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Tomorrow's World

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On your marks....

  • Darren Waters
  • 4 Jan 07, 01:55 PM

The is a marathon run at the pace of a 100-metre sprint.

Each year more than 140,000 industry professionals - from engineers to analysts, and from buyers to sellers - gather in the desert in Nevada for a celebration of technology.

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No-one doubts that the scale of the event is absurd - 2,700 exhibitors and tens of thousands of products spread over 3.2 million square feet and spilling over further to almost every hotel suite in the city.

But every major player in the consumer electronics world will be present and somewhere amidst the copycat products, the hair-brained ideas and the over-optimistic visionaries are products and trends which will dictate how we live our digital lives in the coming years.

Last year and made waves at CES as they demonstrated the obvious - that gadgets without content, services or application are pretty useless. All too often at CES products are prematurely launched, offering little value to the ordinary consumer.

The themes of the digital home and the ubiquitous net made up of billions of connected devices from phones to PCs, fridges and TVs, as well as products taking advantage of high definition and wi-fi have been the talk of CES for many years and little will change this year.

In many ways CES is a mirror of the industry itself - a marathon full of competitors more suited to the sprint.

No-one really knows which products, which services and which models of consumption will emerge triumphant in the 21st Century - every one is gambling.

The conference launches officially on Monday but the event has gotten so big that pre-show events kick off on Saturday with a rota of press conferences, culminating in boss Bill Gates delivering a keynote speech on Sunday.

In past years Gates has used his speech to unveil the Xbox, the Tablet PC and the eBook, three products with varying degrees of success. It goes to show that not even visionaries like Gates really know where the industry is heading.

Over the next week 大象传媒 News journalists will be trying to navigate this race but we want to hear about which products or ideas interest you most. What are the key issues for you? Is this orgy of consumerism a positive or negative influence in your life.

Feel free to comment.

Let the race begin.

Tools of the trade

  • Darren Waters
  • 4 Jan 07, 12:53 PM

What technology does an online journalist use to cover the world's largest technology conference?

Thankfully, unlike my colleagues in television and radio I don't have to worry about booking satellite feeds, or concern myself with international TV standards, upload speeds or how footage will be edited.

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Life is simpler for the online journalist - but not without its challenges. The priority always is getting text - or copy as we call it - back to the journalists in London so it can be formatted for the web.

I can connect remotely to the software we use to write for the web but everything must be checked - subbed - before it goes live on the website.

The key pieces of equipment include:

A laptop (HP 6120) - all of our stories and blog entries will be written on this machine. The most important feature of the laptop is its ability to connect to the internet wirelessly. In order to send back stories and photos I'll need to access one of the many free wi-fi networks in operation in Las Vegas.

It might not be the sexiest laptop around - but it gets the job done... eventually.

A digital camera (Canon 350D) - I'm not a professional photographer but pictures are an essential part of any online news story. All of my pictures for CES will be included in our CES which you are welcome to join.

An MP3 player/recorder (Creative Zen Nano plus and iRiver) - I've had my fingers burnt in the past using a hard disk-based audio recorder so I'm taking two devices. One is a flash based recorder while the other has a small hard disk drive.
The beauty of these devices is that any audio can be dragged and dropped onto my computer so if I want to e-mail the interviews to anyone I can.

A wi-fi enabled mobile phone (Nokia N80) - sometimes you don't want to have to open your laptop and log in to check e-mail or the latest news on the blogs.

A PDA/mobile phone (Palm Treo 750v) - I want to be able to see all of my appointments at a glance and I can sync the Palm Treo to my laptop to pick up e-mails, calendar etc. Sadly it doesn't have wi-fi - hence the need for two mobile phones.

Cables - Lots and lots of power cables, charger, plug adapters etc. It may be the wireless networked world but until power and charging go wire-free it remains very much a wired world at large.

Non-work technology

PSP - The PlayStation Portable may have not become the Walkman of the 21st Century as envisaged by Sony but it remains a very useful device. I use mine mainly to play games - it will be invaluable on the 12 hour flight to Las Vegas - and to watch movies.

I rip movies that I own into a format that the PSP can understand and playback. Sadly in the eyes of the law that makes me a criminal.

iPod - I own a 3rd generation 40GB iPod which is probably the only piece of technology that travels everywhere with me.
The battery life is now non-existent and I doubt it will last even a third of the journey from London to Las Vegas but with my entire record collection - 5,600 songs - on it, it's the one must-have device.

1999 all over again

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 4 Jan 07, 12:35 PM

November 1999 and the 大象传媒 is finally persuaded to send me on my first trip to Las Vegas. It's the height of the dot com boom and the Comdex computer industry show is bound to provide some good stories.

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But we're on a tight budget - the team is me and a producer rather nervously carrying a cheap camcorder, and outside the motel where we're lodged in a seedy part of town there's a drive-by shooting on the first night.

The big story revolves - as ever - around Bill Gates and Microsoft. Will the software giant be broken up by the US Department of Justice? Will its dominance at last be threatened as Linux emerges as a credible operating system?

We also chose to shoot a piece on the challenge posed by Britain's Psion which some believed was the David that could down Microsoft's Goliath, with its Symbian operating system for mobile phones.

We couldn't afford a satellite feed so had to take our material back to London to be edited and broadcast a few days later - and perhaps fortunately the main news bulletins chose not to run our Psion report.

Flash forward to January 2007 and we're back in Las Vegas in rather greater strength.

This time it's the Consumer Electronics Show - but now the computer giants are determined to move their products from the back bedroom to the living-room, I think it'll feel much the same as Comdex.

For one thing, the whole event kicks off with a Bill Gates keynote on Sunday evening - we're expecting more details on Microsoft's campaign to convince us that its new products will be at the centre of family entertainment.

This time, with CES receiving blanket coverage online and on radio and television, we will have to bring the news as it happens rather than shipping it back. But new technology now means we can shoot and edit more economically, and then send our reports via broadband at a fraction of the cost of a satellite feed.

To complicate matters, the other big noise of the technology world is making his play for the connected household. But Apple's Steve Jobs won't be in Las Vegas - his MacWorld keynote address is six hundred miles away in San Francisco on Tuesday morning.

So after a lot of head-scratching we've decided to take a day trip away from CES in the expectation that Mr Jobs will stride onto the stage in his black polo neck and neatly pressed jeans - and pull something shiny and exciting out of his pocket.

So Steve - and Bill - please don't disappoint us. Jobs v Gates makes a good story - and we're counting on both of you to come out fighting.

Welcome to Tomorrow's World

  • Darren Waters
  • 4 Jan 07, 12:29 PM

This blog aims to bring the latest news and colour from the , the world's largest technology conference.

大象传媒 News journalists will be blogging about ground-breaking products, discussing emerging themes and encouraging your involvement.

Your guides to the event in Las Vegas include:

Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones
editor Darren Waters
Newsnight correspondent Paul Mason
reporter Chris Long
大象传媒 Radio 1's Technology reporter Iain Mackenzie

The blog is designed to be complementary to the - which will still be the main source for bigger news stories and more considered features and analysis. Where appropriate we will be linking to articles on the 大象传媒 News website and taking into account the wider debate about CES in the blogosphere.

There will also be news and features across 大象传媒 TV news bulletins, News 24, 大象传媒 World, Radio 1 and of course on Click.

The 大象传媒 wants to be open and accountable, and so this site is a public space where you can engage with us as much as the medium allows. We want your views on any of our blogging posts and to hear about the questions you have about new technologies.

If you are attending CES there is a that has been set up for your photographs. We will also be posting our photos to the group.

Comments on this blog will be moderated. When you submit a comment, we will read it and decide whether to publish it. We aim to include as many comments as we can, but we won't publish any which are abusive, are inappropriate on the grounds of taste and decency, or which appear to be part of a concerted lobbying attempt. There's more on our moderation policy in these .

Comments should be based around the original post and subsequent discussion. If you want to make a general comment, then please e-mail us instead. We can't promise to respond to every e-mail, but we'll do our best to read them all.
You should also bear in mind that e-mailing us, or leaving a comment on the blog, is not the same as making a formal complaint. If you want to do that, this website will help you - and this way, you're guaranteed to receive a formal response.

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