CES 2011

1. CES 2011: i1 Eco Universal Adapter Charges Almost Any Gadget

CES 2011 is giving way to an array of energy efficient designs this year, but beyond the staggering advances in flat screen TVs and super-fine camera lenses, there are a handful of companies keeping things a little more practical. Making its debut at CES today,IDAPT revealed their i1 Eco Universal Adapter Charges The compact IDAPT i1 Eco is not only made from recycled materials, but it meets Energy Star standards with an auto-off system energy conserving mechanism, and minimizes a user’s carbon footprint while charging most electronic devices. With two points of charge, a USB port and a tip port, the device aptly considers future developments in technology, while making it compatible with over 4,000 devices on the market today. The IDAPT i1 Eco will be available in Spring 2011, and is already a CES Innovations award honoree.


2. CES 2011: nPower PEG Charges Your Gadgets as You Walk

There’s nothing more annoying than when you’re away from home and your gadgets run out of juice without an outlet in sight. Spotted at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the power PG  a simplified solution that’s both compact and easy to use. Designed for those always on the go, all you have to do to pump up the power on this puppy is to just get steppin’! The nPower PEG is able to capture all of your kinetic energy, letting you transfer it to your iPhone or other portable devices. So whether you’re in the mood for a brisk stroll or down for a marathon run – just don’t let all that energy go to waste.

3. CES 2011: Smart Power Plug Cuts Vampire Energy Drain

What if all our electronics had plugs that detected how much voltage and power a device needed and only drew that much from the grid? That’s exactly what the designers at Green plug have created – a smart universal ‘Green Power Processor’ that uses less energy than analog power supplies. Debuting at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, this little green innovation completely eliminates the issue of vampire power.

The device was displayed at CES Las Vegas, where according to Green Plug it could “digitize power supplies making them smart enough to work with multiple devices and draw only the power that electronics need.” The green power processoris not so much a plug, but a chip that is designed for digital power supplies and is meant to be more versatile and efficient than existing analog power adapters. Green Plug believes the device could be an ideal way to improve at home energy efficiency by converting alternating currents from the grid into the direct current that electronics use.
“Chip makers and power supply manufacturers now have the technology they need to undertake the transition from clunky black bricks and wall warts to sleek, efficient digital power adapter architectures capable of exchanging information between the power source and the load and adjusting power use according to product need,” Green Plug CEO Frank Paniagua said in a statement.

Seven Technologies Poised To Rock The New Year

What’s in store for 2011? Some of these themes will continue to evolve, and some new ones will gain currency. Here are seven technologies poised to rock the new year:

1. Web Video On Your TV: We’ve already seen many attempts to turn the Internet into a video-delivery pipe to rival cable TV: Google TV, Apple TV, the Boxee Box, Roku, and a slew of “Internet-enabled” TVs.  None of them are quite yet cable killers but they are seeding the market with simple ways to bring Internet video to your large-screen TV in the living room. The more cable-quality video that becomes available over the Web via streaming services such as Netflix, Vudu, or iTunes, the more that people will turn to Web when they are looking for something to watch. This trend is not about surfing the Web on your TV. Nobody wants to do that. It is about using the Internet as an alternative way to deliver movies and TV shows to your flat-screen TV. Even the cable companies will dip their toes into the Internet delivery waters (or plunge deeper if they already have their toes wet). What looks like a pale competitor to cable today will be a lot more viable in a short, twelve months.
2. Quora Will Have Its Twitter Moment: Social Q&A site Quora may be the current darling of Silicon Valley, but not a lot of people beyond the insular tech startup world actually use it yet. That will start to change in 2011, which I believe will be the year Quora has its Twitter moment and start to really take off. Quora represents a bigger technology trend, which is the layering of an interest graph on top of people’s social graph. On Quora, you can follow not only people, but topics and questions. It defines the world by your interests, not just the people you may know or admire. This is a powerful concept and is not limited to Quora (both Twitter and Facebook also want to own the interest graph), but Quora is designed from the ground up to expose and help you explore your interests. It is addictive, and as it reaches a critical mass of early users, this will be the year it emerges from its shell much like Twitter did in 2007.
3. Mobile Social Photo Apps:The end of 2010 witnessed a spate of mobile photo apps including Instagram, PicPLz and Path. They all take advantage of several massive key trends: the growth of iPhone and Android, the ubiquity of decent cell phone cameras, GPS, and existing social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. Each of these apps is built for mobile first. They let you take a picture, mark your location, and share it with your social network (sometimes public, sometimes private). With Instagram and Pic PLs, you can choose a filter to make humdrum pics look more exciting or capture a mood. By building on top of existing social networks like Twitter and Foursquare, they are making popular new ways to use those services. Instead of simply checking in, now you can do a photo checkin (even Foursquare lets you do that now). Already Instagram is one of the most popular photo apps in iTunes. Sharing photos is pretty much a universal impulse, and these apps make it easier and more fun.
4. Mobile Wallets: If you could use your cell phone as a credit card, would you? Everyone from Apple and Google to Nokia want to make that a reality and tap into the mobile payments market. Both Apple and Google are exploring this opportunity.The latest Android phone, the Nexus S, comes with an NFC chip—the same kind that is embedded into credit cards and lets you pay by waving it over a wireless reader.It is going to take more than just NFC chips in every phone to make mobile payments a reality, but efforts by the major players this year should begin to move the needle.
5. Context-Aware Apps: Whether it’s search mobile, or social apps and services, the most useful apps people will keep coming back to are the ones which help people cut through the increasing clutter of the Internet. Apps that are aware of the context in which they are being used will serve up better filtered information. When you search on your mobile phone, that means you get local results and local offers served up first. If you are on a service like Quora that understands your interest graph, it means that you are only shown topics that you care about, sorted in realtime. If you are on a news site, you will see the most shared links from people in you follow on Twitter or are connected to on Facebook. Music and movie services will similarly surface social recommendations. In a world of information overload, context is king.
6. Open Places Database: Every mobile app, it seems, taps into the geo capabilities of phones to pinpoint your exact location and show you what is around you. (Incidentally, that is another example of a context-aware app). But there is a lot of duplication going on, with everyone from Google to Facebook to Foursquare creating their own database of places. It would make much more sense if there was open places database that any company could both pull from and contribute to. While we are not there yet, we are making progress towards a more open places database, or at least a federated one. Factual is providing some of the data for Facebook Places and creating a places database is a major focus for the company; MapQuest (owned by AOL, as is TechCrunch) is adopting open street maps (which could very well become the central places database with more resources and development); and Foursquare lets other apps pull from its places database through its API. There are economic reasons why some companies don’t want to participate (controlling the places database makes it easier to serve up local offers), but expect to see this movement pick up steam in 2011.
7. The Streaming Cloud: As all media moves to the cloud and music whenever they want to any device. I’ve already mentioned the forces that will bring Web video streaming to your TV, but those movies and TV shows should also be available on your iPads, Android Tablets, or even mobile phones if you want. Expiring downloads will still make sense for plane trips and other places where the network is spotty, but you will manage your subscriptions and collections in the cloud. Think Netflix streaming applied to all media. If Google or Apple can convince the record companies to come along for the ride, the streaming revolution will hit music as well. Why would you want to bother with managing all the download rights for the songs you buy from iTunes between your iPhone, iPad, laptop, and your wife’s computer, when you could just sign in form anywhere and start streaming? Plenty have tried with varying degrees of success and failure (Rhapsody, Rdio, Spotify), but it will take someone with the negotiating muscle of Apple or Google to finally bring streaming music to the masses.

Technologies to Watch for CES 2011

 

4G Phones and Networks Debut

LTE (Long Term Evolution), the best-known type of 4G network, will be a big selling point at this year’s CES. Verizon will be holding a press conference just to unveil details about its 4G network, but we expect a lot of 4G devices to be unveiled as well, following the success of the HTC Evo 4G.

One such device we’re keen on trying is the HTC thunderbolt which will have the distinction of being the first LTE phone on the Verizon network. It’s a 4.3-inch monster of a phone, but we still don’t know all the specs. That will change this week.

Other devices to watch for: The HTC Evo Shift 4G, the LG Optimus 2X and even Motorola’s Android Honeycomb tablet, which will also feature 4G connectivity.

 

Android & CES vs. Apple & iOS

Have you spotted an underlying theme for this year’s show? People will say CES 2011 is all about tablets, but while they will be prevalent, the real star of this year’s show will be Google Android.

Android tablets. Android phones. Android appliances. There will be so many devices running on Android at this year’s CES that you’re going to need an actual android to help keep track of it all.

Hundreds of companies have latched themselves onto Android, some so much so that their fate will be tied to the operating system’s market performance. It’s the only credible counterweight to Aplle and iOS. The 3billion will be casting a shadow on this year’s show thanks to the imminent release of The verizon Ipad and the ipad2 It wouldn’t surprise us if Apple announced one of its famous press events this week just to take the steam out of this year’s show.

Apple is the reason why everyone’s going gaga over Android and why everyone is so invested in the Google ecosystem. Without Android, Apple could steamroll over CES. It’s a testament to just how powerful Apple has become.