BostonPocketPC

Sunday's Digital Life event at CES gave me a chance to meet with the folks at DisplayLink.   DisplayLink offers a device that allows you to connect your video monitor to your computer via USB.  They also have a device that enables your video monitor to be connected via wireless USB.  This opens the door to many useful applications like video monitor placement in recording studios.  Due to the quiet sound space needs of recording studios all the noisy equipment is stored in a equipment closet somewhere outside of the main work room.  Depending on the layout of the facilities this can become very expensive especially when it comes to video cables.  Instead of using costly cables to connect the monitor, keyboard and mouse you could connect all these devices via a USB hub.  I was told that standard USB cable lengths are supported and anything beyond that of the USB specifications would require powered hubs to regenerate the signal over longer runs.  Up to six DisplayLink units can be connected to one computer.  When connected DisplayLink will act as an additional display allowing you to drag whatever you need over to the new display just as if you had another video card installed.  DisplayLink also has a wireless USB docking station that will allow you to have a wireless presentation machine complete with audio, video and up to four USB connections.  DisplayLink is able to archive this by transmitting only changing video information, static objects (borders of programs, icons, etc) are only sent once and will only update when a change has taken place.    Coming soon will be a 7  inch screen that will have DisplayLink incorporated directly into the screen eliminating the outboard converting unit.  If you have this 7 inch display you could setup a digital  media frame that does more than just pictures.  This would also be handy for traveling as it would give you an additional display that's small enough to pack and big enough to use.  I was told that this is just the first of displays of this nature to hit the market, soon there will be larger sizes available.  Just imagine having a monitor where the only cables you need to connect are USB and power.  For custom home automation installations this could really allow installers to do some very impressive things.

I just wanted to extend a huge thank you to the folks at Podtech, Seagate, Microsoft and HP and any other sponsors of the Bloghaus we may have failed to mention. Valerie Cunningham and Mariam Scoble seemed to be there every night and even at different parts of the day to welcome to this oasis of bandwidth, food, drinks, and a place to work away from the convention center, betwee n meetings and events. It truly was a home away from home complete with audio and visual equipment for setting a mood and computers sponsored by HP showing off their latest hardware as well as a few Xbox 360s to do something after having spent brains on little sleep and too many hours awake. They even have a Flickr feed here of most of what went on. You can see Johan, Eric, and myself in a few shots. A lot of Video bloggers were using Qik to live stream shows like Robert Scoble.

The Bloghaus also served as a meeting place for many fellow bloggers and friends we have made over the years as well as home base to meet up after browsing the show floor, attending night events, a place for fast bandwidth, a studio to record, edit, and post up blogs and video.

The folks at Seagate also had a drawing for a Maxtor 160GB OneTouch 4 Mini, which Eric and I had each won and Johan is still hoping he won one on the last day. The drive came in handy for us to back up and share each others pictures and video recorded at CES.

Again we just want to thank the folks at Podtech and Seagate as well as the other sponsors- Microsoft and HP that put this together.

Video was shot and edited on the spot by some hard working people like the folks at GearLive.

Ian Dixon interviews Rob Bushway.

Josh from Windows Connected and Ed Bott talking to the folks at WeGotServed .

MikeTemporale eyeing the Fireproof hard drive from Safety 1st

(Left)Podtechs live update page of recently posted videos and some live streams (Right) Ed Bott being interviewed by Ian Dixon

(L) Eric catching up on email with many bloggers opening the haus. (Right) Ian Dixon and Chris Aarons catching up on all things Media Center.

(left)Seagate's current line minus the amazing Bluetooth Dave that will be coming later this year. (right) The back room set for doing video casts.

(left) Nick White and Valerie Cunningham (right) Josh from WindowsConnected talking with Ed Bott, guys from ActiveWin, and the folks from WeGotServed.

(left)Eric and I working (right)Ian Dixon and Mike Temporale sharing some news on his Tablet PC.

(Left)Me and Rob Bushway from GottabeMobile sharing what we saw at CES (Right)Johan and the bloggers watching Bill Gates last Keynote at CES.

The Bloghaus also provided us with a place to crash and catch a few winks for those that couldn't last waking up at 6AM and staying up until 3AM 5 days in a row. ;)

On the last night of CES I was in Las Vegas, Johan and I went to the Media Center Show and met up with various guests and contributors to the show. Our host of course was the infallible Ian Dixon. Thanks to Paul Heitlinger from S1Digital for sponsoring the room and then we split the cost of the food up evenly (actually using the calculator on Ian's HP Tablet PC) which was a very bountiful "all you can eat buffet" at the Paris Hotel Le Village Buffet. A good thing too because the line out the door to get in had an hour wait. After dining in Vegas for 5 days straight Johan and I could only put down one plateful of the rich food before we left to catch our plane home.

Here are a few shots of the night:

Our host Ian Dixon, making the most of his time and putting together a few interviews between bites. I did get to talk to him on the way to the buffet line and he has had a very good CES and plans on sharing it all with his listeners. So be sure to check out his updates on The Media Center Show.

At our table was Ted Singh of Embedded Automation and his lovely wife are on the right in the first picture on the left. To the right of Ted is Microsoft's David Bradley, Business Development Manager of the OEM Digital Home division. To the left of him if I remember correctly was Ben Smelley, Manager of Product Development & Quality Control for Velocity Micro, who told me about not only some of their new systems that were shown at CES including a notebook pc called the NoteMagix C90 Ultra, but also about their new NetMagix HQ HomeServer. We also nudged David about pushing for a Home Server/Media Center merge in one box. All we got was, "Yes we have been asked this alot and it is being looked into." The rest of the dinner conversation was about soccer another passion we all shared. To the left of Randy is Chris Morley of Omaura. I told him that the designs they have are some of the most impressive ones I have seen for Media Center. To the left of him is BPPC's own Johan Van Mierlo.

Closest on the right is Adam Fitch from One Voice. The blurry one on the left in picture on the right is Ed Bott from ZDNet. I think Ed and I ran into each other like 11 times during CES and at other events. He is still one of the rare few that really get it.(he is also in the left picture below a bit more clearly)

At the end of the table with the cool hair is Jessica Zahn of Microsoft, she is the one that has been very active in the community answering questions in several online chats as well as on the Green Button forums Ask the Media Center TV Team. However, she told us that she has just recently joined the Social and will be working with the Zune group and her duties will be transitioned to Liz Sanocki and Peter Denniston. We did have a quick conversation at the door when we were leaving and I would loved to ask her more, however the folks at the Green Button did and have some interesting news about DVD streaming being tested and looked into as a possibility. ;)

We didn't get a chance to talk with everyone since our time was limited and we had to catch a flight back home. I really wished we had stayed a little longer and maybe grabbed one of those tasty desserts we passed on the way back to the table. It was a good time and I look forward to hopefully doing something with these people next year. Great job Ian for putting this together last minute!

Well we actually got to ride on the phantom Blogger Bus while leaving the Blogger Party that we seemed to miss where the pick up was and where it was going to and from during CES and it was the last we saw of it. It was pretty nice, but I wish it was a bit more accessible or had some sort of online tracking so you knew where it was in real time. With all the tech on the bus I am sure it wouldn't have been hard to squeeze it in there.

The bus was a full wrapped tour bus with all the sponsors on the outside.

It even had alot of room including a gaming room complete with an Xbox 360 and a large flat screen TV complete with Direct TV, stereo receiver, etc. in the back of the bus.

They even had a Dell XPS system serving up Windows Vista Media Center all set up by Robert McLaws of Windows Now!

They also had a bathroom and sleeping quarters that Johan tried out.

The bus was actually pretty full of Bloggers like Grahm Skee, Jake Ludington, and Mike Temporale were already on board when we got their.

As well as a few others that I forget, sorry it has been a long couple of days.

Grahm and a gentleman(Michael Davidson) from Newsvines on the right.

The folks at PodTech have a video of their bus ride from California to Vegas here. Jason Dunn also has a write up of it here.

SanDisk had their Press Conference today and the nice thing they had mentioned that where they see the removable storage market going is mobile phones, not digital cameras like one would think and they are making some revolutionary changes in other areas as well. Our host and main presenter for the Press conference was SanDisk's CEO and Chairman, Eli Harari.

They talked about media changing from the day of the floppy disk to USB.

They showed off the new Cruzer Micro 8GB with automatic online backup in case you loose it.

They mentioned their SSD drives in 64GB and 72GB capacites as well as their  new onboard flash for motherboards called Vaulter on the mini PCIe interface, now this would be cool 64GB built into motherboard for the OS and a hard drive for other media, I have been waiting a long time for this. We talked to Ken Castle from SanDisk at Pepcom the night before and they are slowly working on 128GB SSD, but the price point for manufacturing isn't quite there yet so it may 6 months before we hear word of it going to manufacturing, but consumers won't see that until 2009. In the 2H of 2008 we will see 73GB SSD on the market and in new PCs.

They introduced the SanDisk 12 GB micro SD HC card for phones and cameras. It is know so easy to take everything you need with you.

They showed their growth and marketing in the mobile market

As well as storage cards designed for video.

They showed their 'Four Screens' strategy of covering media for television/video, digital players/music and video, phones-pictures,audio, and video, and computers- pictures video and audio.

They also showed their growth in Japan as the leader above Japanese made storage cards by Panasonic and Sony. Next they showed their growth in the EMEA market as well, where they are far above all other brands.

They next showed us where the current usage of flash memory storage is and where they see the future market share and growth for mobile storage going - mobile handsets.

They then closed with a Thank You as people grabbed goodie bags from the empty seats near them containing a 1GB player and presskit. Unfortunately ours were taken before we even sat down, but were able to get them in the end. We will post up a review of the 1GB Sansa Clip soon.

We briefly stopped by the Samsung booth at Pepcom and they had a plethora of phones to show us. Unfortunately nothing new on the Windows Mobile front besides the stateside phones of the BlackJack II and the Verizon SCH-i760 we saw last year, but this year it has a battery in it. We were hoping to see the new Samsung i780 a great review of it is here.

Here are some shots of the phones they had.

In talking to the Samsung people it was evident that they see more people using their phones as digital cameras and they have integrated several parts from their camera division into their phones.

The Serenata had a very nice design that included a slide out speaker designed with Bang & Olufsen; this was the first handset I have seen with an integrated high quality speaker and it sounded pretty good admist the noise of the event and it had the same unique Industrial design that Bang & Olufsen is known for, hopefully it won't have its high price as well. Samsung also had a some Bluetooth headsets made by Bang & Olufsen as well.

Now that these models seemed to marry the two technologies of camera and phone the best in a pocketable form factor that consumers have been wanting. I just wish they had a Windows Mobile phone with this camera technology. More info and pictures of the phones and devices that Samsung released at CES can be found here.

One of the highlights for us at CES this year was the prototype Panoramic DLP display by Alienware. Granted there was a visible seam where the two screens were married together, but you don't really notice it when playing games like Crysis on it, which looked phenomenal.

Seeing this thing in action looked awesome. How it works is that there are four LED-backlit DLP built into the back of the display projects the image used to create the beautiful widescreen panoramic  picture. We were told that the final product will be optimized to create a seamless pictures without any visible stutters or lines.

Stepping in front of it and playing with it gave a really nice appreciation for it. However we could totally see this not being just a great high end gaming monitor or video editing workstation, but as a really nice every day desktop monitor. No price was released.

Eric did some questioning and found that the ODM was Ostendo. The specs given were a 10000:1 contrast ration and two WXGA+ 2880×900 panels. No pricing or availability dates were given since it was brought more to weigh consumer response (which was nothing but positive) and show a proof of concept. They plan to launch the monitor in the second half of 2008.

For those that will be asking, they were also showing off their latest Alienware Area-51 7500 that was powering the display.

iRobot was there as well and had a press conference, which we missed due to conflicting meetings with other companies and they never fail to impress with their new products.

The iRobot Looj gutter cleaner that retails for $99 with other packages and accessories available. It can propel itself through gutters, under gutter straps, and over downspout holes to clean 60 feet of gutter under 10 minutes. Now if it could just have a cool remote camera, go up and down drain ,and make that quick 90 degree turn at the top we'd have a real winner. You do have to climb up a ladder and place it in the gutter and retrieve it on the other end. It does come with a rechargable battery, charger, and remote control.

The also had what iRobot is famous for the new Roomba 560. Which is a bit bigger and better than its predecessors as well as easier to clean, easier to use, it also cleans better due to new programming and logi and it even includes a voice tutorial built-in.Weighing in at 8lbs and 13 inches in diameter with a 24 cubic inch dustbin capacity(increase of 33%) it retails for $349. It also comes with interchangeable color covers in White, Steel Blue, Champagne, Burnt Orange,Silver, Charcoal, Chestnut, and our favorite Carbon Fiber.

The underside has undergone changes including a larger catch basin as well as larger and softer wheels.

The beater bar also comes out and is easier to clean with the addition of a new brush cleaning tool to help get rid of dust and hair that always tends to collect there and if not removed it can bind up and burn out the motor.

In our book one of the biggest things were some proof of concept devices by Intel showing off their new Menlow processors in concept design MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices).

Here you can see the size of the chips for Silverthorne, which allows for 20X performance increase with a 10X power savings based on Intel's 45-nanometer technology and designed to be compatible with the Core 2 Duo instruction set while getting down into the 2 watt to 0.6 watt power range and Poulsbo integrated chipset.

Some prototypes from both Lenovo and Samsung, which similar to some device on the market today.

One Device that seemed to impress us was a mock up phone running Linux on an OLED touch display. It looked very nice! Granted it wasn't a fully working prototype, but we go the idea.

This was a very nice simple MID with a vibrant display easily capable of playing video as well as having a slide out keyboard similar to the OQO.

Some more closeup pictures of the Lenovo prototype. This was designed to be a MID device with the option of a phone, but we will have to wait and see so far this does look like the future of computing and are definitely companion computer devices which UMPCs should be. 

Today at the CES Pioneer announced at their press conference a brand new in or on dash system which will compete with many other multimedia in dash systems.  The Pioneer AVIC-F500BT Hybrid Navigation  improvements on other is in short:

• recapturing lost quality in music files
• Their own voice command technology
• and a new navigation system ( Looks like it's running on I-go, Nav N go software)

Another  announcement made was "Rock does beat Paper" in using Basalt rock to create the fabric for their speaker systems. Which creates more durability and higher Volume.

Last the announced the development of the future line up for Plasma TV's. The KURO project. We  probably won't be seeing these untill 2009 though:

• True Black (no discussing anymore on color aspect ratio)
• Just a 9 mm 50" plasma flatscreen TV

Ok, up on to the next press conference.