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