CES2010: Friday: Panasonic 3D

The show is very crowded this year but we were still able to get tickets for Love just a few days in advance. Woo hoo!

OK let's start with the obvious. 3D TV - everyone was showing it. Panasonic was showing the world's first 3D live feed from DirectTV. The question was asked, what has to change for consumers to get 3D in their living room. Well, only: the feed (the content), the converter box, the cables, the TV, AND you need 3D glasses. The 3D image does look terrific (and even more so on OLED displays), but the ugly 3D glasses are a nonstarter. I call FAD on this one. Technology that makes you look ugly won't last. Maybe I'll be wrong but don't underestimate the vanity of human beings.

This is also, of course, the year of the app. The booths are full of big signs extolling apps, with teeny tiny devices on pedestals (Nokia, Blackberry, Motorola). Very few paper brochures being handed out. Almost makes the booths look empty. Could be the bad economy forcing manufacturers to cut costs and slim down the booths? Mot and Nokia were openly soliciting developers for their devices. Where is HP in this race to grab mindshare of developers??

One group of people noticed my badge and asked me where the HP booth was and where they could see the new tablet. It was embarassing to say that we didn't have a booth. At least we couldn't find it. Only an HP meeting room... I assume that HP's booth commitment would have been made about a year ago when the economy was in total paralysis - but then how could we be the only major manufacturer to have not signed up again once the $$ started to flow again?? I am baffled.

HP Slate teaser video


Back to Nokia: The Ovi mapping app is pretty cool - it shows major landmarks which I'm not sure google maps does.

Blackberry was showing some great apps, some a repeat from last year like Schlage internet locks and Slacker, but the 2 coolest ones I saw were:

- Xobni, somewhat similar to Motorola's Blur. Aggregates & timelines emails, MSC conversations, tweets, and FB updates, apparently inside Outlook. Won't replace facebook as a single place to go to see everyone's status updates, tho. Found out Xobni for Blackberry is in Beta and is not widely available. Ugh - vaporware!!!

- Poynt, location based searching. Similar to Where on the iPhone. Uses your gps to display cheapest gas stations near you; best sushi restaurant near you. One-click integration with google maps. Displays Citysearch reviews - but not sure how accurate those are or whether their review database is large enough to be statistically meaningful. So I downloaded Poynt and played with it in Vegas and on the drive back home. The percentage of businesses that have reviews is shockingly low, like less than 10 percent, and the number of reviews per business is very low (1 - 10). Why would I switch to this from Yelp??

- Urbanspoon finally comes to BB - nice app, I enjoy it on my iPod Touch, but I prefer to understand all my choices, this control freak doesn't like to do things at random.

Nice to see that *some* key apps are being replicated for Blackberry. In the 1.5 years since I got my Blackberry, it's fallen from the number 1 smartphone platform to #3 behind iPhone and Android...

Blackberry also showing the Presenter, $99 adaptor to allow a BB to stream powerpoints to a projector. 1024x768 resolution did not seem high enough for technical presentations - image looked blurry.

I've been trying to convince my husband to get a Droid. Got a chance to play with it at the Mot booth -- and kudos to Mot for having, like, 50 Droids on display to reduce wait times... Some notes:

+ built-in external speakers sounded nice and loud
+ haptics (that little buzz under your fingers when you actually connect with a button) - iPhone *needs* this
+ smaller than iphone
+ google maps seemed to run fast
- no Blur app yet for droid
- physical keyboard is not centered on device, making typing surprisingly awkward for the right hand unless you have long fingers.

Also at Mot - the Backflip phone has a small square area on the backside called Backtrack, a touchpad that enables you to control the controls on the screen without your fingers getting in the way of your view.

Kodak booth - pretty much the only things in their booths were tables for salesmen, and Microsoft Surface tables to display product information - no paper collateral in the booth at all. There was a long "river" (great pictures here) of Surface panels flowing down a column, turning 90deg to flow across horizontally, then another 90deg turn over the edge towards the floor.

Saw an ad for a bar at the Rio Hotel that uses Microsoft Surface tables, including overhead cameras to spy on other tables and send them messages...