Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Innovation (Page 63 of 77)

CES Post 7: Winding Down

January 10, 2007 / / 1 Comment

This will be my final post from the BlogHaus, at about 11:00 am on Wednesday. It’s been great. Now sitting here with Tom Hawk of Zooomr and Andru Edwards of Gear Live and some of his people, who are all busy publishing. (Tom told me he won’t make his 1000 photo upload goal, but he’s halfway there. He only uploads really, really nice pix, though. Somebody else just said there are 30,000 photos now up in Flicker tagged CES 2007. Yikes! I did a bunch myself, mostly of the BlogHaus.)

Had a great time last night at the Blogger Business Summit party — met a lot of interesting folks. Then back to the BlogHaus, which was going at full capacity, Robert Scoble holding court in one corner, pizza in another. And lots in between. One new person I met was a guy who’s launching the first trade show for the the blog world….called, guess what? BlogWorld! Sounds like a serious endeavor, from a guy who’s run lots of successful shows — Rick Calvert is his name. It’s scheduled for November — in Vegas! Don’t know if there’s a site up yet, but looks like it’ll be at www.BlogWorldExpo.com.

Anyway, I’m going off to some other business soon here, then heading for the airport about 3:00. Just picked up all my email, and learned I missed the cut for a lunch with Guy Kawasaki in Minneapolis on the 19th, before his big talk at the U of MN. Apparently there were only 7 slots at the table, and my friend Gary Smaby tried to get me on the list, but too many muckety-mucks already, I guess… 🙂 [Thanks for trying, anyway, Gary.] But I’ll sure be there for the talk following, which is already sold out.

Guy should be very happy the temps are finally dropping in Minnesota (lows below zero this weekend, I hear) — because, as you may recall, what got him to our state in January was the National Pond Hockey Championships, which are held on one of our city lakes. And people were getting real nervous they wouldn’t have ice, with our temps hovering around 40 for so long. Sounds like the ice will be real hard by the time Guy gets here! Anyway, looking forward to seeing Guy again, hearing his talk, and seeing him play hockey.

Cheers from Vegas! It was a good trip…

Tags: , , , , , , ,

CES Post 6: Apple Fever Takes Over

January 9, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Apple has sucked all oxygen out of the consumer electronics space again today, with an absolutely over-the-top keynote by Steve Jobs. It was fun sitting here at the BlogHaus this morning and following along with it all of it at MacRumorsLive and Engadget — which were the only good ways to do it, since Apple doesn’t do any live video or audio feed. Iphone_1 I was sitting next to Andru Edwards, the CEO of GearLIve Media of Seattle, who’s been updating his very impressive site all morning, while he has about five people continuously roaming the show for the news. He and one of his guys and myself were commenting as the keynote went along. Big fun. We can’t wait to get our hands on that iPhone! PodTech reports in a post today that the product will, in fact, be called by that name after Cisco does some sort of licensing deal with Apple, allowing it to use their trademark. (See my previous post on that.)

What struck me about sitting here in the BlogHaus conference room this morning — enjoying this big pipe we’re all on and following along with every word Jobs says — was the weird timing of the Bill Gates keynote from yesterday running in silence on the large screen in the next room. Interesting juxtaposition: two keynotes, world’s apart…. 🙂

Tags: , , , , , ,

CES Post 5: My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don’t Love CES

January 9, 2007 / / 1 Comment

But BlogHaus is fantastic! The PodTech people are great, and I got to meet a bunch of really nice Seagate folks last night, too — very cool. I love that company, and the great legacy they have in this industry — and in Minnesota, too, I might add (where they employs thousands). Bloghausentry

I thought for this post I’d just do the quick rundown of my day yesterday, the first official day of CES (which makes me wonder how many more of these days I can take!]…

It’s Tuesday morning now at the Haus, another beautiful, sunny day in Vegas. I was a little later getting to the suite this morning (about 8:30) — I guess because I stayed an hour later last night! (More on that in a bit.) But I was still the first blogger to arrive today….or maybe Sandira Calviac was here just ahead of me, so I defer to the lovely lady… 🙂 She’s from NY and has a cool new blog called TechAgnostic.com. But the best thing of all: she surfs! Learned in Hawaii recently, and came home and bought a wet suit so she could surf Long Island. I love it.

So, anyway, yesterday I attended the Aussie press event, as I blogged about. Being from Australia originally, I just had to… 🙂 Then I took in the Yahoo press luncheon — where I heard all about the new Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 service (now officially in beta) and the related Yahoo oneSearch — which they say together equals “the ‘Net in your pocket.” Pretty awesome demo they did. What’s the take on all this? Well, TechCrunch and others position it simply as Yahoo playing catch up to Google’s lead in mobile search. And the carriers they’ve signed up so far are all non-U.S. — so don’t get too excited yet. But one guy next to me (from a NY hedge fund!) was able to download the app quickly during the talk from his T-Mobile smart phone. Try it yourself here.

Then it was back to BlogHaus, where I hung in the conference room, blogging and chatting — mostly with PodTech folks and Lionel Menchacha, Dell’s official blogger, who’s a great guy. Been with Dell going way back.

After chatting with Linda Furrier about the how the whole BogHaus idea came about (a great story — more later), I left around 5:30 to head back to my hotel and get ready for the Showstoppers event at the Wynn Hotel. Huge crowds for this mini event, with what seemed like a hundred small booths (and killer food, drinks, and schwag). The coolest thing I saw there was the whole line of waterproof iPod cases and earphones from H2O Audio of San Diego. Pretty cool — for surfers especially, which the CEO, Kristian Rauhala, is (he surfs Black’s Beach). H2oaudiosurfer

Stayed at Showstoppers till about 8:30, then figured I’d better go grab a cab to get back for the big doin’s at the BlogHaus, with all the Seagate people showing up for a special program. Lo and behold, as I’m walking through the endless casino path through the cavernous Wynn, who do I see briskly walking by me but John Furrier. So, I yells, hey John, I’ll bet you have a limo, huh? He says yeah, wanna ride? So, I join him and Robert Scoble, who caught up with us about then, for the ride back to the Bellagio. We had some good laughs….these two guys are way fun!

Back at the animal house — I mean BlogHaus — the place is starting to rock. And a beer or so later, the Seagate folks start arriving. John does the introductions, they announce the Seagate product giveaway winners (darn, I wanted one), and I had a chance to chat with corporate communications people Brian Ziel, Woody Monroy, and Julie Still. Woody’s a surfer (great name for one! I own a woody car myself…), and he tells me there are a lot of surfers at the company, since their offices in Scotts Valley are so close to Santa Cruz. He surfs generally before work. Later, I met CEO Bill Watkins, who’s a great guy, really fun, and we chatted about Minnesota a bit. See photo below of him being interviewed by one of the vlogging crews.

Here are some of my other photos of last night’s happenings, at least the ones that didn’t start getting blurry like my eyes as the evening progressed… 🙂 Seagatepodtech
Watkinsseagate
Furrierseagate
Scobledrinking We had waaay too much fun. My favorite photo is the one of Scoble going bottom’s up — no, that’s not vodka. 🙂 Seriously, it was an awesome event, with lots of great conversation and laughs. Mega-mega thanks PodTech, and of course to Seagate for underwriting the whole thing — a real marketing and PR coup. And it’s not over yet — the suite goes 24/7 till 8:00 am Thursday…

Tags: , , , , , , ,

CES Post 4: Land of Oz Meets Vegas

January 8, 2007 / / 0 Comments

The Aussies banded together at CES this year, and did a nice job in with eight companies in one booth at the Hilton — which was called (of course) the Australia Pavilion. The whole effort was sponsored by the Australian Trade Commission and AEEMA, a computer industry association Down Under. I attended their press event at 11:00 this morning and met a number of the people involved, and later had time to catch at least one demo from the eight startups represented before I had to head off to the Yahoo press luncheon. Cesaussiebooth1

I met Angus Robinson, the CEO of AEEMA, based in Sydney…Barbara Adams, a U.S. representative of the Australian Trade Commission (based in Orange County, of all places!)…Annette Ahern, an Aussie based in Melbourne working for the U.S. Consulate there, and Aussie Susan Fitzpatrick, CEO of PR firm Dateline Media (Palo Alto, Sydney, and New York). They did a great job putting together this first-time organized presence for Australia at CES. (In addition to the eight companies in their booth, Robinson said there are an equal amount of other Aussie companies with their own individual booths in the show.)

AEEMA’s Robinson said his organization decided last year, after he had scoped out CES for the past three years, that this was the year to “show the world what Australia can do.” He said many technologies had their beginnings in Australia, including “the 802.11 wireless standard, the technology behind the Dolby headphone, the IMAX rolling loop, the electric drill, the inflight black box, the refrigerator, and more.”

Later, the one firm I got a chance to spend my limited time with I was really impressed with: Bluebox Devices, based in Melbourne. It has nothing less than a new “from the ground up digital media platform for the home.” I saw the concept demoed, and it was very cool. “It’s a complete on-demand digital content purchasing and management system for the mass market – TV, movies music, and other media types,” said Robert Yearsley, CEO. Cesbluebox

Interestingly, I also met an investor and board member of the company, an Australian named Ron Nissen, who’s now based in Milwaukee! He told that Bluebox lets people watch the content they want for free. “Basically, the pay TV model isn’t working, and free-to-air TV isn’t either.” I’m betting they can get the attention of the content and advertising industry in the U.S. A main objective of the firm is obviously to meet partners at CES, the CEO told me. One good one sauntered up while I was there, and quickly got his attention: Warner Brothers! I’m pulling for these guys, and have already suggested a potential funding partner that I know would like to hear about their technology.

Tags: , , , , , ,

CES Post 1: “The Year of Glass”

January 7, 2007 / / 0 Comments

It’s Sunday late afternoon in Vegas, and I’m in the BlogHaus at the Bellagio. Very cool setup in the suite here (stand by for some pix later), Just chatted with Robert Scoble, and he told me they have an amazing amount of bandwidth — the best anywhere here, I’m sure. He said some 400 bloggers RSVPed, many at the last minute, a lot of ’em to take advantage of the ‘Net access, no doubt. So this place will get busy — especially after the Gates keynote, which is about to fire up at the Venetian. Right now, there are probably 50-60 people here.

But back to my first post from Vegas. Actually, this one’s not about CES per se, but rather a pre-event I attended yesterday and today called Storage Visions, across the strip at The Flamingo. Storagevisions A presentation this morning by Steve DiFranco, VP of sales and marketing for AMD, was interesting. He said that in the next three years, more glass will be sold than in the last 30! And a lot of that glass it for things we look at (not through, like windows), meaning all the many displays we have in our homes and offices on computers, TVs, phones and what have you. “This phenomenon has gone almost unnoticed,” he said. But, as you increase the amount of glass, he said, “you have to increase the amount of content you put on it” — which is certainly a focus of both this event and CES. “There are now multiple places to view content in our homes,” DiFranco said, and really everywhere we go. “And our houses must become more aware of content,” he said, referring to the huge opportunity in home networking devices (and his firm undoubtedly has some things up its sleeve in this regard).

“The real problem is the disorganization of this content,” DiFranco said. “Consumers must become content managers.” When the house gets connected, there will be less need for storage on individual devices, he explained, and more need for a “bit bucket” type of device, meaning central storage.

“The ‘connector’ becomes the next big thing after all the glass you’ve just bought,” DiFranco said. In fact, this may be the Year of Glass, but he says next year will be the “Year of the Connector.”

Today’s plugged-in consumers he called the “exposed generation” — meaning their desire to share content, a la YouTube and MySpace, et al. But, he said, they really don’t care where their stuff is stored. “So it will go where it’s cheapest and easiest to access.”

An interesting point DiFranco made in closing was that you’ll see amazingly little in the way of “the connector” at CES this year.

Tags: , , , ,

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Graeme Thickins on Tech

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑