Ep. 1409: Where sharing is wearing at CES 2014

-Hey, it's Wednesday January 15th, 2014. Thanks for checking out the 404 Show on CNET. I'm Justin Yu. -And I'm Scott Stein. -I'm Ariel Nuñez. -What's up you guys? We're back from CES. This is actually our first show back from CES and it's hard to believe, tell that Jeff isn't here right now that's because he finally succumbed to the CES virus that's been going around CNET lately. First, let's start it with Ty Pendlebury from our television division. -Yeah-- -You were also sick during CES. Bridget somehow escaped it which I'm really happy for her about because she's getting married I believe this weekend. -Yeah, she needs to get out of here because she could catch that sickness. -Well, she's gone already. -Yeah, yeah. -I think she's gone already. -Do you think it's lurking in her that it could like emerge that like some sort of contagion. -I think it's lurking in you that's why I'm on-- -It's definitely lurking in me. I've been sick for-- -That's why I put you on Jeff's mic not mine. -I've been sick for like a month. I'm probably was the one who caused to all of this. -Yeah. -Jeff is like hallucinating. I have not been hallucinating but I coughed throughout all CES. -Oh, my God. -Hacking coughs while looked at every product that probably spread germs like-- -You're Patient Zero. -I am. -Checked it back to you. -I coughed on every piece of wearable tech at the show and just spread germs right all over those wristbands. -So we're back. Ariel, how was your CES man? Usually you're trapped behind the CNET stage editing. Is that-- was that the case this year again? -Yup, a lot more of the same thing as last year, just behind the cage editing all day. -Very cool. -It was cool though, I mean, what's-- whatever. I think what I'm just finally like the routine of things, you know-- -Yeah. -is the CES number 9 for me. -Yeah, I feel like usually when we go to CES, we kinda party and we have fun after the show. -Yeah. -This year sort of an anti-social CES, am I wrong? -It was incredibly anti-social. -Yeah. -What happened? -I don't know. -We're not family anymore. -I feel like-- social network ended up on theaters and I blame the millennials and everyone else. I feel like all of the sudden I did not see anyone. -We're not hanging out anymore man. -We didn't hang out. I felt so had the whole CES. -Yeah. -I kept saying to people, why are we so anti-social? And the reaction people kept giving me was, "we're not anti-social." But then like nobody would hang out with me. -Yeah. -I know. And I'm to blame because I would just run off. I screwed off [unk] little appointments and didn't see anyone and I know people would sound like, "I didn't see the whole show." -Right. -That was sad. I mean, the last night, I mean, you know, even that when-- -A lot of people ducked out. -Well, the weather did not help the very first night, which is usually like a welcome night. I feel like 50% of us didn't even arrive. -Yeah. -And so we're all just crept in, I mean, some places didn't get their people out at all. So we were like lucky to arrive. That just killed any attempt of the social-- -I know. -anything. -Yes, so me and Ariel came from San Francisco and so it was a pretty easy flight. My flight got delayed maybe four hours. I had no idea that the East Coast weather would mess up the entire grid but it did and I ended up leaving out 1 in the morning but people from New York, how is your guy's trip? Can you tell me about Moskovciak's trip? He ended up having to take an Amtrak from J.F.K. to where? -Was it White Plains? -I think-- no, no. It was-- -It was Baltimore. -I wanna say it was Baltimore, it was, yeah. -Well, I mean that was like half of our team went to Baltimore via Amtrak and then transferred in Minneapolis and then got like held over there a bit. I was lucky. I flew out Saturday out of Newark. -Yeah. -And it was fine. I actually got in fine so I was like myself, Dan Ackerman and David Katzmaier were having dinner, the buffet-- -Uh-huh. -alone. I mean, we were together but alone. It felt like, it felt empty and alone. -That's the perfect moniker for CES by the way. Together but alone. -Together-- yes. -That's the perfect motto for CES. -It was like a pair of Google Glass is-- together alone. -Yeah, like obsessively looking at each other but not because we're all looking inside monitors. -Yeah, yeah. So-- -So sad. -I know it was. And I want to see more people and then by the time we got to like Sunday, Monday. Everyone was so stressed that they were just like, "Oh, yeah. Good to see you. Okay, gotta look at 50,000 different things and buy-- -Right. -I'll talk to you later", which is never. -Right. -And that was the show. -Well, you Scott Stein, are really the busiest man at CES every year because you-- it seems like every year you take on another beat, right? -I do sort of, yes. -You're like the beat master at this point. -The beat master. Well, it's now, it sort of like I'm putting a little more emphasis on wearable tech. -Yeah. -I'm working a lot with PCs and tablets but that's a growing area. -Yeah. -So-- but it's also like a despised area, so moving into that and helping work on that, I know a lot of people when I told them I did wearable tech they were like-- -Uh-hmm. -they were like, this stuff's stupid or like, really? You know, I kinda like I expected more out of you. So that's the challenges now. It's like, you're taking over this emerging interesting area. -Right. -Where a lot of people may not want it. -Right. -Or you look at the stuff and you're like, what am I actually gonna buy? And so you're sifting through all these weird like evolutionary things. -Uh-hmm. -And games, and gaming. Although, you know, Jeff's doing like majority of gaming but we help out, look at things like iOS gaming. -Well, that was a busy year for gaming at the show this time around, which is sort of a typical for CES where there's usually not a lot of gaming stuff. -Yeah. -But this year it was a big one for PC gaming. But before we talk about that-- -Sure. -I sort of wanna just get sort of like a lay of the land for CES and how we all feel about it because, I mean, we have been doing this for a while now. This was my 5th CES. Ariel, did you say it was your 9th? -Yup, ninth year. -Oh, my God. I'm sorry for your loss. -I think it's my 7th. -Yeah. -There were couple-- there's one I went to where I-- I just went for fun. -Uh-hmm. -I can't believe that. I went with some friends like a long time ago. If I only knew my future self was doing, I would have been like, stop this. -Right. -But we did that. I went a few times when I was with Max and I went one time as a freelancer and then like-- -Uh-hmm. -And then CNET since 2010. -Okay. So you've been going for a while now. Let me ask you this. Has it always been as big of a circle jerk as it is this year? Or it has been in the past. I feel like CES, it's all about just relationships between journalists and manufacturers or manufacturers and distributors. -Yeah. -If you're a regular consumer, there's no reason why you should be at CES unless you're one of two things, rich or bored. -Yeah. -Do you think that's true? -Absolutely. And I think, you know, if you really are into tech and you've never seen the CES, I think it's worth doing maybe once just to know that it's gonna be a zoo and you can look at it. But I remember that CES that I went to, we're like looked around for 35 minutes and we're like we're done. -Yeah. -But that was back when they were like, I think everything was like audio cables. There was like audio cable years. I looked at a lot of giant speakers. -Right. -Audio cables and I felt like they were like circuit boards and I was like-- -Yeah. -no more. Now it's like-- -Home appliances, USB cables. -USB cables and fitness tracker. -Yeah, exactly. -So is it my-- I don't know why it's happening. You can turn that off. But I think that-- I'm still sniffling. I'm like, yeah. That mic is disgusting. -Don't sneeze in here. We're in a very small room right now. -As I talk, I'm here with Justin. So I felt like it is a run around and the thing it's changing more and more. I feel like you can run around and get lost. But you're also having appointments with these companies but I found out the appointments were happening earlier and earlier. -Uh-hmm. -Because of pre-show. There's like, there are things like this Pepcom event, another events where they have like a ballroom full of, you know, tablet for, you know, we cover this every year. It was like-- -Right. -A hundred vendors or 150 vendors all sitting around showing stuff before the show opens. -Uh-hmm. -Let say you're covering before. But now, there are actually increasingly, I found a lot of companies I wanna meet with you on hotel rooms before that. -Yes, yeah right. -So I was running around on Sunday meeting with people before the thing, before the thing, before the show. -Uh-hmm. -So you're like, what? Like-- and a lot of these companies for the past few years don't even have anything on the show floor. -Uh-huh. -And sometimes they are the most interesting things at the show like the Pebble Steel watch. -Right. -It was like one of the more interesting smartwatches was not on the show floor. They were at the Venetian Hotel doing very personal appointments. -Well, that's the thing is that, I think in the past few years we've started to see a lot of fraction806 products. So-- -Yeah. -there's big manufacturers but then there's also a ton of those little kick-starter companies. -Right. -Then maybe have a prototype or something that you can go and check out in a tiny hotel in the Venetian, which is, you know, miles away from the actual convention center. -It's crazy and you have no way of reaching out unless they've reached out to you or you reached out to them. -Yeah. -And last, your Oculus Rift was like that. And this year they were actually kind of on the show floor but they were actually over at the Las Vegas Hilton like this. So they were like a private meeting room, you had no idea-- you know, people were like, "Hey, can I go to the Oculus Rift at the show?" And you're like not really. No. And, you know, Sony-- there are companies like Sony where they're showing off their stuff and they are ones you can check out but, you know, I felt like some of them were interesting stuff. It's just really hard to find. -Yeah. It's very easy to get jaded when you walk around CES as a tech journalist. -Yeah. -And I'm sure you'll agree with this. You know, you see things that people won't have for the next five years. It's a lot of prototypes and conceptual devices. -Right. -A lot of stuff that people just don't need, you know. You'll see like 80's screen curved TVs which were a big thing for Samsung this year. But who's ever gonna buy those things? -I know. -And for a tech journalist, it's kind of disheartened to see things like promoting 3D TVs a couple of years ago. That was our big projection. Everyone's gonna have 3D TVs. -Right. -But now nobody has 3D TVs. So then why should anybody trust tech journalist in the future on their projection? -Right. At least 3D TVs-- that technology is baked-in and you kinda forget about it. -Yeah. -You gotta live with a curved screen like that thing, you know, that's not going anywhere. You're gonna have a big hunk and curve screen. -Right. -You're never gonna forget about it. -But the other thing about TVs too is that I feel like, so at home I have a 34-inch TV that my sister gave me four years ago. -Wow. -And she already used it a few years before that. It's a flat panel. I think it's an LCD. -Yeah. -So it's an older technology but it's still fine. -Yeah. -You know like, I'm in the tech world and I don't really have a discerning eye for that kind of stuff. I can only imagine the confusion that a consumer now would wanna buy in to. You know like, people have TVs for maybe six or seven years and they're okay with the technology they have in it. -Right. -Especially now that they can add $30, $35 device that can do everything that say, a $1,500 fancy TV that's connected to the internet can do. -Right. -And you think, I think that's like the nice thing too is that, you're starting to see accessories that let you get up to the bigger technologies without having spend the money for it. -Right. Well also, I mean, I was-- was beeping the whole time I was talking. But, you know, like tablets, iPads and other and I was like, you know, that's how you-- if you're going to invest this and you're gonna watch some stuff on people probably tend to buy something like that. -Right. -I think versus saying, time you get a new TV. I don't know. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not in the TV. But I feel like, yeah, that's the thing. I agree. You stick with your TV for a while. -Right. -You definitely has value for games and other things but I don't do everything in my life through my TV anymore. -Right. -So it's like, it's not as essential as it used to be. -Uh-hmm. -But yeah, it's a strange show. And I felt like I walked away like fuzzy because I looked at like, you know, dozens of little products individually. -Yeah. And I was like, so what is this all mean? And you're like, I don't know. I mean, a lot of them I wouldn't necessarily wanna recommend. -Right. -And a lot of them start repeating each other so you're like-- I've already seen that and that's kinda like this and-- -Uh-hmm. -you walk away like, "What did I do?" Well, what was the point of all of this? -This is where those big trends coming into play, right? -Yeah. -It's-- this is where we should get into the wearable tech segment of the show because that was arguably the biggest thing this year if we had Rich Brown, I'll talk to him about appliances. But because you are here, I wanted to talk about wearable tech because I saw you a few times around the show floor and each time you're band of wearable tech, got larger and larger. You had four watches I think. -Just three, just three of them, [unk]. -Three? Yeah, okay, maybe-- -I would switch arms and look-- it looked like a big-- -Yeah, look like a cuff. -like fetish gear, yeah-- weird like what's this guy getting in to? It was like-- it was kinda pointless because I got the call honestly. Somebody at CNET was saying like, you know, what about wearing a stuff around and seeing what it does for you? -Yeah. -And I was like, the one thing I'm not gonna wear at the show, not gonna wear is Google Glass. I'm sorry. I know some people do it-- -You wouldn't be the only one. -Right. I'm not gonna do it. And it's not just that I feel like it's a little overexposed. But it's also like-- it's not that usual because the battery life is really short. -Right. -And if you're gonna take photos with that thing like, you know, time is short like I'm gonna take out my phone and take a photo. -Uh-hmm. -I can't-- this is not gonna get it done. -Right. -You know, I don't know that that picture is gonna be great using it, so I don't know. I just felt like it was kinda like-- but these I thought, you know, how many steps am I walking? So I wore Fitbit Force and then a Nike Fuelband. I don't need to do or both of them but we just-- I just thought to see what they're like. How they perform together. -Uh-hmm. -And then the third was Pebble. -Oh, okay. -Just still have on. And, you know, the Pebble is actually, when I reviewed it, I felt like, you know, it didn't do all that much. -Uh-hmm. -Compared to what you thought it would do. But it had its uses at the show because it's basically like a pager on your wrist. So every time we're in a super noisy area or like the CNET party. -Uh-hmm. -I would be able to know when people we're trying to reach me so much better than my phone when your phone ring or buzz. So I think Dan or someone else were saying like, "Hey, we're leaving now." Or Sarah was going out taking photographs or, you know, someone says him or in appointment like, "Hey, you're running five minutes late." I'll just get a little buzz and now it's there and go, "Okay, cool." It sounds weird but it actually was useful. -Make sense. -And then they're doing apps that are gonna be launching soon at the end of the month. So it is kinda-- it was pretty useful. -So you have the original Pebble on your wrist right now. -Yeah. But they also came out with the Pebble Steel and that was big thing. We had Eric Migicovsky, the CEO of Pebble on the show at CES. -Yeah. -And he was sort of showing us the new thing. But it looked-- I mean it looked great. -Yeah. -But in terms of functionality, it's pretty much the same thing on the inside, right? -It is the same thing on the inside. This is a total cosmetic redesign. The idea is that it's fancier. The battery life might be better. There are a couple little changes. I realized that was showing off the Pebble watch to the microphone for a few seconds-- I was demonstrating to the microphone. I'm clearly haven't got enough rest. So that's the direction. But yeah, so it's steel and in order to do that, they had to put in a special antenna design in it. -Uh-huh. -It looks a lot nicer, definitely looks retro and some people said it looks a little James Bond-like, it's almost 1960's. -Right. -But it is coming a lot-- it has an LED light, which I said, you could get different types of notifications. So it didn't have any light up LED like colored display on there. But there are apps. There's an app store launching around the same time. -Right. -But you can get it if you have the all Pebble too. -Uh-hmm. -So it's really is about like sort of, I wanna say-- I keep trying to say a word kick-starting but like, rebooting the idea of the Pebble. I think they're trying to like get it back out there with apps and get more awareness for it. -Right. -It's not like the truly next generation. -Right, Pebble. And you definitely have a lot of options in terms of smartwatches to look at. -I think ton. -I feel like, you know, when people talk about smartwatches especially when we did last year, when they first start to getting popular I just didn't get it. I still don't get it. You know, when you explained the notifications thing that makes sense. That use case makes sense to me. But, you know, I have this beautiful device in my pocket with the retina display that can display, you know, have many colors. Why do I wanna look at, you know, I don't know, a tiny screen that can do grayscale. It seems aggressive to me. -Yeah. -But, you know, would you say that there are two separate categories of smartwatches like one, that do-- one that does like very specific types of activity tracking, fitness tracking, sleep tracking. And then another that sort of is an accessory to your phone, which I would put more-- I would the Pebble into that category. -Yeah, well, I mean it also like all these-- all the wearable tech out there like I was putting these three categories at the show. -Yeah. -I was thinking like you got notifiers, which is like everything you say, say like a little update or a ping or a text message and it's all, you know, even Google Glass, you know, it's putting the little notification. -But you just still have to look your phone after that. -Yeah, you may have-- you may have to look your phone or you feel like, "Oh, I got the message. I'm fine." But it's all about like sending information to you like what's the weather, what's your, you know, what's your Starbucks balance. Then like trackers are all of the-- you know, how many steps you walk like sensing something like what's your heart rate, how many steps. So it's sensing and tracking something that you're doing and then recording it somewhere. And those were all combining at the show. So it's not really two categories anymore. A lot of things were like, doing fitness tracking but also getting text messages. Like the Pebble doesn't do fitness tracking yet. But it's kinda-- and then you have like Fitbits and other things. And some of those they were starting to show like, "Well, this also gets text messages or other-- gets other things." And then the third thing is all those weird glasses, which I put those in a separate categories because they don't even know what they are. It's like, is it entertainment, is it virtual reality, is it augmented reality-- -Right. -Are you watching movies of it, is it like getting notifications, is it just there to look cool, everyone just playing around with like glasses on your face. -Right. -Every single one is a little bit different. That's pretty much it. I mean, and then you're right. Like they are fancier smartwatches but I feel like that really died out as a trend in their show. -Uh-hmm. -Like Samsung Galaxy Gear, nobody is doing that. -Yeah. -And there was-- I got this before CES, this crazy Omate TrueSmart watch that we wrote a bit at CNET before I left. It is a full phone. It's a full Android phone that runs apps and I was able to send tweets from it and it's nuts. It's like, what is the point of this? But it's intriguing. They're like putting everything on your wrist. -Uh-hmm. -Why does it have to be-- -Either a heads up display or a bracelet? Did you see anything in terms of wearable tech that you could somehow put on your body that isn't-- those types of jewelry? Yeah, yeah. Is there like a shirt or something or-- -No. There was-- -Anything a little bit more creative than that? I feel like we're sci-fining ourselves into these two categories. -I think that's it because-- -But why? -nobody knows where else to put that stuff. And if it's not in your wrist where you can look at it and if it's not in front of your face hanging in front of your eyes where you can see it. -Yeah. -Then how else-- those are the only place that you could put like a screen that will be easy like, you know, you look at a screen on your knee or something. -Yeah. -Everything else would be like sensing or communicating in a way like vibrating-- I don't know. I think we actually saw some of that stuff. -Yeah. -I think we heard about some of the vibrating clothing and under things that you could wear but that wasn't really-- that's not. -Still a different category. -It wasn't the same thing. I was a little-- there were-- you know, I didn't see any of that stuff but it was all but it was being talked about a lot. That-- I heard about like Smart sweaters and like-- -Uh-hmm. -And somebody [unk] with the socks. But that was like, you know, I think you're taking one of those like clips and just stick it on your sock. -I see. -So like now you got a pedometer on your sock or whatever. I think nobody else knows but you could tell the show that nobody wanted to think outside the box anymore. -Right. -They were just like, we wanna be comfortable. Have you understand it and not lose you? But I thought it was kind of a shame. I want a weirder wearable tech and, you know, smart shoes and things. But they didn't-- I didn't see a lot of that. -You know, we talk about fragmentation earlier and CES is a whole but for wearable tech specifically is the problem that there's no one performer that we can all base our product off. There's no Apple iWatches like the Samsung Galaxy Gear was a total failure. There's really no Android watch yet either. What do we need-- what needs to happen in order for us to really get industry-standard? -I think they all need like support the same things like, you look-- like fitness trackers. -Yeah. -And they all are recording the separate apps. They're just insane. So it's like all I wanna do-- and that's-- you used to get yourself to care about that anyhow. Like, do you really wanna record your steps? Not everybody wants to do that. So it's kind of a pain in the ass. But if you are interested in doing that and you start getting married to like a Fitbit. -Yeah. -Well then, now you wanna try using the same like a Nike Fuelband and your entire history of everything you've done doesn't come with you. So like there needs to be a way that this stuff I'll get shared. -Right. -So you're not-- like the fitness stuff needs to pull from the same database and nobody wants to do that but it's like MP3, you know, players and music. It's like, you can't have like separate-- people dealt that in the past. Everybody wanted their own type of music track at one point in the past. -Yeah. -And then they were like, and it's still like that with movies and like, you know, [unk] and stuff. But it's all got different players but they all gotta use the same format of data. -Uh-hmm. -And then on, yeah like the big players are in here, Apple, Google-- I mean, so whatever we saw at the show, I mean, guaranteed by the end of the year, forget the end of the year like in three months. -Yeah. -I feel like we're gonna look back and go Latin cover everything. -Right. -And once those guys, I think that's why everybody was being conservative 'cause you could tell these companies know that Apple and Google are coming. -Right. -And it's not that-- I would even say it's not that when they come everything will be destroyed. But it will definitely, like the iPhone, it'll-- from that point on, everything will be referring to that. So like there's still Android phones. There's still other types of phones but you have to say like, well, this is what we're like in relation to the iPhone or like the Android. And it's like, you start over again. -Uh-hmm. -So I feel like these companies are gonna redefine like what it means to have wearable tech if they're successful. -Right. -So you're gonna have something you wanna buy. [unk] you wanted to do not everything. But you wanted to do enough stuff that you feel like you wanna have to get something else. -Yeah, especially if you're paying something like $250 for the Pebble Steel. -Yeah. -That's a lot of money to spend especially when you get a phone subsidize for just a little bit more than that. -Yeah. And I think it needs to do the same like, I keep thinking of like an iWatch. Like I think if it just become same that is like, I don't even know if we need a music player anymore 'cause we got our phones. But there's something like an evolution of the iPod that just does fitness stuff and doesn't go too nuts. -Uh-hmm. -And I felt like that's what people want. Like I don't know-- unless it does saying crazy like you go on the stores and can, I don't even know if you wanna buy things with it or whatever else. But-- -Right. -yeah, you're right. Like there's a limit to like, you either gonna want that to happen on your wrist or you're not. -Yes. -And so it's different though like when you hold up I think everybody wanted a smartphone at one point when they saw and then they were like, "Oh, that would be fine." -Yeah. -That would be, you know, useful to do that. I just don't know when I'm gonna buy one. -Last thing I wanna ask you about these wearable fitness devices is that, does it have to be all about the fitness because I don't know if you're in to working out or stuff like that? I do not. And so these kinds of things that have a pedometer attached to it, you can swim with it. Those things don't appeal to me 'cause I just don't engage in those kinds of activities, enough to want to attract it. -Yeah. -You know, I saw a lot of devices that had things like food trackers. -Uh-hmm. -You know, if you wanted to check your diet and a lot of people said they reported losing, you know, 5 pounds a month just by tracking their diet and things like that. Did you see any devices that were flexible enough to have all of that where you can cater it to your personal lifestyle or-- I would imagine that CES would be a good place to test stuff like this because your diet is totally influx. You're eating all kinds of crazy shit and go in to the buffets and then you're not getting any sleep afterwards. So-- if anything it'd be a good measure for testing these stuffs. -Well I didn't see anyone that was doing. I mean, the most interesting fitness stuff that we've seen is already launched like Jawbone Up and, you know, Nike Fuelband and Fitbit and so like, I don't think anyone have like new concepts. But they just want to come up of new types of designs. -Right. -Like LG and others and Razer have these like activity bands. -Uh-hmm. -But they don't really talk about like what the software was like so much. They were just talked about like what also does this, what also does that. -Right, right. -But I agree with you. I'm not, look, I don't go to the gym and I need to lose weight and I've lost a little bit weight in the last year and trying to deal with it and this stuff helped me count my steps and be aware of it and motivate. But it's really just about like it just motivated me by knowing what you're doing every day. -Yeah. -And being like when you finally weigh yourself, you're like, "Oh, I weighed that crap." You know, and now when you do that. But not a lot of them get much smarter than that and it's like-- if you've never use these before and you try them out, you probably surprised at how simple they are. -Yeah. -They're really not that smart for somebody had considered it like smart-tracking tech and you're like, "Oh, that's all its doing like-- and the food tracking it was like, enter yourself like weight watchers or something. -Yeah. -I'm not-- but how do you do that when you're at a restaurant? You have no idea how many calories this burger has. -People thought that camera is and then it is a database-- yeah, it's like, you know forget it like it's ridiculous. But I agree like, I think the reason why it's all fitness right now is because it's a start of the year, so everybody is saying about losing weight. -Uh-huh. -And also in wearable tech, it's like the only part of wearable tech that has any practical use right now. -Right. -You know like-- because at least it's counting your steps and can be used for that. So if you're into fitness, you could find the use so it's like, you know, a watch that gets messages from your phone. You could find a use for that but they're really is, it's not that practical, you know. -You already have another thing on your body that does it better. -Yeah. -And looks great. -Exactly. And the problem is these all need to be charged so-- -Right. That's another thing-- -Gonna go weak or-- you know, I get talk to like Casio on other people and like, I think why you're not seeing like a cool watch that also does all these things is probably because they want the batteries to last a long time. -Right. -You know, like you want like a Swatch or like Fossil watch or anyone. You know, they want that thing to last a year and everything else so you're pulling these cables and charging them. I don't, I think it's kind of a shame like, if you could do that and not have to have one more thing to charge. -Uh-hmm. -'Cause do we need one more thing to charge? -No. Definitely not. -It's tough. -And bringing out power strips in my ass. -Yeah, it's crazy. Or like kinetic power. -Yeah, maybe. They could combine fitness thing and the battery charge. -Yeah, like I charge it myself or powered off my blood. -You know what thing is interesting is, you brought up a good point about these devices just being a motivator, you know, and I think that in terms of weight loss, as long as you're paying attention to what you're eating, it doesn't matter how you're documenting it whether it's electronically or just by writing down the foods that you're eating. -Yeah. -You know, anyone dietician-- any dietician will tell you that, you know, just paying attention is enough. -Yeah. -And it's the same thing as these crazy diets that force you to sort of like eat healthier. -Yeah-- -But in crazy ways. You know, we talked to somebody that was part of the Paleo diet. And that seems like in an extreme way just to call attention to what you're doing. -Well-- -You know, and so if you have something on your wrist that will track your steps, maybe you'll walk a little bit more to see how that will perform and that will sort of psychologically push you into losing weight. It might not be the actual device itself. -No, it's not. It's-- and that's what I felt like I would look at it and go, "I'm really close to 10,000 steps like I'll walk a little further. I'll walk further for lunch or I'll take the stairs." -Yeah. -Like I totally felt myself wanting to do that to get like credit. -Uh-hmm. -'Cause I'm sort of addicted to that and so it works. I mean, that's-- I think people, I think they've found it like when you watch that, you know, it helps. -Yeah. -And then you kinda feel proud and you're like, "Oh, I did that." It's tough to do over a longer period of time but it's-- sometimes they're really good about setting new goals. -Yeah. -But I feel like for Apple and Google like, I think about those two companies like coming up with a way to make this more interesting or fun or work with what you have already. -Uh-hmm. -Like if you're part of weight watchers or other stuff like, so you don't have to pick up like another new system. -Yeah. -I think that's kinda what remains to be done. I don't know if you can do like a big revolutionary like next step right now. -Uh-hmm. -'Cause it's-- I feel like also that what you really want going to Rich Brown like a smart appliances like, "Do we need those things?" I guess you really want like maybe everything to communicate with each other but that's gonna take a long time. -Yeah. -And for that not to be annoying. -Right. -And to not have to replace all the stuff in your home. You need like the apps and services to work. I feel like it's gonna take like a decade. -Yeah. It's so frustrating-- -You know, like-- -in the next decade-- -Yeah. -until we get there. -But you wanted to be like, I mean, I think everyone want-- saying words like, you know, yellow message like your food is almost done or like, "Hey, you're-- -You're running out of eggs. -You're running out of eggs or like you left your TV on. -Right, right. -You know, those things like that, you know, I don't know what else. But, you know, your car is running, somebody is in your car. They're driving when you're in your car. I think that's interesting idea. I think it's kind of where, we're already like that now. People are, you know, turning off their lights in their home and-- -Uh-hmm. Yeah. -doing stuff like that. How much more of that? -Uh-hmm. There is a lot to talk about. I wanted to talk to you about Nest and I wanted to talk to you about Oculus Rift and the new Razer Project Christine prototype. -Oh, yeah. -So hopefully, Jeff will be sick for the rest of the week so we can get you in here to talk about those. -I know. That's the more interesting stuff. Oculus Rift we can get in to. -Yeah. -That was like the coolest thing I saw. -Yeah, yeah. -And Project Christine was cool. -Well, let's make this maybe a one of three-part series for the rest of the week. -I'll do another-- -We can do a wrap up, you know, CES. -Yeah. -If you don't get me sick, then I'll be fine. -Oh, yeah. -Let's wrap things up for today though. We'll end it on wearable tech just for today and get you back in here tomorrow to finish it up and Friday as well. -All right. -That's gonna do it for us today though. It's been half-hour show, kinda short but get you back in here tomorrow. Give us a call, let us know what you think about what you've heard on the show today on any cool stuff that you've seen at CES. We wanna hear about it. Give us a call at 866-404-CNET. Let us know what you think. You can also send us a tweet @the404 is our handle. Or you can give us an e-mail, the404@cnet.com. Send that over. And once again, we will be back tomorrow with another great show. Thanks for joining us today guys. I'm Justin Yu. -I'm Scott Stein. -I'm Ariel Nuñez. -It's The 404, high-tech, it's low brow. It's less low brow when Scott's here. I like that about him. -I might be a low brow to you. -You're a classy guy. -Thank you. -We'll be back tomorrow guys. Thanks for watching.