One of our favorite spectator sports here at Firegeezer is watching the annual Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas each winter. This year’s edition opens tomorrow, Thursday for its 4-day run and there is a lot more anticipation over the new products being introduced than there was last year. It was announced that they have 2,500 exhibitors this year. Digital heaven!
With global sales of everything dipping recently, there is an increased effort by the electronics industry to make noise and deliver even stronger sales pitches for their products. But what I like most of all is seeing what nifty stuff is coming onto the market in the way of gadgets both necessary and useless, and what kinds of improvements and advances the hardware and software innovators are working on.
From the clues we’ve been getting from advance “leaks” coming out, it is apparent that there are still more digital book readers coming onto the market. Amazon’s Kindle showed that there is acceptance, and even a desire, for the handy pocket-size reader. But two things happened along the way. For one, Amazon was exposed last year as not being quite what everybody expected when they “recalled” three books that people had purchased and downloaded. Without so much as an “excuse me,” Amazon went directly into their customers’ Kindles and took away the books that they had a copyright problem with. While they did refund the customers’ money, it still was a shock to people who are concerned about things like personal property rights. As a result, we also learned that Kindle customers did not “own” their copies of any of the books. They are only permitted to “use” them and cannot loan them to somebody else in the way that you pass along a printed book to your friends to read.
Barnes & Noble was supposed to be an alternative with their Nook reader, but their entry stumbled coming out of the gate and they couldn’t deliver the product when the Christmas buying frenzy hit last month. So the opportunity is there for all comers and we will see some new digital readers coming out.
Now that the GPS chip has been refined to near-perfection, I am anxious to see what kinds of grown-up’s toys and gadgets will be incorporating this tool. We’ve already seen how the new Droid cell phone has it as part of the package. And speaking of cell phones, watch for a lot of new entries into the I-wanna-be-an-iPod market. What will they do to make their individual products different from the others? I love to see the imagination that comes out with these sorts of things.
Technological integration is now set to hit us full force. After a couple of years tinkering around with it and learning what the consumers will be willing to pay for, expect to see a lot of products that are designed to connect your computer with your television with your phone with your Facebook page, etc. This is going to be fun! I’ll do my best to keep up with it, but I can’t do it alone. If you see some new toys that you want to share, send me an email and I’ll pass it along with my daily updates.
This morning though, we still have to get this equipment checked out, so let’s get started. I’ll go make sure the coffee pot is filled. See you back in the day room.
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