Consumer Electronics Show

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) started this week in Vegas.  Every year, geeks like myself attend this great event filled with the latest and greatest gadgets.

This year it appears that the product that is making the most noise are 3D TV’s.  A handful of companies are introducing their version of the 3D TV.  To view these TV’s, you’re still going to need a set of 3D glasses to view your 3D programming.  Studio executive Jeffrey Kattzenberg took the stage to introduce the show and to announce that Dream Works would release a blu-ray 3D version of Monsters Vs. Aliens to be viewd on these TV’s.

In the not too distant future, 3D TVs may start becoming the norm as more and more programming is coming online with 3D content.  Of note, for soccer fans, the 2010 World Cup will be televized in 3D as well.

Google Unveils New Phone

Its finally happened.  Google released their own phone in hopes to put a dent into the dominance that the Apple iPhone has been having.  The Nexus One, an iPhone killer?  Maybe, maybe not.  We’ll have to see how many apps and how soon they’ll be available beyond the apps already available.

The phone has a 3.7 inch display and comes in at a not too shabby 130 ounces.  The phone has a track ball, camera, flash, and GPS.  The phone runs on Google’s android software.

The phone has been paired with t-Mobile and the cost of the phone is $179 with a two year contract and $529 unlocked.  The costs of the phone and carrier service will be roughly the same with other smart phones in the industry.

Airport Scanning Technologies

In the wake of terroist attempts to bring down a Delta flight into Detroit, government officials are debating the cost effectiveness of expanding airport detection equipment.

There are new technologies that are available that can thwart more threats than the typical x-ray scanners that are used at every security checkpoint.  However, these new technologies come with a high price tag. These new technologies are only in place at very few airports.

The new technologies such as the backscatter x-ray and bomb sniffing machines are criticized because the technology is more invasive to a persons privacy.  Especially the backscatter x-ray is akin to a digital strip search as it can peer through clothing.  The imagery shows the outline of the body of the person being scanned in pretty good detail and therefore showing any foreign material.

In the light of the recent terrorist activity at what point are we as passengers on airplanes going to sacrifice some conveniences and invasions of our privacy to stay alive and safe in the air.  Americans have to realize, the threat is real and we need to be more patient with security personnel who’s only job it is to keep us safe.

Blackberry’s Second Outage

Research in Motions second outage in a week is leaving alot of Blackberry users wondering about their emails.  Blackberry’s are ubiquitous among business user for their role in business email.  Email is the driving force behind the use of Blackberry in the corporate world.  These outages have been most hit by non business users but could it be a concern for business users.

Even though email use was disrupted, Twitters feeds were firing pretty quickly and all of them stating their disappointments and frustrations over loss of email.  RIM hasn’t had any explanation about the near 9 hour outage.  However it has said that they are looking into the problem.  They state that the problem most likey arose due to a software upgrade that went wrong.

Will this pose a problem with RIM and Blackberry’s market share?  Apple and their iPhone has been making serious headway in the market share for smart phones.  The only problem with the iPhone is the carrier which has gotten most of the complaints with users of the iPhone.  Many people may ditch their Blackberry but may not ditch their carrier as Verizon is deemed more stable.

Blackberry Experiences Outage

Research in Motion, the makers of Blackberry are still wondering what happened to allow their networks to experience an outage affecting millions of users.  It appears that only emails were experiencing outages and that people were either not getting emails or having signifcant delays to their emails.   There was no affect to internet and voice communication.

The outage affected users on all carriers.  The outage only lasted a couple hours and all emails have seemed to be restored.  However, RIM has still yet to issue an explanation as to what the problem was.

Domain Name Shortener

Domain names that are simply way to long are going to be a thing of the past.  With Twitter only allocating 140 characters, it is a necessity to shorten domain names.  So a few big names are coming onto the markte to provide domain name shorteners.

The most prominent companies to do this is Twitter, Facebook, and Bitly,  Google.  With a shortened domain name, users have more room to be able to share whats on their minds.  In the age of microblogging, this is essential.

Apple Tablet Rumors Heating Up

Rumors of the Apple Tablet are starting to heat up again.  Rumors of an Apple Tablet have been circulating for months now.  Whether or not its gonna come true may have to wait till next year.  Thats when rumors mills say that Apple will be releasing the rumored Tablet.

Competition may be fierce since many companies already supply a sub $400 table and some as low as $200.  It may be interesting to see what Apple finally prices its Tablet for.  Most consumers see Apple as a premium and may be able to get away with charging more.  Many thought that Apple releasing an iPhone for $600 was crazy initially.  Rumors have been circulating about prices as well.  People see that Apple may release a Tablet in the $600 to $800 range.

Many people will pay the premium that Apple generally charges because they see the added return from paying the higher Apple penalty.  Apple has been talking to some big name publishers about creating content specifically designed to be read on a Tablet.  Therefore Apple may be in the makings of creating an iTunes like environment for published content.

We will just have to see.

Google Goggles

Google has been pretty busy lately.  They quietly added a dictionary feature to compliment their Google docs and now they’re introduced a promising feature.  Google goggles is a feature where you can take a picture of something such as a landmark, book, or something of interest and submit the query to Google and have it returned results.

The picture that is submitted to Google is somehow interpreted and eventually recognized and then return results almost instantly.  Of course you’ll need a camera phone with this feature but it goes to show that Google is hard at work taking over the internet.

Google adds a dictionary

Google has introduced another free feature to its ever expanding slate of free services.  Google has introduced Google Dictionary to compete with dictionary.com.  The website google.com/dictionary now provides a full blown dictionary and provides very good definitions and synonyms.  Also, the dictionary feature is complimented by the translation feature that Google also provides free. Therefore if someone were to search a word, Google can give you the definition, synonym an translate the word into 40 different languages.

Google’s dictionary can be a vital tool when working with Google Docs.  Users can tag words when using Google docs for reference late with Google Dictionary.  The new feature may result in a slow death for dictionary.com and answer.com.  It is pretty difficult to compete with the free offerings that Google is providing.  They provide an ad free, clean environment and easy to use.

Bing Maps

Look out Google, here comes Bing maps.  Bing, the search engine from Microsoft is coming out with its own mapping service.  Now, Microsoft has been notorious for taking someone’s ideas and making it their own.  This is no different with the maps feature.

The major improvement of Bings maps vs Google maps is that their version of Google’s Street View called Streetside provides a much more richer view.  The downside is that you have to download Microsofts Silverlight to make the rich views accessible.  Using Silverlight may put a strain on a computers cpu when using it however.  You can still use Bing’s maps without it but the whole point of maps was the street views.

Now Google has much more data than Bing for the maps and Bing is only introducing its version of maps in only 100 metropolitan areas.  However with more work, Bing’s maps should be a worthy competitor.