CES 2012

LAS VEGAS -- The Consumer Electronics Show is like the real world in only one sense: everyone is trying to capture your attention.

So if they can't do it with dancing girls, they hire actors and professional presenters who are there to lure you to a company's wares.

This morning, for example, Panasonic and Samsung were employing more flashing lights than Amsterdam. They talk at you, they play music, they activate multifarious screens at passing eyes -- everything to halt your gait and grab your eyes and brain.

Every company at CES garnered some kind of crowd. Every … Read more

LAS VEGAS --Being fond of movies in which people aren't what they seem, I was moved to hear that there are spies at CES 2012.

I had already been suspicious, as--being one who stares at people's names and companies on their badges--I saw more than one person yesterday whose employer was "U.S. Government."

However, there is allegedly a whole troop of spies out here, sniffing around everything: employees of Apple.

Paid Content, for example, bumped into Apple's Head of iOS marketing Greg Joswiak yesterday. He allegedly sported a "sheepish grin."

I have … Read more

What's it like to be a top manager or engineer in Silicon Valley and a woman? Google's Marissa Mayer, Flickr founder Catarina Fake, and Padmasree Warrior of Cisco Systems talked about that and more today at the CNET Women in Tech panel.

The three agreed that progress has been made, but that there's still a long way to go to get more women into the technology field.

Mayer said she believes we need to get more people interested in technology overall--men and women. Warrior said we need to find ways to keep women in the workforce and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--We all want a peek at the future of electronics, and we all like to think that it's just around the corner. Often, it is. But let's not get past ourselves.

If there's one trend we've had enough of here at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, it's the "smart" product. Manufacturers can't help but throw the term around to describe virtually any electronic device that can transfer data to another. They also can't resist using the term to describe an improved user experience or new operating system.

I'm here … Read more

Android product diversity shows "differentiation," not fragmentation, says Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman.

Nonsense, I say.

"Fragmentation means the app only runs on one device and not the others. That is not happening to Android," Schmidt argued while speaking to CNET at the CES show on CNET's Next Big Thing panel.

But I think that's too binary a view. There's a lot of gray between the black and white.

Yes, Android lets mobile phone makers and tablet makers differentiate their products from rivals'. Phones with large screens and styluses, phones with slide-out … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The Consumer Electronics Show is really about the here and now, a showcase for the sleekest, fastest, shiniest gizmos that will show up in stores in the coming months.

But a panel of corporate leaders discussed the importance of creating corporate cultures that encourage companies to displace their own gadgets--to develop the next generation of devices that can replace the ones so lavishly displayed on the show floor here. Because if a company doesn't displace its own gadgets, rivals will.

"If you don't make those investments, clearly somebody else will cannibalize your business," said John … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The technology community has made substantial in-roads in efforts to stop SOPA and Protect IP, two bills pending in Congress that would expand the ability of federal law enforcement and rightsholders to police the Internet for violations of intellectual-property laws.

But the fight is far from won. That was the message yesterday at a contentious panel discussion at CES's Innovation Policy Summit, featuring Congressional staffers along with industry representatives from both Hollywood and the technology community.

"Opponents have organized," said Ryan Clough, legislative counsel for Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). "But we haven't stopped SOPA … Read more