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Written by: Ian Markowitz
The Consumer Electronics Show, better known as CES, takes over the city of Las Vegas every year in early January, showcasing the latest and greatest in consumer technology for the upcoming year. This year, approximately 120,000 people descended on the city for the industry showcase.
I was fortunate enough to have been one of those roaming the more than 3.5 million square feet of the show floor spread out over the entire convention center in addition to two hotels. While I spent a majority of my time at CES documenting the show for posts on The Vanguard’s website, it is likely that many of you missed the articles while we were on our winter break, so I felt that it was important to recap the highs and lows of the expo.
While the expo is typically a great venue for companies big and small to showcase their products, I tried to focus my efforts on more mainstream products you will likely be seeing in stores in the near future. This year’s show was dominated by the introduction of a significant number of 3D HDTVs, none of which were significantly impressive presently, so instead I tried to focus on other areas of the expo more pertinent to Bentley students.
My pick for the best product of the show was Parrot’s AR.Drone. Controlled through an iPhone or iPod Touch, the AR.Drone is essentially a remote-controlled aircraft with a built-in camera which relays its video feed to the iPhone/iPod Touch via a Wi-Fi connection. It seems that each Drone has its own Wi-Fi connection, since Parrot had 4 crafts running simultaneously, although they wouldn’t elaborate on the specifics of how that was possible.
Additionally, the Drone has an internal stability sensor which allows the craft to hover almost perfectly still even in variable winds. Lastly, with its built-in camera, the iPhone allows you to play augmented reality games by firing virtual missiles at real targets. This feature gives the Drone that added umph to make it even more desirable. The only downside is that it is likely to cost you an arm and a leg when it is released sometime this year.
Another announcement made at CES which wasn’t nearly as revolutionary as the AR.Drone was the introduction of the Echo USB drives from Lexar. If you are like 95% of the other students on Bentley’s campus and don’t back up your data due to the necessary hassles, this is the device for you.
Barely extending out of the USB port on your laptop, the nail drive automatically backs up your data to the USB drive with no effort required on your part. The drive will automatically back up as many revisions of any particular file that you want. It will be available in sizes up to 32GB for around $140 and is available for preorder now on Amazon.
My pick for the worst announcement of CES came out of Taser, the same company which makes the Tasers used by most police departments across the country. Taser unveiled a new product called PROTECTOR which allows parents to monitor all of their children’s phone calls, picture messages, and text messages, as well as restrict their ability to text/call while driving through an additional add-on.
Any text message or picture message will first be sent to the parent’s phone where that parent can either approve or deny the message before it gets sent to the child’s phone. Taser is describing its PROTECTOR as a communication tool between parents and children which will allow parents to “relax” the controls once the child earns their trust, but any Bentley student can tell you how easily that tool will be abused by parents.
Despite some disappointing announcements, CES is certainly an excellent showcase of what is to come. With an audience of more than 100,000 industry affiliates, many booths pull out all the stops and utilize the event to show off their latest and greatest. While this is by no means a complete coverage of all the gadgets unveiled at CES (there were 20,000 products introduced at this year’s CES alone), these three that I found seemed to have the strongest connection to Bentley students.
There are more in-depth articles on all the products on The Vanguard website if you’re looking for more information. Enjoy!
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