At CES 2009, the length of the cab lines--often a barometer of the show's population--were shorter than usual. Here, dozens of cabs pull into the Las Vegas Convention Center, despite a lack of the crowds that have meant hour-long waits in the past.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)LAS VEGAS--There are probably a lot of different ways to measure how the deepening recession has impacted the Consumer Electronics Show, but in Sin City, it stands to reason that one of the best is how much business the local strip clubs are getting.
In an entirely unscientific survey, then, my conclusion is that CES was hit hard by the downturn, at least if the experience of one local taxi driver is any indication.
"We taxi drivers, we've got a thing with the strip clubs, where we get a kickback...so it's big money if we can get the guys to go to the strip clubs," said Darryl, a 54-year-old cab driver who asked that his last name not be used. "I went to the clubs (during CES), thinking maybe I could get some guys to take them back to their hotels, but I didn't have any luck. And a friend, he was hoping to get some strip club rides, since they pay us $50 a head, and he didn't have any luck...They weren't going out of their way to spend money like they normally would, for that extra type of entertainment."
Actually, it's been very hard to judge the effect of the recession on this show, which in the past has been one of the largest in the world. Ask five different CES veterans what they thought, and you get five very different answers.
But over the course of the four days I've been in town, some patterns have emerged, and in the end, I'd say that while CES was still packed with attendees and exhibitors spread over the full breadth of the mammoth Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo and Convention Center, there were noticeably far fewer people here than in past years.
"There's way less than in 2007," said Don Sherstobitoff, the owner of Okanagan Home Theaters, and a four-year CES veteran. "I was walking around (Las Vegas) and it feels pretty much like a ghost town."
Getting around town
I've never enjoyed being at CES, and one reason is that during the show, it is impossible to get around Las Vegas. In the past, the lines for taxis, either at the major hotels or the convention centers, have been horrendous--easily an hour long--and once you finally got in one, you'd be trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic for easily as long, even for a short ride.
As this photo shows, there were large crowds to be found on the CES floor, despite the difficult economic environment.
(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)This year, however, the general consensus is that getting around has been, while not exactly fluid, then at least easier, and quicker.
"It's been (just) a half-hour wait for a taxi anywhere," said Sherstobitoff.
As I was writing this story, in fact, I walked to the taxi line by the convention center's south hall, to head to the airport to go home, and literally hopped in a cab with zero waiting--just an hour before the show closed down for the day on Saturday.
Clearly, the taxi economy has been a buyer's market this year. At the convention center, cabs are backed up nearly as far as the eye can see, even as the lines seem demonstrably shorter than in years past.
And that may be, several taxi drivers told me, because of what now seems to have been a rather large miscalculation as to how many cabs Vegas would need on the streets during CES.
"The idiots at the taxi commission put enough cabs on the street for 147,000 people," one 50-something white-haired cabbie told me, "when they knew there's only half that many. It's not even worth it to come to work."
And another cabbie suggested that after the taxi companies struck major deals for advertising on the signage on top of the cars, they decided not to pull many of the vehicles off the street even when it became clear CES attendance would be down.
So how many people actually showed up?
During the show, Tara Dunion, the senior director of communications for the Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on CES, said that 130,000 people were anticipated, just 11,000 less than the 141,000 who came last year.
But in a press release issued late Sunday night titled, "2009 International CES electrifies and elicits optimism for global economy," the CEA said its preliminary results showed that just 110,000 people showed up. That is 31,000 less than last year, a hefty 21.9 percent drop.
Yet in its release, the CEA professed to being pleased with how things went.
"At its meeting on the third day of CES," the release stated, "the 45 members of the CEA Board of Industry Leaders, which includes top executives from large and small manufacturers and retailers, reported to CEA staff that the 2009 International CES succeeded beyond all expectations and that CEA should strive to restrict future attendance to 2009 attendance levels."
Some cab drivers said that the Las Vegas taxi commission had put too many vehicles on the streets for CES, but that the taxi companies had struck deals for advertising on the car-top signage and were loathe to cut back, despite a smaller population than originally was expected for CES.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)Perhaps the CEA's happy face comes from its assessment of the number of companies that showed up exhibit. In the release, it touted the "more than 2,700 global companies, including 300 new exhibitors, (who) unveiled an estimated 20,000 new technology products across 1.7 million net square feet of exhibit space this week...(and helped) lead the way to economic recovery."
Still, the CEA's admission that attendance was down more than 21 percent--which was buried in the eighth paragraph of the press release, validates much of the on-the-ground assessment of what it was like by people who were at the show.
"It's a little less cloggy, in terms of trying to get through the halls," said Stephen Cass, a senior editor for Discover magazine. "You don't feel people pressing in on you so much...Literally, you feel a little less pressure from the crowd."
Cass, who's been to CES four of the last five years, said that all the big companies were here--the Panasonics, Sonys, and Toshibas of the world--but that for many smaller outfits, the emphasis this year might well have been more on value proposition than on new glitzy features.
"It's the other side of Moore's Law," Cass said. "This year, people are maybe looking at the 50 cents side, the economy side, of Moore's Law, rather than the performance side."
Others agree that the emphasis during the coming year in the consumer electronics business might well be on getting the most bang for buyers' bucks rather than on the feature-laden products that have been so prevalent at CES in past years.
"Honestly, I think (consumer spending on electronics) is going to be on inexpensive things," said Jed Putterman, vice president of products at Cloud Engines, "things people can get value out of."
Not everyone, though, felt that CES 2009 was all that noticeably different than the event has been in the past.
To Jeremy Toeman--a consultant who was shepherding four different companies in CES' Innovations Showcase at the Sands--the people who needed to be at CES, like retailers and media, were there in force.
"I don't feel that the show is really 'hit' even though people say it is," said Toeman. "Our foot traffic has been phenomenal."
Indeed, in the Innovations Showcase--a special section of CES focusing on notable engineering and design--the crowds were thick. And in fact, throughout CES, there were large numbers of people. Many tens of thousands of people add up, no matter how large a convention center they're spread out over, and no matter if the total population is less than in the past.
But even Toeman said that he thinks that where some companies visiting CES might have sent 20 people in previous years, they may have sent just 12 or so this year.
Was this fairly empty sidewalk at the Las Vegas Convention Center a sign of the impact of the recession on CES 2009 or just an anomaly? While most people agreed that attendance was down, there were still many tens of thousands of people on hand, and it could be months before the final attendance numbers are known. The Consumer Electronics Association said it had been expecting 130,000 people, down just 11,000 from the 141,000 that came for CES 2008. But by Sunday, it was reporting initial estimates of attendance of 110,000, down nearly 22 percent from 2008.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)The real impact of the recession could well be felt next year, however, he said. That's because companies planning on exhibiting at CES 2010 had to make their decisions about booth space by this year's event.
"The big boys will be spending less money" for next year's CES, Toeman said. "I may be wrong, but if I had to make a wager, that's the wager I'd take."
Still, the gossip throughout town during CES was that the convention was markedly smaller this year. Whether it was bartenders talking to patrons, cabbies talking to passengers or reporters talking to each other, there seemed to be unanimity that the numbers, while still large by the standards of other trade shows, were way down for CES.
But the impact on the people who depend on CES for their livelihood is hard to measure.
For Darryl, the taxi driver, the show couldn't have come at a better time. He'd had such a dismal November and December due to a broad general drop in visitors to Las Vegas that he'd had his cable shut off the week before CES.
He said, however, that business had been up at least 50 percent during the show, and that he hoped that at the very least, he'd be able to get his cable turned back on.
"I'm hopeful that this is a sign of the next few months," Darryl said, "that the big conventions are back, and that the business people are going to be coming here. If it's not a big convention, there's still a lot of people coming here for business meetings. Even if it's not normal, it'll still be better than it's been the last few month, and that'll help me get back on my feet."
Update 6:08 p.m. PST: This story has been changed to add comment from Google, and to address streaming adult content on the iPhone.
LAS VEGAS--Apple might not want anything to do with it, but if one thing is clear, it's that porn on the iPhone is going to be huge.
While there don't seem to be any porn-related apps available for the iPhone, there is a plethora of adult entertainment available on the Web, and a growing amount of that content is being optimized for Apple's hit device.
At the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) here Friday, I had a chance to talk to two executives from Digital Playground, one of the world's leading porn producers, about the latest technological advances their company, and their competitors, are implementing, and it seems that the iPhone is a very big piece of the puzzle.
AEE is being put on at the same time as the Consumer Electronics Show, and many at the adult show are looking to CES for new technology to adapt their content for.
One major goal for Digital Playground is to make as much of its content available on the iPhone as possible, said the company's founder and director, a man who goes by the name of Joone. Essentially, the idea is to make the device an extension of the Web, so that when people buy memberships, they can watch movies on their computer, or on their iPhone, without having to distinguish between the available content.
The front door of the iPhone-optimized Digital Playground Web site. The company is one of the leaders in making adult content available for the iPhone.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)"We're trying to make it transparent," Joone said, "so that guy doesn't have to worry about whether to purchase something new, so he can say, 'I want to watch it on my iPhone, or I want to watch it on my computer.'"
Joone said these days the tools available to content producers make it extremely easy to port content produced originally for the Web to the iPhone. As a result, Digital Playground--and its competitors--are going to have to put much of their efforts in this area into figuring out how to give their customers the best possible, and simplest, user experience.
"Just click and watch," Joone said. "So it might not give the same kind of experience as on a computer, but you get to what you want pretty quickly."
To date, said Farley Cahen, Digital Playground's vice president of new media, the company has made about 300 full-length movies available for the iPhone, and that it has the first fully-optimized site for the platform.
What that means, he said, is that users can simply enter the normal Digital Playground URL into their iPhone instead of needing some special mobile URL. The site "sniffs" the device and automatically brings up the optimized site, Cahen explained.
"You can sort by performer, keyword, or movie title," Cahen said, "and over Wi-Fi, or 3G, it works really well."
Of course, Digital Playground isn't the only adult content producer making their movies available on the iPhone. A Google search for "iPhone porn" returns millions of results. But Digital Playground seems to be among the most committed to building an iPhone-optimized site suitable for large amounts of its content.
Down the line, he said, there are a series of advances coming to the company's iPhone library.
One, he said, is the ability to parse a movie by scene, since, as he said, "a lot of adult content is consumed in scenes, rather than full-length."
For now, the point is, someone watching a Digital Playground movie on the iPhone would need to either watch it straight through, or fast-forward to his or her desired point.
Another innovation, he said, would be social aspects, like ratings and the ability to see which clips have been viewed the most times.
And so, combined with the company's DVD offerings, as well as its traditional Web content, the growing availability of Digital Playground movies for the iPhone means it can "allow our consumer to access our content in the highest quality however, wherever, and whenever they want."
Cahen said that Digital Playground wants the ability to make an iPhone application, which would make it even easier for its users to access its content. But Apple has made it clear: No porn apps.
I asked him if Google's Android phone might offer an alternative, given that Google is far more hands-off about what kinds of apps it is allowing on its smartphone than Apple, though it does have restrictions on the applications available through its official Android Market.
Cahen suggested that while Android seems to present Digital Playground and other adult content producers the option to create applications, he said he is not yet sold on the platform.
"They're a ways off from actually competing with the iPhone" on functionality, he said. "The general features of the iPhone far outweigh the (Android) features."
A Google spokesperson said, "Android Market is not the only source for Android applications. Any Web site can post applications for download which can be installed via the Android browser. However, we have built the Market to ensure quality applications and security for the user, and we recommend safe downloads through this service.
For Digital Playground, making content available on mobile platforms isn't just altruism. In fact, Cahen said, the company has a tremendous conversion rate for people who visit its iPhone site.
As a result, the company is going to continue to work on new developments for the platform, and Cahen said the biggest innovation that it will have down the line is likely to be streaming porn.
However, some other producers, such as Pornhub, already offer streaming adult content.
For companies like Digital Playground, streaming may well be a holy grail. Cahen said he sees a huge demand for live streaming video of porn stars doing their business, even including their preparations for work.
During his keynote address at CES Thursday, Ford CEO Alan Mulally--along with several other Ford executives--emphasized that the car giant is interested in being a leader in in-car connectivity.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)LAS VEGAS--Ford on Thursday announced a series of innovations aimed at giving drivers more a higher degree of Internet connectivity as well as a slew of tools devoted to helping them get to where they're going in the most efficient way possible.
The car giant's new initiatives were unveiled as part of CEO Alan Mullaly's keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show here. And while some of the technology Mulally and a series of subordinates discussed was part of Ford's previously announced and available Sync partnership with Microsoft, much was all-new.
Mulally began his talk by touting the fact that Ford is nearing 1 million Sync-equipped cars on the road. Then he set the tone for the keynote by explaining that the company's major technological goal for the near future of its vehicles is to load them with as much connectivity as possible, all in a bid to bridge the gap between drivers' homes and their ultimate destinations.
One surprise early in the address was the unexpected arrival on-stage of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who gave his own keynote talk Wednesday evening here.
Ballmer was really just window dressing, though, for an hour-long advertisement for the latest elements of the Sync program and the ways Ford hopes to bring a never-offline state of existence to the owners of its vehicles.
Highlighting the Sync partnership between Ford and Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, joined Mulally on stage during the keynote. Click on image for more photos.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)"We are a car company," Mulally said, "but we are learning to act like an electronics company."
Connectivity was definitely the watch-word Thursday as each Ford executive to speak talked about a different piece of the puzzle that the company is working on to make sure its customers are always-on.
First up was Derrick Kuzak, Ford's group vice president for global product development. He explained that the company's goal is based on three things: beamed-in connectivity, such as from satellite; brought-in connectivity, such as from drivers' own cell phones; and built-in connectivity, such as dash displays.
And all together, Kuzak said, Ford wants to build a platform for drivers that emphasizes speed, scale and affordability.
Kuzak talked about one innovation the company has been working on at its Virtual Test Track Environment, or Virttex, called MyKey. This, he said, is a technology designed to promote safe driving habits for teenagers by allowing parents to program an ignition key to limit a car's top speed, as well as the volume of its sound system.
Another advance Ford is promising is the ability to synchronize applications from mobile devices like Apple's iPhone with the car. That would mean, apparently, being able to run applications like Pandora, via the iPhone, by using control buttons on the car's steering wheel. Similarly, it should be possible for drivers to get access and manipulate their Facebook or MySpace accounts using voice commands.
Later in the keynote, Jim Buczkowski, Ford's director of electrical and electronics systems engineering, explained how the company plans to incorporate human machine interfacing (HMI) into its cars. The first application of that, he said, would be something called SmartGauge.
So, for example, a driver of a Ford with this feature would find him or herself coached by the system on how to get maximum fuel efficiency out of their hybrid vehicle.
This, of course, is essentially hypermiling, but with an educational assist from the vehicle itself.
Buczkowski also unveiled a futuristic prototype of a car dash that is packed with smart digital features, as well as an avatar companion known as the Emotive Voice Activation (EVA) system.
EVA, Buczkowski explained, would allow drivers to speak voice commands and basically interact with the car, getting intelligent directions--including those between point A and B that are most fuel efficient--as well as recommendations for music appropriate for any given situation and much more.
Much of what was on display Thursday seemed like it wouldn't be ready any time soon. But on the other hand, it was a fascinating glimpse of what is surely just around the corner, not just for Fords but for all vehicles.
And it's interesting to see such advanced technology coming from a company that has seemed in other ways to be anything but ahead of the times.
Still, with a company as large as Ford, there is bound to be some cutting edge thinking, and it was definitely on display Thursday.
LAS VEGAS--MindArk, the developer of the science fiction-based virtual world, Entropia Universe, has announced that it is spinning off the functional game side of its business into a separate company.
Known as First Planet Company, the new entity will be a stand-alone company that will run the actual virtual world, which it is calling Planet Calypso. MindArk will continue to operate the platform side of its business, focusing on tools that it can make available to partners looking for a custom virtual world.
In recent months, MindArk has put a lot of its energy in developing relationships with outside entities that want to build their own planets in Entropia Universe. To date, it has signed up five partners.
But as part of the spin-off arrangement, announced here at CES, First Planet Company will be treated as one of those partners.
Among others that have set up shop in the virtual world are a Chinese company that is investigating using the virtual world for cultural purposes and a firm that is looking at using Entropia Universe as a virtual theme park. And still another is looking at giving the game's players immersive environments based on hit Hollywood films.
LimeWire 5.0 allows users to share files with friends on any Jabber-compatible system, as well as to have search results incorporate files from the LimeWire store.
(Credit: Lime Wire)LAS VEGAS--Get ready for the collision of social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing.
With the beta release of LimeWire 5.0 (download for Windows| Mac), which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show here, the popular P2P service is incorporating a social element that will enable people using Jabber-compatible services like Gmail to share files with friends on their buddy lists. Lime Wire calls this a "personal sharing network."
The idea, said Lime Wire CEO George Searle, is to add trusted context to user searches for content, given that people are more likely to want--and feel comfortable with--content from people they know.
Additionally, Searle explained that the new social features of LimeWire--which has 70 million monthly unique users and more than 5 billion queries a month--will enable people to choose whether to make files available to the public at large, or just to their friends and family.
In many ways, this is much like many other content-sharing systems. But to Searle, adding a social component to LimeWire means making what is already an extremely popular service more personal to many users.
Essentially, the way the new feature works is that users will be able to decide whether to make files--photographs, for example--available to anyone on LimeWire, or just to people on their buddy lists. Similarly, users will be able to search for files from their friends. And this will take advantage of a sharing system that tens of millions of people already use, something that Lime Wire hopes will encourage many on the service to adopt the social elements.
Searle said he hopes that the social feature will allow users to trust the sources of the content they share across the system in a way that's not really possible when sharing with strangers.
In the realm of companies I wouldn't expect to release an online game, Symantec is right up at the top of the list.
But that's just what the security software firm has done with its Cyber Smackdown online quiz, a Web-based game that tasks players with answering questions related to cyber security.
Symantec's new 'Cyber Smackdown' online game tasks players with answering questions about cyber-security. Unfortunately, the list of questions is very short and the answers are too easy.
(Credit: Symantec)It's a good idea, and if Symantec had bothered to come up with some difficult questions or even a few dozen different questions, it would have also been a nice manifestation.
Unfortunately, it seems--from my multiple tests of the game on both Safari and Firefox, at least--that the game's creators only bothered to write 12 questions, and so if you take the quiz multiple times, you just get the same questions in a different order. How challenging!
I scoff because, let's be honest, how hard would it have been to write, say, 24 questions? Or 36? Or 48? So that if someone felt like taking the quiz again, they might find new questions.
As it is, the list of questions runs along the lines of "What percentage of those surveyed said they have received a fraudulent email from someone pretending to be a real institution asking for personal information?"
There's also questions that ask for a definition (from a multiple choice list) for malware or typo-squatting.
The questions themselves weren't all that bad, though for the most part the answers were rather obvious. I just wish there had been way more of them.
I suppose, in the end, this exercise wasn't really about presenting players with any kind of real challenge, but more just to get Symantec's Norton brand name in front of people who like to play games. Symantec released the game at CES this week, so it was obviously counting on passers-by getting excited by the game.
But sitting here at my desk at CNET, I have to say I'm not so impressed.
Update at 2:49 PM: I just heard from Symantec, and the deal is that the company plans to release a full version of the game on Jan. 10 which will have 120 questions. The version with 12 questions is a CES-only version.
A group of video game giants that changed the way people play in the '80s, '90s, and 2000s were honored with technology and engineering Emmy Awards during a ceremony Monday night in Las Vegas amid the Consumer Electronics Show, according to Sony Online Entertainment.
The awards were handed out in two categories. The first was development of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The winners were Sony Online Entertainment, Blizzard Entertainment, and AOL/Time Warner for EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and Neverwinter Nights, respectively.
In the user-generated content and game modification category, Electronic Arts, Id Software, and Linden Lab were honored for Pinball Construction Set, Quake, and Second Life, respectively.
View complete CES 2008 coverage from CNET.
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