Live From CES - COOL NEW STUFF!

Live From CES - Friday Morning Update

A summary of Thursday's events.  After roaming the floor and attending meetings with some of the most exciting companies in the industry, we have some neat things to tell you about.

• SPOT - Mircosoft's SPOT Technology (Smart Personal Objects Technology) is available.  After the offical announcement of the launch of SPOT Watches driven by MSN Direct (by Bill Gates) at his keynote Wednesday, the industry is "buzzing" with excitement.  Techie "early adopters" and mainstream consumers are sure to want a SPOT watch with many now available.  Check out: www.spotstop.com for continued coverage!
  
• SD Wi-Fi cards with integrated memory are on the way.  Without talking to much about this "hush.. hush.. guarded subject, we may see these cards on the store shelf as soon as Q2 of 2004.  The SD device manufacturers continue to offer many exciting options on serval new cards.  (more info. and pics to follow).
  
• OLED screen technology.  OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screens were on display.  All I can say is "wow"!  Think your iPAQ screen is gorgeous?  Think again.  These new screens are richer in color, significantly brighter, sharper and can be seen from virtually any angle without any visual change to the screen.  Best of all they have no need for mercury lamps as LCD panels do and consume less power.  For more information, check out: http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/display/index.jhtml
  
• BLUETOOTH - Why does Europe get to have all the fun?  Brian, Andrew and I once again had to face a reinforcement of our frustrations with manufacturers being unsupportive of integrated Bluetooth in their devices shipping to the U.S.  I don't know about you, but I hate connecting my printer to my notebook just to print one damn page.  I LIKE to sync my iPAQ without using the cradle when I am in a hurry.  I would love the ability to share files with others at meetings on the fly.  During our meeting with Bluetooth, We saw a few neat new Bluetooth devices.  But most importantly we reconfirmed manufacturer's reluctance to include intergrated Bluetooth in their notebooks, Tablet PC's and desktops for models shipping to the U.S.  Much more to follow on this story.  Check out: www.bluetooth.com
  
• INTEL Centrino UPGRADE - The Pentium mobile chip dubbed "Pentium M" which is found in Centrino and lightweight notebooks and Tablet PC's is in for a significant performance upgrade.  The current Pentium M architecture is fueled by it's "Banias" core, but performance in Mulimedia and other demanding tasks will be significantly improved later this year with the next generation of chips incorporating the new "Dothan" core of this processor (psst. you didn't hear this from me).  After seeing a side by side performance comparison between these two chips, I was blown away.  Check out: www.intel.com/unwired and http://www.geek.com/procspec/intel/banias.htm
  

Barry J. Doyle