Signed Electronically Online Conference Event Made Easy

Signed electronically online conference event

i'm brian cooley and uh coming to you from the hallowed halls of my house as all of us have been this ces of course being a virtual show as you certainly know by now they want to wrap it up for you with a bow and do our best of ces and joining me so capably is someone who has the rare honor of saying from hollywood ashley esqueda i i feel like i need to hire you to just record that intro for me for everything i do from hollywood ashley esqueda um i'm so excited i finally get to do best of ces with you and then it ends up being like this it ends up being remote uh but we do not need to be physically present with each other in the same room to celebrate all of the good things we saw this week at ces 2021 um and at the first all digital ces 2021 it's been a weird week but but well it's a little more compact and obviously completely distributed it's not like part of it was in vegas this is not a hybrid show this year as you probably noticed by watching our our coverage all of you uh this is a purely virtual show but we want to kick things off now and get right into our list we've got about 14 picks for you i think nine or 10 of them are coming to market and then we saved at the end about four that are still prospective we're not calling them vaporware but they're still tbd on delivery and price let's get started now with the device that became uh as category anyway that became the heart of daily life for so many people the laptop and in this case our favorite was not the flashiest one we saw but perhaps the most capable the hp dragonfly max what did we like about this ash you know i think that everybody this year kind of realized oh man my laptop needs an upgrade my computer needs an upgrade and uh a lot of people found out that they had terrible webcams and so hp really went out of its way to sort of make these upgrades uh it's it's blue it's it's a little it's a little flashy but we won't say it's as ostentatious as some of the other laptops we saw this week uh but it does have four microphones on board it's got a five megapixel webcam an ir camera so you're gonna have a little bit better audio and video quality which is obviously something people are looking for now and what's so interesting is we were discussing this with some of our other editorial colleagues the phrase kept coming up it has a phone quality camera not too long ago that would have been an insult but now a phone quality camera is actually the gold standard so that's kind of what you're going to find in that laptop and a few others uh in terms of a very different device and this is real even though it may not look like it lg showed off a rollable extendable phone so that doesn't crease and fold like previous foldables but the screen gets bigger or smaller by unfurling and furling part of its display yeah this is uh this reminds me of the the hidden television from from ces's past where it sort of uh it's got this hidden compartment where the screen retracts and then it kind of pops back out um i i have been wrapping my brain around this idea for the better part of three days and i can't quite figure out many more use cases beyond okay well i wouldn't mind having something a little bit larger for maybe reading the news or checking out a magazine saying like apple news plus like i i would love to see a magazine layout or something to that effect on a rollable screen to be able to expand it and and then shrink it back down seems nice but i don't know cooley like can you think of anything else that you'd use this for well we were joking off the air it's great for boomers who want to watch old episodes of i love lucy you can turn this thing into like a 4-3 and not have a bunch of black space on one side or the other but i doubt that's their intended market uh i do think there's something interesting about the fact that it rolls and scrolls and doesn't project fragility the way i believe the folding phones do and it's causing i think a lot of consumers i'm not sure if that's going to be durable let's take a look at something completely out of left field this is a smart ceiling lamp from nobi aside from the b-roll we're about to see being a little disturbing what does it do speaking of the boomers this is this is so interesting to me and but also again like you said this video is a little disturbing it appears that the lamp is alerting this nice woman in the blue shirt that her i he's a younger gentleman so i would her husband friend uh spouse has fallen down and cannot get up um to steal a catchphrase from as seen on tv uh as seen on tv moments of your uh but yeah so this is a ceiling lamp that has sensors in it and it's meant to help um seniors live independently for longer it can sort of watch for things like falls and then send out alerts to get out help so um and then there's also i i'm curious like there's some monitoring activity um functionality that i i'm not 100 sure what that means like it's just constantly watching you like what you know nobody's making a very interesting ceiling lamp which i never thought i would say yeah she asks the boomer uh yeah basically what this is going to do is do motion and object detection as i understand it in a simple way and like you say to tell if someone has fallen down versus just being in the room turn on the light obviously to help them but then i think the interesting part is the alerts and notifications and we've seen more and more of this in the senior sector because let's face it a lot of seniors are aging in place and that also means aging alone in place in some cases i hear repeatedly from people that are watching the smart home market as analysts they go a little more attention could be paid to the needs of seniors because they have more needs and they have more money to buy gear that will help their those needs than a younger consumer who may have very little of either and speaking of smart home alarm.com came out with a touchless doorbell this is just one example of a slew of touchless no germs no skeeve kind of smart home technology how does this thing actually know to ring the bell like so there is a door mat that's sort of like uh you you likened it previously to a home plate baseball home plate and so it's uh you step up there the doorbell knows that you're present uh if it's a quick drop off um i think that it's yeah so you stand on matt to ring doorbell um so it stands there and if i assume if you're there for a longer period of time if it's not just a quick drop off then the doorbell knows hey go ahead uh i'm gonna ring the doorbell for the person who's inside um but yeah this is very interesting and i i think that they're we're gonna see a lot more of this this year i think we're gonna see uh doorbells like this from everybody we're gonna see them from amazon and ring and we're going to see them from uh security companies like alarm.com they're going to be all over the place very very prevalent yeah i think a lot of this is going to merge from a touchless revolution let's face it we're not probably not going to be as sensitive about touching cross-contamination as we are now forever but along the way touchless also becomes convenient you know touchless is good when you don't want to get germs it's also good when your arms are full whether it's a faucet whether it's a toilet handle whatever it might be so i think it has to move and morph beyond just being a germ story or i think it becomes a very 2021 thing rather quickly i'm going to talk more about a touchless bathroom in a minute but first let's stop down and have a little bit of fun we've seen table sized electronic gaming products before but usually they're video game platforms this is an electronic board game platform yeah i really like this so the infinity game table was a crowdfund effort um they raised quite a bit of money um and this is they're starting off with uh hasbro games so you're gonna see sorry we're seeing right now you can see they're kind of scrolling through looking at different games they can play um and it is also wi-fi connected so if somebody else has an infinity game table uh anywhere else in the world it they say you're gonna be able to sync up with your friends and play these board games uh from a distance which i think is really cool and also the price point is really compelling it's 600 bucks uh which is about the same price as uh an ipad an off contract ipad a wi-fi ipad so um it's it's definitely something that i think a lot of people are going to be interested in um it is kind of large so if you don't have space in your home this might be a tough purchase the legs do come off it does seem to store pretty easily um but then i am also very curious if they're going to expand into um tabletop gaming with something like a dnd campaign where you can customize your maps and have them sort of load them into this table i think that would be a really great expansion on that technology but overall still really cool i think the best thing about it is that they have licensed legendary big name games that are classics as opposed to inventing their own games and nobody would care that's key the rendering of those games looks really good they did a beautiful job bringing those games to life and you and i were wondering why the screen is not a square ratio because board games typically are more or less square and they're using a pretty clearly a 16 9 it looks like maybe because it's an initial product and they wanted to grab some off the shelf panels which i understand another thing i was thinking is you know the popularity of video poker and video gaming and casinos i don't know if they have any uh you know pseudo casino games on there but i suspect that could be a winner as well let's go back to the touchless kohler had a whole bunch of touchless the bathroom technology from faucets to toilets um this is kind of getting into that germ paranoia thing that we have to there's the lid going up all by itself i mean they're going beyond handles they're going to everything in this bathroom being almost like you glide through it well look i am gonna just say right here and now that the united states of america has been lagging on its bathroom technology compared to other parts of the world for a very long time and i'm i'm so happy to see companies like kohler really picking up the pace here i mean we've seen some pretty amazing uh toilets specifically from companies like toto for a really long time and so kohler making this touchless bathroom experience uh is you know i think that this is the type of stuff that we expect to see as a as a this is the future we all want to live in right nobody wants to touch a surface in a bathroom so it's except for my toddler who apparently wants to touch every surface in a bathroom but that's a whole different story you know i hope they get this right in the very simple part of its responsiveness you know go to an airport go into the restroom there but you're waiting for your bags and i have never in my life in probably thousands of interactions with touchless faucet ever found one that didn't do the opposite of what i want when my hands are under it i get no water when i pull my hands away it gives me water it's like it's playing whack-a-mole with me so they've got to get that right the bathroom's in our in our cnet offices here in san francisco the same way you can't get any damn water out of these things because they are opposite of what you want and the soap the soap thing is the worst when you're sitting there and you want soap it won't give you you pull your hand away and it pees a bunch of soap into the sink so they've got to get the responsiveness right okay let's turn now to televisions about tvs at the at this show two from tcl that represent a similar trend the one that i'm big on is an 85 inch 4k television for a list price of 15.99 that is a price breakthrough not necessarily a technological wow but an absolute price breakthrough and the other one kind of a twin of it is a roku 85 inch 8k so same size but 8k res uh price is still tbd but the smart money says under 2700 what do you think about these two are do people need these big of a television at any price i mean i'm a person who needs the biggest television as cheaply as possible so this is exactly what i want this is i'm i'm obsessed with tvs at ces every year it's one of my favorite things to go check out you know cooley did you ever think when you were a small boy growing up during the american revolution that we were going to have tvs this big for so cheap i didn't think we were going to have tvs i'm sorry i had to shade just a little bit i you know i love you but no this is this is amazing because anybody who wanted a 4k tv for a long time that price point was not attainable for a lot of people and then we started seeing uh really inexpensive oleds that were 1080 then we started seeing really inexpensive 4k tvs that were 55 inch and 65 inch and now we're seeing this 4k television that is 1600 which is amazing and it's 85 inches this is a massive screen um and that usually is the tipping point for the next generation of televisions for the next resolution and so to see that tcl is not only focused on getting an 85-inch screen television at that price point a 4k tv um to the masses is awesome but then to also know that their 8k tv is potentially not even going to be you know or is going to be about a thousand dollars more than that um that's pretty amazing and i'm hoping that that means that the 8k tipping point will come a little bit faster when it comes to uh you know getting these tvs in people's houses uh and also the creation of that content so right now as you you and i both know um you can't watch ak anything like there's very few no content that's what's interesting and yet the good tvs upscale so beautifully that they do take advantage of their resolution fairly well but i'm with you uh this sets the table for the by a year from now here's my prediction 85 inch 8k pretty much at 2 000 street price and that's pretty cool just a year from now it's aggressive that's right so that's an aggressive bold prediction let's talk about a very different display now ar um i'm i'm big on this company viewsix that makes um maybe not the flashiest ar glasses but these latest ones they've made are moving us rapidly toward normalcy uh they're still intended largely for a work or business environment but the new viewsix are called nextgen smart glasses you can see everything that they need is pretty much built into relatively slim temples very ordinary looking rims you know has a certain style to it it's a slightly retro horn rim style but that's great it doesn't say tech it says fashion eyewear and these guys have do it they do a really good job with these sorts of things to give you assistance and aids in front of your eyes and also built-in smart voice i know they have amazon i think they might have google built in as well i don't recall there being a price announced on this there may have been but this shows that the normalcy of uh ar glasses might be starting now and it's no longer something that screams i'm a dork but i want you to see what cool tech yes like that that has always been as a glasses wearer um that has always been my hesitation with these products it's been they just look so dorky and i don't want to wear them um you know even something like snapchat spectacles was a very tough sell for me right where it's just oh these things they have these little cameras on it so this uh music's kudos to music for for deciding specifically deciding to go with a design that is very subtle and almost dare we say it kind of cool kind of kind of so cool kind of yeah kind of 80s bra right yeah i appreciate that very much yeah so keep an eye on music they have a sense of normalcy that i think is is really good even if they aren't the most ambitious uh necessarily uh you know industrial headset uh wrapping up with the things we don't need that i think it's you know exactly right it's gotta be it's gotta be basically useful before it has to be some kind of a space-age technology that's immersing me in a new world and by then you're into vr anyway uh panasonic had something in the air space also they did an announcement they're working with a company called invisix which has been on my radar for a while they're a highly respected uh i believe pretty young laser holography company in the uk and panasonic is going to work with them to bring laser holography ar head up displays to cars so that when you're driving you're going to start to see the world out in front of you augmented whether that's a hazard whether it's a place name whether it's a navigation direction or whether it's a color bar on the road that says slow down you're closing too fast on the car ahead of you all of this is long overdue i'm very big on ar making total sense in cars where it doesn't necessarily make sense in other places yet you can see the demo there here's a garbage can in the road it's alerting her on the windshield to avoid that here's another one about a hazard pulling out in the road so this makes sense to me because it's all very much practical and the reason i'm excited about this it's not the only company doing it is that this announcement puts together great tech with a company panasonic that has deep roots in the auto industry they build cabin tech and other technology for almost every automaker so when they speak automakers listen so i look forward to this yeah this is um i think it it's been a long time since we've seen the first ar hud in in cars like it's been we've seen these a lot at ces um but this is the first time that it really feels like because panasonic is partnering with invisics it it feels like this is a this is this could be a groundbreaking partnership in the way of getting this technology into cars um even at the lower price points um that most people buy cars at and so this um this could be a tipping point for for that ar hud which is really exciting for people because honestly there are so many cool technologies in higher end vehicles that we just haven't seen quite trickle down yet um in a way that is uh real and tangible um and usable by the masses and so something like this is just fantastic and i hope that it ends up in a lot of cars really really soon yeah i think it's the next big wave of driver assistance is not necessarily things that alter the driving for you those are already deeply rooted but now things that uh uh sort of provide a superpowers to your senses let's move now to a little lightning round of our concepts these deserve a little less time because we don't know if they're coming to the world anytime soon or not but let's give them a little quick nod first of all general motors announced a bunch of electric cars in a very big press conference but aside from that they also kind of did a one more thing rolling out a well it's not a flying car because it has no wheels it is a personal transportation drone and it's not the first company to do that we've seen several others at ces from car companies but there's something about general motors releasing a cadillac branded concept of a flying vehicle that just got a lot of attention but what do you think of flying personal transport i okay so i am of two minds on this obviously the first part is whenever i think of the future i think of flying cars i think of things like this this this gm vitol cadillac like it's amazing um but there are a lot of challenges that still have yet to be solved in the way of making sure these things are prevalent and and usable uh by the masses i mean obviously there are things like you know uh flight plans and and and launch pads and landing areas that have to be sorted out before anything like this is usable yeah i i agree i think there's a real uh it feels like it's going to bring the elite transportation market down a little bit or expand it a bit as opposed to addressing anyone's common real world transport needs and that's fine pursuing that market is fine that's not illegitimate but i don't think it solves congestion as much as we are told it will i just don't see how it gets there uh lg rolled out jeff bezos this is for jeff bezos to take from his volcano layer to amazon headquarters uh lg had a transparent television a tv you can see through while you are seeing it a little mind bending so you gotta look at the video here now it's not the first time we've seen this technology but they're really expanding the use case in a covid sense to say look you can have it at the foot of your bed like that and it's it's a screen that lets you see what's going on but also see through it and to what else is happening in your environment but this is interesting here it is as a shield at a sushi bar it's also your ordering interface while being a german sneeze shield while not being off-putting you know when you have a clear plexiglas see a shield at a restaurant it just feels icky like you're in a you're in a hospital environment and i know we need them right now but in the future we might like to continue having them but have them not be so prophylactic but instead be useful and helpful and that's what this does yeah i this is very star trek um if we've if you've seen star trek discovery uh you see displays like this i i got to take a tour of that set and they are real transparent displays which is awesome uh this is the first oled one and if i'm not mistaken lg display is a different company than lg if the exact is that right cooley like i'm pretty sure they're different companies um but this particular technology is absolutely the future this is this is the type of stuff uh that makes ces what it is and it is the thing that you see at ces and you go home and talk about uh to everybody who said hey how was ces you're like wow i saw this amazing oled tv or or screen but it was also it was an interactive transparent display i mean that type of stuff is just it's the stuff of future dreams and it's i can't wait to have those things uh because they're non-obtrusive like you were saying it's it's if they're clear you can watch what's through it you can interact with whoever's on the other side or whatever's on the other side um but then when you need it it's there for you you can you can use it as a functioning surface and i think that's really really cool and it's got a certain augmented reality function that they're showing it's a screen it can be used for anything obviously but you see how they envision a c3 display as being an excellent ar thing c automotive windshield otherwise i just hope that the real one works a little better because that one if i'm not mistaken was labeling the tip of manhattan as hollywood so that wasn't ideal uh let's wrap up with one last product which is an n95 active ventilator this is not some fiber map second of the last product okay so i forgot about a butler hold on a second keep that as the gotta talk about my favorite robot samsung bot handy so why do you like it so much you know again when i think of the future i like to think of the jetsons everybody has the dystopia in their mind and i think there are some elements of technology that make us think of dystopian futures but something like bot handy reminds me of the the lofty ideals of the jetsons future where you have a rosie the robot type uh character so sana it looks like it's on a roomba it's got one robot arm and it's doing things like picking up after uh the laundry it's pouring you a glass of wine at the end of a hard day and it uses ai to figure out uh how much pressure needs to be applied to the thing it's picking up and so um this is you see it didn't crush that glass of water all over the place like an older robot might have done uh our clumsier robot might have done look it's loading the dishwasher i mean when can i get one of these in my house i gotta have it yeah what's interesting about this is what you pointed out is that it's got sensors and ai to figure out what am i about to pick up so it's got material awareness which allows it to be more dexterous with a piece of fabric or a flower and a vase or a heavy plate or a light thin glass and the other interesting thing is i was talking to our colleague megan wallerton one of the lead editors at our scene at smart home center in louisville and she said one of the things she's hearing the most of from our users these days is that they say great smart home is great with light switches and thermostats and irrigation timers and all that but i want smart home tech next that really cuts down the amount of labor i spend on everyday chores and cuts down the time i spend on laborious chores and you've got to get into anthropomorphic robots to do that in many cases you can't just have things that are you know electromechanical you've got to have things that are heavily mechanical yeah there's a lot of back and forth between virtual assistant in a smart machine and then also like you said this anthropomorphic uh you know physically able-bodied robots yeah and that's and that's that's a big difference it's it's a tough nut to crack because of the ambition of that but we see it get closer every year let's finish up with one more um uh sort of a pandemic inspired product of which there were many here at the show and this is an n95 mask an active mask uh but from a company that you would not normally associate with this sort of product you associate them typically with gaming hardware razer is the company and this mask is called project hazel project hazel has been the talk of at least my twitter timeline this week uh people are loving it people are posting pictures of it i think one of the things that this concept idea does right is that it's clear it's transparent as they just showed um so people can see your mouth moving and that's been a really tough um a really tough problem a hurdle for a lot of people who either need to read lips who use sign language and lip reading um a lot of people sort of need that or to smile at somebody for for heaven's sake like it's hard to smile at people when you're out and about now if you're wearing a mask um it also obviously it's like very cool it's very sort of you know cyberpunk just again the dystopian thing it's like very cool it's got the you know lighting on it and all that stuff it's got a silicone seal so they're saying it's like very well sealed um i hope that something like this uh becomes a normal thing in the way of you know the way that we see uh countries use masks when it's flu in cold season um i hope that we take we take some lessons from the pandemic forward even after vaccines have happened um and we have things like this uh but you know as we've discussed uh cooley unfortunately razer has a lot of products they liked a lot of i won't even call them products projects they like to announce that you never see uh the light of day for the consumer market yeah you know razor sometimes i think puts off more vapor than a pot of boiling water but this is not that difficult to imagine and those little pods you saw on the side those are active ventilation pods but again nothing too hard to imagine being possible uh i can tell you that i i could totally imagine something like this being in my permanent rest of my life travel kit i don't see ever getting on a plane again without a mask i don't know about everywhere else but i am never going to be on a plane again without a mask ain't going to happen so this is the kind of thing i could see becoming living in that suitcase ces unless i'm on camera i would want this thing on sure