CES 2012: G-Form
Posted by Derek Alfonso in CES12, Video on January 11, 2012
Derek Alfonso, host of The Power of Information gets a demonstration of the latest release from G-Form that is no longer focused on just protecting the body but now also your electronics (and my M&M’s)
CES 2012: Ar Drone
Posted by Derek Alfonso in CES12, Video on January 11, 2012
Derek Alfonso from The Power of Information reviews the Ar Drone v2 from french creator Parrot at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012.
The Last Gadget Standing @ CES 2012
Posted by Derek Alfonso in CES12 on October 11, 2011
| Do you have the latest Gadget that will fascinate, captivate and become indispensable?
Enter the Last Gadget Standing Competition to find out. Innovators of the hottest gadgets in the industry can now reach for fame and fortune, and a ton of laughs. The Last Gadget Standing Competition, in its eleventh year at the International Consumer Electronics Show, CES, will showcase the best and brightest stars in the industry. Plus our hosts Gary Dell’Abate and Jon Hein from the Howard Stern Sirrius network are this year’s hosts — back by popular demand. The live competition is scheduled for January 12, 2012 in Las Vegas, and now is the time to submit your entry. |
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| Here’s How It Works
It all starts with your entry. Nominate the products that you think have what it takes to garner audience love. On the Last Gadget Standing website, you will introduce your product to our readers, encouraging discussion and opinion. We’ll tally up the comments and our team of expert judges will narrow the field down to the Top 25. Our judges will then write an objective review of each of the gadgets. Finally, our Top 10 finalists will be chosen by our expert judges. Finalists will move on to the big stage – a standing room only crowd at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Each finalist will have four minutes to introduce their product before a full-house audience. Presentations tend to be campy and fun, and through it all, the winner will be crowned. The press will be there to capture your moment of glory. Audiences love the fun, quick-paced, tongue-in-cheek game-show format. Participants love the opportunity to show off their products as one of the best at the show. And everyone loves being part of the final vote to determine which product will be the Last Gadget Standing Previous Last Gadget Standing winners include Acer Iconia, Eye-Fi Card, HP TouchSmart PC, Data Drive Tornado, Pioneer Inno, iRobot Roomba, Davis Car Chip, Dell Axim, GM OnStar, and others. Past participants and winners both have enjoyed the strong media coverage that the event attracts, and play to large crowds of attendees who want to see the very best products in action. You can expect coverage from TV, newspapers, tech journals, bloggers, and others. Qualification & Nomination Requirements To qualify for participation in the Last Gadget Standing Competition, your product must be available to ship publicly in 2012. If your product is under NDA until CES, please make these restrictions clear in your entry, and we can discuss details of how to handle the media embargo. Here’s How to Enter Go to www.lastgadgetstanding.com to fill out the entry form and pay the nominal entry fee. And feel free to pass this note along to any colleagues who may be interested in submitting a nomination. We look forward to another season of great products! |
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Covering CES12
Posted by Derek Alfonso in CES12 on August 27, 2011
The video crew will be at CES 12′ covering the latest in gadgetry, stay tuned here for exciting updates as we learn more about what is coming at the show.
Show #127
Posted by Derek Alfonso in Shows on August 26, 2011
News
- $230 – vs. MUCH MORE for ruggedized specialized hardware
- Sheathed in a rugged case for Military purposes
- Soldiers = Swiss Army Knife
- Translation software – word translator and gesture translation (VCommunicator)
- Annotate Maps – In Dev – Take pictures of streetsigns and the Iphone will give intelligence about the location
- BulletFlight (Ballistics Calculator)
- Video Player
- Camera
- IPhone still a little too expensive for general deployment
- Oracle Buys Sun
- Oracle is the largest DB Vendor in the world
- Sun owns MySql, OpenOffice, Java, Large portion of Unix world
- Will Oracle still offer DB on Windows platform
- Will OpenOffice and Java still be free?
- Flash on TV’s
- Software already written
- Announcement at the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention
- Set-top boxes by end of year, embedded into TV later
- TW admits defeat on Tiered Bandwidth
- Retracting Pilots for tiered bandwidth that were to start in fall
- Grass Roots, and Senators all went after Time Warner
- Claims of “Stifling Creativity” and Monopolistic practices (inability to stream video without exhorbitant pricing) were cited
- Last straw could have been when U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y got on board and threatened legislation
- Competitor Frontier communications was already in the process of retiring a tiered plan
- Will still provide tools so ppl can educate themselves on bandwidth
- No promise that program won’t go into place in future
- Google 3D Plugin
- How many failures before they get hint that the Internet is a commodity?
- They are still in WAAAAAY exploratory phase
- Mozilla and Google presented different applications, not compatible
- What level will it take before 3D will be acceptable on Internet?
Gamer’s Corner (Conferences, New Developments, Game Reviews)
Intarweb Goldmine
Reference
Show #126
Posted by Derek Alfonso in Shows on August 11, 2011
News
- Usually manifest by a tweet: Visit DailyStalk, better than twitter, with pictures
- If you visited the profile of that person, you were infected too
- You began to send the same messages
- Different variations, happened twice
- Twitter “claims” to have fixed the problem
- shortened urls are just ripe for taking you to sites you don’t want to go to.
- TinyUrl has a feature called “Preview” that will ask you if you want to visit that site
- Only go to links from twitterers that you trust and fit what they usually tweet (limits mass blast take-overs, can’t target individuals and their prefs)
- Broadband Cap from Time Warner Draws Lawmaker’s Ire
- U.S. Rep. Eric Massa of New York
- Lawmakers looking to legislate out the ability to cap in monopoly markets
- TW’s response: $150 unlimited fee? (ridiculous)
- “Time Warner’s decision has the potential to more than triple customers’ current rates, and I think most families will find this to be too taxing to afford,”
- South Korean Blogger Arrested for Blogging about Failing Economy
- 18 Month jail sentence
- falsely reporting that South Korea had barred banks from purchasing U.S. currency.
- Google Losing 1.65 million a day on YouTube
- Bandwidth, Servers, Support, Bandwidth
- $1-2 per visit per user
- Loss Leader for keeping Google on the tongue?
- Investment for future. getting in early and being #1,
- Cost will go down, Bandwidth only becomes cheaper
- Facing more competition with places like DailyMotion, blip.tv, Hulu (diff. model but still online video entertainment), etc
- DiggBar Stirs Controversy, Unveils Compromise
- Diggbar acts as a URL shortener and disguises the site url in a frame
- Your URL is your identity on the Internet
- Companies have been writing programs for years that “break frames”
- A LOT of ppl have complained so Diggbar came halfway, they made it an “opt-out” service
Talk Points
- 20 Twitter Apps
- People are organizing politically on Twitter: #teaparty and #teabag
- http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/15/live-tea-party-twitter-feedsopen-thread/
- #teaparty: Used to protest government’s intervention into businesses / combat socialism
- #teaparty used the hashtag to organize demonstrations across the US and even has signage
- #teabag: organized in opposition to #teaparty / Basic tenet of group is that #teaparty is organized by a bunch of Obama haters and are currently happy with the changes in gov’t
- Freedom of speech is a good thing right?
Sponsor
Doghouse Systems
Doghouse Systems
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This will give the customer free ground shipping in the continental U.S.
- New System – Under $1000 – Still handcrafted with care
DoghouseSystems VS
DoghouseSystems VS
-Performance in WoW is still great: 40 Frames / sec @ 1920 x 1280
-Don’t forget their laptop which has 2 graphics card built in, the mobius, at a mid-line desktop price
-If you want all the bells and whistles, they can handcraft that too, just call them up during normal business hours, they’ll talk with you, find out your needs, and recommend the system that you need (not the one that costs the most)
-877-DHS-DHS2 (347-3472)
-Don’t forget their laptop which has 2 graphics card built in, the mobius, at a mid-line desktop price
-If you want all the bells and whistles, they can handcraft that too, just call them up during normal business hours, they’ll talk with you, find out your needs, and recommend the system that you need (not the one that costs the most)
-877-DHS-DHS2 (347-3472)
Gamer’s Corner (Conferences, New Developments, Game Reviews)
- WoW: 3.1 hit with a thud on day 1, downloads were slow, finding the MAC patch was even harder. I personally chose to stay away for a couple days away
- Just goes to show that no matter how good your infrastructure is, its really hard to get out large content pushes to 10 million ppl all at once on the Internet.
- “Braid” comes to PC, Level Editor Included
- Very popular puzzle game that works on a time mechanic
- Unique Look-n-feel
- Was on consoles, now on PC (steam, etc)
- Hidden Level Editor included for PC version only
- Later support for imports from Photoshop
- Burnout Paradise reveals Cops and Robbers Mode
- Not much is known but it but introduces a chase mechanism
- There’s a trailer out there, just follow the link in our shownotes
- Criterion is looking to continually change the way ppl play their popular racer by download packs, instead of releasing whole new games.
- I WANT A CRASH MODE (as seen in previous versions of Burnout)
Intarweb Goldmine
Show #125
Posted by Derek Alfonso in Shows on April 11, 2011
News
- The Conficker Worm
- 1 for full featured but unresponsive
- Time Warner set to introduce tiered pricing for bandwidth
- 5GB: $29.99/month
- 10GB: $39.99/month
- 20GB: $49.99/month
- 40GB: $54.90/month
- 100GB: No information yet
- Biggest argument by Cable companies: small percentage of users forcing caps
- (my argument: If such a small percentage, target those users because the 98% doesn’t need a cap)
- Test-beds for this cap structure going into markets where no competition is available
- Homework assignment for users: Find out how much you use per month and then compare it to the pricing structures
- T-Mobile / HP to use Android OS for netbooks
- Microsoft claims they have 98% of netbook market despite no rise in sales
- Netbooks are about cost saving, why pay premium for a low feature item
- Microsoft should be giving this OS away (like they did with Win95) in order to corner market
- .69 songs a missing commodity on ITunes now that new Price Structure implemented
- Promoters decide pricing structure, which give no incentive to lower prices
- most older songs stayed put at .99 with some raising price to $1.29
- (derek open up itunes and get me some supporting numbers)
- MLB dumps Silverlight
- War inside browser being waged, who controls the media delivery mechanism
- Microsoft = Silverlight, Adobe = Flash, RealMedia = dead
- Olympics dumped Silverlight, now the MLB?
- last year plagued by glitches, admin needed to install, etc.
- Big hit because MLBAM also streams NCAA tourney and 2009 Masters
Sponsor
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This will give the customer free ground shipping in the continental U.S.
Don’t just take our word for it…
Gamer’s Corner (Conferences, New Developments, Game Reviews)
- Beatles: Rockband and Canon CD simultaneous release Sept. 9
- Notable because the younger generation of soldiers is choosing a medium that they are comfortable with to tell their story (not movies)
- Will feature all sides of the conflict: Soldier, Villager, Insurgent
- Konami promises that this will be realistic
- Free Game: The Power of Paint
- WoW note: 3.1 forthcoming
- End-Game furthered – Ulduar: Dwarves gone wild (NE Stormpeaks)
- DUAL SPEC – BIIIIIG game changer, only ooc and cast time to change your whole build
- No equipment manager – got pushed
- New holiday “Noble Garden” was pushed also
- Jack Thompson’s unconstitutional bill gets vetoed in Utah, takes fight to airwaves
- Disbarred Florida Nut that really is just into grand standing and has chosen his target as gaming
- Wanted law in place that forced M games to be put under lock and key and was giving stiff penalties if this didn’t happen.
- Stupid because rating system is voluntary and would force ppl away from rating their game
- Claims on radio that Doom was a trainer for Columbine, Germany shooting was CS and Far Cry 2′s fault
Intarweb Goldmine
Show #124
Posted by Derek Alfonso in Shows on April 4, 2009
News
- Steady iterations of Beta. Now at 7068
- Will Windows 7 help re-establish stranglehold on consumer market and buzz gallery?
- 50% of Mobile phone internet usage happens from IPhones
- Touchscreens: The top handset on each carrier is a touchscreen. T-Mobile has the Android device, the T-Mobile G1, Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) has the BlackBerry Storm; AT&T (NYSE: T) has the iPhone and Sprint (NYSE: S) has the Samsung Instinct.
- Top five smartphones: Globally they are: iPhone (above, top), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N70 (above, left), BlackBerry 8300 (above, right), Nokia N80, and Nokia N73. In the U.S.: iPhone, BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Centro, and HTC Dream (G1).
- OS Breakdown: Symbian lost market share in February, but is still number one worldwide with 43 percent of requests; the top Windows Mobile device is the Samsung BlackJack II, but six of the top 10 Windows Mobile devices are from HTC; Android accounts for 5 percent of the US smartphone market; iPhone generated 33 percent of worldwide traffic and 50 percent of US traffic.
- Scientists working on nanogenerator
- Uses tiny nano wires that react to vibrations to generate electricity
- Electricity can then be used to fuel electronics
- Being studied and prepared for military applications but personal devices also targeted
- At about $600 to $800, kitchen PCs could be to desktops what netbooks have become to notebooks today: cheap, cheerful alternatives to overpriced, overpowered machines.
- Kitchen PCs offer a stylish form factor, a touchscreen interface to get to e-mail, weather forecasts, calendars, news or recipes — all wrapped up with an attractive price tag.
- Like Y2K the Conficker virus was set to “wake up” this past Wednesday on April fools
- And it did, but no commands came down — it was a dud.
- Google ammasses a $100MM venture fund (news story)
- First Bluray and HD DVD was a free add-on to your existing Netflix service, I was in love with Netflix and was enjoying the spoils of Hi-Def — but I knew it couldn’t last forever.
- Then Netflix moved with the industry and removed HD DVD and stuck only with Bluray, they even vowed to get all of the latest releases, and that they have. As far as customer service I have no complaint!
- Then the first e-mail came, they were adding $1 to my subscription, a sigh of relif, no biggie, that made sense, the discs were a little more expensive than DVDs, the demand was not super high at the time, but as demand increased the $1 would make a big difference for Netflix, or at least I thought
- This past week I received the e-mail that made me change my mind, Netflix (NFLX) decided to raise the Bluray cost from $1 to $5 for me added on to my already $20ish/month subscription, that’s 5X the previous cost!
- Now I can say that on more than one occasion my wife and I have experienced a Bluray come in with a crack in the actual disc, Netflix I assume pays to replace these — one would assume not at full cost, but still if this occurs a lot (and I have to assume it does, because as I said, its been more than a few times) this could be part of the price increase, or it could just be inflation.
- The price increase is also not the same across the board, the more expensive (or more discs you have out at a time) the higher the increase. It’s $1 more than the number of DVDs out at a time, so if you have a 4-DVD plan like me, its $5 extra dollars ($28.99 instead of $23.99), if you have a 8-DVD out plan, it’s $9 extra dollars ($56.99 instead of $47.99)
- If you have Netflix and you have Bluray enabled and this sounds too pricey for you all you have to do is click ‘Your Account’ at the top right, and click ‘Change Bluray Access’
- About 10% of Netflix’s subscriber base has Blu-ray enabled, and on average Blu-ray costs as much as 30% more in stores, but this demand for Blu-ray is new on Netflix and has risen to this level through a 60% increase over the last six months, I am curious how many people are going to jump ship.
- Sound quality reportedly pretty good
- News of this going Live hit Twitter first
- Will this change the face of cell phone usage? (probly not since your paying premium price for at&t service)
Talk Points
- Dilbert Moment:
My boss walks in, says his boss can’t use my report due to crappy pc. Not my report I say, fix his pc. “No, i can’t tell him that. U need to fix report”. So I’m “fixing” a non-broken report. - Will spam be the death of Email?
- Easy to codify
- No cost whatsoever to send en-masse(except marginal programming costs)
- According to Google, 94% of all email is spam
- Possible solutions:
- Paid
- Black Lists
- Opt-In feature (i.e. Facebook and myspace)
Sponsor
Doghouse Systems
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This will give the customer free ground shipping in the continental U.S.
Gamer’s Corner (Conferences, New Developments, Game Reviews)
- Now $99, going on 9th year
- 2500 titles out for this console
- Looking to compete with Wii, but not sexy or casual friendly enough
- Where is our PS3 price drop?
Intarweb Goldmine
- Stephen Colbert won Internet Voting for Rights to name latest module of space station
- NASA threatens to name toilet after him, Colbert threatens succession if the whole module doesn’t carry his name
- Funniness abounds
Show #123
Posted by Derek Alfonso in Shows on March 28, 2009
News
- Video Demo from GDC
- 1 milisecond lag
- VOD for gaming
- Future gaming
- Crysis Wars
- GRID
- Mirror’s Edge
- Burnout Paradise
- Lackluster PC sales eating into its profit
- Phone OS really is the next-gen profit cow (see IPhone)
- It’s more likely the hardware that is the profit cow
- Even Apple gives away the latest version of their OS to their users
- Right now it is because it lacks features other phones take for granted
- But they are setting the precident, and Android has promised even before iPhone to be the OS that is upgradable for free
- So getting the hardware that works, and maintains the functions and battery life you want will be the future of phones.
- Facebook was one of the first there
- Yahoo Updates is coming soon and will likely be integrated into Y!’s very popular e-mail service
- AOL Site Social
- International calls via Skype grew 41% in 2008
- That made Skype 8% of all of the International traffic combined last year
- Sucker born each day
- Great device but it feeds the monopoly
- The devices do come locked to specific networks
- That is the work of the networks, not of Apple
- And lots of people have successfully unlocked their phones to use with other providers
Talk Points
- 15.1MP up from 12 in XSi
- HD Video (no autofocus)
- 1080p @ 20fps (unusable)
- 720p @ 30fps
- Slideout Qwerty keyboard
- Non-locked device
- No Data plan option
Sponsor
Doghouse Systems
Here is the code: POI
This will give the customer free ground shipping in the continental U.S.
Gamer’s Corner (Conferences, New Developments, Game Reviews)
Intarweb Goldmine
