CES 2022, with real humans inside

Fourty thousands of visitors, only 30% of which from abroad, that's a far cry from the heyday, but a quantum leap from last year's virtual event. 

Anyway, you can always show off without showing up - CES 2022 simply shifted buzzwords from WFH to metaverse, and amped up everything VRtual.

If NVIDIA's Omniverse predated Facebook's Meta*, special mention to Hyundai for their branding extravaganza: Metamobility, MoT (New Mobility of Things), MobED (Mobile Excentric Droid), PnD (Plug n Drive), DnL (Drive n Lift).... Of course Boston Dynamics' tireless robots are in the loop (always willing to play with BTS members or to showcase innovation campaigns), but there's also the possibility for robots to somehow become our IRL avatars or surrogates. A bit more ambitious than just using e Ink to turn your car into a chameleon (a fun BMW concept car paint, though).

Samsung flexed once again their muscles and screens, between the curvy AI-speaker unfolding into a display to the S-and-G-shaped Flex S and Flex G, and their big browser Flex Note, a monitor that goes laptop. 

 

Yet I fancied even more some of their more conventional hardware: not necessarily the QD Quantum Dot) OLED, but the elegant The Frame (a collector somewhere between The Wall and an upcoming The Stamp?), and the convenient The Freestyle, which comes with Alexa as well as Bixby, but also with Tap View (just tap gently the projector with your smartphone to project what's you've been watching on it).

 

As usual, you can find all kinds of gizmos at CES. I have yet to wrap my head around this one, though. What went wrong at Colgate, and moreover among CTA curators? Who wasted their 20% allocated to pet projects on this slam dung?

But when it comes to relieving an itch and solving pain points, mosqitter deserves more buzz. Maybe that's because this ugly Dalek is into removing buzzing beasts: it lures all female mosquitoes within a 50 m radius indoor or outdoor. 

Maybe that was the whole plan from the start: drawing from a close range annoying innovation suckers to Vegas in order to prevent them from reproducing.

mot-bile 2022

* see "Meta-Fiction or Meta-Stasi?"

Photos: Hyundai, Samsung, CES, mosqitter.

CES 2019 Who'll Pay For The Wall? And Y-brush?

At last, The Wall is up, but a bit too far from the border with Mexico: Samsung is exhibiting in Vegas the most titanic version of its monster, a whopping 219-inch, 4K microLED TV. At that level, you should measure your screens in feet (18), or yards (6), or simply dump these obsolete standards altogether (5.5 m). This wall will cost you much less than $5.6bn, and will much more easily fit your living room once it's curved. Like LG's rollable screen, which returned to CES but this time for sale, under the group's premium brand for home appliances, as LG Signature OLED TV R.

In the weird vehicles section, BMW proposes a driverless motorbike, Hyundai a walking car (Elevate), and Bell a flying car (Nexus Air Taxi) so huge, that it takes as much space as 4 cars, and probably burns more fuel than 10 - prepare to be Uber-charged for a ride on that one.

Otherwise, IBM is back to mainframe computers: it takes a 2.7 m x 2.7 m frame to host its IBM Q System One quantum computer. It only takes two of these to climb The Wall, if not to reduce it to quantum bits.

Meanwhile, the French decided not to punch below the belt, like last year (see "CES 2019 - Driverlessly nuts"), but straight at the jaw: Lyon-based FasTeesh claims its Y-brush can clean your teeth in 10 seconds.

You just have to keep a low profile for two times 5 seconds, as you chew on the thing:.

That said, this concept is also smartly proposed in a BtoB version targeting medical or retirement institutions. That's a real game changer for caretakers.

What else? Ah, yes, after all, there seem to be still some latency with 5G.

mot-bile 2019

CES 2019 - Driverlessly nuts

A power outage at the CES? In the heart of Neon City? 35 miles away from Hoover Dam? And, of all reasons, because of excessive rain? In the Mojave Desert? This is nuts.

Like LG's 65-inch roll-up OLED TV... totally nuts:

And how about ForwardX's CX-1, a driverless luggage that follows you wherever you go? Now if that one doesn't drive airport security people nuts... imagine the mayhem when hundreds of these suitcases roam their halls, and no one can tell who's 'carrying' what...

Can't get nutsier, you think? Consider this: Spartan underwear, radiation-blocking boxers from France, to 'protect your nuts' from harmful waves...

You've been briefed.

So what to expect for next year? The Crotch It, an ankle monitor that punishes convicted sex offenders as soon as they get within range of former victims? A Wonder e-Bra, to fend off potential Harvey Weinsteins, and keep them away from the Internet of Tits? The Locker Room Banner, a semi-A.I.-based app to automatically delete your account each time you post something offensive on social media*?

We'll see. So far, if CES 2018 didn't bring any of the 3 gizmos I expected last year (see"CES 2018: tighten your 2.5 ppm helmets"), we've already been graced with a lighter version of one of them: smart masks from R-PUR ('pure air' in French - yes, we frogs are not just into smarty pants)






mot-bile 2018

* by the way, Samsung built The Wall. A 146-inch modular TV. With Micro LED. Now who will pay for it?

CES 2018: tighten your 2.5 ppm helmets

So you came back from Vegas with your LG bendable OLED screen (needed to wrap those smart gimbap rolls), your Hushme mask (needed to give Hannibal Lecter a call), and your Plume Labs Flow (needed a cheese grater that doubled as a air quality monitor).

Hushme mask (gethushme.com) allows you to mask your voice using various sounds (Minions, R2D2, rain, wind...).

Plume Labs Flow (plumelabs.com)

And you wonder what CES 2018 will bring you next year. Here's an exclusive preview of the 3 gadgets that will define the event:

• Xiaomi 2.5PPM Helmet: after purchasing Plume Labs and Hushme, the Chinese manufacturer created an air filtering mask with an airbag that inflates around your head as soon as nanoparticle levels hit the roof. In this safe bubble, the air is pure, your eyes don't hurt, and no one can hear you scream. 
• Alphago D-Bunk: this cloud-based A.I. service boosts your messaging and SNS apps, and sorts fake news from verified stories. Or at least it used to until Russia hacked it.
• Samsung Gear Fit Cuffs: clip the smartwatch on your left wrist, the other end of the handcuff on your right wrist. It beeps and flashes LED rainbows as soon as LEE Jae-yong moves 200 ft away from his cell.

mot-bile 2017

I see through you: City of Sin, Screens, and Smartpagers

Remember that old 3D classic "Avatar"? Now Navis can say "I see through you" instead of "I see you" on Hisense's latest see-through 3D TV.

CES 2013 is all about screens, and it starts on your wrist. I wonder if Amazon will try to sell haikus on this mini ebook reader:

Pebble's e-paper watch for iPhone and Android does look like a gizmo from the 90s, some sort of Bluetooth-enabled smartpager, but the biggest story about it is the way it was crowdfunded on Kickstarter, smashing the $100k goal and raising $10M within days. 85,000 units have been ordered before the CES, more to come.

Does your handset require a remote control that works on Bluetooth? That's another story:


Moving on to some bigger screens: how do you like your OLED TV? 4K (Panasonic)? 4K and Ultra HD (Sony)? Curved (Samsung - nothing as sexy as its "Samsung Flexible AMOLED" of course -, LG)? Multi-view (Samsung again)?

Sharing your screen, that's also possible on the Lenovo IdeaCentre Table PC, a touch table that may host interesting game applications in a near future.

Nevermind the fingerprints, the dust, or even water. One year after HzO Waterblock, Huawei demonstrated a waterproof Ascend series (Ascend Mate, Ascend D2). I'm still in shock to see a smartphone, with all its connectivity slots open, take a dive and come out just fine.

And how about this schizophrenic Asus Transformer AiO? An Android tablet taking off from your Windows 8 desktop? Will an iPad spin off from it? An Apple, wrapped in a Google, inside an Microsoft?

I still don't know what to make of the Firefox OS (showcased in Vegas). A Plan B for Android makes sense (I'm not even mentioning iOS), and it's nice to start in Brazil, but can the Mozilla ecosystem grow that big?

SmartTVs, smartphones, smartwatches... it all sounds like logistics these days, more about fine tuning delivering processes than about delivering new goods.

Still better than last year's shark lawyer frenzies.

mot-bile 2013