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My Brent Spiner (Cmdr. Data) photo from the IWSIV party
Rantings from a guy who has 36 pairs of identical socks.
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D-link is a massive company that has network switches, routers, cameras and a ton of other things. They’ve recently fixed their home security monitoring system to include energy systems, utilizing third party electrical plugs. Honestly it felt like energy monitoring was a bit of an after thought for them, but apparently their system was nominated for the best in innovation award for CES.
Energyhub is the startup of the mix. They have a nice display and outlet covers running over Zigbee. They’ve closed a recent funding round and have another in the wings. They will have some tough competition from the bigger players if they can’t get going fast enough, but their units looked very professional and ready for consumers to start buying.
Marvell has a nice looking device that will be out in Home Depot shortly. It works over wifi and displays the usage of all outlets and whatnot, along with also controlling your lawns sprinkler systems if you have such a thing. They were the furthest along in development and said they will be in Home Depots sometime in the next few months, at a pretty low cost.
Oregon Scientific. Looks very sexy but haven’t seen it in person yet.
There are probably other devices out there, but I haven’t had a chance to meet them all. What is really interesting about these devices is that eventually they will be in almost every home, regardless of whether you are geeky or not as new contractors and energy companies start to roll them out for consumer usage.
I’m going to the ‘Asia rooms’ today to meet with manufacturers of different things. They might have some cool toys in there as well. Follow my Twitter updates if you want to keep up with me real time.]]>
The gadget blog dvice.com has their 5 Tech Trends at CES, though I’m not sure I agree with the ordering. 3D Tv (?), Pico projectors (to put your iPhone video on the wall), ebooks (dull), tablets (not until Apple speaks) and connected everything (probably). It doesn’t mention mobile tech which will be getting a lot of play this year, nor any of the other things that geeks are talking about (social networking, location aware, etc). And this is one of the problems with CES. CES is about consumer electronics. Sure there are a few ‘new new’ things out there, but there are also tables after tables of extension cords. There is room for TV antennas. Space for wineglass washing machines, and shoe buffers. It’s really a trade show that is about anything you plug in and can buy from Kmart, not necessarily from Frys. And it is far removed from the geeky world of that which lives on the net. As devices have become connected (see the cited article) there is more and more of a connection between the online world and appliances, but CES really isn’t “the show” for the Internet generation and companies. Many of the folks I’ve worked with in the pure online world have come to CES out of default, and once they get there they often feel like ‘well, I’ve seen it, and now I don’t have to see it again’. So what trade show is the one for the online world? Unfortunately, it hasn’t really happened yet. There is no “Net 2010” show that rivals the size and scope of a CES so for now, Vegas is where you have to go. Such is life.]]>