Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to text Stuff. This is Jonathan Strickland, senior writer
Speaker 1: for how stuff works dot Com. Now, normally you'd be
Speaker 1: hearing Chris Pallette's voice during this intro, but we're having
Speaker 1: a bit of a snow event in Atlanta, the snow Snowpocalypse.
Speaker 1: We've called it Hot Atlanta. So Chris is safely at
Speaker 1: home between us and he is a glacier. So instead
Speaker 1: in the studio, I have a special treat special guest
Speaker 1: co host Matt Frederick of Coolest Stuff on the Planet. Hey, guys, um,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be quiet and let Jonathan talk for
Speaker 1: most of this podcast. If you want to say anything
Speaker 1: or you want me to have an opinion on something,
Speaker 1: if you could just e mail Jonathan as we're recording
Speaker 1: this and then he'll get it that. He'll get that,
Speaker 1: and then i'll talk right. So for those of you
Speaker 1: who are able to send email messages back in time,
Speaker 1: send it to tech stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and we'll make sure that Matt asks the deep
Speaker 1: probing questions. So what are we covering today, Well, today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about my recent visit to the
Speaker 1: Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. For you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people jealous of you that
Speaker 1: you got to go to this. Yeah. There, I get
Speaker 1: that a lot. I get every time I talk about
Speaker 1: going to c E S. I have people right in
Speaker 1: and they say, I really wish I could go. I
Speaker 1: really want to go. Uh guys, Um, it's a show.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a it's an electronics show.
Speaker 1: It's a conference in order to show the latest and
Speaker 1: greatest technology in a way that sounds really cool, but
Speaker 1: when you dive down into it, it quickly becomes both
Speaker 1: overwhelming and exhausting. Yeah. At any point are you walking
Speaker 1: around and just go, I really wish I didn't have
Speaker 1: to be here for my job? Yeah? Actually that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I love my job, but yes, there are times when
Speaker 1: I'm walking around the show floor and I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: if I didn't have any responsibilities, like if I didn't
Speaker 1: have to actually go into all these different booths and
Speaker 1: look at the next eight things that look exactly like
Speaker 1: the last eight things. I saw, Um, then I could
Speaker 1: just hit whatever interests me and once I was done,
Speaker 1: I could go and hang out with all the cool
Speaker 1: people and then that would be it, and I go
Speaker 1: to parties and it would be fun. When you're covering
Speaker 1: it as a job, it's a totally different experience. Uh
Speaker 1: CS has around one point five million square feet of
Speaker 1: floor space to cover. Yeah, it uh can And you
Speaker 1: can tell from my voice that I'm I'm getting over
Speaker 1: the convention crud. Yeah, I'm going to clear my throat
Speaker 1: hold on one moment. Wow do you see? So Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like one point five million square feet of of
Speaker 1: area to cover, and there are hundreds of exhibitors. There
Speaker 1: are hundreds of thousands of people there. It feels like
Speaker 1: this year was supposedly the biggest year ever for ce S.
Speaker 1: It was definitely more heavily attended than the last two
Speaker 1: years that I've gone. Um, it was difficult to get
Speaker 1: around on the floor and uh yeah, it's it's exhausting.
Speaker 1: And so here's what here's what my typical day at
Speaker 1: ce S was like. Alright, if I arrived there on
Speaker 1: the Tuesday of the show, which is two days before
Speaker 1: the show floor opens, the only thing really going on
Speaker 1: is a preview event that night, So I landed in Vegas,
Speaker 1: went to my hotel, which was the Sahara Hotel and casino.
Speaker 1: Yes on the monorail line is the old school rat
Speaker 1: pack style casino. So you know, I got my my
Speaker 1: little groovy attitude going early on. So I set checked in,
Speaker 1: dropped stuff off, went to the preview event. Preview event
Speaker 1: had some pretty cool stuff and it things on the
Speaker 1: show floor that you might miss because they're not the big,
Speaker 1: flashy things that take take up a lot of floor
Speaker 1: space at the CS floor if you were to walk
Speaker 1: into one of the main show floors at the conference center,
Speaker 1: because it takes place at the Las Vegas Convention Center,
Speaker 1: the Venetian Sands Expo Center UM, also the Renaissance Hotel,
Speaker 1: the Hilton UH. There are several hotels that have yeah,
Speaker 1: like they have suites set aside just for all the
Speaker 1: audio equipment, because if you want to listen to these
Speaker 1: stereo systems, you need to go someplace that secluded from
Speaker 1: all the other sound. You can't get down the show floor.
Speaker 1: The show floor of the sound systems you'd see are
Speaker 1: the big car sound systems, the ones that are meant
Speaker 1: to shake the buildings as you drive by them. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to this preview event, saw a cool little things.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about some of them in a minute. Uh
Speaker 1: that that really I thought were interesting uses of technology.
Speaker 1: And again this is the quirky stuff that often you
Speaker 1: would just pass right by because you're going to the
Speaker 1: next big TV right then. Uh. Tuesday night, I go
Speaker 1: to bed early because I'm of course from Atlanta and
Speaker 1: Las Vegas is on Pacific time. That's a three hour
Speaker 1: time difference, so it's three hours earlier over there, which
Speaker 1: means I woke up at four am, got up at
Speaker 1: four um show floor or the press event didn't start
Speaker 1: until nine am, so I took my time, made my
Speaker 1: way over to the convention center and went to the
Speaker 1: press day. Now press day is back to back press
Speaker 1: conferences from some of the major manufacturers. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about companies like Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony, Sharp, Samsung, Intel. These
Speaker 1: are the big, big companies and and these events are
Speaker 1: kind of their way of of giving you a taste
Speaker 1: of what you're gonna find in their their booths. And
Speaker 1: then the goal is to get you to go to
Speaker 1: the booth to get more detailed about the products, so
Speaker 1: they're going to show you the best of the best.
Speaker 1: They usually save the show stopper for the very end,
Speaker 1: and often they'll only give you, oh, thirty seconds of information.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this year it was all about and we're
Speaker 1: also doing a tablet. All right, we'll see you at
Speaker 1: the Yeah, that was it. That was essentially, in fact,
Speaker 1: specifically Sharp did that. Sharp's press event. They show all
Speaker 1: these gorgeous TVs with their quatro system. That's the woman
Speaker 1: has the four colors, you know. They they add yellow
Speaker 1: to the red, green, and blue. Yes, so it's supposed
Speaker 1: to make it more vibrant. But at the end of it,
Speaker 1: the very end, maybe a minute was you was taken
Speaker 1: to cover it, they introduced their tablet called Ghosts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was darwin esque so yeah, but that was about.
Speaker 1: All we saw was that it's the Galapa Ghosts. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we'll see you at a booth. Yeah, like wait,
Speaker 1: what was the tagline? It's evolutionary it should be that
Speaker 1: would be excellent. I don't know, are you working for
Speaker 1: Sharp because anyway, So, after a full day of press events,
Speaker 1: the final one was Sony and I loved Sony's press
Speaker 1: event because they fed me. Um, I had gone all
Speaker 1: day without really eating anything, and they gave me lots
Speaker 1: of food. Yeah, bribing with food always works. The They
Speaker 1: also showed off the Green Hornet in three D, not
Speaker 1: the full movie, but the preview, and then introduced Seth
Speaker 1: Rogan and j Chow. Well there you go, yeah, who
Speaker 1: came out wearing three D glasses And then they did
Speaker 1: some tortured comedy. By the way, this is just a
Speaker 1: note to all of you people who are planning press
Speaker 1: conferences for c e s. From the press perspective, what
Speaker 1: we want is we want to see the technology, we
Speaker 1: want to hear the specs, and that's it. If you
Speaker 1: doing the tortured comedy routine where you've prerecorded or pre
Speaker 1: pre rehearsed some comedic jabs between like the CEO and
Speaker 1: the CTO, that that just doesn't work. People. You might
Speaker 1: get an uncomfortable chuckle. But for the most part of
Speaker 1: the press, we're not supposed to react, right, We're not
Speaker 1: supposed to applaud, we're not supposed to laugh, right. We
Speaker 1: are supposed to observe and objectively report. So if you're
Speaker 1: doing a press event, just give us the details, show it.
Speaker 1: Lets let the technology speak for itself, and if you
Speaker 1: made a good product, then you're gonna get a great
Speaker 1: right up on your press event. But if you spend
Speaker 1: time doing these corny jokes and stuff kind of the
Speaker 1: way I do my podcast, um, you're gonna get some
Speaker 1: you're gonna get some snarky comments. I reserved mine snarky
Speaker 1: comments to aim directly at the other reporters who were
Speaker 1: at the show, because they were the ones who were
Speaker 1: elbowing me out of the way in order to get
Speaker 1: to the free food. Yeah, I'm not happy about those.
Speaker 1: So then on the third day, that's when the show
Speaker 1: floor finally opens. This is technically day one of c
Speaker 1: E S. I've been there three days now. Day one
Speaker 1: of c e S started at well for the first
Speaker 1: show day started at ten am. That's when the show
Speaker 1: floor opened. So when I hit the Central Hall, which
Speaker 1: is where a lot of the big companies like Sony
Speaker 1: and Panasonic um have their booths. When you hit that
Speaker 1: show floor, it's enormous. It's like the biggest warehouse you've
Speaker 1: ever been in, and it's full of booths that are
Speaker 1: just chock full of gadgets, accessories, all the computers, all
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and um, you are overwhelmed with
Speaker 1: lights and sound and crowds and booth babes and it's
Speaker 1: just a weird situation to be in. Um, if you're
Speaker 1: there for fun, that I'm sure it's a blast. When
Speaker 1: you have to go booth by booth and cover everything.
Speaker 1: I liken it to going to a shopping mall and
Speaker 1: it's your job to go into every store in the
Speaker 1: shopping mall and write down what they sell. Yeah, after
Speaker 1: three stores, you you just you're like this, this doesn't
Speaker 1: even sound like fun anymore. Like I can't even imagine
Speaker 1: fun being used to describe this, except all the stores
Speaker 1: are beating at you and showing a little cleavage. Maybe yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they ed Hardy Booth in particular was known for that.
Speaker 1: I actually went by the d the booth when the
Speaker 1: boothbabes were on break. I thought that they had decided
Speaker 1: not to do booth babes this year, and I was thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: they're really gonna stand by their product and that's all
Speaker 1: they're going They don't they're not going to try and
Speaker 1: uh entice people in with booth babes. Turned out, I
Speaker 1: was just there at the wrong time. Here's my opinion
Speaker 1: about booth babes. Um, ladies, you are gorgeous. You all
Speaker 1: seem to be very well briefed on the material that
Speaker 1: you are, you have to cover for whatever booth you
Speaker 1: work in. I appreciate that, but I have to say
Speaker 1: I really wish that companies wouldn't use booth babes because
Speaker 1: it tends to clog up the traffic patterns around the booths,
Speaker 1: because there are too many guys who are trying to
Speaker 1: take photos and video of these women and they're they're
Speaker 1: not even interested, they have no interest at all, and
Speaker 1: whatever technology is being sold in that booth or being
Speaker 1: being shown off in the booth, they just want to
Speaker 1: get photo of this really cute girl in this really
Speaker 1: skimpy outfit chatting with them. And um, I guess they
Speaker 1: knew their audience probably, so you know, I'm not kind
Speaker 1: of criticize because my audience is the best audience in
Speaker 1: the world. But to me, that again, it feels it
Speaker 1: feels creepy right that you're using you're essentially using sex
Speaker 1: to entice people to come into your booth. And I
Speaker 1: would rather see companies again stand by their products to
Speaker 1: entice people to come into their boots, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the big booths they don't use boothbabes at all
Speaker 1: because they don't need to, you know, they stand by
Speaker 1: their name. So companies like Microsoft, Intel, Sony, these big,
Speaker 1: big companies, they don't have booth babes. Um you know,
Speaker 1: to them, their technology, that's the booth babe. I've got
Speaker 1: an image of a Microsoft to booth babe in my
Speaker 1: head and it's very strange, and she's just holding up
Speaker 1: a blue screen of death. Yeah, I love you Microsoft. No,
Speaker 1: I really respect the fact. But then again, you could argue, well,
Speaker 1: these companies don't need it because they've got the reputations.
Speaker 1: The smaller companies that don't necessarily have that may need
Speaker 1: an edge in order to get you into the booth.
Speaker 1: But again, to me, it just seemed like that didn't
Speaker 1: really old people into the booth so much as it
Speaker 1: made them stop in the aisle, which meant that it
Speaker 1: made it harder for me to get to the next
Speaker 1: place to go. So let's talk about some of the
Speaker 1: big themes that actually there that was sort of the
Speaker 1: personal experience of what it's like to be there. By
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you're exhausted. I was invited
Speaker 1: to parties every single night. I didn't make it to
Speaker 1: any of them, not one. No, it was too tired.
Speaker 1: I would I would get back to my room and
Speaker 1: I would think, all right, I just need to drop
Speaker 1: my stuff off, and then if I turn around and
Speaker 1: walk right back out, then I can go to the party.
Speaker 1: But no, I would sit down and that was game over.
Speaker 1: The only exception to that was the second night, so
Speaker 1: that would be Friday night. I did go out. I
Speaker 1: didn't go to a party, but I went to a
Speaker 1: gathering with some friends. So I met up with tom
Speaker 1: Merritt of this weekend tech fame and I as actor
Speaker 1: who is this old nerd? And a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other people. The g men showed up. Uh the Brian Brushwood,
Speaker 1: magician extraordinaire and scam school artist. He was there. Um uh,
Speaker 1: one of Wired's sexiest geeks of two thousand ten showed up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't really talk about that other than the fact
Speaker 1: that she was there. She also accidentally brushed my knee,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I tried to leverage that into fame. Tom
Speaker 1: Merritt also leverages it into fame, so I don't feel
Speaker 1: so badly about that anyway. Yeah, we all hung out
Speaker 1: and we we chat and had a good time. We
Speaker 1: really kind of talked about the show experience. That was
Speaker 1: the only late night thing I did, and I actually
Speaker 1: went really late. Other than that, I just had no
Speaker 1: I had no. So it is really exhausting, guys. It's
Speaker 1: not as much fun as you might think if you're
Speaker 1: covering it. I mean, I guess if you're just attending
Speaker 1: and you just hit the things you want, it's a blast.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the stuff I saw.
Speaker 1: First of all, the themes um Just like last year,
Speaker 1: the two of the big themes were tablets and three
Speaker 1: D TV. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing some sort
Speaker 1: of tablet device and some sort of three D TV
Speaker 1: being shown, and so uh, companies like Sony we're showing
Speaker 1: prototype three D TVs that didn't use glasses. So it's
Speaker 1: a lenticular displays. Yeah, that's it's a pretty neat technology.
Speaker 1: The biggest problem with lenticular displays in my experience, is
Speaker 1: that the the viewing angle gets divided up into several
Speaker 1: slices of pie. Okay, I think of the TV is
Speaker 1: the center of a pie, and then the slices extend outward. Now,
Speaker 1: if you are in the middle of one of those slices,
Speaker 1: you've got the ideal TV viewing experience. But if you
Speaker 1: straddle a slice like a line, then the two images
Speaker 1: are no longer together. You're getting this blurry double image thing,
Speaker 1: which is really disorienting when you're not wearing glasses and
Speaker 1: give you a headache and a heartbeat if you if
Speaker 1: you stare at it for too long. So that means
Speaker 1: that you know, you have to position your furniture just
Speaker 1: right in order to watch television without glasses. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: if you like, if you screwed over on the couch,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh crap, I can't see what's going on anymore.
Speaker 1: You have to scoot back. Um. But still those were
Speaker 1: in the prototypes age, so they'll get better. Uh. The
Speaker 1: three D with glasses was great across the board, and
Speaker 1: we saw I mean I saw everything. I saw three
Speaker 1: D with passive glasses, that's what the polarized lenses. I
Speaker 1: saw three D with active shutter lenses, those of the
Speaker 1: powered glasses that are synchronized with your television. I've never
Speaker 1: heard of that. You have to tell me more about
Speaker 1: that later. Well, I'll give you a quick just a
Speaker 1: quick explanation. So active shutter glasses they have these l
Speaker 1: c D shutters in them that that go on and
Speaker 1: off so fast that your eye can't really track it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they're they're moving, uh, in sync with the TV
Speaker 1: that's showing two sets of images alternating back and forth.
Speaker 1: So one lens only shows you one set of images,
Speaker 1: the other lens shows you the other set of images,
Speaker 1: and they alternate, and then your brain takes the two
Speaker 1: sets of images and combines it into a three D picture.
Speaker 1: Tables and three D were two big themes. Another one
Speaker 1: was internet television a again, this was another year for that,
Speaker 1: and also this idea of being able to port your
Speaker 1: experience from one platform to another. And by that I mean,
Speaker 1: let's say that you're playing an app on your smartphone
Speaker 1: and then you move over to a tablet. Well, some
Speaker 1: of these companies are offering up products where you would
Speaker 1: be able to pick up the tablet and continue that
Speaker 1: activity on the tablet uninterrupted from what you were doing
Speaker 1: on the smartphone. Then let's say you're moving from the
Speaker 1: tablet to a PC, same thing, or PC to your television,
Speaker 1: same thing. So this idea of an ecosystem where all
Speaker 1: your apps can exist and you can just go from
Speaker 1: one experience to another. And it's kind of the this
Speaker 1: idea of ubiquitous computing that we've heard about for years,
Speaker 1: we're starting to see it now. Not the biggest problem
Speaker 1: with this is that the systems developed by one company
Speaker 1: don't necessarily work with the systems developed by another company.
Speaker 1: So if you like your televisions from Company A, but
Speaker 1: you like your computer or is from company B, you
Speaker 1: may find that you can't take advantage of this ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It seems like hopefully some kind of third party system
Speaker 1: or some kind of standardization will occur pretty soon. I
Speaker 1: would imagine that down the road that would happen. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's like any kind of new technology, you're
Speaker 1: gonna see competing well you can't call them standards, but
Speaker 1: competing approaches come out. So those were the big themes
Speaker 1: that that whole connectivity, portability of your experienced internet, television,
Speaker 1: three D tablets, that kind of thing. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the stuff I actually saw while it
Speaker 1: was there, besides the three D televisions which were everywhere
Speaker 1: and everyone had really amazing ones. Everyone, by the way,
Speaker 1: is the leader in three D TV everyone everyone, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's how they would start their press event, like, well,
Speaker 1: we've been leading in the three D TV space and
Speaker 1: insert company name here has been leading in the three
Speaker 1: D TV space. Um, so I thought of talk about
Speaker 1: some of the quirkier stuff. For example, one of the
Speaker 1: people who showed up on the show floor was Lady Gaga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was there too because she she works with Polaroid.
Speaker 1: She designs products for Polaroid, at least esthetic designs. And
Speaker 1: one of the things she showed off was a pair
Speaker 1: of glasses with a camera built in. Okay, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would show you the picture you would take, you take
Speaker 1: a photo and showed the picture within your lens so
Speaker 1: you can review it. That's pretty cool. It turns you
Speaker 1: into the Papa Razzi. It was either that her bad
Speaker 1: romance dude, I gotta go. I mean, I belonged to
Speaker 1: the house the guy guy. I don't know what I
Speaker 1: can tell you. My wife. My wife bought some of
Speaker 1: those headphones that she put out that were there the
Speaker 1: triangle shape. Once those did not look comfortable to me. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, that's that's fair. Um but yeah, she she
Speaker 1: showed that off. That was one of the quirk things
Speaker 1: we saw. There was a smart fish Engage intelligent keyboard.
Speaker 1: It was a keyboard that could change shape, and the
Speaker 1: reason for it is to maintain ergonomics. So when you're
Speaker 1: typing in a normal keyboard, your wrist tends to stay
Speaker 1: still for a really long time, and even if it's
Speaker 1: ergonomically designed, that can hurt your wrist. So the idea
Speaker 1: behind this keyboards it would change shape and at little
Speaker 1: motors in it, I would change shape so that your
Speaker 1: hands would not and rists would not stay in the
Speaker 1: same position the entire time. That didn't constantly change shape
Speaker 1: because that would feel really weird. It's like the hula
Speaker 1: chair of keyboards. Yes, exactly, but that was kind of
Speaker 1: a neat idea. Uh, let's see what else were There's
Speaker 1: the body Media Fit device. I love this thing. It
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a watch, but you wear it
Speaker 1: around your arm, your upper arm, and it helps you
Speaker 1: determine how many calories you burn throughout the day. It
Speaker 1: also monitors your sleep patterns. So you're wearing this all
Speaker 1: the time, SI you take it off when you go
Speaker 1: take a shower, and that's about it. UM and I
Speaker 1: had an online component that would help guide you to
Speaker 1: learn things like you know what kind of food you
Speaker 1: should eat and how how much more exercise you need
Speaker 1: in order to balance out your activities and lose weight.
Speaker 1: According to one of the the reps, it's more effective
Speaker 1: than just diet or exercise by yourself because it helps you.
Speaker 1: It actually guides you into what you are doing and
Speaker 1: gives you more information. That was pretty cool, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they had a really fun promo for that. One of
Speaker 1: the guys from the company warrant and then ran around
Speaker 1: Vegas doing crazy stuff like skydiving to find out how
Speaker 1: many calories you burn when you're doing that. Source of Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty neat. Another cool thing I saw was
Speaker 1: a Cornings booth. Corning is the producer of Guerrilla glass.
Speaker 1: That's the glass that is really good at at scratch
Speaker 1: resistance and impact resistance. It's being used in a lot
Speaker 1: of electronics now, so LEUS, smartphones, tablets, even TVs are
Speaker 1: using gorilla glass to protect the electronics. And they had
Speaker 1: a really effective demonstration where they showed how much weight
Speaker 1: the gorilla glass could withstand and it was pretty impressive. Um.
Speaker 1: They also talked to me about the manufacturing process, which
Speaker 1: was absolutely fascinating. So I hope to do a full
Speaker 1: episode on Gorilla Glass in the future, just because it
Speaker 1: sounds so cool. It's it's pretty neat. Oh. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite products, and I wrote about this in the blogs,
Speaker 1: was the Celestron Sky Prodigy telescope, and it was sort
Speaker 1: of a new approach for amateur astronomers to really dive
Speaker 1: into astronomy. So one of the things that's a challenge
Speaker 1: in astronomy if you if you're brand new to it,
Speaker 1: you just bought your first telescope, is you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know where everything is. Right. You look up at the
Speaker 1: sky and you're like, well, there's obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: beautiful stuff up there, but you know what do I
Speaker 1: point my telescope at. So the sky Prodigy what it
Speaker 1: does as a digital camera that's mounted on the telescope.
Speaker 1: It's point in the same direction as the lens. Okay,
Speaker 1: you push a button when you set up your telescope
Speaker 1: and it will automatically align itself to a random part
Speaker 1: of the sky. Take a photo. It does that two
Speaker 1: more times, triangulates your position based upon the photos that
Speaker 1: were taken, because it'll it'll be able to figure out
Speaker 1: where it is and where everything in the sky is
Speaker 1: in relation to you. Then you tell it what you
Speaker 1: want to look at. So say you want to look
Speaker 1: at Saturn. You you type in on the little number
Speaker 1: pad that you want to look at Saturn. It will
Speaker 1: align itself to point at Saturn and you can look
Speaker 1: at Saturn's rings. It was a cool approach and the
Speaker 1: thing I liked about it was that they decided to
Speaker 1: go with the digital camera as opposed to a GPS receiver, gyroscopes, UM, accelerometer,
Speaker 1: and compass to keep the price down. Because all they
Speaker 1: used was a digital camera and everything else was run
Speaker 1: on the software and on the hardware end. Can you
Speaker 1: actually get an output from these photos or is it
Speaker 1: just for the photos? The photos, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: we're just to align the telescope. It wasn't you know
Speaker 1: that the digital camera wasn't like, it wasn't designed to
Speaker 1: take deep space photography. You don't have the hubble sitting
Speaker 1: there on your tripod. But the idea that you could
Speaker 1: use this to to star gaze was pretty cool. U.
Speaker 1: The in power adjustable reading glasses, Okay, hit me, what
Speaker 1: is it? They're reading glasses that have a focus ability
Speaker 1: in them. The frames, the frames contract. They actually change
Speaker 1: the the the way that the lenses bend so you
Speaker 1: can focus your lenses. I wonder what did Do you
Speaker 1: know what they're made out of? Uh, they're made out
Speaker 1: of gorilla glass. No, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I saw that. I saw that demonstrated
Speaker 1: by Natalie Morris of seen that. I didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to get a hands on with that myself, but
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool. Um, oh, the razor switchblade. Matt,
Speaker 1: you're gonna like this. I don't like violence. No. No,
Speaker 1: it's a gaming device. It's a handheld gaming computer. The
Speaker 1: keys are all programmable and are and will and they're
Speaker 1: each a little screen so that you can have specific
Speaker 1: gaming layouts depending on the game you're playing. So it
Speaker 1: has a keyboard, Yeah, it's a keyboard. It's a little
Speaker 1: handheld uh like think netbook but smaller. Okay, But let's
Speaker 1: say you want to play World of Warcraft, it will
Speaker 1: give you a customized World of Warcraft keyboard for your experience.
Speaker 1: Or let's say you want to play Quake, or you
Speaker 1: want to play some other first person shooter or a
Speaker 1: third person shooter, it'll give you a keyboard that is
Speaker 1: designed specifically for that game. It's pretty cool. Does it
Speaker 1: have any kind of mouse or you just plug a
Speaker 1: mouse into it? I guess or you know. I didn't
Speaker 1: get a hands on on that one because it was
Speaker 1: one of those things where I got to see it
Speaker 1: just for a second and then Jonathan, I need to know. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm telling you about so you can go
Speaker 1: and look into it all right. Um. Motorola had a
Speaker 1: couple of really cool devices. The Zoom x O o
Speaker 1: M tablet, which is running Android three point oh Honeycomb,
Speaker 1: or will be when it launches. That looked really impressive,
Speaker 1: although um, the first time I picked it up, I
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to, so the representative got very mad at me.
Speaker 1: The second time I was invited to pick it up,
Speaker 1: and it's about a pound and a half so it
Speaker 1: felt have felt um sturdy, ten inch screen, beautiful device.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see really what it can do
Speaker 1: once we get closer to launch, once Honeycomb is really
Speaker 1: fully baked, bake that Honeycomb. The Motorola Atrix. It's a
Speaker 1: smartphone that can actually power a laptop like device. It's
Speaker 1: actually a doc so you plug the smartphone in and
Speaker 1: the processing power all comes from the smartphone, so you
Speaker 1: can type, you can access your your smartphone apps through
Speaker 1: a laptop interface. When you unplug the phone, it actually
Speaker 1: carries all the data with it, so the laptop does
Speaker 1: not hold any data. You can someone steals the laptop,
Speaker 1: They're not going to get your information. It's all stored
Speaker 1: on the phone. Um and that phone, I mean it
Speaker 1: was snappy, it looked nice, and the running really really fast.
Speaker 1: It's got a dual core processor in it, and it actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: dual core processor for a phone. We're starting to see
Speaker 1: those now. We're we're still not really seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of applications that take full advantage of it, but they
Speaker 1: are coming out. Let's see, uh, Intel is got they
Speaker 1: introduced their Sandy Bridge processor which has graphics processing built
Speaker 1: into it. Meanwhile, Nvidia is introducing CPUs, so we're seeing
Speaker 1: the CPU companies get involved in graphics processing. We're seeing
Speaker 1: the graphics cards getting involved in CPUs, so they're gonna
Speaker 1: be going toe to toe in will be pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: They're just gonna have a computer in a chip now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's already got on board memory. You're gonna go
Speaker 1: and go. Uh I saw maker bots thing oh Manic,
Speaker 1: which is a three D printer prints three D objects.
Speaker 1: That was really cool. I got to watch it and
Speaker 1: I got to watch that go and it was that
Speaker 1: was really cool. It would print line by line of
Speaker 1: plastic and you would end up with your object, so
Speaker 1: that Yeah, they had they had bracelets that they were
Speaker 1: giving away. I did not pick one up. Let's see
Speaker 1: the in power peg kinetic charger. This looks kind of like, um, well,
Speaker 1: it kind of look like a rod and you hold
Speaker 1: it a certain way and you carry it with you
Speaker 1: when you're like hiking or or you know, doing power
Speaker 1: walking something like that, and it actually can build up
Speaker 1: a charge so that you can charge your electronic devices
Speaker 1: just based on the kinetic movement. And that was kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Um Let's see what else I'm looking at
Speaker 1: my list here of cool stuff. Uh da da da Oh.
Speaker 1: The Microsoft Surface got an update. Now every single pixel
Speaker 1: is a camera. Yeah, the pixels that you see on
Speaker 1: the surface are all cameras. They're all able to scan.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you take a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and you've written something on it. You can put that
Speaker 1: face down on on the surface and it can scan
Speaker 1: it and you've got a scanned copy of your piece
Speaker 1: of paper with text recognition, it can actually recognize what
Speaker 1: you've written. Yeah, talk about the smartest copier in the world.
Speaker 1: You know, seriously, you get into a point where your
Speaker 1: copier can spell check, your pro your your your copy.
Speaker 1: I imagine I can see Google buying like ten of
Speaker 1: those to help out with the Google Books project and
Speaker 1: just laying books on top of it. Yeah. You know.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about it, but that totally makes sense. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the surface, despite the fact that the surface was
Speaker 1: being shown at the keynote for the Consumer Electronics Show,
Speaker 1: it is not a consumer product. This is something that
Speaker 1: you'll see in retail stores things like that, but not
Speaker 1: in people's homes unless you're Bill Gates, which case is
Speaker 1: probably there. I saw people getting tasted. That was exciting
Speaker 1: for fun kind of. It was at the Taser booth.
Speaker 1: They were showing how effective the taser was by tasting people.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the people who were volunteering were
Speaker 1: actual volunteers or plants. If they were actual volunteers, dude,
Speaker 1: where are you thinking. I can imagine somebody going to
Speaker 1: CES just like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get taste and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna yell, don't taste me, bro. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what I think. When I go to c S,
Speaker 1: I think, God, you know what, I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: getting taste? Uh so yeah, I mean that's kind of
Speaker 1: the rundown. I got to play with the BlackBerry Playbook,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, until c S was pretty much
Speaker 1: behind glass for journalists, So that was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: And that was also a really snappy tablet. I think
Speaker 1: that's a really compelling product. Um what else did I
Speaker 1: play with? There were? Lenovo came back with its U one,
Speaker 1: except it's not called that anymore. That's the notebook computer
Speaker 1: slash tablet device where you detached the screen and it
Speaker 1: becomes a tablet. Um, it's you were excited about that one? Which,
Speaker 1: oh no, that was my favorite from cs INT winning eleven.
Speaker 1: The biggest changes that instead of running Lennox on the tablet,
Speaker 1: it's now going to run Android three point out. They
Speaker 1: didn't have a launch date. They said that that will
Speaker 1: fully depend upon when Google comes out with Honeycomb for
Speaker 1: for tablets, but that um it should be coming out
Speaker 1: sometime this year. So um it runs Windows seven when
Speaker 1: it's in notebook form and Android three point out when
Speaker 1: it's in tablet form, and I can't wait to play
Speaker 1: with that some more. I got to hold it this
Speaker 1: time because there was a guy showing on camera how
Speaker 1: the device worked and he needed somebody. You need an
Speaker 1: extra set of hands, so he grabbed me, so I
Speaker 1: was in the right place at the right time. I
Speaker 1: got to play with it. Um, So that was really cool.
Speaker 1: The uh gosh, what else? So much stuff? Really, I
Speaker 1: have to say that for me, the best part I
Speaker 1: was kind of talking the tech over with some of
Speaker 1: my peers. UM. Chatting with them about the technology and
Speaker 1: getting their perspectives really helped. It's really helpful because you know,
Speaker 1: when you go in you have your own personal bias,
Speaker 1: no matter what. It's not until you actually can sit
Speaker 1: down with other people and talk to them about their
Speaker 1: experiences before you really see what's going on. So I
Speaker 1: was excited. Uh, it seemed like a very optimistic year
Speaker 1: this year. The economic downturn stuff seems to be behind us. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were way more people than have been there in
Speaker 1: years past. And uh, I think the general feeling, at
Speaker 1: least from the the buzz I was getting on the
Speaker 1: floor is that is gonna be huge, Like it's just
Speaker 1: gonna be a breakthrough year as far as electronics goes
Speaker 1: and uh and the and the market in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is exciting, um and I'm really curious to see
Speaker 1: if in if we're just going to get yet another
Speaker 1: iteration of what we saw this year, because again all
Speaker 1: of the big themes were carryovers from last year or
Speaker 1: two years ago, even just expansions. I'm curious to see
Speaker 1: if will be the same or if we'll have some
Speaker 1: brand new I think the ecosystem idea, the idea of
Speaker 1: being able to port your experiences between different platforms in
Speaker 1: a sort of steamless way, I think that will be
Speaker 1: even bigger. In like if three D and tablets or
Speaker 1: anything to judge by where you know, you started seeing
Speaker 1: them about two or three years ago and then each
Speaker 1: year it's gotten bigger. I think if that's an indication,
Speaker 1: then we should see more of that in Well, that
Speaker 1: sums it up. I've got a whole bunch of blog
Speaker 1: posts about this, So if you want to go to
Speaker 1: the House Stuff Works blogs, you can read up all
Speaker 1: about my experiences at c e S. You can watch
Speaker 1: the tech news today I was on, which was the
Speaker 1: twit dot tv. UM they keep all of their their
Speaker 1: old archived episodes. So Tech News Today do a search
Speaker 1: on it. Look for C E s C. Gosh, what
Speaker 1: day was that? I'm gonna say it's Thursday. I want
Speaker 1: to say Thursday. I'm gonna say Thursday that I showed
Speaker 1: up on on Tech News Today, and uh so look
Speaker 1: for the Thursday episode during C E s UM. I
Speaker 1: can't even tell you what day that is anymore because
Speaker 1: my brain is scrambled. Oh, Jonathan, looks like we have
Speaker 1: some some questions that have come in. Please hit me
Speaker 1: with the questions. We'll finish up with those. Thanks for those, guys,
Speaker 1: Thanks for sending in your questions. Um, what kind of
Speaker 1: shoes did you wear? Hang on one second, let's see
Speaker 1: I was wearing, um these right here? Oh those are
Speaker 1: good shoes. Yeah yeah, oh wait, we don't do a
Speaker 1: video podcast doing. I was I was wearing like mall
Speaker 1: walker type shoes. They these are loafers without you know,
Speaker 1: they don't have any laces. Makes it easy to take
Speaker 1: them on and off of the airport. Um, good shoes. Support? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I felt I felt that they supported me. Well, well,
Speaker 1: that was kind of a strange question. I don't know
Speaker 1: why they were wondering about that. I get think they're
Speaker 1: worried about your well being. Your I appreciate that of
Speaker 1: your listeners are great. Uh. What what was the best
Speaker 1: food you ate? Oh? My god, best food? All right.
Speaker 1: I didn't eat lunch any of the days. Um Press
Speaker 1: does get free lunch if you bring your little coupon,
Speaker 1: but it is a mad house to get those free lunches,
Speaker 1: so I skipped it. But at dinner, Uh, I went
Speaker 1: to a place called m the House of Lords. It's
Speaker 1: in the Sahara Casino. Actually, I did not expect it
Speaker 1: to be this good. It's an old school steakhouse, so
Speaker 1: in other words, you go in and all the booths
Speaker 1: have that half booth where you all sit on one
Speaker 1: side of the table. Um. I had Pacific Shark, which
Speaker 1: was topped with salmon, shrimp and artichoke carts with a
Speaker 1: sauce overtop, served with a loaded baked potato with sour cream,
Speaker 1: chives and butter, and uh, grilled vegetables. And it was phenomenal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really really good. Um. Now, the best meal I've ever
Speaker 1: had at CS was actually last year at the Aria,
Speaker 1: but I didn't make it down to the Aria this year.
Speaker 1: So but this was still good and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: reasonably priced for Vegas. Well, I again, these are strange questions.
Speaker 1: I don't know what this has to do. We've we've
Speaker 1: got some crazy listeners. Oh, here's the last one? Is
Speaker 1: the last one? All right? What was your caffeine source
Speaker 1: of choice? Coffee? Starbucks brand coffee. That's what they served
Speaker 1: in the press room. And fortunately there was always coffee available.
Speaker 1: I hit the coffee all right on days on Tuesday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Thursday, hit coffee a lot. On Friday and Saturday,
Speaker 1: I switched to mint tea. Can you guess why if
Speaker 1: you've been listening closely to this episode, you sure do?
Speaker 1: All right. Well that that I think that wraps up
Speaker 1: our discussion. I would like to thank Mr Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: for joining me on this. Thank you for having me. Everyone,
Speaker 1: please send your warmest thoughts out to Chris Palette, who
Speaker 1: is currently behind ICE. I can't, I can't fill these shoes.
Speaker 1: Please come back Chris now, he'll he'll be back. He'll
Speaker 1: be back for the next episode. We just had to.
Speaker 1: I had record one today and he could not be here.
Speaker 1: I actually technically he was going to try and be here,
Speaker 1: and I told him to stay home because I knew
Speaker 1: how bad the roads were between his house and How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. And it's just now. I would hate to
Speaker 1: think that he got into a wreck just to come
Speaker 1: in and do it. Do it and ask me silly questions.
Speaker 1: You know. So, Matt, you did an awesome job. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. If you guys aren't listening on watching
Speaker 1: Coolest Stuff on the planet, check it out. It's one
Speaker 1: of our other podcasts here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can see more and Matt's work that way. He
Speaker 1: also does some work on other shows in a production capacity.
Speaker 1: He's one of our producers extraordinaire. So he happened to
Speaker 1: be one of the foolish mortals who made their way
Speaker 1: into the office today despite the icy roads, so I
Speaker 1: grabbed him. Thanks for listening, guys. If you want to
Speaker 1: check us out on Twitter and Facebook, remember our handle
Speaker 1: there is tech Stuff hs W and you can shoot
Speaker 1: me an email. That email address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. We'll be back really soon,
Speaker 1: and I promise I'll stop coughing for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com To learn more about the podcast, click on
Speaker 1: the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
Speaker 1: The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
Speaker 1: today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you