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01.13.10 Hi-Tech Highlights From CES 2010 
By David Berkowitz
Every year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), there's an event called Showstoppers where dozens – maybe about a hundred? – technology companies show off their latest wares to the press, and the press drinks so heavily that they wind up giving everything great reviews. Unfortunately for the companies exhibiting, I was too busy gorging myself on grilled cheese sandwiches made with white chocolate orange bread and brie to remember where I put my Sam Adams. I didn't get to see every company there because:
• I didn't want to.
• It's kind of tiresome talking to booth vendors after awhile. • I had to pry myself away from the grilled cheese. But I did get a good taste of things. Below are my gut reactions from the various gadgets and tech toys I tried there. You can find all of their press kits online from Showstoppers, you can view more of my photos from the event on Flickr, and I have a handful of videos on YouTube. Technology I started using right away: Seesmic for Droid Seesmic is best known for its desktop Twitter client. I've tried it but I always wind up either using Twitter.com or a mobile app. On the Droid, the gold standard has been Twidroid, but I think they just went silver. When I met Seesmic founder Loic LeMeur, he showed me how Seesmic for Droid had integrated Twitter Lists, and any of its features I've tried out so far either mirror or surpass anything from Twidroid.  Gadget I don't understand why anyone would ever buy unless they're a board member's mother: Plastic Logic's Que One of the hot product categories at CES were e-readers… no big surprise there. There was a pretty, glassy, thin one that debuted from Paper Logic called Que, which is designed to format newspapers and magazines in a more natural way while also making it easy to review and even annotate Microsoft Office docs like presentations. I fell over when I heard the price - $649 (4GB wifi) or $799 (8GB wifi and 3G). So let's see – you can get a netbook for a few hundred, or a tablet somewhere close to $1000. If tablets go big, they will kill the market for this device because tablets have web browsers, color, and really any features you'd expect from your laptop without the physical keyboard. When I saw another demo of the Que they were very quick to say you shouldn't spend much time typing – it was only for brief notes. When I appeared skeptical, on more than one occasion, different reps would say, "But it's for business!" It's reminiscent of the "You know, for kids!" tagline from Hudsucker Proxy. But at least in Hudsucker Tim Robbins was selling the hula hoop, a gadget that filled a need in the market. Continue reading this article. About the Author: David Berkowitz is Director of Strategic Planning for 360i and oversees the Search Informed Marketing firm's Emerging Media Practice. Every Tuesday, he pens the Search Insider column for MediaPost, with over 100 articles published to date. He often speaks at events covering marketing, media, and technology; his previous engagements include Ad:Tech, Consumer Electronics Show - Digital Hollywood, MediaPost's Search Insider Summit, and many others. He has also blogged extensively with MarketersStudio.com, MarketingVox, nowEurope, AdTechBlog, and others. | ||||||||
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