Big Screen Marks

woah...the audio was great, but I have seen better webcams. I must also learn to sit still. But concentrating too hard on the voice down the other end of the phone. It was a good quality debate in the end. Amazing how it did not end up talking about the issues like Blu-Ray DVD versus HD-DVD, and all the other bling that's around Lost Wages. Here's a bit of what I was trying to say on air...

Personally, I think the CES is going in the wrong direction, a bit like the Funkaustellung in Berlin in September. The first two days are a complete zoo, far too crowded, and much too expensive for the ordinary person in the street (they hike the hotel prices, just like NAB in April). May be this is the next Comdex - one year, no-one will come. Everyone is obsessed with “shiny” new things. Frankly, I am more interested in relevant technology

Went once to CES. Never again. Stay at home and watch it come to you instead. Something like 7000 journalists are there. The best gadgets I saw in coverage were enhancements of something already invented.

Things like intelligent LED lighting getting into big screen televisons to save power....but also into the home in the form of light bulbs. Philips is big on this, although they are messing around with 3DHD at the moment and frankly I am not impressed.

Energy is a huge problem facing us and I think we could do a lot more to make computers more energy efficient, especially if they could run hotter without breaking down. Much as I admire OLPC, I fear the Intel competition may win bigger contracts.

Blu Ray will win the high-definition war. Glad I chose the right system (by default - it is the Sony PS3).

I like misusing consumer technology for work I’m doing in Africa. I have found an MP3 stick with quite a decent mike in it, so we’re giving them away in African villages and asking people to record a conversation on it and then bring it to the radio station for broadcast (there is an incentive to bring it back!). Impossible 5 years ago.

But the most exciting developments are in software not really in hardware...software like Seesmic (a sort of CNN of your friends) which has the potential to be far more interesting than Facebook. With Seesmic, all the talk of web 2.0 as a collaboration tool is finally taking off.

(Took the photo during the repeat airing, incase you were wondering).