Jan 12
The time has come: the video game industry must finally come together to pick a single standard for game controllers that will work across platforms and easily handle gameplay on … Continue reading
Jan 12
About 1.5 miles southwest of the Downtown Project’s cluster of development in Las Vegas is another creative neighborhood going through changes. It’s named 18b.
     |
Jan 12
SolarCooler Keeps Your Brews Icy With The Power Of The Sun, But It’ll Cost You $1K
Posted in: Today's Chili
Every year at CES, the Eureka Park outpost where they stick the scrappy startups is the best damn part of the whole shindig. This is where all the people with a screw loose or a decided lack of good common sense come to peddle their spaghetti-cooking robot or aroma-powered computer – or, as happened this year, their solar-powered beer cooler.
SolarCooler is a “world first,” which is a common epithet at Eureka Park, and it’s currently undergoing crowdfunding on Indiegogo. The startup is looking for $150,000 to make their portable refrigerator (it even makes ice!) a reality, but it’s currently looking like it’ll need a real groundswell of support to get there.
Here’s the big issue: the entry-level model costs just under $1,000, and that’s a special backer-only price. Retail for the SolarCooler is $1,200, which is bound to be a bitter pill to swallow even for the most ardent of tailgaters. Still, this is essentially a solar-powered 12V battery backup for everything combined with a cooler that offers true, continuous refrigeration, so that price tag starts to look at lot more reasonable when you consider its other potential uses.
It also has a lot of potential to help out in commercial and medical settings as a transport for goods that need to be kept cool when direct power is in scarce supply and loading up a device with a significant number of batteries would make it cumbersome to use.
SolarCooler is pursuing a flex funding goal, meaning it walks away with whatever it raises, and the founder seems keen on building it whatever the outcome, but there are still over 40 days left in the campaign, so it could still turn into a Cinderella story. All I know is I like beer, and I like it cold (that ‘best served at room temperature stuff’ is BS) so SolarCooler makes sense to me.
Jan 12
This week, we have a special TechCrunch Gadgets podcast, in that it’s actually CrunchWeek in audio form. CES happened this past week, and so the news we focused on in general happened to be about gadgets.
Check out our personal favorites from the show, which include Qualcomm’s mobile processor advancements, the ever-improving Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming headset, and some of our own Hardware Battlefield contestants as we chat poolside at our decently appointed Las Vegas hotel.
Tune in and hear Greg Kumparak, Jordan Crook and Darrell Etherington reflect on the week that was, and the gadgets that will be.
Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
You can subscribe to the show via RSS.
Subscribe in iTunes
Intro Music by Rick Barr.
Jan 12
Way back during CES 2011 we talked about an interesting health gadget from Withings that let your iPhone take your blood pressure. The catch was that the device needed a cable to be connected between the iPhone and the blood pressure cuff. And if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that wires suck.
Withings was back at CES 2014 with a new and updated version of this iPhone blood pressure machine. It’s called simply enough the Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor. There is now no wire between the smartphone and the cuff to take a reading.
Notice that I said smartphone, as the new wireless monitor works with both the iPhone and Android devices. The app controls the show and swiftly displays blood pressure readings and heart rate. It will even archive your readings for you. The Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor will ship soon for $129.95(USD).
Jan 12
Before this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, I issued a challenge: I wanted makers of wearable tech to prove to me that the time had come for this category of gadgets. What I was seeking was irrefutable proof there was wearable technology out there demonstrating enough clear and immediate benefit that consumers would flock to it in droves.
That’s not what I found.
Which is to say that nothing I found at CES offered up the kind of ‘love at first sight’ that I had with my first iPhone (an iPhone 3G), my first smartphone of any kind. The smartphone needed no additional argument beyond itself to prove its worth: no discourse on market trends, no explanation of how it will appeal to specific niches, no apologies about its current limitations. Of course smartphones had their doubters, as will any new tech, but simply using a good one was enough to convince most of their worth.
Not so with wearables. CES 2014 was a veritable explosion of wearable tech, with major companies including LG (the Life Band Touch) and Sony (the Core) both debuting activity trackers at the show. Many others also added their respective hats to the ring, including JayBird (the Reign), Garmin (Vivoki and Vivofit) and GlassUp (plus a slew of other Glass-type eyewear). At best, however, each of these devices only edged forward the potential of the wearable space; at worst, they represent a descent into a major growing area of concern with the category.
The new Sony and LG devices serve as the best examples to articulate the inherent problem in wearable tech. The category isn’t popular with OEMs simply because it looks to be a new area where people are willing to spend money – it also represents a tremendous opportunity to continue the kind of consumer behavior tracking and analysis begun with smartphones.
Smartphones have proven a veritable treasure trove of data about the people who use them, and that data is immensely useful in developing a product pipeline, and in attracting content and marketing partners. Sony’s Core is designed not just to track fitness, but to provide a log of essentially every connected AND real-world activity a person undertakes throughout the day. In the right (wrong?) hands, it could provide a near-perfect profile of the average day of actual consumers, which is the kind of data portrait that makes marketers weak at the knees.
That’s why Google created Glass, in case anyone was wondering. The search giant’s first and still most influential success was targeting ads at users based on expressed intent (search ads). Arguably, everything it’s done since then has been designed in some way to gather more info on its users for a more complete picture of what they’re looking for (Android, Google+ are just a few high-profile examples). Wearables is simply the next evolution, and that’s why we’re seeing everyone chase that carrot, rather than any especially huge market opportunity in terms of consumer appetite.
It’s telling that the most impressive wearable at CES for me was a mostly aesthetic iteration of an existing product. The Pebble Steel is the Pebble I always wanted to begin with, though the underlying software and feature set remains mostly unchanged. In fact, my existing Kickstarter edition Pebble never left my wrist during the show, providing a tether to our coverage team which proved superior to any system we used previously. I think it’s telling that Pebble has never positioned itself as a monitoring or logging device, in the context of the argument above, and that may have a lot to do with its continued success.
I still think there’s a lot of potential in the wearables market, but to explore that potential fully, device manufacturers need to at least couch their salivation over the data vein they have to power to break right open in a very convincing veil of consumer concern. Especially now that the Snowden whistleblowing has shed additional light on the value of our privacy, wearables need to concentrate on showing consumers what they offer, rather than just providing a list of what data they keep track of.
Top image courtesy Richard Stevens 3 of Diesel Sweeties. For the full comic, check out his Medium blog here.
Jan 11
I’ve Seen The Future Of Health Tech And It’s Going To Improve Your Life In 2014
Posted in: Today's Chili
I just returned from the most exciting Consumer Electronics Show I’ve ever covered. Thanks to extraordinary demand for gadgets that make us healthier, stronger, and smarter, the technology industry is putting some serious brain power behind the next generation of wearable health devices. Over the next year, a torrent of new devices is hitting the market to provide automated elite coaching, a pocket-sized clinical lab, and your own personal assistant.
Labs In Your Pocket
It seems that nearly every time I rush head-first into a new diet or exercise program, I find months later there’s some crucial oversight that’s holding back my progress or actively destroying my body. Exasperated in frustration, I drag myself to a clinic for expert diagnostics, only to discover simple advice I should have been following from the beginning.
Now, nearly every expensive lab test I’ve gotten over the past year is coming to the delightful convenience of my smartphone. The Sensoria smart sock correctly diagnosed that I make the runner’s rookie mistake of heel striking, leading to a workout-stopping knee pain (available this spring).
Valencell’s PerformTech in-ear heart-rate monitor calibrated my V02Max (a common measure of endurance) in a nearly painless five minutes of light stair-stepper work on the CES show floor (available now). The results were within 5 percent of lab-test results I received months earlier and helped me know that two months of running San Francisco’s hills are probably paying off.
Quality rest is just as important as hitting the gym. The Basis B1 wristwatch, Sleeprate app, and Withing’s Aura bed pad will diagnose the quality of the major stages of sleep, including crucial REM cycles.* I got a preview of Sleeprate’s heart-rate-monitor-powered app, and apparently I’ve got a nasty restless sleep cycle (Basis update coming January 21, Sleeprate January 23rd, and Aura in the spring).
Unlike a lab test, these devices can follow you wherever you go, ensuring you actually follow through with the advice. Many of us work so hard at self-improvement; it’s nice to know that our time isn’t going to waste.
Automated Elite Coaching
The defining feature of the world’s sharpest coaching minds is a broad novel strategy that is meticulously applied to each student. The delicious replicability of elite coaching makes it ripe for automation.
While last year was all about fitness gadgets that monitor activity, “what’s going to happen next is teaching technique,” said Ruth Thomason of Cambridge Consultants. Cambridge was showing off the ArcAid basketball free-throw technique video analyzer. Normally available to college sports teams with budgets larger than the entire Humanities Department, this kind of video technology could bring elite coaching to the masses.
The marathon-enthusiast fitness company, Polar, is releasing what claims to be the most advanced training watch on the market. The Polar V800 meticulously tracks heart rate to advise athletes when they’re overtraining, analyzed through a free online web app, Polar Flow (available in April).
There’s also hope for my fellow ADHD brethren: Interaxon’s Muse headband is like a mind-reading meditation coach. Using classic techniques from the field of neurofeedback, the behind-the-ear mounted EEG device measures brainwaves to coach users into a state of meditative peace. Unlike its competitor, Neurosky, which is mostly used for brain-controlled computing (and women who love to wear rotating cat ears in San Francisco), the muse will track improved mindfulness over time.
In the same way online education is bringing the teachings of world-class professors to anyone with an Internet connection, the future of health tech will be to essentially roboticize elite coaches in the devices we wear on our bodies.
The Digital Mother
“Sit up straight and brush your teeth!” Sometimes, we know exactly what we’re supposed to do, but just aren’t very good at following through. The latest health tech is here to gently nag you into better health.
The Lumo Lift is a vibrating shirt pin that buzzes whenever it detects slouched shoulders. It’s pretty much impossible to answer 5,000 emails a minute and remember to sit up straight for eight hours. This little guy helps you remember (available in the spring).
For objects around the house, the aptly named “Mother” device imbues everyday objects with the nagging power of our lovely moms. Sen.se’s Mother interacts with satellite “cookies” that know when and how an object is being used; for instance, whether a bottle of pills is being picked up and poured upside down. The same goes for a jar to water the plants (available in the spring).
2014 is going to be an exciting year for digital health. For years, technology has conspired to transform our upright bodies into hunched-back zombies. Now, it can make us all ubermen. Bring on the gadgets!
Jan 11
The past week at the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show, we saw a ton of cool, crazy, and downright unbelievable technology
| |
Jan 11
While it’s not headed to market for a while yet, seeing a completely wireless* mouse capable of recharging itself on the go wasn’t something we expected to see this week … Continue reading
Jan 11
In the 3D realm of CES 2014 we caught up with 3D Systems, a crew that brought so many new products and services to the show that it was difficult … Continue reading
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.