CES Fun!

Good stuff coming out of CES so far, here's some stuff that has stood out to me:

Innovations for TV:
Canonical (maker of Ubuntu Linux) has come to CES for the first time, and they dropped a whopper with Ubuntu TV. It is still in the alpha stages, but they demonstrated some working software and it looks great! It'll be open source too, which I love. So hopefully they can shake up the market for smart TV's a little since Google and Apple have let it grow a little stale. On the subject of Google however, it looks as it Eric Schmidt knew what he was talking about when he said GoogleTV would be on a majority of new televisions this year! It seems like every major manufacturer, with the notable exception of Sharp, is cramming El Goog's open source GoogleTV software onto their big screens. I say that Sharp's exclusion is notable because they are expected to team up with Apple to bring an AppleTV offering sometime this year, though Apple does not attend CES and has a lockdown on their software and products, so information on their new platforms (no open source here) will be forthcoming when Apple decides it's ready.


Tablets:
The best announcement I've seen so far is Asus's 7" Prime, this bad boy has Nvidia's Kal El processor and Android 4.0 (Ice cream Sandwich), and will retail for an incredible $249! My prediction it that this will really shake up the Tablet market, and that's great for consumers. Unfortunately, along with this came Asus's announcement of another Transformer Prime that is an upgrade of the current Transformer Prime, adding some new design elements to improve some wifi and gps issues with the current product and some other minor upgrades like a 2.0 megapixel front camera, and costing $100 more than the current Prime. To me, it looks like a re-release of the Prime where they are trying to fix what they got wrong the first time around, and a little bit of price gouging too. It also feels a little like an admission that the current Prime is a broken product, that they have little confidence in. We'll see if my perception is true however, the current Prime is selling well everywhere and has gotten mostly favorable reviews, and the new version isn't slated for release for a couple of months. I have the original Transformer and have been incredibly pleased with Asus customer service and support, and I am consistently in the earliest groups of tablets to receive updates ( I'm waiting on my guaranteed ICS update now, which should be within a few days :) Another interesting offering that I saw was a product from Lenovo that essentialy copies the Transformer's design. I hope this is the sign that quality first party keyboard docks are catching on, because it would be nice to have some competition in that segment of the market to drive innovation. Also, after owning the Transformer, I don't think I'd be in the market for a tab without this functionality.


Toys:
Only one real entry here so far, the upgraded AR Drone! If you haven't seen this yet, you must check it out on YouTube. It is basically a mini spy drone with two high def cameras on it, that you control from your Android device. And it's under $300! Just talking about it doesn't really do it justice though, you have to check this one out for yourself.


Hope you are enjoying all the cool new tech, I know I am! There's more to come too, so stay tuned, lol.