I am a post-CES-zombie

Just got back from CES.  Vegas, baby, Vegas.  I have about 2 parts love, and 20 parts hate for that town.

With three and a half days of intense presentations, technical discussions, and sales & marketing mania, I can honestly say that this is going to be an amazing year for us. The feedback we received on our technology was mind-blowing. What can I say, when you have good stuff, people notice.

So for four nights, I totalled 15 hours of sleep. I am wrecked.

In the coming days I will post some impressions I received about what technologies and trends will be fueling the user experience for the next year or two. There is a lot of noise to sort through after the show, but I can think of a few concepts outright that stuck with me…

1. Internet in, satellite out – I just don’t see any compelling reason for satellite radio or satellite television any more. It’s an expensive network, and there is nothing defensible about it’s content… It’s dead. Goodbye. Portable audio players with wi-fi, and connected speakers and radios that access internet radio and online media are the future. See Sansa Connect. Zune should follow.

2. Wireless in, wires out – Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will continute to be in everything, PCs, mobiles, portable audio players, cars. Mind you, Bluetooth still promises more than it can deliver, but the marketing machine is too powerful, and the mobile handset numbers are just too attractive to speaker-makers and automakers. Also, Atheros, Marvel, and Broadcom are making 802.11 chips with less and less power consumption, and applications for audio and video transport are compelling, if not a bit pricey for now. Like it or not, standards are useful. My only appeal relates to my next point, and that is, if you are selling me a device that does audio and video… and includes one of these standards… don’t underdeliver what its capabilities promise… if you use a standards-based wireless technology, give me the benefits of its bloat. If you give me BT, make it do headset, A2DP, and data… seemlessly. If you give me Wi-Fi, make it do streaming audio/video, VoIP, and feed-widgets, seemelessly. If you can’t offer me this, I am paying too much, and getting short changed on experience — by definition.

3. Killer-experience in, feature-spam out – Consumers demand a good experience. Ease of use. Robustness. There is fatigue and cynicism now about devices that are long on features and short on “f*ck yeah!” great experience. Stuff has to just work! Product makers, quit yanking our cords… more on this in future posts…