Jonathan attended CES once again. What were the big trends? What caught the press's attention? And what did he eat?
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Get into technology with tech stuff from how Stuff, What's dot Com? He there and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Stripland and this is going to sound like a very odd recording because I'm actually recording this in my hotel room at the Monte Carlo Casino and Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. We are at c E s S today is January five. So we arrived in Las Vegas yesterday at in the afternoon and then immediately checked into our hotels and headed down to c S Unveiled. And this is an event that's a press event. Ce S itself is not just a press event. It's actually meant for manufacturers to get a chance to meet with retailers and other companies that are going to be moved being their products. But the press is also there and has a very big presence, So we are here to cover it just like lots of other people are. And the first things that we wanted to check out where the stuff that was on display at CES Unveiled. This is just a small collection of companies that have a few things on display. It's not like the massive show floor where you have two point two million square feet of show floor space. This is just a teeny tiny fraction, like the tip of the tip of an iceberg, but it gives you a chance to see some stuff that otherwise might fall away, that might disappear with the chaos that is the showroom floor. So we went there and shot a quick video for how stuff works now, so if you have not seen that, you can go check it out and see some ridiculous stuff. Like you can see me in a chair that's pitching around left and right, um as video is playing on a headset that I'm I'm wearing. The whole idea was that you can turn your couch into an immersive experience. It's almost like pimping your couch by adding hydraulics. It's similar to that kind of idea, and it was fun. I don't know that I would ever do that for my home, largely because I'm married and I have a feeling my wife would object to getting thrown off the couch if I happened to watch you know, Fast and Furious or something. But it was a fun experience, and not only that, I got to run into some of my peers that I hope to grab a few of them and have them show up on this recording so that we can talk about c e s, what is interesting, what's got all the buzz around it, what was sort of a you know what fizzled that kind of thing. So I'm going to try and grab some of my my years at least one or two, at the very least two talk about their thoughts on this year's show. Now, to be fair, Uh, the unveiled thing was so so relatively tiny, um. And we had very limited amount of time there because we actually we got we landed just as the event was getting started, so we got there a little late. Um. And today, as I record this, it's pressed day. That means it's just going to be press conferences all day long, not not a lot of Look at the showroom floor that that is still being put together. In fact, if you could walk into the Las Vegas Convention Center as I record this, you would see teams of folks putting together booths. This will continue all the way up to the moment the showroom floor opens on Wednesday morning. It's the morning of the sixth, so tomorrow from when I'm recording this, and it's pretty crazy, like you'll still see folks putting up sign ns and banners sometimes because you know, stuff just falls behind as you're trying to get everything put in place before the the attendees arrive. But a few press will be wandering around the show floors because they get early access. They're going to check out some interesting stuff that that the rest of us will have to wait to see a little bit later um and then we'll get a chance to check it out. So our plan today is to attend the Toyota press conference to record a video for Forward Thinking. That's the video series I do about the optimistic view of the future, and it's sponsored by Toyota, So we're gonna go check out what they have to say. I have a feeling it's going to be about artificial intelligence and the massive AI research centers that will be funding over the next several years. And then that's pretty much it for today. That's the nice thing is that on press day we don't have a whole lot that we're going to do other than research the other announcements that have been made so that we know what kind of stuff we want to look at in The show floor opens on Wednesday, and Wednesday will go to the Las Vegas Convention Center try and cover a lot of the stuff that's there. Um, it will be impossible. The center is it's huge and like one point for one point four million square feet of space. That's you know, more than half of all the space exhibit space at C E S is at that convention center. But we're gonna try and do at least a quick run through and get a few cool things on camera, shoot a few videos, get some ideas for future episodes that kind of stuff, maybe even meet with some folks to possibly go into a deeper dive in the future for certain types of technology. That would be a lot of fun. And then Thursday we will be going to the Sands Expo Center, which is Tech Center West in c. S Lingo. But that's generally where you see startup companies, some of the more innovative stuff, the the small scrappy groups that are trying to redefine what consumer technology is all about. That tends to be where you find stuff like weird robotics, three D printers, a lot of Internet of Things stuff will be over there, although that's migrating more and more into the main show floor as everyone is getting into the Internet of Things. So this episode is gonna send a little choppy, and it's probably gonna have lots of different audio quality issues because I'll be carrying this recorder around with me to try and get more reactions as I go through, and and talk to some of my peers if I get a chance. Um. I know that Shannon Morse has said that she will happily chat with me on here, so I just have to track her down and be able to talk to her about that sort of thing, and maybe just get some more perspective on what c e S means to other members of the press. Maybe I'll even get a couple of the members of our team to talk about what it's like. Because out of everyone who's here from how stuff works, I'm the only one who's done it before. Everyone else is a first timer. So I hope this ends up being a great episode. It's weird because I'm recording it in chunks, so I have no clue what it's gonna sound like when it's all over. But this is an adventure, and I'm taking you guys with me while I go on it. Take this. It's dangerous to go alone. Okay, guys, I'm back after some c E S ing, which mostly involved going to the Toyota press conference, and I captured two of my technology peers and brought them back to my hotel room. Yeah, I said I had cookies. Uh, that was true. You're going to get a little text tag that lets me track you wherever you go. Now that's good. Then you can find me again. Yeah, exactly, I don't have to track you down. So so with me is As Actar and Shannon Morris and we have spent another day kind of covering ce S although this is a press day, this is not the day when the show floor is open. But instead of talking about the stuff that's on display right now, because you know, most of us have not had an opportunity to really check anything out. Apart from some stuff that was at c e S unveiled, there's some other events that are going on. We're gonna get some early looks at some technology. I thought it might be fun to talk to you guys about past c S experiences because we always get I'm sure you guys have gotten the questions to like, what is it like to actually go to c E S because everyone thinks it's like the world's biggest toy store, which, depending upon your thought about toys, it's possible, but I always liken it to the world's largest radio shack, where well, there's like ninety percent of the stuff is stuff you really, I mean, it's okay, like it's it's cool, but it's not mind blowing. And then there's maybe ten percent stuff hid the way. It's really interesting. So first of all, Shannon, how many cs is have you been to? I'm pretty sure this is my fifth year I started going. Alright, fifth year for you and I s e my ninth or tenth one. I can't remember. You skipped one at some point, didn't you? Oh but you you I just worked with lots of different companies. Yeah, I thought there was one year where you hadn't planned ongoing and then you showed up. It was it was a joke and made a joke off handedly, and I was told you should go, and I was like, okay, And that's how I wanted in California for three years. Sometimes you wake up on the wrong flight and then you just go with it. Uh So, yeah, we've all done cs for a while. I've done This is my eighth year I think for CS. So, um, my first year was when I met I a S because I met you when you were working at tech V and I got I got pulled on to be on tech V because somehow Randall Bennett, who was running tech the had known of me. What's crazy is we had a booth in North Hall production but he somehow talked his way into getting it didn't cost us anything, which is absurd to think about this little podcasting section for free. And how did he do it? I don't know. He just knew everybody. Yeah. See, that's the thing is that here at c e S there are a few outlets that have space on the show floor or near the show floor. There are a few more that don't have space on the show floor, but they have production trucks that are parked adjacent to the convention center. And then there are schmoos like myself who have a production company back in Atlanta, Georgia, not on site at the time. Uh and uh, it's it's a very interesting mix. And I'm because of that, I got to meet I S and Shannon. I met you for the first time at a ce S a few years ago. That's true, isn't it. Yeah, I was I was stopping by the Revision three area and you were there, and I had never met you, and you ran up to me and gave me a hug, and I was like, well, she she's on the list of favorite people now too. It was out here at CES. It's like c S brings all the podcasters together. That's true. Yeah, it's interesting because usually we're aware of each other's work. Often we're fans of each other's work, but we haven't had the opportunity to to meet, particularly for folks like me where I'm I'm on a completely different coast although I as you're in New York now, so it's still not convenient to me, but at least you're on the same time to be so geographically inconvenience. Yeah, you're very inconsiderate, is what I'm getting at. So, but getting back to instead of that's just being a hey, aren't we awesome podcast? I want to ask you guys if you had any particular ce S memories, things that it doesn't have to define C E S for you, but something that you associate with c S. It could be a great memory. It could be this is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. It could just be, well, here here's something interesting that would not have happened anywhere else, any of those, Shannon, I'm gonna go with you first. First, Okay, So my first year was back in and it was also one of the very first years that I was going full time with HACK five h K five, which is my main show, And for me, I was still extremely nervous, very self conscious, but I was basically being thrown into c e S like all hands on deck. They're like, hey, guess what you're going to be doing. Forty seven episodes. That's fun, you know how? That is forty seven episodes within the timeframe of like four days. Here is c S. So me and my co host were pretty much dead by the end of the week. Both of us gone sick for like a week. C CS plague is a real thing. It's a total real thing. Bring lots of hand sanitizer. Yeah, I want to put it in an atomizer and sprints yourself with it occasionally. But I think I'll always remember that first year because it was it was like the year that I met I S. And it was the year that I met Tom Merritt and a bunch of other podcasters who I looked up to for a very long time. So for me, it was a great introduction to them and being able to watch them, like face to face, how they interact with the camera, and how they are like excellent public speakers. So it helped me grow my own abilities on camera and it helped me not be so self conscious whenever I was in front of the camera. Um. So every time I come back to see s now, it's always great to see them again in person and be able to interact with them now. And now they watch my stuff too, so it feels almost like a family reunion for me, Like we're all, like you said, we're all fans of each other's work. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's the best. Like I met tom Merritt for the first time at CEES and Molly Wood and uh I met Randall in person for the first time at ces he had contacted me via the internets. Yeah, so, I mean, it's really most of the folks in our space that I have met personally. My first interaction was that was that CS. What are you? Oh, there's a lot of them. I'm like, which one's happening you heard? Yes, Well, my listeners haven't heard any of them. My first year. I'll have about that one my first year I was coming in with a company called Gadgetal. I was their new editor. I just finished school and they gave me a job and I said, okay, fine, I'll run this site, which is great. Uh, And they brought us in and I was stuck in the press room for like the week, and it was driving me nuts because like, why are we even here and probably doing his press releases because we're rewriting press release 're not even getting photos sitting in here. We're doing this all day. But they're like, don't worry. At the end, We're going to the party. Always good every party. I'm like, okay, okay, fine, you know that. That's that sounds like that that will work. I mean we've worked until like midnights or nights, and we've stayed up by the way. In the very end, we went to like a Lenovo party. I'll be good. I want to be able to wake up nice and my flight and be all right. So I'm like, okay, I will only order this specific beer. If they haven't, I won't get it, and if they don't, I won't worry about it. Because everyone is like it's like all this pure pressure was really weird. Like I'm for all adult would get a drink. Alright, cool, alright, fine, I'm gonna have a Shemay Blue if they have it. Blue is this Belgian beer and it's really good, but it's kind of expensive. So I'm thinking, there's no way they're giving this out at this party because it's kind of break or British. So I go to the restroom and I come back and everyone at my table has a little bottle of Shamy Blue and I'm like, oh no, they have blue, and They're like this is great, it's right, and I'm like, yeah, that's why I picked it. To the point where people at other tables saw that we had it, and they started bringing out cases of this stuff that they had and they're all wraps, drink wraps, and I'm just like, okay, so this is happening. I didn't even think of the concept of of free stuff. I'm like, I'm just working like crazy, and I'm like, wait, do I have to pay for any of this, because like that's like thirteen dollars a bottle, and like you're just giving them away. I'm like, okay, I can do this. That was a very odd one, but that I was only with that company for a year and I got sold and then I quent and what to tech Where I met you? And you I met somewhere out I met you. It was at a bar and there. I don't know how I remember that because I was dropped. It was and he was there and we had quite the conversation to be fun. Yeah, it was very fun. Eric Sandean and I As and I do a show called Podcast without Pretense. So I met Eric because he was working with tech V two. I met him at the same time I met i As and Uh, it's it's funny because we've the three of us, I As, Eric and myself have have been part of some shenanigans in Vegas. Not we didn't set out to break any rules. We had the best of intentions. Now we were we were walking outside um in Vegas, which which you can only do for so long before you start to give up all hope. Uh, because everything in Vegas is further away from you than you expected to make but then you realize that everything is just feeling away. Yeah. So we had come up with a brilliant idea of let's cut down on some of this walking by using the monorail, and the monorail runs through several major casinos along the strip, and uh, the only problem we had was that we were outside and the mono rail stations were all connected to casinos, and we were following the mono rail tracks, which are elevated. You know. It's not like we were in danger of getting run down by a monorail, which would have been tragically hilarious. But no, we were following the tracks and came up to a casino that was right up against the tracks, and then we can't remember which one it was. That it was somewhere along the southern side. It might have even been the mgm UM because it may have may have been walking away from the south side where the press stuff was and heading back north. But at any rate, we could see the station attached to the to the casino, but we were on a side of the casino that didn't have any entrance for the general public. And these casinos are huge, and we were already tired, and so we're thinking, well, we can walk around to the front of this building go inside, but then we have to walk through the maze of casino games to still find the way to the monorail station, which we could see. We just couldn't get to. And as we stood there trying to figure out if we actually had the will to walk into a casino and then wander around, we noticed that there was a doorway into this casino that was for employees, and an employee was coming out. So we asked the employee a simple, innocent question. I cannot stress innocent enough. We just asked, how do we get to the monorail because we just needed to and she said, you have to go through the casino. You could probably go through this way, which was the employees on the entrance, and we're like, okay, this was clearly an employee who thought I would like to be responsible for four or five young men going to jail. So we went in through the employees on the entrance, and probably about ten steps in, we walk right in front of the security guard station in the backstage area of the casino. The security guard looked at us with an air of resignation and just said, gentlemen, where do you think you're going? And we're like, we're just trying to get to the monorail. He's like, okay, you just need to go that way and exit and don't come back this way, and so we were really lucky that either he was tired or this had happened so many times before that really it wasn't a big deal. But at the time we were all convinced that, yeah, this is we're gonna be calling our respective companies for bail. I'm pretty sure I had to like talk you guys into it by saying, like, we're gonna go in. We're gonna act like we belong. They're they're not going to throw us out. All we gotta do is just walk straights. Won't be a problem. Yeah, you're like you particularly Jonathan was not this is a bad idea. Yeah, this is not something we should do. And I'm like, hey, look, I'm not being outside anymore because as we know, and if you can't tell, I get cranky when I'm outside, I'm too U I get cranky or too tired, or if he's around other people, or or if if it's a day to ends and day, there's a chance that I might do a little bit edgy. So yeah, but back then I was younger and more energy to be edgy. Yeah, so so I as as the little Devil on our collective shoulder, wrestled Jonathan the Angel on our collective shoulder to the ground and closed his mouth with duct tape, and surely enough we went in. Luckily, nothing awful happened. We made it to the monorail and we were safe. I mean, we the Shenanigans go. That's pretty tame. It's pretty cool me backstage, though, it was pretty cool being backstage. So it's so the opposite of everything you see, right, it's like it's ever being opulent. It looks like a prison. Yeah, it's like all beige walls and that security center. I remember that it might be of like now watching Orange in the New Blacky. This looks like something out of prison. It didn't look like Oceans eleven even a little bit now. It was not glamorous at all. So, yeah, it's funny because most of the time, the closest to Shenanigans we would get up to would be let's go ride the roller coaster, Sahara after eating a burrito the size of a baby. That's true. That was a baby size barrito. That was their marketing speed. Remember that was on the posters. Barrito as large as a baby. God, it was a business as any wonder it went out of business was that the NASCAR, NASCAR Cafe, the Sahara. The Sahara is no longer. Yeah, it's no longer with us. It was torn down a few years ago. Yeah. So so we've had some fun times. And of course, obviously none of that has anything to do at tech. If you're wondering why are they telling stories that have nothing to do with tech, it's largely because year over year, like it starts to get hard to separate when you saw stuff, because oh yeah it does. Yeah. A lot of the tech is is it's iterations, right, It's not like here's a brand new thing that literally didn't exist last year. It's usually more like, here's a slightly evolved version of the thing you saw for the last three years. Well one year, and it was it was very early on, so it must have been. That was the first year the Oculus Riff came and they came to a press event and they were showing this very very simple virtual reality version of their goggles, which was it was heavy and it was obtrusive and it kind of gave me a headache. But at the time everybody was like, well, I think, you know, this might work one day, but not right now, because this one really kind of sucks. Yeah, but it was nice to see something different because you're year over year and we kept seeing you know, oh, we're gonna go to the three D TVs this year. Yeah, which three D TVs was one that that was one of those technologies where companies were pushing it year over year and customers weren't buying it. Literally, we're not buying the three D televisions, or if they were, they were, they were slagging them saying that, oh yeah, I never you know, you lose the glasses or it's a pain to have to keep up with that kind of stuff, And it was nice to see that particular technology fadeaway. Another thing that I liked that when the thing I liked when it went away, when it came back it was better, was the internet connected TVs because when I first started going to C E S, that's when you had widgets on everything, and uh, turning your television into the world's busiest desktop computer desktop is not the way to go, I don't think. I like. It almost becomes one of those parodies where it's the parody of a newscast where it's just tickers and and and and data caps popping up all over the screen while the news anchor continues to deliver the news. It's like that except for everything on your TV. So smart TVs eventually actually earned that name because they were pretty dumb when they first came out. It was slow too. Not only did you have this extra graphical interface, but it took forever to pop up or go away or have a selection or do anything, and then you're like, oh, it's not connected right, or just there was always something stopping it to the point where were such a headache. Like I remember some of the first ones I got to check out on the show floor here at c ES. You would have to click like ten fifteen times to get to this subject or whatever application that you wanted to get. The taxonomy of the of the commands was so dense. Yeah, I I remember them being so slow that when you pull up the weather app you get the weather for last week, it's pretty rough or at a like a zip code yeah right, oh my gosh, Like it couldn't identify your geographic location on its own. You had to tell it. It was like it was like the modern version of a rotary phone, Like they have to find numbers or I have to have this terrible, um, because some of these televisions were like, oh yeah, we'll have a total virtual keyboard, so it's being able to use the buttons like one two fo. Yeah, you actually select the things, right, And anyone who's like that reminds me of the interface for the Xbox, right. Whenever you have to type something in, if you don't have one of the controllers that has the little keypad that goes with it, or you don't use smart glass or something along those lines, you're using the controller to highlight each individual letter. And that's not not a whole lot of fun. Yeah, it's not like they were fundamentally broken. They just weren't ready yet. And we've seen that a few times at c e s where technology was displayed and you could say there's something to that, but it wasn't quite ready. I mean I remember several years ago seeing a tablet PC hybrid for the first time. Oh yeah, and the very first I can't remember the name of it was the X one something like that, Lenovo, and it was part Windows, part Android of the time. Yes, yeah, maybe it was in a splashtop. It might have an Android yet, but they had something that you could tear apart and it would be a tablet one way and a laptop the other. But this is be four windows. Microsoft pushed for Windows eight, right, So this so you had essentially Windows seven for the PC mode. When you detached the screen and turn it into a tablet, it's changed, it changed operating systems. So that was kind of interesting, like a very interesting concept, and I remember really being intrigued by it when I saw it on the show floor. I thought, what a what a cool idea, especially since they were really working hard to make sure all the apps and programs that were shared across the two platforms were cross functional. So if you were to start a document in one, you could pull up the the software and the other and the document would still be there, you know, which was a great idea. It just was one of those that never quite made it out of that prototype here in the United States, at least because they wanted to redo it with Android at some point, and there was I just remember all the weird splashtop interfaces. You remember that at the lightweight operating system that would load before your regular operating system. Yes, you work while you couldn't wait for the loading time. That's like pre s S d days, Yo, dog, I can see that you wanted to to word process, and I get word process while waiting for your word processor. I've done that idea. I'm like, this would be so great on an air like airline flight. Yeah, I just quickly load this up and it won't eat up a lot of battery. It will be great. And those are the those the netbook era, you know netbooks before we got to ultra lights, which uh, I guess are still a thing, but I don't ever hear it being called that anymore. Like they're the laptop now, that's that's just what it is. And there's like there's modifiers with the other stuff, like it's a gaming laptop, which is code for it's freaking heavy. You'll need you'll need a you'll need a trolley to move this around. Yeah. I think of some of the other tech that I saw that never really made it out, at least not in North America. Before we started recording, I mentioned like, do you remember the LG smartphone watch that when in debuted And that was early too, that might have been two thousand nine ten something like that. It was early for me because I started in two thousand and eight going to these things. Um, but I remember that it was one of those where you know, you couldn't get your hands on it. They had representatives from the booth who were allowed to wear it on their wrists, and then you would unless you were with someone like seen Net, where you know they would want it to get in front of the cameras and stuff, you really couldn't get your hands on it. It's a little different for people who are able to to work for such a well recognized outlet, that that some vendors are coming to you guys as as opposed to not you, as you are the one who have to go with us to go out to them, but me in this particular instance, I'm going out to them. But yeah, it's it's nice being in that kind of organization because I was like, I've been part of small teams and doing that kind of stuff, and all I remember doing is that tech of the year that we went to the casino. In the back of the casino, I started using the attitude for everything. So if somebody was saying, I can't take off the glass off of this thing, I said, yes you can, We're here, we're gonna do this, and they would do it and I'm like, oh my god, this is working. I can't believe they're buying this. It's what they're worth. So we're getting all this footage of all this stuff that we weren't supposed to be touching. Nobody seemed to care about my Thursday and they they're like, Okay, that's true. Who are exhausted. We don't want to be here. We want to tear down you want you want us to take the glass off? Yeah, okay, that's true. It really is true. If you most of the action happens the first two days the show floor is open. By the time you get to the end of the show floor, show Flora hours like I'm the last day. People are really kind of lackadaisical when it comes to the policies they've been following up to that point because they've been worn down over time. Except Razor, they are really tenacious. Really, they don't like people mess with anything odd. Because they gave me hands on demo a couple of years ago, I should I'll change my attitude to Jonathan's attitude, which is pleasant and southern. Yeah, well shucks, I just brought you all some This gets Gravey. If you let me get my hands on that tip. It's always very useful to make friends with pr people who also have like the same pets as you, or like they get their nails done and I'm like, I love your nails. Where did you get your your nails done? Right? Right, I'll show them pictures of my cats. They'll be like, oh, I have cats to Oh my god. That's great. You just make a connection, like talk to them about some kind of similarity that you guys have and so do you take it from Shannon, find some superficial connected tissues so you can leverage it. You seem to like technology. I like technology to crazy world. You're a little easier for girls breathing. It's awesome, right, it really does. It's a real problem when you don't can't do that, you know, Yeah, it's it's you know a starth Vader. Well you can't spoiler alert he's dead. Um, yeah, so it's it's uh, it's great that I get a chance to catch up with you guys. It's fantastic. We're Tomorrow is the day, the first day where the show floor is open. Is there anything you're particularly looking forward to or anything you are trying to seek out this year? Do you have a game plan, Shannon? Are you just gonna go in and just absorb or yeah, just like I'm looking at it every then. Well, this year is nice because I don't have to record forty seven episodes about all these weird things that I find. I'm just doing one episode for tech thing and then that's it, so I just get to talk about my favorite things. So this year, I'm just planning to hit the Central in South Hall and hopefully North as well, while my co host hits up the Sands and we're going to find our favorite items. I'm mostly interested in the four case Dreaming, which a lot of people have been saying is a thing this year which I'm I'm a little quizzical about. I want to see how it works encoding, Yeah, yeah, exactly now that I'm editing, I want to understand the back end of it. I want to get geeky. And I'm also really interested in more VR virtual reality, augmented reality and things like that nature because it's gotten so much better and it doesn't make you sick. Now, my coworker has a Samsung Gear I think it's called the Gear VR. It works flawlessly. The thing is so smooth, and I would love to see some more companies working with that. UM non proprietary Internet of things would be nice. Yeah, where you can actually have Internet of things talking to other Internet of things that were made by somebody else exactly like I. I believe something is happening along that line over in one of the car sections. I believe one of the car manufacturers is going to be working with a online online store who sells I don't know, this thing called the Amazon Echo. You're talking about Ford in Amazon. Yeah, Ford in Amazon. We all thought it was gonna be Ford in Google, and it turned out to be Ford in Amazon. And they're going to actually license that technology to other car companies because they're licensing into Toyota's. Yeah, so you'll be able to uh to talk to your echo in your car, which is a great idea. I mean, Internet of things, non proprietary, make all your things work together so you can still buy the best product and to be summoned into this one brand. There's so many times where I've been stuck in traffic and thought, I wish I could buy paper towels right now. You know, it's it's interesting that you that you mentioned that I remember seeing one thing before coming out the c e S and I'd have to do research to actually look up the name of the deal, but I remember seeing was an app. And the app is designed to talk to different Internet connected products in your home, so it becomes kind of a central hub, which is an inelegant solution, right. We would all love to see a standardized protocol that all of these things worked across, so that we didn't have to either all buy into one ecosystem or have eight different systems to manage to deal with all the stuff in our house. The Internet of Things is this amazing view of the future, but only if everything works without it getting in your way. And so the app I saw was one where you could do things like control your nest thermostat and your hue light bulbs and all that kind of stuff, although I don't know if specifically those brands were represented, but that was the idea, and I'm thinking like, well, that's that's a good temporary solution, but I don't want to see that trend continue where you get this this you know, splintered uh marketplace, and then you have to find a solution like that in order to make everything work together. Because I can't. Can you imagine living in a house where you're like, howney, can you turn the lights? I'm looking for the app. It's one of these, it said, this folder, this smart tech. As you do, you have anything that you're specifically looking forward to. And I was thinking about all this smart home stuff. You guys, that stuff you're talking about, the Internet things, stuff actually talking to each other, and how hubbs we're supposed to be some kind of middle ground solution. So then Samsung goes out and buy is one of the hubmakers, which made it even more weird. And Samsung's got like not a mini few with Google said those things don't necessarily work together. And then Apple's got Home Kit. So I mean, I have a house that's got a bunch of different little things, and I do have to find apps. What's weird is that the real solution is something like like Echo or Alexa. These kinds of assistance, let it figure out which app is supposed to work with. That to me is way more interesting than a lot of the stuff I've been originally looking at the fact that Amazon is working with Samsung with their fridge. You can have Alexa in the refridge. You've heard about their fridge. Does she beg to get out? This fridge is a five thousand It's it's called the Family Hub. It's five thousand dollars. It's got a twenty one in Android touchscreen on it. Uh and it also has Amazon Alexa intrigation, so you can ask it things like play music or whatever you want. Right, So it's kind of a weird concept. So Samsung's working with Famisa are going like use our s voice thing, which is kind of interesting. The fact that if you had your Ford you drive in, you can have it talked to your fridge. That imagine somehow us the Alexa stuff can talk to each other. Dude, get ready, this guy bought a lot of groceries. Fridge just swings open. Welcome home boys. The Ford Amazon connection to me is also fascinating because between the car and the smart home there wasn't really a good connection. It was almost like this it's its own island. It was this thing and it's almost like you talking in and you're like hopefully stuff with syncop and maybe be all right, but no, this actual connection between the device and we're like to open the garage like that's cool. ELEC Toronto lights or start the car when you're inside when it's called out, Like all this stuff is like that would be great, well work most of the time, secure hopefully. Yeah, that's a big question right there. That's an excellent question. It's one of those that we uh that we are becoming increasingly aware of, especially in the wake of demonstrations such as the terrible demonstrations that befell jeep. Oh yeah, that's funny. Yeah, that's funny if you don't own a jeep. But yeah, it's it's it's a it's a different it's a different approach to technology. It's a different world, one that has new concerns that come up. But the potential is really cool to to the case of rerigerator literally so to allow you to have this kind of interactive and um added functionality that you know normally would just be a simple appliance, and like even even stuff that is now telling you how much energy it uses, giving you that feedback immediately, so that you can adjust your lifestyle if possible. I mean, sometimes you don't have that flexibility, but if you can, then you can end up conserving energy and thus saving money, Like especially in markets like California and Hawaii. That's a big deal. I mean, your your surge pricing can be pretty expensive at peak times, so that's you know, we're seeing more of that. It's really a lot of it's all about data still. It's all about either giving data back to the user so that you're getting an ability to quantify stuff that you couldn't before, or it's about data interacting between devices so that you have this kind of seamless magical experience as you go through your your home. You know, whether it's music following you around through the house, or your lights turning off when you leave the room, whatever it may be. And uh, I love the direction it's going in. It's still very splintered. And uh it may turn out that the way we get a standard is just that someone makes a system that works so much better than everyone else's that it becomes the de facto standard. That's a possibility. It's not something that people willingly enter into. It just happens by by competition. Uh. Sorry. There's also lots of issues when it comes to education, because sure remember there's there are a lot of standards to get audio and video to different components in the house, and it's open to d l n A. You can have d l n A and nobody really educated anybody about that. Apple is airplay. People like, oh, I get this, and it totally works. It just works. It's like a variance of the same technology. So the fact when smart devices started coming out, right, Internet things devices, and there was these giant consortiums, and you'd see all of these names and you'd see and you're like, great, but they're missing the Google one and the Apple one. As long as that keeps going on, we're always gonna have three apps. Yeah, which is I think at a minimum right now. That's that's a fair point. I tell you. The one thing that I'm really looking forward to seeing because I still don't know if it's really real or not, is the Faraday electric car because it it seems like people are still kind of referring to it as vaporware because the concept that's out there is purely like this is like a prototype concept type vehicle. The company appears to have emerged from nowhere. So it's one of those things like a company forms and makes a car, like that's I alwaysn't believing the guy who was showing me a nice momote control, like, yeah, that's na that that'll come out here to be You have a car? How did you have time to build a car? Yeah? Where did you get the manufacturing the facilities from these things? You realized that that giant competition thing is there and they might crush you over time, right, Yeah? Yeah, There's also supposed to be a car. I can't remember who makes it, but there's also a car that has a drone landing pad on it that's gonna be So that's why I want to hit the North Hall because there's going to be a car with a drone landing pad and I need to see this thing. What is it for for drones to land on? I asked, what do you think it's? So it's in the name. You're saying, Alexa, it's not a predator. I need I need those paper towels. Amazon is dropping it off on your car that has the landing pad. Look, all I can tell you is that in the future and this will become a pivotal plot point in a Fast and Furious movie heliports. Why not a car? Yeah? This is how awesome? Can I make it work with my moon roof? So it just like opens up and it just drops off the stuff in my past feeling that's going to mess up your hair, Doe Shannon, It's it's kind of like a car hop. I want car hop. Is is a drone coming by? Yeah, it's just knowing that there is a car with a drone landing pad on it, and Ces tells me I need to see it, if for no reason then just to witness it. But yeah, so there's there's always stuff that will surprise you at c E s as well, like, uh, often that it'll be things that I find out about after I return home and someone else with a lot more manpower. Yeah, not at all. Yeah, you've got two point two million square feet of exhibit exhibit spaces. Even if you are diligently walking through all the halls, you're not gonna see everything, just because eventually you're gonna get that thousand yards stare where you're not really like your eyes are looking at things, but you're not taking in any information that does happen. So um, yeah, I'm sure there will be things that we miss, like, uh, I love the quirky stuff that you occasionally come across, Like I'll always remember the haptic fork that would vibrate if you ate too quickly so that the food would fall off your fork. Remember the Intel charge bowl, this wireless charging bowls a couple of years ago, and you would just dump your phone in there. I'm sitting there, and it did along with your milk in your cereal, could charge your have to crunch. It didn't Gonza traffic. It was insane. Everyone's fascinated with a wireless charging bowl. It's like even asked about them, like is it coming back? We don't know if we can tell you anything. So there wasn't even a tag for your luggage that it wasn't even like not a tag tag. It was an electronic tag which you would put inside your luggage that would allow you to keep track of where your luggage was in case you traveled and it didn't arrive in the airport that you went to. And I remember people were getting really excited by that. I'm thinking, this is possibly one of the simplest implementations of technology I've seen in a really long time. Was Yeah, they ended up selling that on Amazon. I think I just sent my friend that link. Yeah, that thing. Yeah, I forget the name of it. When I remember seeing about a couple of years ago, I think I ran into Molly would while I was looking at it, and we were both kind of surprised at how much attention was a game. That's the other thing is he could never predict which odd thing is just gonna get people's attention. If you've ever wondered why the press gravitates toward these weird, quirky things, it's because we've seen countless televisions and it only gets so thin. Yeah, and it's also hard to convey that information, like two point seven millimeters. So unless unless your focus is home theater, or your focus is headphones or cell phones or whatever. So like Android Central, they'll probably have a focus. So that's what they're going to talk about. But for us, we we talk about everything. Yeah, so it's very hard to look at those things over and over again. I think, Okay, well, what's exciting about this? Yeah, so you increase the ram congratulate exactly. It does the things that did before more better now. So yeah, that's essentially the gist of many many people think, yeah, yeah, pretty much. So at any rate, as Shannon, uh, thank you very much, I'm gonna loosen your bonds so that way you'll be free to go after I've kidnapped you to force you into this episode of text we Cookies. You're kind of get that text tag before you leave. Trust me, it's gonna hurt a little bit because I actually physically attach it to the top of your ear, all right, kind of like you know, catch and release. Um. Thanks so much, and I'll probably continue this podcast after I get a chance to actually see the show flours, So more to follow. Okay, I'm recording this last section back at the Atlanta office, so that would explain why it sounds like this as opposed to the previous recordings. Uh. I have already returned from CS. Clearly, I wanted to record more in my hotel room while I was there, but honestly, I was just so tired at the end of the show days and my voice was so fry that I wasn't really able to record anything useful while I was still out in Vegas. But I thought i'd talk about some of the things we looked at on the show floor before signing off. So first, the show is just too large to see everything. It's impossible. Even if you just glanced at each booth and never stopped, you'd still miss some stuff because there's just too many exhibit areas. I mean there's three days of show days like when the show floor is open, but the show floor is you know, two point two million square feet and that also includes offsite hotels that are not part of the Sands or the Las Vegas Convention Center, and just getting from place to place, even without maneuvering your way through, takes up a lot of time. And there's just too many booths. So we went into c S with kind of a general game plan, and we stuck to it about as closely as we could, with a couple of exceptions. We weren't able to see any vr A R stuff, and we weren't really able to explore the drones stuff because we ran out of time while we were exploring. But on Wednesday, January six, we focused on the Las Vegas Convention Center. Um So, the LVCC has three main halls. There's a North Hall, a Central Hall, and the South Hall, and the South Hall actually has two floors, which makes it particularly huge. We started in the North Hall that's generally filled with auto technology and car sound systems that kind of stuff. Some other things are there too, but it's mostly car tech, So we concentrated on four booths while we were there, Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen, and Faraday Future. There were others as well, but we had to be really careful with our time. So first we started with Toyota, and They're big focus was on artificial intelligence and the connected car concept. The company is really stressing that their research is all about making the experience of driving a car, say for with systems in place that can take over should a driver be put in danger. So even an excellent driver may encounter dangerous situations that he or she can't react to in time, and that's where these driver assist systems can kick in, potentially saving a life. These same technologies may one day lead to fully autonomous vehicles, but Toyota experts stress that current autonomous car technology is pretty limited. It's it's great for mundane driving situations like moving through a regular city grid. It's great for that, but they don't deal with the unexpected very well. So Toyota is spending a billion dollars in research money over the next five years to help push the development of AI, with the goal of finding ways to make AI better at reacting to new unprecedented situations, or to put it in another way. Computers are really good at following instructions. So if you think of a scenario, you can program that scenario into an autonomous cars logic system saying when X happens, then do why, and the car will most likely react the way you want it to in those situations. But it's impossible to anticipate everything and program everything into your car's logic system. And if you have enough cars on the road for a long enough amount of time, something that you did not anticipate will happen at some point. That's when AI needs to react more like a person would, where you would think back on past experience and extrapolate what you should do based upon the particular parameters of that moment uh and also to do it while minimizing risk to yourself and to others. And that's that's a very difficult AI problem, and that's what a lot of that research money is going towards to try and solve. How do you make AI able to not just anticipate, but react to dynamic situations that it had not been specifically programmed to handle. And we don't have an answer for that yet. That's exactly what the AI research centers that Toyota is backing is gonna That's what they're gonna look into. Meanwhile, over at Ford, we learned about Ford's partnership with Amazon. Now, originally the rumor was that Ford was going to announce a partnership with Google, but Amazon's voice concierge system, Alexa, is actually the big news. It's going to be part of the Ford's in car systems and it will actually allow you to synchronize your car with your smart home, allowing the car and home to kind of work together. So imagine your garage door is communicating with your car, or you could just tell your garage door to go up while you're driving your car and it goes up. That kind of stuff, or even being able to have your car alert your home when you're coming into the driveway so that the thermostatic just so that you know the house is going to be comfortable shortly after you get inside. That kind of stuff, you know, sort of this concept of the connected future where everything is more convenient. But I could go even further than that. You could also while you're in your home, tell Alexa start the car, and in your garage or in your driveway, your car starts up. And the climate system kicks in so that the car is nice and comfy by the time you get out there. That could be really useful on a very hot summer day or a very cold winter day. You could get your car started without having to pop outside the house. That's kind of neat. Also, you would even be able to use Alexa to maybe get updates about your car's status. So if that check engine light comes on, you might even be able to ask Alexa, hey, what's wrong with the car and get an answer, which would be nice before you take it into a mechanic right Meanwhile, Volkswagen was showing off its electric concept van called Buddy b U D D dash E, or as Paul Shore would say, by and probably lost everybody. If you know who PAULI Shore is, give me a shout out on Twitter tech stuff hsw or at John Strickland. I once saw him a beach in Maui. Anyway, back to Volkswagen, this concept vehicle design was pretty cool, little little funky looking lot of interesting lighting and all this kind of stuff. But there's no guarantee we'll ever see anything like it actually hit the road. It is, after all, just a concept. Um. It's also no surprise that Volkswagen showed off electric vehicle technology in the wake of that clean diesel scandal that broke in late Now the question is will electric cars help repair the damage done to Volkswagen's public image. Personally, I'm not sure it was a lot of damage done, but at least the company is trying to do something now. I will say that I thought this particular car design and the features that it had were really cool. Had some interesting stuff like you could have a you had a platform where you could do wireless inductive charging for your electronics. So if your phone can accept wireless inductive charging, you just lay it down on this platform and it would charge through the car. It's not exactly brand new, other vehicles have had this, but it was cool to see. It also included a connected car concept, so similar to Toyota strategy where you want to have your car communicate and and forward strategy to where you have your car communicate with the smart home and with other vehicles. It's, you know, kind of the way the future is going. And speaking of the future, there was Faraday Future that was one of my favorite booths to stop at on our trip. We went to a lot of different booths that c ES, but this one in particular was interesting mainly because it was so mysterious leading up to the show. Faraday Future is the company that's kind of like what would happen if you smashed up an Internet start up with an automotive industry company. That's what you get with Faraday Future, And no one really knew a whole lot of details about the company leading up to c S. It was just kind of, you know, this this mysterious entity that was supposedly going to show off a car, and that car ended up being the f F zero one concept race car, and that looks like something that came out of Tron or Minority Report or even Batman. It's a really weird looking race car. But really that was just a design to grab attention. It wasn't that Faraday Future is all about producing race cars. They just they use that as a way of pulling people into the booth to explain what their philosophy was. And the philosophy is that Farody has created a modular design approach to building vehicles. They actually have a modular means of putting batteries together, so instead of like a giant battery think of like a series of batteries, and depending upon what your car needs to do, they can modify the foundation to have the amount of batteries appropriate for your car. So, for example, and suv that's gonna do a lot of off roading where it's gonna need more battery power to generate the power needed to actually do those kind of things, whereas a subcompact car wouldn't need that much battery power. So from the design phase, they could say, well, this, this is how many of our battery units were going to include. They also had a modular drive train approach, so they could have different style drive trains on vehicles, and uh, they could also create autonomous vehicles. They could include autonomous technology sensors and and drive systems in any of their models. So in other words, they've created kind of a base, and that base can serve as the foundation for any type of vehicle, whether it's you know, an suv or a van, or a compact are or a race car, whatever it might be. So it also gives them a lot of speed when they want to speed and development, not not vehicle speed, but the speed to actually go from design to building a vehicle. In fact, the FF zero one went from sketch to built out car in eighteen months, which is incredibly fast in the automotive industry. So that was really exciting to actually see this kind of disruptive technological approach to the auto industry. I'm hopeful that that this will have a big impact. We'll see if Faraday Future actually becomes a player in the space, or it may just be that Faraday Future is going to end up influencing other companies. Either way would be interesting. Of course, I would rather see them be a real player, just to kind of add another layer of competition in and uh an innovation. It would be really exciting. At that point, we then moved over to the Central Hall of the convention center, still on Wednesday, January six right now, when we went to the central Hall, that's where a lot of your big electronics companies happen to be. Things like Sony, Panasonic, Intel, and a lot of other big companies are there too. So first we went to Sony and looked at their high dynamic range television's hd R t v s. Actually do a video where I explain what HDR is and why it's important and why even if you have an hdr TV right now, you may not have a whole lot to watch on it, So keep an eye out for that video that's gonna come out on now dot house, stuff works dot com in the near future. We also looked at a fridge from Samsung that has a manufactured suggested retail price of around five thousand dollars. It's smart fridge in the sense that it's connected. It's got lots of different interesting features. It has cameras on the inside, so you can get a quick look at the inside of your fridge even if you're not home, which could come in handy if you're at the grocery store and you're thinking, gosh, do we have any milk left? You can actually look inside your fridge and find out. It also had a twenty one and a half inch screen embedded in the door. It was really an impressive piece of technology. UM, not sure that I'm ready to spend about five thousand dollars on our fridge, but it was. It was interesting to see those kind of features worked in and also it was a very different philosophy from another company we would see the next day, which was Whirlpool. But we're were you've got a whole video coming out about the connected kitchen, So keep an eye out on now dot how Stuffworks dot com for that that will be coming up soon as well. Uh. Then we went over to Intel looked at some of the technology there. Intel, of course is mostly known as the company that makes the stuff that makes other stuff work, so when we go to tell you see a lot of cool stuff on display, but these are all products that are the result of partnerships with other companies. Intel provides the microprocessors or the other technology that allows it to work. So we got to see things like a robo butler that's a personal uh transportation device essentially one of those wheeled skateboards that are often called hoverboards, but it could be converted into a robot butler, which is kind of cool and very cute. It was a very cute robot, and we also saw um connected bicycles. We saw a dress that reacts to a person's adrenaline levels, so the dress would expand when adrenaline levels would increase, and it contracted when it decreased, and kind of similar to the spider dress that we saw last year, which was fun. So we took some footage of that. It was good to see. After all that, we moved over to the South Hall. Keep in mind, we probably saw maybe of the Central Hall. It's just that's how it goes. Because you're running from from place to place to get your videos in, uh, you're gonna miss out on a ton of stuff. So there was a lot of stuff on display in the Central Hall that we just didn't see. But we made it to the South Hall, which pretty much hosts a big collection of different stuff, including things like VR A R, drones, all the stuff that we weren't able to see, but we did get to see some really cool things. We got to go to Codex booth and check out their brand new Super eight film cameras, which is great. Kodak is bringing film back, So the super eight millimeter camera is a classic. That's something a lot of filmmakers worked with with back when they were kids. Um, I used to play with a super eight camera back when I was a kid. My dad owned one and I got to play with it. Well, Codex bringing it back and pairing it with modern technology. So when you buy one of these, when you buy a cartridge of film, the cost of that cartridge isn't just for the film it's also for the processing fee. So in other words, when you buy the film and then you put it in your camera and you shoot it, you have already paid for the processing. So then you would mail the film off the Kodak. Kodak processes the film and returns the print to you, but you also get a digital print, so you don't just get the film print. You get a digital print as well. And there's an onboard microphone with this Super eight, which is not the way the old Super eight cameras worked. And you get a digital audio track as well, so you can sync up the audio track with your film. Plus you have the digital print where it's already synked. My video crew got really excited about this technology, and we'll have a video about this as well, so keep that eye out for that. We also went to gen Worth Financials booth. Now gen Worth Financial is an insurance company. Specifically they provide insurance for long term care for the elderly, and at their booth they had a really amazed using exoskeleton that I actually got to put on. If you follow tech stuff on Facebook, you probably saw a picture of me wearing this thing. So the whole purpose of the exoskeleton was to create a way to start a conversation between young people and the elderly to demonstrate the importance of long term care. So it made sense like they wanted a way for young people to understand what the elderly go through, to say, look, the service we provide as a valuable one, but I think the actual application of the technology goes well beyond that. Uh. They turned to a company called Applied Minds, which was originally co founded by a couple of former Disney imagineers, and that company ended up making the Aging Experience exo Skeleton, which mimics various disabilities, conditions, and illnesses that the elderly often experience. So when I put this thing on, they were able to simulate these various conditions with me, and it was really an interesting experience to go through. So the suit included a headset and that headset has two video cameras that are mounted about where your eyes are, and they that fed a live video signal two monitors that were in front of my eyes, and it did it really well that there was no noticeable lag, which is very important because otherwise you would get that kind of swimmy effect you turn your head and then a moment later it's reflected that's gonna make you sea sick. But I didn't. I didn't experience that. It seemed like the lag was manageable. So they use software which allows handlers to manipulate that video feed, so while you've got video in front of your eyes, they can change that video around a little bit and simulate conditions like glaucoma or tunnel vision. The headset also included headphones and they could manipulate that as well, so they could, you know, simulate hearing loss or even tenitus, which by the way, incredibly irritating to have that high pitch tone in one ear. That's what tenitus is, that ears are ringing. If you've ever been to allowed concert and your ears were ringing afterwards, that's tenitus. Sometimes you develop it and it doesn't go away. So the suit was able to simulate that and also could add torque to all of your major joints like your shoulders, your elbows, your hips, and your knees. And by adding torque, it creates resistance, so it makes it harder for you to move. So it's more like if you had a hip replacement, or if your knees were no longer as as flexible if you suffered from something like arthritis. And the whole suit weighed about forty pounds, so that helps simulate the weakness you would have as a result of muscle loss and weight gain. And the whole experience was really enlightening, very interesting stuff. I was very pleased that I got a chance to do it, even though it meant that I was in that weird get up with a lot of people watching me. It was a little um you know, thank thankfully, I've never been one to shy away from the spotlight. Uh So, it sounds like we did a lot, but my team only saw a very tiny percentage of what was at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The next day we hit the Sands Convention Center and that hosted stuff like fitness tech, wearables, three D printers, connected home technology. Tons of small startups were in the Eureka Park area, so we shot several videos there about the technology that was on display. But I'm not going to go into detail just because it was a lot of stopping and starting. And this episode is already running pretty long, so at any rate, to keep keep on touch, you know, go look at now dot House to parts dot com. We're gonna continue to upload videos from our experience at CES. You'll be able to see them. They're also forward thinking the other show I do. There are a couple of videos that we did, including one of me and the exoskeleton that will go up there. So after an exhausting world wind of shooting videos, we wrapped our production and we rested. We left the following day, which was Friday the eight, and the show continued throughout that day. So we left, but the show was going on and a few events even went into the weekend. But by then we were back in Atlanta, which pretty much gets us up to speed. Uh. And I'm gonna do some shows where I talked about some of this technology in greater detail, particularly the auto technology. I'm gonna try and get Scott and Ben on this show in the near future to talk about some of the high tech stuff that's coming to cars in the nearer future and kind of get their take on it. Also just discuss some stuff that they might be aware of that I didn't get a chance to see. So that episode will be coming up probably in the near future. I'm hoping to record it next week, but it might be a few more weeks before it airs, just because I've got some other shows in the vault between now and then. But if you have a suggestion for a tech Stuff topic or a guest I should have on the show, we should get in touch with me and let me know. My email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or just drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The handle of both of those is tech Stuff h s W. And I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and bathands of other topics. Is it astac works dot com.