Thanks to all the confusing timezone abbreviations and me just thinking everything revolves around me (and the fact that Google doesn't do timezone conversions - why?), I mistakenly said in a previous post that Day 1 of CES was nearly done when it was only starting, and that Job's keynote is today (its actually tomorrow morning in AEDST). Anyway, take all these times with a huge pinch of salt, as I'm still trying to work out the various timezone abbreviations and that the world doesn't revolve around me
So CES Day 1 turned out to be a lot more interesting that I said in the last post. The amount of stuff coming out was actually quite scary - Google Reader told me the Engadget feed had 100+ items! Anyway, I waded through all that, and here's all the interesting things, focused on my main interest at the moment, that is,
making content easily & seamlessly accessible in our daily lives.
- First up is the variety of portable video players popping up. Sure there was always Archos doing this, and the failed portable media centre concept from Microsoft and partners, but it never really hit mainstream until now (no, the iPod video doesn't count - who seriously watches movies on that tiny screen?). Creative recently came out with their Zen Vision W, and now iRiver's announced their attempt, the W10. Looks very nice physically, interface 'looks' good and a good set of features (not sure what pseudo-GPS means). Battery life will be interesting though, as it always is with these devices.
The other is the is the Sansa View. Details are more sketchy for this (8GB is a bit small unless they compress it first, and 10 hours of music and 4 hours of video - that's crap), and its interface is obviously a work in progress (it better be), but the black and blue highlights design looks alright, very Sansa-like I guess.
iRiver also have a device in the works that integrates with Rhapsody (Real's music subscription service) over wifi which is great for getting songs on demand, say after you hear it on the radio or after a friend recommended it from their iPod.
- The Zune is also facing some real competition (MusicGremlin doesn't count), with SanDisk releasing their own, called Sansa Connect. Can't help but say it looks even less polished than the Zune, and its competing with Microsoft without any significant different features (apart from the ability to use wifi for something other than squirting - Microsoft said they were going to enable that later anyway).
- Vista's new SideShow feature has been in laptops, remotes and various other things, but this example is one of the more interesting ones - integrating it into a bag. Fabric buttons isn't new (Motorola has been doing it in burton jackets for a while), but the concept of being able to access emails, music, calendar etc. from your laptop without having to take it out is pretty cool. Let's hope they can turn the non-working prototype into a working one.
- Verizon (the US telco) has a cool device called the Verizon One. It's basically a phone plus a screen, but the screen displays photos, and various bits of information. Its pre-production, but it has a lot of potential, e.g. as a bedside clock, it could act as a smart alarm clock, adjusting when it'd wake you up depending on your diary, as well as telling you of immenient appointments, so you know not to over-snooze and alerting you to the traffic situation so you won't be late to a meeting again because of traffic. Really nice design too (pity about the phone bit though, that's a bit plain).
- Nokia's pushed out the N800 Internet Tablet. I'm not sure how big it is, but this is definitely the direction that 'mobile phones' should be heading. The larger screen size is essential with the vast amount of content out there, and while I think this is a bit big and can't really be used as a phone without a BT headset, it has potential. The interface looks alright, as do the specs, though the lack of GPS and the poor battery life sucks.
- Engadget's found more info on Windows Home Server which I mentioned in my last CES post. Making it headless is a good decision, though I'm a bit mystified as to why they don't have a configuration web interface (they have a remote access web interface, which isn't mentioned in engadget's article, but is in their photos). Even if it was a WPF app running within IE (or a .NET ClickOnce app), its more flexible than making the user install another app just to check on their home server. Not too sure about the RAID-like system either - what if the system completely dies, how can I get data out of it? (RAID suffers the same problem, especially striped ones). The Windows Live link is interesting though, giving you access to your content anywhere easily.
- Finally, Motorola and Yahoo announces a partnership to include Yahoo! Go 2.0 for Mobile (new version) in their new mobiles. This is great for pushing web content (in particularly, Yahoo!'s) out to the masses (like maps, local POIs, weather, news, email), but there still remains the matter of integration. The previous versions of Yahoo! Go for Mobiles have mainly been independent apps on phones, so users will need to know what it offers to use it, distinct from clicking the menu button when viewing a text message, and being able to search using some selected text. In similar news, Vox struck a deal with Nokia to get their blogging platform supported in Nokia's Nseries mobiles. (Motorola also announced a cool new phone, the MOTORIZR Z6, the first with its Linux-based platform and ironically supports Windows Media DRM - take that FSF).
And in other news,
Yahoo! releases a preview of their fancy new Yahoo! Messenger for Vista [via
Shane Morris: UXB], complete will very nice looking WPF styling. I'm not a Yahoo! Messenger user (Windows Live Messenger only), but damn, that interface is very tempting because its cleaner (though its missing many of its features by the looks of it), shiny, and well, because its new.
Yahoo! (geez, Yahoo! making a lot of news today) also announced the acquisition of MyBlogLog [and at
Mashable!], the cross-site social networking service, for $10 million bucks. Its no YouTube, but for 2 years worth of work between 5 people, its still an amazing effort and a great result. I'm still tossing up between adding
MyBlogLog or
Whooiz (to support Aussies) on to this though...