Consumer Electronics Show 2013 Day One

My first day at C.E.S. was full of all kinds of exciting things. Here are my highlights:

Dr. Wendy Walsh, Relationship Expert for CNN and author of "the 30 Day Love Detox" spoke at length about online dating. She gave advice for singles exploring a market that are looking for companionship after kids. The advice I took away: 1) Avoid a profile pic because pictures move the discussion away from a carefully crafted profile that is as detailed as possible to intrigue your soul mate. 2) Do not engage in email exchange as words invite the other party to extend their own perceptions about you as a person before you meet in person (possibly setting up disappointment). If you are interested, arrange a quick meet and greet at a coffee shop with the intention of progressing to a first date. 3) Older people are looking to find connections later in their life and embracing technology to rediscover interests that were put aside to raise family.

Panelists at the Silvers Summit

Eric Taub, writer for the New York Times, moderated a panel with current developers of SmartHome technologies. For those of you who don't know smart home technologies, it's where you can go in and have all your environmental controls, lights, and habitat controlled by something as simple as voice. The next step in this is to develop a digital means to monitor life signs or to even predict dangerous falls. All of this stuff is ideal on a bottomless budget (i.e. the 1%), but the fact is, most people won't have the access to the kinds of funds to make this a reality. There's a push by people to get Medicare to pay for all of these Smart Home innovations, which pushes the tax burden onto the american tax payer. But hey, seniors live longer so they can draw more social security, which causes medicare expenses to go up to keep them alive, and medicare and social security continue their never-ending dance with one another until people are 140 years old and still alive drawing down money and entitlements. It's really quite interesting.

I can't tell you which pavilion is more magnificent between Sony's and LG.
The LG Pavilion was filled with 3D ultra HD television sets so sharp, it's like
real life. Sony's debuted its new 4K television sets that were simply incredible.

Justin Rattner, the CTO for Intel, spoke about working with Stephen Hawking. Intel worked with the world famous astrophysicist who is paralyzed, yet still able to do things like advanced calculus in his head. Anyway, Intel went to Cambridge and studied his facial gestures of which he has three: a cheek twitch, an eyebrow raise, and a mouth raise. They want to make computers more accessible for older folks or for people (like Hawking) who really struggle with the technology because they are "differently-abled." You may find this interesting: Hawking can only do one word per minute. When you hear him speak at conferences or to respond to someone's question, that's all been done beforehand so you don't have to wait for him to answer you. The same goes for his writing...all done one word per minute via a word prediction program that tracks his eye twitch and/or movement. So what's coming? Well they're going to eliminate passwords. Intel wants to go to palm secure authentication. Skin is transparent at certain wavelengths of light, so they intend to put an emitter on a computer that can read the infrared structure of your palm. So basically, they want all computers to be more secure through better biometrics.

Finally, Nick Pudar, VP of Planning and Development with OnStar told us of the plans coming for self-autonomous cars. First off, Audi, Toyota, and GM will have them within two years. He said that within our lifetime, you will have to go to Disneyland to actually drive a car. By taking away the responsibility from consumers and employing the use of a bionic eye, more lives will be saved. It's all about safety and how the car manufacturers are taking steps to prevent automobile deaths. When they took questions, I don't think they were prepared for mine. I kinda got that "Who let the Democrat in this seminar?" look. What question would poor old Mike ask you might say? Well it went something like this: "So if cars can drive themselves, what happens to the millions of drivers who have jobs and families that depend on that income?" The answer: "Well, we think there will be resistance to this notion, but those people will be unemployed and have to find other work." So yet again...technology in America destroys jobs.

After C.E.S. got out, I went to see the Jersey Boys at the Paris Hotel and Casino. I absolutely loved it. I'll have to do a review later as this blog post is already too long. But here's a video from another show, and it's pretty much what you get at the Las Vegas one. The singing was incredible, and I knew nothing of Frankie Valli but now I'm a fan. It's just really interesting to me how four guys with such incredible talent can randomly coalesce/find each other. Who wouldn't like guys that have voices like angels?

Have a great Wednesday.

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A Magical Monday Night

The Consumer electronics show starts tomorrow morning here in Las Vegas. I'm really excited. So today, my friend James, my friend Tomeka, and myself (all of us here in town for the convention) decided to have some fun and see the Mirage dolphin habitat along with some white tigers. Here's one shot that I took on a particularly frisky looking white tiger at the Siegfried and Roy habitat (where I saw a rather majestic looking lion straight out of the lion king, and a few leopards). I'd post the video of the dolphins that I took, but it's upside down and don't have the time to figure out how to turn it right side up. But the shots are incredible...only a few feet from them through glass.

And then Monday night we went to see David Copperfield at the Hollywood Theater in the MGM Grand hotel and casino. I've been a fan of Mr. Copperfield for many years. Seeing him live is absolutely incredible. He made entire audience members disappear and teleport to other areas of the theater. He made a car appear out of thin air, levitated some random guy in the audience, and then did this really touching tribute to his father and grandfather who thought he could never make it in show business. He asked someone, "what do you collect?" After hearing her answer, he said that he collects words. Things that he finds worldly or inspiring. And then he made someone pick a word at random from a display of 100 words and then that one word printed on all of our show bracelets throughout the audience. That was a neat trick.

This is my glass from the pina colada that I ordered. It's a collectible glass so I get to take it home with me and put it in the cabinet where I keep other things that remind me of trips that I've taken. We had really good seats to the magic show, just one row of folks before the stage.

Click to Embiggen to read the words

At one point, he did this kind of random chain thing with the audience and told us that he'd just been to the future, and he had a poster that he wanted to show us to prove it. He picked on one person to come up to the stage and write down a dead celebrity's name (then he turned the poster around). But you can see that the poster of Elvis isn't just an ordinary poster, but one comprised of words (some of which spell the exact audience members and what happened randomly to arrive at the point of the big reveal). It was really awesome.

And here's a picture of my friend Tomeka on the left, me in the middle, and James on the right.

Today, I'm scheduled to appear on Cherie Reich's blog at some point. Thank you so much for following and commenting on my book tour. Tomorrow I will post a bunch of pictures that I take from CES (my day begins at 7 a.m.) And then at night we are seeing "The Jersey Boys" at Le Theatre des Arts in the Paris Hotel and Casino.

Have a great Tuesday.

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