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Topic: Recap

January 12, 2007, 3:56 PM

Posted in: The show in-depth

CES 2007 Logo

Tim Conneally, BetaNews: As a first-timer at CES, I was naturally overwhelmed by it, but not because of its formidable size or the profusion of vendors, rather because it was just so mazy. The convention center alone required three separate maps to navigate, and only after a few laps around the show floors did they actually prove useful. You stop being lost when you start using landmarks, and you can't help but feel like a Sherpa when you help someone find their way by referring to something as the Pyramid of flat screens or the Ruins of the coffee bar. I'm quite sure, though, that Himalayan mountain men never use the word "kiosk."

This show became less about technology for me and more about lines. The queue for registration was tremendous, the lines for food service were absurd, and don't even ask about the wait for a cab or the shuttle to your hotel. At the Bill Gates keynote, five people would come up to me and ask if Nate's seat was taken every time he went up to take a photograph. Every single time.

Topic: IPTV

January 11, 2007, 10:45 PM

Posted in: Digital TV services

IPTV is one of the oldest and most frequently recurring "new topics" at CES, having broken ground here back in the early 1990s, and with few attempts at a living-room-based Internet service having ever taken firm root, especially in North America. But now there's some headway as set-top box (STB) providers work to build a new generation of standardized (a new phrase in the STB world) components. Sunday night's keynote from Microsoft, though, left many thinking it would try to spoil that party.

Topic: Apple iPhone

January 11, 2007, 10:35 PM

Posted in: Mobile broadband

Linksys iPhone online banner

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: ZDNet blogger Ed Burnette spoke today with a trademark and patent attorney, whose research has apparently turned up that Cisco failed to file a Declaration of Use document with the US Patent and Trademark Office, necessary for it to extend the use of the "iPhone" trademark it picked up in the acquisition of Linksys, by the November 16, 2005 deadline. "It is possible that the Declaration of Use is defective," the attorney tells Burnette, "as there was no continuous use, and the sample that Cisco submitted was for a product not released until seven months later."

So quite possibly, Apple may have had good reason not to return those licensing papers Cisco says it submitted. If the attorney's claims prove correct, and if Cisco was aware of this deficiency, the question then becomes, was Cisco's offer of trademark licensing to Apple in good faith?

Topic: HSDPA

January 11, 2007, 6:45 PM

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: After the Apple iPhone was announced, there was some surprise - including from our own Nate Mook - that it didn't support 3G wireless broadband. That wasn't the only big device missing 3G: Palm's Treo 750 was hoped to have had support for Cingular's HSDPA, even though that service is not available everywhere on the continent. But to be able to provide homogenous worldwide service, the device sticks with 384 Kbps UMTS service - which, for secure e-mail and other professional applications, should still be quite adequate. But in an arena where spectators expect all the gladiators to head into the ring at full speed, Cingular's Treo announcement disappointed some.

Topic: UMB (EV-DO Rev. C)

January 11, 2007, 5:39 PM

Verizon logo

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: In a late development at CES, Verizon announced that it is commencing with plans to boost the speed of its all-fiberoptic FiOS Internet service in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to 50 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream, bringing the total to five the number of states where 50 Mbps service is being offered. New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are the other three, and the company has plans to upgrade the rest of its service to about 522,000 customers in an 16-state area later this year.

Verizon Wireless, meanwhile (which parent company Verizon jointly owns with Vodafone) could conceivably get in on the act soon, perhaps becoming part of a "quadruple-play" deal with Verizon. A mobile + stationary broadband service offering could become quite attractive, giving the telco a quality-of-service offering that upcoming device-oriented IPTV services from Microsoft, Apple, and others won't be able to match. Key to Verizon Wireless' success with this plan is its investment in the EV-DO evolutionary path, which is culminating this year in something called UMB.

Topic: Web services

January 11, 2007, 2:32 PM

Posted in: Computer applications

Sure, this is supposed to be an electronics device conference, but BetaNews was founded in the field of software, so we can't help but notice developments in front of us at CES that impact the software industry as well.

Topic: WiMAX

January 10, 2007, 10:47 PM

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: The race is on to lay claim to the letters "4G," and Sprint Nextel took the lead in at least this one particular race on Monday. At that time, it announced its rollout plans for WiMAX mobile broadband services in some major US metropolitan areas. Here's a paragraph from its Monday press release:

Sprint Nextel logo

Sprint Nextel press release: Sprint Nextel will work with WiMAX ecosystem partners and others to incorporate WiMAX technology in a range of computing, portable multi-media, interactive and other consumer electronic devices. The intent is to wirelessly enable the multitude of stand-alone consumer electronic devices that currently lack connectivity or Internet access, thereby facilitating digital life amid a new era of user-generated content. Sprint Nextel has the experience, network infrastructure, spectrum and distribution channels to make 4G broadband mobility services pervasive and indispensable for customers.

Topic: Digital still cameras

January 10, 2007, 10:17 PM

Posted in: Consumer photography

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: Here's further proof that convergence is not a force unto itself, but something that may have to be managed: Polaroid, which has struggled in recent years to re-establish its brand in the wake of the digital camera revolution, has been showing its new line of WiFi-enabled portable media players at CES this week. Its highest capacity device has 80 GB of capacity and a 4.3" screen, and its basic function is for storing photos and other media, and showing those photos. Probably not a high price for this device, but take a guess as to what's missing. One guess. (Clue: "Polaroid.")

Casio Exilim digital camera

In the meantime, Casio, which at one time was better known for digital watches and cool electronic music toys (that actually are a lot of fun), announced and showed at CES a digital camera that is a hair under one inch thin, easily fits in a shirt pocket, and has a 7x optical zoom lens. Because it's such a small device and weighs so little, it could be more susceptible to being shaken, so Casio has added an anti-shake digital signal processor to compensate. The Exilim EX-V7 goes on sale in March for $399.99.

Topic: Slingbox

January 10, 2007, 4:56 PM

Posted in: Digital TV services

It's still Michael Gartenberg's favorite device: the Slingbox system that captures video from your home TV and pipes it through the Internet straight to your remote receiver anywhere in the world. Monday, Sling confirmed its plans to produce SlingPlayer software for Palm OS-based handsets, leading to wide speculation that the company's next targets will easily be Windows Mobile- and Symbian-based handsets.

Topic: Intel Viiv

January 10, 2007, 4:44 PM

It was one of the stars of CES 2006, but as IPTV and set-top boxes start to wield their influence, there's a question about whether PC-based media centers will continue in the majority role. Suddenly Intel's Viiv and Microsoft's Xbox 360 - which last year were in two different leagues - look like competitors.

Topic: 3G

January 10, 2007, 12:36 PM

Posted in: Mobile broadband

If you're wondering what's missing from the Apple iPhone and the Palm Treo 750, it could be epitomized by Nokia's N76. Calling this a multimedia device is not a stretch in the capacity (up to 2 GB on SD) and throughput department, but may be a stretch in the display department. Depicted here with a speaker, it may make a more effective selling point in the audio department. But underlying the N76, in a statistic Nokia doesn't even tout as loudly as it does its 2.4" display, is its theoretical 3.6 Mbps maximum throughput. So the choice seems to be shaping up: very fast throughput you may need a magnifying glass to appreciate, or slower throughput on a screen large enough for a user to detect just how much slower it really is.

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