CES 2012 - The CES We Know & Love Is Back

As CES closes today, the major impression we carry away is that CES Is Back.  The show was much more fun, much more dynamic, and much bigger than it has been since the economic collapse.

The numbers back it up, nearly 2 million feet of exhibit space, 5,000 press and analysts, 140,000 attendees.  Taken as 1 building, the South Hall 1,2 3 and 4 is one of the worlds largest buildings.  And with so many product intros, more than in many years, some are bound to stick.

Photo: Joe Lackow

The highlights for us, and for many attendees, will be the intro of the Lumia 900 and the hybrid phone/tablet Samsung Note, each very heavily promoted and for once, certainly worthy of the hype, especially the Lumia 900.

Now that the visceral appeal of the Lumia 900 intro at Monday's Nokia conference has worn off, the reality has set in.  And it is even better.  As a GPS unit as capable as any GPS out there, with serious Navteq navigation quality data instead of consumer-level Google or Bing maps underneath, combined with a 4G smartphone on AT&T's network, this promises to be the low cost logistics solution many of us have been waiting for.  Smart phone navigation was not up to snuff.  And now, it is.  And this Nokia re-entry rocket will also put a lot of digital cameras and software to bed, with its powerful ability to do wide angle high res images without cropping.

We should also mention a couple of technologies we saw at CES that we are trying to pull into our little world of GIS, mapping, and location based services and advertising.  One of them is Shodogg, "Videos Best Friend", which is designed to allow users to "toss" fat entertainment content i.e. TV and movies from device to device wirelessly and trnsparently.  We see business applications for Shodogg, allowing users to plug into and share and collaborate on streaming presentations regardless of the device they have; and we see a LOT of potential in tossing Call To Duty (and other games) from device to device.

We also like Boogie Board, which is designed to do away with paper notes and save trees.  The basic model (left) does just that, especially useful in a family household where it will revolutionize the fridge note.

But the upscale model (right) lets you use USB to get what you drew or wrote on the Boogie Board into your computer.  And that is a whole other deal, useful for students and artists and physicians and a host of other users and applications.  And we think, with a little tweaking, we can turn it into a really, really inexpensive and nifty little digitizing tablet that we can use to get small paper maps and other GIS (and CAD) content into our PCs where we can work with them with robust tools.  Stay tuned on Boogie Board.

Among the other cool and interesting stuff we saw - solar panels storing energy and powering portable devices; the iM Watch mobile phone controller; the continued evolution of Square as a payment system; the giant LG 3D panel and a number of first generation 3D games.

And as we leave the amazing venue that is Las Vegas - after gambling only on the blind grab-bag gifts from White Basin at the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian for the ladies - we breathe a sigh of relief that America, and the world, seems slowly to be turning the economic corner.

And we can't wait to see the Lumia 900 this spring.