CES 2008

CES is always fun, however those who put on the show and those who participate have more in mind than simply putting together a fascinating spectacle.

The purpose behind CES is to bring buyers and sellers together and to bring each company's latest products in front of the media spotlight. This is where CES fell short this year.

The Consumer Electronics Association did a great job as always at putting the event together, it was the companies that fell short. There were few innovations that inspired us to get excited about the future of technology.

We did see a super thin TV, but it was still just a TV. We saw every shape and size of bluetooth headset and GPS system, but they all had exactly the same features.

We were pleased to run into my favorite Web 2.0 app representatives in the hall at CES.
Zoho offers a complete online office
experience for no cost. Zoho applications can be accessed any time, any where with any computer and a web browser. How can they offer such a great product for no cost? I asked them that very question and the answer is their parent company, AdventNet, supports the project. Sridhar told me that AdventNet has been extremely profitable and they wanted to introduce web productivity applications for everyone's use in 2004.

Another product that I was fortunate to see demonstrated by the company's representatives at CES 2008 was the Eye-Fi SD Card. Eye-Fi is a company out of California that invented this ingenious SD card that can upload your images directly from your camera to your favorite online printing service or photo web site. Once the card is setup, computer required, anytime a wireless network is available, your pictures are transmitted to the web site of your choice. The initial setup lets you choose what service or services you want to use and how to log in to your home wireless network or other networks you want to use. You then put the card into your camera (2 gigabyte capacity for $99) and use it just like any other storage card.

The Eye-Fi SD Card won many awards at CES, and the concept is nothing short of genius. Click here to read more about it on their web site. 

One of my favorite finds at this year's CES came from a company called Data Robotics, Inc. The product that I talked about at length with CEO Dr. Geoff Barrall is called teh Drobo. I tried to get my video of this product to post at YouTube, but for some reason it wouldn't take this one.

The Drobo holds up to 4 Serial ATA hard drives that can be inserted and removed at any time whether the machine is on or not. Drobo accepts any size and brand of drive up to 1 terabyte each! I enjoyed seeing and learning about this product because there is absolutely no setup, configuration or maintenance on the part of the computer user. Simply plug the unit into a high speed USB drive and Drobo takes care of the rest. It automatically backs up your data on up to 4 different drives and dynamically stores the data so that you will never have a loss...barring any catostropic loss due to fire, 5 story drop of the unit or something similar.

To read more about it and see the video on the Drobo web site, click here.

We discovered this iPod vending machine at the Las Vegas Hilton. We were there because Rick insisted on visiting the Star Trek store.

CORRECTION: Some of my facts were incorrect. To our knowledge, none of these systems feature dual core processors and the largest hard drive in the system that they showed us was 40 gigabytes. We apologize for the inaccurate information. We hope this does not affect our reputation as serious journalists and demote us to blogger status for next year's show.

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Part 2

While many companies invented acronyms and new words to explain why their product was better than their competitor's. Sanyo just cut right to the heart of the issue. Their phones feature, "All the new stuff!"

Guitar Hero is a game of reflexes and coordination. Using a guitar-shaped controller, the player holds the guitar and presses colored buttons matching the patterns displayed on the screen. It is very difficult and causes the player to work up a sweat if done correctly.

Toy maker Jada demonstrated this new Guitar Hero licensed toy that features special picks and a belt buckle hooked up to a miniature amplifier.

When the player strums past his belt buckle in rhythm with the pre-programmed riffs, it looks pretty realistic, except for the lack of an actual guitar.