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>> Kara Tsuboi: Welcome to the Daily Debrief, Second Edition. I'm CNET's Kara Tsuboi here with Erica Ogg, the head writer for Crave. And Erica just returned home from Japan where she was at the CEATEC show. Why don't you explain exactly what that is first of all?
>> Erica Ogg: So CEATEC is basically like CES before CES. It's in Tokyo. It's a huge, you know, global technology show. And the great thing about CEATEC is that you get to see basically all aspects of the chain of consumer electronics. So you're not just seeing phones and TVs. You're seeing, you know, LED screens and you're seeing buttons for remote controls and batteries. And it gets down into the minutia, but it's really cool.
>> Kara Tsuboi: The gadgets behind the gadgets.
>> Erica Ogg: Exactly, yeah.
>> Kara Tsuboi: So what, like what blew your mind? I mean I'm sure there was lots of bizarro stuff, but what really left an impression?
>> Erica Ogg: So, the thing that I loved over there were their cell phones.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Ah.
>> Erica Ogg: You know, Japan has a completely different -- you know, Japan and South Korea, they have a cell phone culture that, you know, is way more robust than ours.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Mm-hmm.
>> Erica Ogg: Which means they have phones that we'll never see with capabilities that, you know, we're only starting to get around to. But design-wise actually, I was really, really surprised. Just kind of the cool, innovative prototypes they have on display. So they're not necessarily actual products, but I got some photos of just some really cool stuff, you know, phones that are, they're musical instruments that are actually phones or I saw one that was a prototype for a phone that basically had a projector inside of it.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Wow.
>> Erica Ogg: Yeah. I mean, things like that that are really cool.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Mm-hmm.
>> Erica Ogg: Another one was, a lot of companies were taking prototypes of phones and instead of having your normal screen and then your buttons, they were taking them into the two pieces.
>> Kara Tsuboi: [inaudible]
>> Erica Ogg: So that you basically rearrange them however you wanted.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Oh, that's great.
>> Erica Ogg: And they'd be connected by Bluetooth. So just taking the traditional design of the cell phone and kind of deconstructing seems to be all the rage right now over there.
>> Kara Tsuboi: What are some other trends that you saw that American consumers will someday see, and maybe will even preview at CES in Las Vegas?
>> Erica Ogg: Well, we'll definitely see at CES really thin TVs.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Oh.
>> Erica Ogg: You know, for a long time it was the big TVs.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Yes.
>> Erica Ogg: It was moving over to high definition.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Mm-hmm.
>> Erica Ogg: And now that we're there, the TV makers are saying, okay you need really thin. And so all the big companies like Sony, like Hitachi, like Toshiba, like Sharp, like Panasonic, they're all showing really thin LCDs and really thin plasmas. You know, so we're talking, you know, millimeters thin. And in Sony, they're really working on their OLED technology, which is an organic film kind of screen. And they have one product out on the market right now that's really thin. It's about a millimeter thin. But they're also working on an OLED that's 0.3 millimeters thin.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Oh my gosh.
>> Erica Ogg: And so if you can imagine that.
>> Kara Tsuboi: It's like human hair thickness.
>> Erica Ogg: It's like a playing card, basically.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Yeah, yeah.
>> Erica Ogg: And it's a TV screen, so.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Wow.
>> Erica Ogg: It's ridiculously expensive right now.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Of course.
>> Erica Ogg: And you can't make them in mass amounts for, you know, markets around the world yet.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Mm-hmm.
>> Erica Ogg: But, we'll get there. But that was what they were showing, yeah.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Now, of course, this being Japan, a culture that loves their robots, I'm sure you saw some really fascinating robotic technologies.
>> Erica Ogg: Yes, definitely saw robots. Interestingly, a lot of the ones there weren't necessarily new.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Okay.
>> Erica Ogg: But people were definitely flocking to the booths and looking at them. The cool one that everyone was looking forward to seeing, I think, I was too, was the, it's Murata Girl. And she's the little unicycle-riding robot.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Yes.
>> Erica Ogg: We wrote about her before we left.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Yes.
>> Erica Ogg: And I saw it when I was there. And you can control her with a remote control. It looks like a long wand, basically.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Uh-huh.
>> Erica Ogg: And it uses Bluetooth so she can kind of
>> Kara Tsuboi: Very slick.
>> Erica Ogg: stop and start on her own.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Yeah.
>> Erica Ogg: So that was the cool robot I saw.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Now, I've got to ask. Outside of the convention and the hubbub of work, did you eat any great meals or see any amazing sights?
>> Erica Ogg: Oh, yes.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Okay, good.
>> Erica Ogg: I, yes.
>> Kara Tsuboi: You had fun then?
>> Erica Ogg: I did, I did. Got plenty of that in too.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Good. Any meal that you are going to remember for the next few months?
>> Erica Ogg: I went to this one place in Ebisu and had ramen that was to die for.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Ooh.
>> Erica Ogg: So, highly recommended. It's called Ifido [phonetic].
>> Kara Tsuboi: Oh, nice. Okay, welcome home.
>> Erica Ogg: Thank you.
>> Kara Tsuboi: We loved your posts throughout the last week and thanks for giving us a preview for what's to come at CES in January.
>> Erica Ogg: Sure thing.
>> Kara Tsuboi: Awesome. Erica Ogg, head writer of Crave. I'm Kara Tsuboi. You have been watching the Daily Debrief. We'll see you next time.
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