Mostly More of the Same at This Year's Consumer Electronics Show

The overall theme at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2016) seemed to be small steps and incremental change. There were no ground-breaking new products or technologies that caught my attention, and I left feeling uninspired.

There were way more drones (unmanned aerials, in CES parlance) than past years, with an entire section of the lower South Hall dedicated to them. FAA's new guidelines doesn't seem to have grounded this industry in the least, and the size of drones keeps growing.

Virtual Reality systems remain poised to be the next big thing, led by Oculus Rift who finally announced they will begin shipping product in March at a $599 price tag. The line to experience their product constantly snaked around corners, making them one of the popular stop for the second straight year in my estimation. Use of VR for gaming is pretty obvious, but I'm more interested in how this technology will be adopted in industrial and commercial applications, to perform hazardous work remotely for example.

4K displays were the norm, and keep getting larger and thinner, which is simply expected now and not necessarily groundbreaking. The 3D displays that were so prominent a couple years ago have almost disappeared.

The Internet of Things (IoT) buzzword continued its overuse trajectory this year, and has hopefully reached a climax. Every type of product imaginable now connects itself to a smart phone, and I counted at least thirty products that bill themselves as "The world's first [insert product idea here]." I totally get the long term potential here, but do I really need to adjust my mattress remotely or have an app that tells me if my toilet tank is leaking?

I attended the show with a particular interest in wearables and bio-sensors, but these seem to have stalled as well. Although there were more companies peddling health products and fitness bands than in the past, there's simply not much differentiation in the category. Focus seems to have shifted to style and fashion instead of features. Samsung highlighted their smart clothing line, but the sensors themselves seem convey basic things like temperature, motion, etc. with smartphone software performing the magic of converting this to calories burned and other (questionable) information. Perhaps the sensor technology required to make other types of biometric measurements accurately is just not there yet.

The biggest shift I saw from last year's CES is that autonomous vehicles are now going mainstream. This idea seemed pie-in-the-sky just a few years when the Google car started getting attention. Then luxury brands like Mercedes and BMW started autonomous programs. Now all of the automobile manufacturers have self-driving prototypes to various degrees, and we may see these on the market before we know it. Interestingly, Toyota also displayed a hydrogen-powered vehicle, which seemed like a blast from the early 2000s.

As a beer geek and homebrewer, and can't complete this article without making a mention of picoBrew. This Kickstarter-funded company had a great display and real-working product, from which they were brewing beer and giving out free samples. They target shipping the smaller picoBrew system ($1000) in mid-2016, and are already shipping their larger Zymatic system ($2000). As an advanced homebrewer, such a system would take all the fun out of brewing for more, but they're goal is to make homebrewing so easy that anybody can do it. Best of luck to them.

Overall my CES 2016 experience this year was a little underwhelming. I hope companies are saving some of their great new gear and tech for next year.

TG Tech Briefs: Stories Worth Sharing for Week Ending March 7, 2015

Some recent tech stories that I find interesting and worth sharing.

The Face Detection Algorithm Set to Revolutionize Image Search If you’ve ever been involved in implementing automated facial recognition then you know the ability to identify faces from any angle, or when partially occluded, is problematic. These two researchers hope to change that.

Biometrics Researchers Race to Stay One Step Ahead of Hackers As much as we hate passwords, they’re not going anywhere soon. That’s because fingerprints and other biometrics might not be as secret as we think they are. Interesting article.

Europe Pivots Between Safety and Privacy Online If you’d like some insight into how the EU perspective on information privacy is different than the US, this is a great place to start. It’s just a whole different cultural perspective than in the US.

A Speedy Wireless Protocol Is Coming to Many Gadgets WiGig is up to 10 times faster than today’s WiFi. This technology is being pushed by Qualcomm and will supposedly be available by the end of this year.

The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies Many if the usual suspects are on this list, but there are many surprises to… Warby Parker? The list also demonstrates that innovation is not just limited to high-tech, but applies equally to retail, transportation, housing and even social activism. How did an upstart airline become India’s largest in just 10 years? By being different. There are some lessons to be learned here.

TG Tech Briefs: Stories Worth Sharing for Week Ending February 28, 2015

Some recent tech stories that I find interesting and worth sharing.

12 Emerging Trends that Everyone Missed at CES Thomas Frye always has a unique and sometimes far-out perspective on things. For those interested, Frye’s DaVinci Institute is a local organization that hosts speakers and events for the geek-crowd. I’ve attended a few of his events, and they are affordable and usually interesting. Check them out.

Portable Battery Pack Market worth $11 Billion by 2020 The portable battery pack market is projected to grow by 20% per year for the next 5 years, $11B. Because this such a big market, we need to be realistic and accept that we will ride the coat-tails of other people’s technology and R&D investments.

Global Asset Management, 11 Years On This is a fun retrospective on what’ changed in battery-powered asset tracking over the last 11 years. What hasn’t changed? Battery technology for the most part.

Indoor Location Market worth $4.4 Billion by 2019 Here’s a sister industry that flies under the radar, but is 10 times the size of the criminal justice tracking market. The "Indoor Location” market is largely focused on retail, track and trace, and emergency management applications using tag-based, RF-based, and sensor-based technologies.

Speaking of indoor location, have you ever wondered why there is not a terrestrial or ground-based equivalent to the Global Positioning System? I have, and it turns out that there are two companies in the US developing such systems: UrsaNav and Locata. Such systems could reduce dependency on satellites (which can be taken out) and drastically improve location fixes indoors and other impaired areas. Only time will tell if these systems come to fruition.

TG Tech Briefs: Stories Worth Sharing for Week Ending February 21, 2015

Some recent tech stories that I find interesting and worth sharing.

Top Hacker Exposes Home Detention Bracelet Flaw A computer hacker in New Zealand has demonstrated how electronic monitoring bracelets can potentially be fooled by "spoofing". At a computer security conference, he demonstrated how a bracelet could be wrapped in foil, preventing it from reporting its location, then the signal mimicked by a laptop using a $500 transmitter and some custom software. What we don’t know is how knowledgeable this hacker was about the product he spoofed. Will demonstrations like this become more common as the electronic monitoring industry comes under increased scrutiny?

Newest US GPS 2F-8 Satellite Goes Active The fourth modernized Global Positioning System satellite launched this year has completed in-orbit testing and joined the constellation. The Boeing-built Block 2F series of a dozen spacecraft offers advanced atomic clocks, stronger anti-jamming, a new third civil signal, and longer design life. Three more GPS satellites are scheduled for launch in 2015. It’s nice to know that our GPS constellation is being upgraded on an ongoing basis.

Laser-Radio Links Upgrade the Internet This way-cool technology uses parallel radio and laser links to move data through the air at high speeds, in wireless hops of up to 10 kilometers at a time. This is being pitched as a cheaper and more practical alternative to laying new fiber optic cables, and is in trials with three of the largest U.S. Internet carriers. It is also being rolled out by one telecommunications provider in Mexico, and is helping build out the Internet infrastructure of Nigeria.

Wireless Gadget Recharging with Sound Waves Here’s yet another addition to the dozens of battery charging technologies under development. Under this approach, sound vibrations are harnessed from the air using piezoelectric transducers, which in turn convert that mechanical energy into electricity. This is all very theoretical at this time… a true R&D project, but interesting nonetheless.

TrackR Bluetooth Tag Sold with Luxury Designer Wallet at Macy’s Retailer Macy’s is now selling a $100 leather wallet from Royce Leather together with a Bluetooth tracking tag from TrackR to help locate the wallet if it gets lost. I thought this story was interesting not because of the technology (which is impractical for “true GPS tracking”) but simply because it illustrates how ubiquitous location-based services are becoming across so many different products. People generally understand the concept of location tracking, and I think that makes it more acceptable to society as a whole.

A Map of Every Device in the World That's Connected to the Internet This is just one those interesting pieces of info that seemed worth sharing.

TG Tech Briefs: Stories Worth Sharing for Week Ending December 20, 2014

There have been lots of stories over the past few weeks about wearables and sensor technology.

A New Chip Could Add Motion Sensing to Clothing A company called mCube has made a new kind of accelerometer that is small and cheap enough to lead to smart electronics in clothing and sports equipment.

First Look at Simband, Samsung's Health-Tracking Wearable of the Future & The Apple Watch May Solve the Usual Smart-Watch Annoyances Samsung’s new health tracker is equipped with six sensors, and its modular design means developers can add their own proprietary sensors as well. The six sensors it comes with can keep tabs on your daily steps, heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, and how much sweat your sweat glands are producing. The blood pressure sensor is a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor. The Apple Watch also has a PPG sensor.

Sweat Sensors Will Change How Wearables Track Your Health Researchers have discovered that perspiration may carry far more information and may be easier to stimulate, gather, and analyze than previously thought. This electronic sweat-patch uses paper microfluidics to wick sweat from the skin through a membrane that selects for a specific ion, such as sodium. Onboard circuitry calculates the ion concentration and sends the data to a smartphone. The electronics within the patch are externally powered, as in an RFID chip.

More Than Skin Deep & Artificial Skin That Senses, and Stretches, Like the Real Thing Both of these stories are about a thin, stretchable material that in which sensors and electronics can be incorporated. Making electronic devices that are skin-like will ultimately allow us to intimately integrate very advanced semiconductor technology and sensors with the body.

Radio-Controlled Mouse Hints at New Diabetes Treatment In this fascinating research at my alma mater Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, mice were made to respond to a radio signals by releasing insulin. One day this might allow people with type 1 diabetes to use an app on their phone to alleviate their disease at a cellular level.

Finally, being in the electronic monitoring industry for criminal justice, as well as from Colorado, I get asked lots of questions of about marijuana detection. There are few press releases popping up about marijuana breathalyzers, such as this one from Washington State University and this one from Lifeloc. These stories are high on promises but low on details. What’s not stated is that concentrations of delta-9 THC in breath are so low that there is no reliable sensing technology outside of traditional, lab-based chromatography. My opinion is that this is a really a law enforcement issue; not an electronic monitoring issue. THC does not readily disappear from the body, so there are many reliable ways to determine if somebody has recently used marijuana. But there is no reliable chemical test to determine if a person is under the influence of pot right now, and I don't see one coming for some time.

TG Tech Briefs: Stories Worth Sharing for Week Ending December 13, 2014

Here are the latest product development and technology news that I find interesting.

New Smartphone Battery Goes From Dead To 70 Percent Charged In 2 Minutes,Scientists Say This team of researchers in Singapore have supposedly developed a way to charge batteries quickly by replacing the graphite normally used in the battery's anode (negative pole) with a gel made from titanium dioxide. They have applied for a grant to build a large-scale battery prototype for electric car tests, and say these new batteries could reach the market within two years.

New iPads Come with Special, Multi-Carrier “Apple SIM” & Apple's Quiet Attempt to Shake Up Wireless Carriers Could Benefit Us All Have you heard about the new “Apple SIM” that comes with latest iPad? It’s a software programmable SIM, meaning you can change carriers without swapping the SIM card. Participation is limited now, but Apple is trend-setter, so I imagine that we will all be able to advantage of such a SIM 2 or 3 years down the road. This could have a huge impact on how cellular carriers compete for business!

Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015 There’s nothing earth-shattering, or even surprising, on Gartner’s list if you follow technology… but the concept of software-defined infrastructure is quite intriguing to me.

The'Internet of Things' Will Be The World's Most Massive Device Market And Save Companies Billions Of Dollars The growth in mobile computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to amaze me... a projected 6.7 billion connected device shipments in 2019! (Yes billion, with 9 zeroes.)

Finally, I found the chart below from MIT Technology Review very surprising and worth sharing. This one chart provides great insight into the whole Net Neutrality debate, and explains why a few companies who need tons of bandwidth will be more than willing to pay-to-play. The impact, if any, on small users like us remains to be seen.

Inventors With No Fear of Falling Off the Bike

Two bicycle-related stories caught my attention as I was catching up on some reading over holiday break. They will both be of interest to product managers and fans of beautiful design.

The first story is about Israeli inventor Izhar Gafni, who designed a cardboard bicycle... yes cardboard! Gafni's goal is to make production costs low enough to allow the bikes to be sold at retail for no more than $20. Such a low price could transform the lives of people living in poor countries who still walk miles per day to go to work or school, or to visit a doctor. He and his invention have been featured in the Huffington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and Dezeen, and it sounds like all the attention means that funding won't be the reason for success or failure of this unlikely, new product.

The other story is about a pair of Swedish inventors who turned everything that was known about bicycle helmets on its head (pun intended) and designed what they call the Hövding, or the "invisible bicycle helmet." Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin started developing this product as part of their Master thesis in 2005, and they haven't stopped since. The Hövding is an improbable blend of technology, materials, and fashion that may be making the major cycling gear manufacturers ask, "Why didn't we think of that?" Check out this 3 minute video to see how it works. Their company has received $10M in venture funding so far and now has 16 employees.

What makes these stories so appealing is that they are examples of industry outsiders who brought a unique perspective to a problem, then came up with a solution the so-called experts may never even have considered. This is humbling to those of us who work in product development and product management, as we are expected to be the experts and messengers of our markets. It's tempting to conclude that we should bring people or firms from other disciplines on board to help us, but if these brilliant ideas are 1 in a million (or even 1 in a hundred), what's the likelihood that such investments will actually lead to anything real? I think a more a sensible approach is to take the opportunities that come our way a little more seriously. Think twice before dismissing the email or phone call from the "young kid" with a big idea. And that silly prototype from the little startup company at the trade show? (It doesn't even have feature x, y, or z!) It might just be your next product.

AirTrain in Vain: Good and Bad Visual Design

BART Light Rail Map: An example of good visual design.

On a recent trip to San Francisco I was confronted with side-by-side examples of excellent and awful visual design.  I needed to get from the airport to downtown San Francisco via the light rail, or BART system. After finding my way to the BART station, the light rail map was exactly what I expected. Like almost all subway and light rail maps today, it's based on the style of Harry Beck's London Underground Tube map. This style is a classic example of elegant and effective visual design. One of the few criticisms is that these maps are not always geographically accurate, but this flaw is typically far outweighed by the fact that such maps are so easy to understand.

However, getting to the BART station was another matter entirely. The signs in the airport terminal directed me to the AirTrain, where I was confronted with a dreadful map. The first thing you notice on this map is all the white space, roads, and terminal buildings. Although the geographical accuracy may be useful to some, it probably does not need to be to scale, as less empty white space would make the stuff of interest much bigger and higher in resolution. The orange and green fill on the buildings serves no purpose whatsoever, except to distract the viewer. It is pure visual noise. Is there a train on this map somewhere? Since I am on a train and would like to know where get off, that would be fitting. Eliminate the colored fill, and place the emphasis on the AirTrain route itself.

AirTrain Map: is there a train in here somewhere?

After I finally figured out that I could access the BART station from the AirTrain, the next problem revealed itself. The train line leaving the BART station is shown in a reddish/ magenta color. Anybody who's done a little research in advance knows they are looking for the yellow line, but there is no yellow line on the map. Must I get on the red line instead? It turns out that the colors on the AirTrain map have nothing to do with the lines on the BART system. I guess somebody just thought red or magenta would like nice with the orange and green terminal buildings.

I confirmed this suspicion with a passerby and had about 10 minutes to kill before the next yellow line train arrived, so I decided to wander around the station and stretch my legs. That's when I came across another AirTrain map even more bewildering than the first one. Note the Zaxxon-style isometric projection of the AirTrain and terminals. Confused? Then just drop your eyes a little to the detailed top views and side view, where you can count the number of steps on each escalator and find the location of the nearest trash can. What is the purpose of this map? My theory is that it was drawn by a first year drafting or architectural student and placed in the station as a prize for getting the highest grade on the project.

Anybody up for a game of Zaxxon?

The entire purpose of visual display of information is to improve understanding beyond what can be conveyed with words. In these examples the BART light rail map does exactly that, while the AirTrain maps fall way short. They may actually create confusion and decrease understanding, which is the antithesis of good visual design. Map making is one of the oldest forms of graphical design, and great examples of professional maps surround us. It's perplexing how the maps for a key transportation link in a major metropolitan area could have missed this.

Presenting Data and Information: A Day with Edward Tufte

Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending Edward Tufte's lecture entitled "Presenting Data and Information" in downtown Denver.  Tufte is a professor at Yale where he teaches courses on statistical evidence and information design.  He's been called the DaVinci of data and graphical information, and one of his books (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) is widely considered one of the greatest non-fiction works of the 20th century.  For many data geeks like myself, it is a go-to treatise referred to routinely.

Speaking of those books, all four were included in the $380 cost of the lecture, which made the price tag more palatable since they retail for $40 to $50 each.  And they are gorgeous!  Self-published by Tufte, he practices what he preaches and has produced what are truly heirloom quality collectibles.  Everything about these volumes is beautiful: the paper, type-faces, use of color, and printing quality.

So what about the lecture?  For those already familiar with Tufte's work and presentation philosophy, there was nothing new or earth-shattering offered.  The lecture could have been called "the world according to ET in six hours."  His disdain for Powerpoint is well-known, and he did not disappoint in reinforcing this.  Having said that, I truly enjoyed seeing his well-rehearsed and choreographed lecture, and it was nice to hear what he considered the most important take-aways from his four volumes.

My summary of those take-aways is as follows:

1. All problems worth talking about are multi-dimensional.  They shouldn't be presented serially or one-dimensionally, which is what Powerpoint forces us to do.
2. Start the presentation by giving a thorough data-dump on a high-resolution display (i.e. a printed document), and spend the first 15 minutes of the meeting telling people to read it.  For comparison's sake, printed documents have 6 to 7 times the resolution of most computer screens, and still twice the resolution as the latest retina displays.  Your audience isn't stupid.  They routinely read and understand charts and tables with 200 numbers or more in the newspaper, magazines, and internet.
3. Follow that with a summary of the items you wish to highlight and discuss, and open it up for their questions and discussion.  The whole purpose of visually presenting data is to improve understanding, so that's what the focus of the meeting should be.
4. You don't need to be a designer.  Find some good non-fiction reporting sources that you like, and model your documents after those.  Just copy the fonts, color-schemes, spacing, etc.  Sources that Tufte repeatedly referred to were the journal of Nature, espn.com, plos.org, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
5. Show your sources, and make your data available to anybody who wants it.

Would I pay $380 to see Tufte again?  Probably not.  But this is one of those things that I'm glad I did once.  (For more info, check out Tufte's website.)

Beer Labels as Fine Art? Occasionally.

While recently enjoying a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye, I decided that I liked the beer label more than the beer itself.  Don’t get me wrong – I think this beer is good; it’s just not great.  It’s very restrained for a “rye-PA,” so I admire that Sierra Nevada is not joining the malt and hops one-upmanship game that so many craft brewers are playing.  But overall I found it to be, well… meh.  Apparently this is a replacement for their Glissade spring bock, which is a little surprising to me, as this rye ale just screams autumn.  As does its label.

And the label is striking!  Done in a style reminiscent of high-end graphic novels, the first thing you’re drawn to is the color scheme.  The hues are analogous enough to be soothing, but just far enough apart to throw you off a little and create an uneasy feeling.  The woman is haunting yet beautiful, like Patrick Nagel meets the witches from MacBeth.  Details, like the ominous clouds and strands of hair in the woman’s face, complete the picture.  The overall impression is chilling, hypnotic, and mysterious.

It turns out the artist is rock and roll illustrator Ken Taylor.  Best known for his album covers and concert posters, he dabbles in other areas too.  Somebody at Sierra Nevada must be a fan, so now he can add beer labels to that list.  Perhaps he’s a craft beer lover too?  Check out his portfolio.

Most beer labels have an illustration of an animal, landscape, person, or some other scene that matches the beer’s name.  It is usually competent and professional, but unmemorable.  Those who try to make the artwork take center-stage often go over the top in my opinion, producing art that’s better suited for the next Motorhead or Insane Clown Posse album cover.  (Sorry Coney Island and Ska Brewing.)  To me, the best beer labels are ones like those shown below.  The monochromatic, accented color schemes and easy to read fonts make beautiful, elegant designs.  But they are not art.  And that’s just fine, because it’s about what’s inside the bottle.

But Sierra Nevada may have changed the rules with their latest label.  Look at the crowded craft beer section in any well-stocked liquor store, and you’ll notice that Ruthless Rye really stands out.  That's the whole point of packaging.  You are drawn to it because it’s unique; it’s fancy, but it’s classy.  It’s a Bellagio in a sea of tacky Las Vegas strip hotels.

As the craft beer scene becomes more crowded, small brewers are struggling to come up with unique beer names and packaging that attracts attention.  I have a hunch that some of these brewers will follow Sierra Nevada’s example and start employing established artists.  For us beer-geeks who love art and design, this will be a nice bonus!

Please comment and share some your favorite beer label designs, and check out these links for more on this topic: The Pour Curator, and  15 Beer Labels we Love.