three watches that I have on
Speaker 1: order that haven't arrived yet, one of which I did see.
Speaker 1: Another one at c S one that I had backed on.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if it was a Kicks. I think
Speaker 1: it was kick Star, and the other Kicks are Indigog
Speaker 1: but things Kickstarter called the CS t O one. C
Speaker 1: S t O one is not a smart watch. It's
Speaker 1: a watch that's kind of like a steel cuff and
Speaker 1: it has e ink, right I remember you talking about
Speaker 1: super flat thin display, very pretty design. Uh. They actually
Speaker 1: had one at the ink booth, so I got to
Speaker 1: see one in person, and then they told me that
Speaker 1: it should be shipping pretty soon, so I hope that
Speaker 1: within a couple of weeks I'll finally have my wrist
Speaker 1: on one one on my wrist. I saw Mother when
Speaker 1: I was there, Right, Yeah, so what is what is this? Okay?
Speaker 1: This is a Korean company, I believe, and it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a replacement for your parents. Well, it's really
Speaker 1: supposed to help you monitor things in your home, but
Speaker 1: it's supposed to give you incredible flexibility to do that.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the data stuff we talk about
Speaker 1: are very specific to very particular items, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about one of those in imediately following. Right, So let's
Speaker 1: say that you're talking about like your thermostat, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about nest soon. Anyway, you collect all
Speaker 1: that data and you can analyze it, and that's really interesting,
Speaker 1: but you're limited. You know, you have to do that piecemeal, right.
Speaker 1: You have to go and buy the product that does
Speaker 1: the thing, and then you may not even be able
Speaker 1: to integrate that into the other systems you have, So
Speaker 1: that means you end up having forty different apps for
Speaker 1: all the stuff you're doing. The idea with Mother is
Speaker 1: that it becomes a unified base station that allows you
Speaker 1: to monitor pretty much anything. And they have these little
Speaker 1: sensors that they call cookies now right now, and you
Speaker 1: can get them in a cookie jar. It's so cute.
Speaker 1: So these little cookies right now are motion sensors. But
Speaker 1: there's going to be more um functionality build into it
Speaker 1: over time. So let's say you attach one of these
Speaker 1: cookies to something specific, like your keys, and then you
Speaker 1: can consult mother whenever you can't find your keys, and
Speaker 1: they'll tell you exactly where your keys are. Or you
Speaker 1: put that on one of the other examples they had,
Speaker 1: as they had one of these attach to a toothbrush
Speaker 1: so that you can learn whether or not your kids
Speaker 1: were brushing their teeth every night like they were supposed to.
Speaker 1: There was other toothbrush related technology, cal Calabree toothbrush. You know,
Speaker 1: I make a list of the stuff I have to
Speaker 1: absolutely see before I go to c E S. And
Speaker 1: Calabrie was on that list. So it says, uh, this
Speaker 1: is a little tiny startup company. And I got to
Speaker 1: talk to the inventor of Calabrie is great. He's so enthusiastic,
Speaker 1: it's very genuine, is fun to chat with him. But
Speaker 1: calu Bree is a toothbrush that has very much a
Speaker 1: smart toothbrush. It's got sensors in it that can tell
Speaker 1: its attitude, orientation, it's movement. And the idea is that
Speaker 1: you brush your teeth, you put the calu Brie toothbrush
Speaker 1: on its inductive charging stand, which is you know, it's
Speaker 1: way a lot of electric toothbrush is charged and then
Speaker 1: it will send information via bluetooth to your smartphone and
Speaker 1: you get a grade for how well you brush your teeth.
Speaker 1: And it's based not only on the duration becase you're
Speaker 1: supposed to brush your teeth for about two minutes you know,
Speaker 1: each each time you brush your teeth, but also on
Speaker 1: the style, like how you brush your teeth. Are you
Speaker 1: brushing your teeth correctly, because it can tell from the
Speaker 1: orientation and the movement where a lot which quadrant of
Speaker 1: your mouth you are brushing, and so it gives you
Speaker 1: all this information and the idea is that you can
Speaker 1: improve your brushing technique uh each session and you get
Speaker 1: a better grade. But it also means ultimately that if
Speaker 1: you do this and if if it works properly, and
Speaker 1: if you do it properly, you'll cut down on the
Speaker 1: time you spend in a dentist chair, which to me
Speaker 1: is awesome. So you know, I love this kind of
Speaker 1: technology because the first time you hear about it, you're like,
Speaker 1: that sounds ridiculous, and in an app connected toothbrushed that.
Speaker 1: But then when you start thinking about you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: if does this mean that I spend less time with
Speaker 1: having a metal hook jabbed, you know, mercilessly into my
Speaker 1: gums repeatedly? I am on board, So I was really excited.
Speaker 1: There was another thing. Now, this is an example of
Speaker 1: something that had been introduced in and I had heard
Speaker 1: about it that I hadn't seen it. Texas Instruments had
Speaker 1: created a basketball that had something like sensors in it.
Speaker 1: And what happens is when you throw this basketball, it
Speaker 1: collects all that information and sends it to an app,
Speaker 1: which then tells you what angle you made your throw,
Speaker 1: how hard you threw it, and you know, based upon
Speaker 1: where your throw went. Just when you watch and the
Speaker 1: information you get back, you start to learn how to
Speaker 1: make better throws so that you get nothing. But net
Speaker 1: I did not try this because I knew that if
Speaker 1: I were to throw the basketball, it would just tell
Speaker 1: me I can see why you're always picked last, but
Speaker 1: I watched other people do it and it was it
Speaker 1: was cool because you would get, you know, feedback, and
Speaker 1: then the people working it were like, all right, so
Speaker 1: what that would mean is that you need to throw
Speaker 1: a higher arc that kind of stuff, and it was
Speaker 1: really cool to see how that that would help you
Speaker 1: build muscle memory fast. The last thing I have on
Speaker 1: my list is inarguably the most important of all the
Speaker 1: things I saw while I was at c e S.
Speaker 1: What could that possibly be? Jonathan World Wrestling Entertainment had
Speaker 1: a press conference and if you can smell what the
Speaker 1: rock is cooking, They then announced, Sorry, anyone who knows
Speaker 1: me knows I am a I'm a rassling fan. He's
Speaker 1: he's a very big wrestling fan. Yeah, and I grew
Speaker 1: up in it in the Atlanta area, So I'm not
Speaker 1: talking pro wrestling. I'm a rassling fan, okay. Georgia Championship
Speaker 1: Wrestling later on World Class Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling.
Speaker 1: We're talking like old school w W. E of course
Speaker 1: is the biggest name in the game of pro wrestling,
Speaker 1: and so they came to c S and I was
Speaker 1: curious to see what they were going to announce. I
Speaker 1: thought maybe it was going to be an app or something,
Speaker 1: but they really hit like hard. They said, what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do is offer up a digital network, which you
Speaker 1: know has been in the work works for years. It
Speaker 1: was originally supposed to launch in two thousand twelve and
Speaker 1: has been delayed mull times. Lawrence amused it, how excited
Speaker 1: I'm getting about this. It's a digital network that will stream.
Speaker 1: It gives original programming that's related back to the stuff
Speaker 1: that w w E is doing. It also will have
Speaker 1: all of the pay per views. That's twelve pay per
Speaker 1: views per year. Uh. And it's a nine dollars um
Speaker 1: subscription per month. So you think, oh, ten dollars per month.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but every single pay per
Speaker 1: view is like thirty bucks, you know, so you're already
Speaker 1: saving money. I don't know why you wouldn't go ahead
Speaker 1: and do this. Um. Also, they took a note from
Speaker 1: Netflix's book and they put it on everything. So Xbox three, six,
Speaker 1: TPS three, PS four, eventually the Xbox one. I think
Speaker 1: that'll be live in the summer online through w w
Speaker 1: E dot com. So you know, it's that strategy of
Speaker 1: make sure you put it wherever people watch stuff so
Speaker 1: that they can watch it however they like. I I
Speaker 1: cannot profess to particularly caring anything about wrestling, but I
Speaker 1: do have to admit that this is an awesome, savvy
Speaker 1: business technology kind of concept to push out, and then
Speaker 1: if they're successful with it, then that could be a
Speaker 1: terrific business model for lots of other media company. I think.
Speaker 1: I think they're also like, the people who are really
Speaker 1: into pro wrestling probably are also people who are really
Speaker 1: into things like video games. So being able to access
Speaker 1: this programming through your video game console, which means that
Speaker 1: you don't have to call up your cable carrier or
Speaker 1: use some weird thing in order to order a pay
Speaker 1: per view and have all that content available anytime you
Speaker 1: want is pretty phenomenal. They're also going to show older
Speaker 1: UH stuff that they have in their archives, so old WWF,
Speaker 1: and I could see this extending to other sports as well. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: This is a it's an interesting model, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it is something that UFC has already done, so it's
Speaker 1: similar to the UFC approach. So you know, we're getting
Speaker 1: into UH from real actual like martial mixed martial arts
Speaker 1: fighting into sports entertainment with w w E. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, I really, I genuinely was impressed by the
Speaker 1: savvy they were displaying and I could totally picture, like,
Speaker 1: for example, all of all of you crazy footballers out there,
Speaker 1: when when soccer season runs around, having something similar something
Speaker 1: similar could be pretty popular. Now, there was some stuff
Speaker 1: at c e S that we have not mentioned that
Speaker 1: you're probably saying, why haven't you talked about that? And
Speaker 1: the main reason is because I wasn't. I didn't actually
Speaker 1: see it myself. But we can actually mention some of uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about the PlayStation now. So so, Sony
Speaker 1: had of course a huge presence at c S. At
Speaker 1: kas hear I, the CEO of Sony was there giving
Speaker 1: the keynote. Yep, they Sony has uh on press day
Speaker 1: traditionally Sony has the final press event of the night.
Speaker 1: And then they also were the keynote for c S.
Speaker 1: That was something that up until last year was traditionally
Speaker 1: held by Microsoft. Microsoft was the company that would they
Speaker 1: would kind of kick off c e S and increasingly
Speaker 1: strange ways. Um, but but then I'm not forget seeing
Speaker 1: Slash play live on stage because of a Guitar Hero
Speaker 1: face off between valmer And and Gates Microsoft about out
Speaker 1: of that entire thing starting last year and um and
Speaker 1: this year's from what I've heard, was a lot more
Speaker 1: um calm than perhaps it has been in a few
Speaker 1: years might have been. I didn't make it to either
Speaker 1: of the Sony events. I had conflicts on both of them.
Speaker 1: But PlayStation now, for those who are wondering, this is
Speaker 1: something that they were announcing back when they first talked
Speaker 1: about the PlayStation four. It was not it was a
Speaker 1: feature that was not going to be ready upon launch,
Speaker 1: but they were saying, this is something we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: This is the part that addresses the problem of PlayStation
Speaker 1: four not being backwards compatible with earlier PlayStation games. Right,
Speaker 1: this is going to be It's a service that will
Speaker 1: stream games for to the PS four, the PS three,
Speaker 1: the Vita, and also eventually smart TVs, tablets, and phones.
Speaker 1: So you'll be able to play PlayStation games on these
Speaker 1: various devices through streaming. So the actual game is running
Speaker 1: on a remote system and you are your controls are
Speaker 1: are you know being uh. The information is being ferried
Speaker 1: back and forth between your controls and the remote system
Speaker 1: at the cloud system. So, uh, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's an interesting, uh solution to that problem because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, gamers hate when something's not backwards compatible, because
Speaker 1: you know, anytime that you've purchased a thing and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't play that on this new thing that you
Speaker 1: just bought, it's like, but why not? Look, I know
Speaker 1: I haven't played Sonic the Hedgehog and years, but I
Speaker 1: might want to write, yeah, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: have to unhook something from my television set that's already
Speaker 1: at the max for all the inputs and then hook
Speaker 1: up an old system just to play this. So this
Speaker 1: is a way of addressing that. Now, we don't really
Speaker 1: have enough details there to say, you know exactly how
Speaker 1: this is gonna work. Is it gonna be a per
Speaker 1: game thing, is going to be a subscription thing? There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different opportunities here, and I bet
Speaker 1: that Sony is gonna play with a lot of different
Speaker 1: approaches in their various betas they come out. They're going
Speaker 1: to be in beta starting in February, I believe, and
Speaker 1: looking at a potential rollout towards the end of the summer.
Speaker 1: Other things I didn't see there was one of the
Speaker 1: things I heard got a big buzz was a wearable
Speaker 1: device called the Razor Nebu, which is do you read
Speaker 1: anything about that one? So all right, so it's like
Speaker 1: a little uh, You're going to both love this and
Speaker 1: then when I get to one of the elements of it,
Speaker 1: you are going to be horrified. Excellent, Okay. So it's
Speaker 1: a wearable it's it looks like a bracelet. It's got
Speaker 1: like a little time piece on it. The way I
Speaker 1: was seeing it, everyone was wearing the time piece part
Speaker 1: on the inside of their risks, so I guess they're
Speaker 1: all nurses. Um. Anyway, it's an activity tracker, sleep tracker,
Speaker 1: but it was an activity tracker. Then part of that
Speaker 1: might have been the biometrics of your pulse taking taken
Speaker 1: from the inside of the wrist, although although I don't
Speaker 1: know why the display would be there, because you could
Speaker 1: still have the display on the other side. The sensors
Speaker 1: could be on the inside that the display could be
Speaker 1: on the other anyway. Anyway, So here's the part that's
Speaker 1: gonna horrify you. But I think it's kind of awesome.
Speaker 1: So so the video they have that goes along with us.
Speaker 1: It shows different use cases for this technology. So it's
Speaker 1: like the uh, the person who needs to get their
Speaker 1: notifications all the time, and if they get it on
Speaker 1: their risk for some reason, that makes it less distracting
Speaker 1: than if they were whipping out their phone every five seconds. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's the person who is not sleeping enough, so it's
Speaker 1: actually telling them, hey, you need to get some sleep.
Speaker 1: Then there's the person who's the dude at the bar
Speaker 1: who totally wants to meet the chick at the bar
Speaker 1: but doesn't really know how to approach said chick at
Speaker 1: the bar. But both of them are wearing Razor neboos
Speaker 1: that have their personal preferences programmed into them, so it
Speaker 1: lets him know that she also likes sports and hiking,
Speaker 1: so he can go up and say, hey, I saw
Speaker 1: that you like sports and hiking. I also like sports
Speaker 1: and hiking. And then if she thinks he's cute, she
Speaker 1: can actually send him a message on his wrist saying
Speaker 1: hey see you tomorrow. It's on the video. So, um,
Speaker 1: well that's I mean, I'm not as horrified as I
Speaker 1: could be by that. It would be. It's an opt
Speaker 1: in process, and I myself, being an incredibly awkward person,
Speaker 1: could see how it could be useful to have some um,
Speaker 1: some pre information before starting a conversation. I think it
Speaker 1: would be awesome if you know, like you got information
Speaker 1: about the person like says it says something like for
Speaker 1: the guy that you you're you're seeing it, you're you're
Speaker 1: eyeing the dude at the bar, and the information coming
Speaker 1: back is saying things like, uh, you know, he likes
Speaker 1: the music you like, and he's he's into art and
Speaker 1: he's into uh to to kind of like cult films.
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile, the information that comes up on his
Speaker 1: wrist is just saying, I'm so awkward. So but it's
Speaker 1: opt in, right, that's the approach. That's I actually think
Speaker 1: it's kind of neat idea. And that granted, I'm happily
Speaker 1: married and have been for for a long time, so
Speaker 1: I'm well removed from that scene and I have thankfully
Speaker 1: forgotten how awkward it can be. Um So that's not
Speaker 1: so much of uh selling point for me? Probably probably not,
Speaker 1: but but yes, it's best for everybody, trust me. I
Speaker 1: can imagine that would be a pretty good selling point
Speaker 1: for for many people. And then the last thing I
Speaker 1: have on my list, although I granted you know, of
Speaker 1: course There's tons more stuff that we could talk about,
Speaker 1: but the Roku TV that was a big deal. The idea.
Speaker 1: Every year Roku has come to c e s and
Speaker 1: really tried to push the envelope with new products. You know,
Speaker 1: they had that little dongle Roku that came out a
Speaker 1: while ago where it was essentially a full Roku system
Speaker 1: but on a thumb drive that you could hook up
Speaker 1: through a USB port on your on your or maybe
Speaker 1: it was h d my might have been an HDMI
Speaker 1: port on your on your television. I don't have one,
Speaker 1: so you know, I I have Roku too, and I
Speaker 1: bought Roku threes for my family because, uh, they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be really easy to use and have a lot
Speaker 1: of different services on them. So they're now in the
Speaker 1: TV business actually building TVs with the Roku H technology
Speaker 1: built directly into the television. So that was, you know,
Speaker 1: another big game changer type approach, or at least they
Speaker 1: hope it will be a game changer. Will it will
Speaker 1: remain to be seen whether or not it is. You know,
Speaker 1: Internet TV, that's one of those things that's been trying
Speaker 1: to make a real splash for several years now, and um,
Speaker 1: I think we're finally seeing interfaces that nail it largely
Speaker 1: in Part two, set top boxes like Roku or like
Speaker 1: the console systems that made it. Uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: had their own user interfaces that seemed to work a
Speaker 1: little better than some of the skinned stuff you would
Speaker 1: see on various television sets that we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: smart TVs. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that also, um
Speaker 1: integration with smartphones has really helped out, Like like once
Speaker 1: we started having enough people with smartphones that were capable
Speaker 1: of running the kind of apps that were necessary to
Speaker 1: control these sort of things before us a remote like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah too, when your phone becomes your remote, that also
Speaker 1: is really handy because you know, especially if you're using
Speaker 1: your phone for other stuff, like you know, you're playing
Speaker 1: everything Angry Birds while the dreamy boys of Supernatural are
Speaker 1: out there fighting the baddies, you know, just for example. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's totally not an example from my life, not not
Speaker 1: at all. I don't play angry Birds. I play plans
Speaker 1: versus zombies, so because it's the matic zombies, so you know,
Speaker 1: there are no Angry Birds and Supernatural. Actually, I can't
Speaker 1: say that I haven't gotten all the way through them.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, there's gonna be an episode coming up, all right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that kind of sums up my experience of
Speaker 1: C E S. I just thought it was an interesting
Speaker 1: show from the perspective of quirky future technologies that could
Speaker 1: potentially have a big impact either in the implementation has
Speaker 1: shown off at CES or in future implementations. To me,
Speaker 1: it was a great show. No, no, I I think
Speaker 1: that this has been a pretty interesting spread of products.
Speaker 1: Of of course, many and and a lot of places
Speaker 1: where I got my information, being that I did not
Speaker 1: go or some of the excellent coverage from companies like
Speaker 1: Verge and gadget Uns was big. Also, of course, Revision
Speaker 1: three did a lot of coverage our buddies. Over Revision three,
Speaker 1: I had a chance to uh see them at work.
Speaker 1: Those people work hard, all of these people, every single
Speaker 1: one we've mentioned so far. I mean they if you
Speaker 1: could see how quickly they turn around from one segment
Speaker 1: to the next, it's exhausting just to watch. I went
Speaker 1: there having to shoot three videos. There were other people
Speaker 1: there who are like, okay, this is shoot number seven.
Speaker 1: Oh and I just feel my eyes roll up into
Speaker 1: my head. Alright, guys, Well that wraps up our discussion
Speaker 1: of C E. S two thousand fourteen and the stuff
Speaker 1: that I saw there. If you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics, maybe there's something that we talked about on
Speaker 1: this show that you think deserves its own episode, let
Speaker 1: us know. Send us an email our addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: or Tumbler or handle at all three locations. Is text
Speaker 1: stuff H. S. W and Lauren and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it house work dot com
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