I'm back from CES . . . !

Hi everyone! I'm back from Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show and I have to tell you that as cold as it was in Las Vegas (upper 50's) it seemed like a heat wave wave compared to Madison. How do you people live here? :)

I traveled there with my good and obnoxiously generous friend and fellow techie, John Hallick from CPM. John is the tech master and so is CPM so his techie is bigger than mine. That sounded awful but that's OK, John would appreciate that. LOL

The two of us had a fantastic time talking with all the reps from the biggest tech firms in the world. Samsung, Microsoft, Canon USA, as well as thousands of others. Most of the company's at the show I had never heard of but the cool factor is very high. Science fiction of yesterday is now a reality. No one talks in gigabytes anymore, that's so last week. It's all terabytes now. (1 terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes and then it goes to exabytes. 1 exabyte = 1,000 terabytes. I can't even comprehend that.)

My interest in going to CES was to technically improve J. LaMore and jlamore.com and take us as far into the future as I can afford. CPM is moving into a new building and John & Co. want to refurbish an older building into a masterpiece of modern technology. CPM is the next Epic Software Company and if you know John Hallick and his two sons James and Eric, you would certainly agree. That company and the story behind it is simply amazing!

I had an agenda but you can't help but take in the fun and cool stuff too! 3D television is everywhere now and that will definitely be how we watch movies and sports in the future. It's very cool but I don't think I'm ready for it yet. You still have to wear the glasses and during the demonstration we saw I had to keep moving my head around to get the 3d effect with the glasses. I thought the hype was bigger than the experience but that can happen in consumer technology. Remember when CD's were the music rage? Forget about it. Now cars of the future will have USB ports and all your music will run into the digital stereo screen from that. Your entire music library of 10,000 songs on a device no bigger than your thumb!

TV's are getting thinner and thinner. Camera's and video equipment are completely incredible and everything seems to take two or three steps forward in the way of wireless. Land line telephone service will be a thing of the past (for residential anyway) as Skype is finally growing into a monster. The Google guys have their fingers in a lots tech areas and are standing behind the curtain pulling the strings of the future. Speaking of Google, we saw how they make Google maps as the company they use was there. The car they drivehas a huge spinning gyro on the roof that keeps the four camera's absolutely still when they drive and they take video's of the front, back, and both sides of every street and address in the world. Those images are sent to a satellite and presto magic, Google maps! Very high cool factor! The car looked like something from NASA, which it kind of is in a way! WOW!

Entertainment is a big part of CES and there's now a computer server (10 terabytes) that you can buy and attach to your home wireless network which will store all your pictures, movies and music which you can scroll through on your flat screen TV. What you can do is give your friends and family your wireless Internet network name and password that this server is on and they can log in over the Internet and listen to your music, watch your movies, or look at your pictures on THEIR television in THEIR home anywhere in the world. You just became your own little Netflix except they don't have to return the movie or deal with late fee's, they just turn off the TV. Unbelievably cool! That's not the future, that's right now!

Gaming is really big and games are no longer just for kids. Games haven't been just for kids for some time but it seems that a huge leap in graphics just recently happened. Your PS3 or Xbox is a hub for all things fun and the graphics and realism is astounding. That's a big reason for terabyte storage, the graphics! The line to try the games was long so I never got to try Motorstorm 2 or even the new Guitar Hero, but OMG!

CES is like a Home Depot for geeks. It's almost overwhelming and if you don't have an agenda when you're there you could wonder aimlessly though the convention because it seems nothing is beyond the limits of your imagination and everything is amazing. It's a future now kind of thing. I have an insatiable curiosity about most things so really cool stuff keeps me awake at night.

At the end of my CES experience, John and I asked each other the same question; when does it all end? Do I really need all this stuff? Does this make me happy? I left thinking about the past just as much as the future and I happily remembered the days of yesteryear of less complication and fewer headaches. And then it happened! Jennifer had a car problem during the recent snow storm and called me at the show. We Googled the problem from the smart phone and solved the 'drive or no drive' issue in a mater of minutes from 1,500 miles away. . . . I mean seriously! The planets are aligned and the world is right again! Bring on the future and the sooner the better!

Your geek!

Jim
jlamore.com

PS. I forgot to mention a device for travelers that speaks 120 languages and when you go to a foreign country you just speak normal English into the device which records your voice and then scroll down to find the language translation and hit play. What you just said comes out perfectly clear in that language. Then you hand the device to the other person who doesn't speak your language and they record their answer in their language and you can play it instantly back in English. It's also GPS enabled! I died and went to heaven!