This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Comcast has partnered with Skype to bring its video chat service to subscriber living rooms. With an adapter box and HD video camera, Comcast subscribers will soon be able to video chat with any other Skype users from the comfort of their living rooms. Read more »
Video chatting from the couch might no longer be some Jetsons-esque fantasy: New technologies are beginning to appear in game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect and Nintendo’s new Wii U that could make video chat services available to the wider mass market. Read more »
Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect accessory might have the spotlight when it comes to gesture technology, but it’s not the only game in town. EyeSight is bringing its software and algorithms to camera-enabled Android tablets and Windows computers for remote controlling applications with the wave of a hand. Read more »
When Microsoft reported earnings for its most recent quarter, Peter Klein, chief financial officer with the company waxed eloquent about the success of Kinect, a new kind of controller based on motion sensing technology. That success is helping boost fortunes of another Silicon Valley company. Read more »
Kinect, which on its own is pretty awesome become even more powerful when it is married to an Internet connection. Higher the speeds, more the possibilities. This fun technology is illustrating the need for bigger broadband pipes and the possibilities that raw speed can have. Read more »
