IOGear

I've always liked their gear and this year they had an HDMI splitter and KVM on display. A nice dual-DVI KVM too. Some other stuff too like their digital scribe, which I still haven't tried yet.

NJoy

This is... I... What... Who came up with this?

www.NJOY.com. The electronic cigarette device.

Hey, at least there's no second hand smoke.

Cable Technology Ecosystem: Understanding Next Generation Interactivity - Programming and Technology and the Digital Consumer

Wan from Cisco
Trantor from NDS
Shannon from MacroVision
Malone from Sling
Lariu from McKenna
Harrison from Ensequence
Fausch from Alcatel-Lucent

Wan said in 4 years that IP traffic will hit the zetabyte level-1 trillion gigabytes. Also there will be between 3-4 billion IP devices(where is IPv6???)

Wan-Anything that can be powered will have IP eventually.

Malone - It's all for nothing if we are not giving the consumer what they want. Operators don't really want to open up their walled garden, but open up a little like Facebook on the STB.

Shannon-Operators are moving from broadcast to client server world and metadata will become even more important. Webservices will become more important as we go on and integrate systems together.

Malone - You guys are fooling youselves if you think the consumer won't give up cable or DBS and get their media online. If you do, you are out of touch with the younger generation.

Lariu - For advertising, the micro-niche is becoming more important than the mass shotgun approach we currently have for advertising.

Harrison - TV/EBIF is able to do advanced stuff that the Internet can't right now. Content providers realize they still have the eyeballs over the Internet and are trying to take advantage of that mass audience.

Lariu - ITV needs to get into deep engagement with consumers, such as a scenario with Lost, but ITV is not doing that yet.

Faust - I worry that the days of unlimited bandwidth are over and what will that mean to IP video?

Shannon-EPGs get more 'pageviews' and interactivity than Internet, but we are not taking advantage of it.

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Overall the panel discussion was good, but let me down. It was more of a bashing or 'we should do this' type of thing instead of a more definitive 'This is where we are heading with interactivity', which was what I was looking for.

Breathalizer?

I thought it was amusing when I saw 1 personal breathilzier, but for the 2nd one I saw, AlcoHawk, they are giving away free a beer coozy! That just seems wrong.

ArkNav

G-forces recorder... Can save to miniSD or interface via RS-232. Has adjustable sensitivity/triggering and internal clock.
It'll be ready in 2 months for about $100. www.arknavgps.com.tw

My posts

Some of the technology in my posts might seem odd, but it's usually because I think I might be able to use them in projects for work.

eBox mini-PCs

Nice micro PCs... About 4"x4"x1". Up to 1g ram on the board and you can install a 2.5" drive(although I would worry about heat.) I saw a 1ghz processor running with 1gb ram. VGA, com ports, ethernet, USB, and CF ports all built in.

HyPC from Yoggie.

Interesting device... A PC in an ExpressCard. Says it's 'untouchable' from the host...I don't know about that. This is from the guys that made the portable hardware firewall.

Wildcharge

Which I talked about last year, has come up with batteries for the 3 major game platforms. That could sell a lot of these things. Even my kids can just put the Xbox controller on the table.

nPowerPEG

Kinectic energy charger... Available in April for about $150. Power comes out of a standard mini-USB port. I 'charged' an iPod myself.