monthly computer chronicle mcc - …the luxor hotel and casino. for the past few years several of us...

MONTHLY COMPUTER CHRONICLE

By Chuck Hajdú

Once again we’re covering CES2016 for all of our readers. Weknow that every geek out therereally wants to go to Vegas for abig electronics trade show. All ofyou think it’s just fun and gameswith lots of free food and way toomuch to drink. Well yeah, there is alot of that going on.

There’s also a lot of hard work go-ing on! Early mornings and latenights with lots and lots of walkingdone in between. We start out twodays before the show actuallystarts to cover the pre-show pressevents and then the real workstarts! Trust me this is a lot morework than you think! I’ll be rightback, I need to go get a free cof-fee. OK, where was I, oh yeah, boyis this hard work!

This month’s ePub issue will bejam packed with CES coverageand we hope all of our readers ap-preciate the amount of time andwork that went into putting this is-sue together.

Before I go any further I need toexplain something. Our regularreaders may know this but therehave been some name changesthat took place this year. The Con-sumer Electronics Association, orCEA, used to put on the Consum-ers Electronics Show, which laterbecame the International CES.This year the Consumer Technol-ogy Association (CTA) is putting onthe CES 2016 show. No more In-ternational and no more CEA. Ihope all of our reporters rememberthe changes but I’m not makingany promises.

Personally, there were a lot of highspots this year and, unfortunately,a few duds. I’ll try to cover them allbut I may miss a few that I’ll catchup on in later issues.

The first of my high spots is alsothe first of my duds, it’s staying atThe Luxor Hotel and casino.

For the past few years several ofus have stayed at the Rodeway Innon Convention Center Drive (nextdoor to the indoor parachute jump-

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N E W S A N D V I E W SI N TH I S IS S U E :

NEWS AND VIEWS 1

WHAT’S NEW 4

TECHNOLOGY TODAY 7

CES 2016 REPORT 9

FOLLOW OUR DAILY BLOG AT:HTTP://MCCPUBS.BLOGSPOT.COM/

MCC F E B R UA R Y 2 0 1 6

High spotMy annual meeting and picture with my old friendRohan Marley. Rohan and I have been meeting atCES for many years now and taking a picture to-gether has become a tradition. Please check outtheir web site for the best audio equipment avail-able. http://www.thehouseofmarley.com/

DudNo Ricoh/Pentax booth. Ricoh had a fairly largebooth area but there was nothing with the Pentaxname I asked their information people where Pentaxwas and I was told that they had private rooms only.I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised becauseSarah Schachterle, the Pentax PR Manager, hasbeen gone for months and they don’t seem to be ina hurry to replace her.

High spotThe Kingston table at Pepcom Digital Experience isalways a high point. It is a chance to catch up withDave Leong and see their new products. This yearthey were showing the Kingston DataTraveler 2000,a truly secure 32GB USB 3.1 drive. Please checkout all of their memory products atwww.kingston.com


ing is how you tell cabbies to find it) because it was agreat location.

It is very close to the LVCC (Las Vegas ConventionCenter) and right next door to the Riviera (importantin the past). It’s also only a few steps away fromPiero’s which was important when Pat Meyer John-son still did Lunch @ Pieros. The LVCC is gobblingup all of the properties near the LVCC and the Rode-way was the next logical acquisition.

The first night at the Luxor was a high spot and adud. The woman at check-in gave me excellent direc-tions and a clear map. All I had to do was follow herdirections. Instead I became Mr. Know-it-all andwent off on my merry way. A half hour later, andmany, many steps later, I finally realized that I waslost and asked for help. With a bit of guidance I even-tually found my room. Of course someone earlier hadclearly violated the strict No Smoking policy and theroom reeked of cigarette smoke. The staff at theLuxor was very helpful and found me another roomright away. Thank goodness for that!

By now it was getting late and I was tired and hungry.I made a quick trip downstairs to the sports bar/restaurant and found a table. The bar tender/waitressthat I had, Bonnie, turned out to be an angel. Shesuggested an excellent stout for me (after letting mesample a couple of other beers to see what I liked)and I had a cup of excellent French Onion soup anda couple of large glasses of stout. The second glasswas on the house to make up for my long day gettingthere. Thank you Luxor and Bonnie.

I’m going to do something a bit different this year.Instead of taking you trough my trip chronologicallyI’m just going to hit on a few high spots and coverwhat I thought of as Duds.

DudThe next dud was the CES Unveiled event. In thepast the Unveiled event was always way overcrowded and very difficult to navigate. This yearthings really seemed to be different, it wasn’t ascrowded. Of course, they had very little food and ifyou did what I did and talked to vendors first then youwere going to go hungry. I found out why it wasn’t ascrowded later on, we were the fourth group of pressto be admitted. Higher priority press and media hadalready gone through. We ere, literally, the “D” list!

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MCC FEBRUARY 2016 PAGE 2

NE W S A ND V I EW S

High spotOlympus had the new Olympus M.Zuiko 300mmf4.0 PRO lens on display. It’s a micro4/3 lens mountlens which means that it is the equivalent of a600mm f/4 lens on a full frame 35mm body. We hadthe chance to heft one a bit at one of the CESevents and it’s a real beast.

Naturally, it’s smaller and lighter than a lens for alarger format sensor but it’s still a bit of a handful.We’ve requested one to review so stay tuned.http://www.getolympus.com/

High spot and DudWe attended a Huawei press conference where theyintroduced their new Phablet phone. We hadn’t pre-registered so we didn't get one of the hundreds offree phones they handed out. Oh well, that’s ourloss. We’re hoping Huawei can send us one fromthe next batch that ships to the USA.

Storage Visions 2016

This year’s SV event was held in the Luxor ratherthan the Riviera where it has been held for the pastfew years for a very good reason, The Riv is nomore. We actually stayed in The Riv for a couple ofyears and it was really getting old and needed morework than it was worth to rehab. One more Vegasicon of The Rat Pack days is no more. The Sands,the Stardust, the Desert Inn, the Riv, the Frontierand many more casino hotels are no more. Such islife in Sin City.

I have a serious suggestion for the people who runStorage Visions: next year cut things back to oneday. On day two of the event most of the press andmedia are gone because it’s press day at CES.

DudThe whole Tech Debut “event”. For the past fewyears they have had an event at the Bali Hai golfcourse following CES Unveiled. This years event wasat the nearby Four Seasons Hotel and it was held inseveral suites rather than one large room. I canhonestly say that none of the vendors had anythinginteresting to see and it seemed to be a total waste oftime and energy, my energy that is.

High spotThe E-Fun booth at Pepcom was great ths year. Wegot to talk to Susan van Barneveld and Nicole Fait ofCopernio, the E-Fun PR team, and see some of theproducts due for release in Q2 of this year. We havebeen using Nextbook tablets and 2-in-1 units for acouple of years now and we feel they are one of thebiggest bargains in the industry.www.nextbookusa.com

High spotIf you’ve ever watched an episode of Seinfeld the youknow who the Soup Nazi is. Well this year at CESUnveiled we had the Line Nazi!! One of the securitypeople there was an older lady who strictly enforcedline protocol! No cutting in line allowed! She didn’ttake any excuses from anyone and I loved it!

Big DUDSpeaking of “security”. We had been advised thatsecurity would be really tight this year and therewould be lots of bag checks going on. We observedfirst hand the small number of restricted entrances tothe LVCC, the trained dogs that were on hand readyto leap into action and the greatly increased numberof security personnel. We also saw exactly zero bagchecks. The “security” people just waved everyonethrough with no delays or checks whatsoever.Hmmmm, I guess they were just trying to create theappearance of increased security.



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MCC

The Nextbook note-book computer

Gone are the days when a company had one princi-pal product with a few variations. Now, each com-pany that can produces one or more of each type ofpopular product. That transition is one of the rea-sons that exhibit space has expanded so much. Theother is that every company needs to attract cus-tomers by setting up eye-catching displays, so theexhibit space is very colorful with a lot of movingobjects.

The most popular product categories this year were:HDR 4K TVsWatchesTabletsHealth monitors

Car automationKitchen equipment3-D printersHome automationSecurity systemsVirtual RealityDronesSmart phones and accessories

Of course, some companies specialize in one ormore of these lines and the exhibit space this yearwas segregated into broad product categories. Thismade it easier to survey 3-D printers among thevarious company products.

While the big companies congregate in the Centralhall, there is also the North hall, two South halls, theSands hall, the Venetian and the Aria. You canimagine the problem of contacting many of theseexhibits to see what they have to offer.


By George Harding

CES 2016

The Consumer Electronics Show is bigger and betterthis year. Bigger because it has expanded into threevenues this year and better because there is morestuff categorized by type.

The attendees numbered some 170,000 and exhibi-tors were about 3,800 and they were spread over 2.4million square feet of space. Imagine going down aline of booths 3,800 tables long and talking with halfof them! It’s a time-consuming process.

As a press person, one has to make a good attemptto stop by the more significant vendors, so as to writeabout the significant new products and services nowavailable. As an old person, that process gets hardereach year. But your intrepid reporter made yet an-other valiant attempt at thorough coverage!

One thing that was noticeable was the size of theexhibit space for the larger companies, like Sony, LG,Intel, Panasonic and Samsung. The Central Hall inthe Las Vegas Convention Center hosts these com-

panies (as well as many, manysmaller companies). The spacefor each is so large becauseeach has so many current prod-ucts. Each has TVs, externalspeakers, washing machines,refrigerators, Iot devices (Iot isshorthand for Internet of things,whereby you can control house-hold and other items whereveryou are), and more.


WH A T ’S NE W

CES 2016, CHEERO, WOCKET WALLET

George Harding

comes with two cables, one with a Lightning con-nector, the other with a microSD connector. Bothhave a standard USB plug at the other end.

I tried out a fully charged Cheero on my iPhone 6.Interestingly, when my phone was fully charged, theCheero still showed 4 lights of charge capacity.Pretty impressive!

The internal battery is rated at 13400 mAh and ispowered by a Panasonic lithium-ion product. Thecase for the Cheero is fire-proof plastic. A nice fea-ture of this product is the automatic shutdown toavoid overcharge.

Cheero has a six month warranty for product defect.

Price $40 (currently $28.50 at Amazon.com)http://www.cheero.net/usa/

Wocket Wallet

If you’re like me, you have several credit and debitcards in your wallet or purse. Not only do all thecards make the wallet bulky, but there’s a substan-tial risk when you travel that losing your wallet willproduce disastrous results.

Wocket provides an elegant solution! You can storeall your credit and debit cards in this device in amore secure fashion than the cards themselves pro-vide. It’s a bit larger than a credit card and about ¼”thick, so it’s more convenient that than the stuffedwallet.

About the only thing you can’t store the informationfrom is your driver’s license, but the Wocket casehas a slot for your license, too!

The case contains the Wocket itself and a card thatlooks like a credit card, but isn’t. It is programmedwith the data for the credit or debit card you want touse and is used just like that card – you slide itthrough the reader’s slot as usual. What’s dramati-cally different is that the data cannot be read by any-one else and is unusable after use. It will be pro-grammed for the next use when needed.


I suppose next year will be even bigger and better!

www.cesweb.org

Cheero

With so many electronic devices we have today, anexternal charge is a necessity. This product is one ofthe best of the type, with its massive storage capacityand dual charging options.

The unit is fairly small, being only 3 ¼ by 3 ¾. It’s abit heavy, but not unduly so. All the controls are onone end.

First, there’s a power button. It’s used to start a de-vice charging and also to show the state of the inter-nal battery’s charge. The degree of charge is shownby four LED lights.

There are two USB ports. One is used for fastercharging and for those devices that need the higher2.4a capacity for charging. The other port offers 1acapacity.

The only other port is for a micro SD port, used forcharging the internal battery.

It



WH A T ’S NE W

The Wocket has to be charged, but the companysays a full charge should last for months. The charg-ing cable and the card reader both use the 3.5mmsocket. It’s like that used for earbuds.

Barcodes and text, such as voter's registration, loy-alty and/or membership cards, can all be enteredmanually into Wocket as well.

I stored three credit cards in the Wocket I receivedfor evaluation. I had difficulty modifying the descrip-tion on the panel for each card, so I had to remem-ber that Visa2 is my Fry’s card and Visa3 is mycompany credit card, but that wasn’t difficult.

To use your Wocket card, you first select which cardyou want to use from the panel, enter the passwordand then see the message that your Wocket cardhas been programmed. The screen on the Wocketshows an image of the card with your name, the lastfour digits of the card’s number and the CSR code.You remove the Wocket card from the case and useit like any other card.

The back of the card has a band where the mag-netic stripe normally is, an area for you to sign andfour electronic contacts that connect to the Wocketfor programming. But you use the Wocket card thesame as any other by sliding it through the retailer’sreader. The device I received does not enable thechip-reader technology that is used for recently is-sued cards.

I had no problem at three retail stores, but at afourth, the card was not recognized. I had to get outmy actual card and slide it.

This is an interesting technology devised to solveboth the crowding we experience today from havingso many cards, as well as the security problemsassociated with magnetic striped cards.

Price $179www.wocketwallet.com

The process of loading your cards is pretty simple.You first set up a password. I had a bit of trouble withthis because I tried pressing on the screen, harderand harder when my press wasn’t recognized. Ifound that instead of a press, what’s required is sim-ply a touch. The password is four characters, anycombination of letters and numbers.

Next you see a screen that shows four panels, eachof which can contain a card’s info. You select one ofthem, attach the card reader into the Wocket andslide your card through the reader. The info is trans-ferred to the Wocket. You only have to add the CSVcode printed on the back of the card, and save theresult. You can name the card so it appears in thepanel.



WH A T ’S NE W

MCC

their cases and you will be amazed at what they areputting together not for just phones, but for tabletsas well. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of those.

The Huawei Mate 8 is their latest high end phoneand I am happy to say, connected very nicely to theAT&T network that I use. This link above takes youto their mini site as if you look for the phone on theirnormal US site, you won’t find it. It is a large phoneof the 6 inch variety and having been a long timeuser (two years) of the Apple iPhone 5S, must saygetting used to the larger size was a little tricky.

I won’t go into much of the details ofthe specs and features but one thingdoes stand out and that is the bat-tery life. You can listen to 98 hoursof music or watch 17 hours of con-tinuous video on a single charge.What that really means is you cantalk a long time without needing toplug it in and my own use at homeand around town for the last weekconfirm that the battery does indeedhold quite a charge. Another neatfeature is that the phone supportstwo sim cards so that you can use iton two different networks. The backcamera is quite an upgrade as wellwith 16 megapixel Sony sensor at-tached to a six piece aspherical lensusing a hybrid autofocus system.When it makes it to these shores,look to spend around $600.

But I do like the speed, the video, and the sound.Having said that, I also have to confess that all thetime I used my iPhone, I have kept it in a waterproofand dustproof case from Catalyst and Lifeproof andso that does have an impact on the sound but it suremakes me feel more secure in knowing that thephone won’t be damaged, especially when I was outin the rain, trying to connect to my Uber driver to findthe correct entrance at the Mirage hotel in Las Ve-gas. Uber, you need to upgrade your maps as wediscovered that the entrance to the Mirage EventsCenter is not on any road and is not that easy tofind. And I know, it is not supposed to rain in LasVegas but it did for the first three days out there andI love having a waterproof case on my phone.


By Robert Sanborn

Huawei Mate 8

First of all. It is a cell phone. One of how many thatare out there on the market and, from what I saw atCES, are bound to be more and more coming to ourshores. Huawei is one of the many very large Chi-nese companies that most people have never heardof and they have already made quite a few inroadsinto the USA market. If you look at a number of theGoogle Nexus phones available, you are looking at aHuawei phone. You can look them up here.

Like many companies from off shore, they are mak-ing phones, watches (the electronic kind), tablets,and a host of other products. And I was quite im-pressed with the showing of the Mate 8 phone attheir press conference at CES. It is a high end phonethat will compare with the Apple 6 Plus but of course,since it is a generation later, it has more memory,more pixels in the camera, faster processor, and asleek design. And they gave me one to take home.

So without even taking it out of the box, as I wan-dered the equivalent of 42+ football fields of exhibits(including the end zones) at CES, the show formerlyknown as the consumer electronics show, the firstthing I discovered with such a new phone, that noone is showing off a case for it. I probably saw adozen different companies showing off phone casesand in nearly all the booths, they were showing offcases made for the Apple iPhone 6 and its variants.Amazon on the other hand had 8,538 results for the“Huawei Mate 8 Phone Case”. Most of them for lessthan $20.

Having said that, I did find a booth that would makeme one out of leather or wood at Toast, a smallmanufacturing plant in Portland OR. Take a look at


TE C H N OLO G Y TODAY

things for your home. Corning had their day made ofglass (see the YouTube video) and this year at CEStook it several steps further by showing off samplesof what it will be like. It was worth seeing.

One company there, Roost, has a new electronicreplacement for the 9 volt battery you place insmoke detectors. Yes, these are the ones that oncea year, you are supposed to go around the houseand change all thebatteries in. And ofcourse, most peo-ple don’t. The con-cept sounds quiteneat. Replace thebattery with anelectronic versionof itself that will notonly last five yearsbut will also let youknow when it istime to change it. I had to see for myself.

The package arrives and is quite handy and easy toget into. A very easy to open package that once in-side, first tells you to get the app for your smart-phone. It is a small app to download, mine from theGoogle Play Store. Connecting the phone to thebattery was pretty straight forward. It connects toyour phone to allow you to enter the wifi connectionpasswords if needed, and steps you through as itconnects to the phone and then to the wifi system.When you insert the unit into the smoke detector,you get a notice on the smartphone Roost app anda tone to go with it. When you test the battery andthe alarm goes off, it again sends the tone throughthe wifi to the cloud to the app in the phone and it isall done quite fast. And you are done.

The battery is a special lithium ion battery that hasthe electronics on the bottom that turn it into a wifi

device. The battery will last upto five years in most cases andat some point in the future, theywill be connecting it to othercloud devices as well. For now,you can have it alert you or afamily member or neighborwhen the alarm goes off so is aterrific piece of mind for thosewith parents or friends livingalone. It will also alert you


So you will be impressed with the specs of the phoneas I said as it includes the cool finger print reader toan 16 megapixel camera, to great sound. Now, hav-ing used the iPhones for a very long time, gettingused to the Android system was not as difficult as Iwould have thought. AT&T has a nifty transfer utilitythat will copy your contacts, photos, and videos fromthe iPhone to the Android phone and it worked verywell. I must admit, I haven’t yet looked to see how Iwill synchronize my contacts with my Microsoft Out-look and I need to figure out how to do it with the cal-endar as well. Setting up the email accounts waspretty easy, though I did discover that at one point,the Android forgot that I had saved the passwords tothe accounts and for a while refused to get new emailtill I went back in and put in the passwords again.The photos that are transferred are saved in an al-bum called “Other” and that is ok. Of course, sincethe Apple and Android are different operating sys-tems, I needed to download all the apps that I had onthe iPhone. It also means I need to buy some ofthose apps. To copy my music, I needed to downloadGoogle Music to my computer and now my music isstored in Google’s cloud. It is getting complicated; Ihave stuff stored in Google’s cloud, Microsoft’s, andApple’s.

The final thing I needed to save was my text mes-sages and how do those things pile up. I was neverone to text much (you should try doing it on a flipphone), but people have really gone into it in a hugeway. Looking around the internet, I found a greatguide from Tom’s Guide that stepped it through veryeasily and now I have all my text messages but Idon’t see the images.

The good news is that the larger phone seems to fitin my pockets as well as did the smaller iPhones butof course, the volume controls and power button areat a different location that I need to get used to. Thefingerprint reader is on the back of the phone andafter getting used to it, actually like it as I can pick upthe phone with one hand and easily turn it on. So far,I am enjoying using the phone as I get used to theswitch from ios to android.

Roost Smart Battery

One of the things that we saw at CES this year was ahuge surge in the IOT, the Internet Of Things, andwhat that brought with it was a surge of connected



TE C H N OLO G Y TODAY

NAND, and ten times the density of conventionalmemory? It's just not user-friendly.

Rob Peglar – Micron: New Media Driving Conver-gence

Doug Voigt – HPe: SNAI NVM programming modelscopeChange seems slow. It took years for Solid StateDrives to get adopted. The advantages of nonvola-tile memory make its adoption inevitable

Jim Pinkerton – Microsoft: Role of New OperatingSystems

Nisha Talagala -- Parallel Machines: ApplicationBenefitsNisha has four considerations regarding looking for-ward: Performance, Endurance, Capacity, and Per-sistence. The ability to analyze large quantities ofdata more rapidly than your competitor is the key tomonetization.

Rob Davis – Mellanox: Persistent Memory over Fab-ricsThe way nonvolatile memory works is essentially thereverse of how memory calls work for software writ-ten for volatile memory. Significant rewriting will beneeded. But the advantages are worth the effort.

Dennis Waid of peripal Research lead the panellooking at Analyst Perspectives: How Will We UseUbiquitous Storage?

John Rotchford of SASI LLC led off noting that ex-penditures on storage show no sign of slowingdown. Players come and go. He notes that most oftoday's users don't care where their stuff is sincethey know they can get it from a cloud.

Jean Bozman of Neuralytix thinks that most peoplewill continue doing the same things in the same wayfor a long time. There will be incremental improve-ments, but the high-intensity users on the leadingedge will benefit from reduced latency, greater datamanagement, and no single failure point.

Tim Bajarin, Creative Strategies sees 3 trends: vir-tual reality/augmented reality, which is starting off asgaming but leading to immersive computing, whichis trend #2. Immersive computing will have new user


By Bayle Emlein

Storage Visions

Rob Peglar of Micron led off the Storage Visions key-notes addressing the advent of Storage Where YouNeed It.

Surprise, surprise! Some of us were coding in the'70's (that's the 1970's, kids). And we've come fullcircle to looking for compact code.

1. We are in the era of Software-defined Everything.2. We are also at the start of the end of storage at theend of a multi-layer storage paths. Nonvolatile mem-ory is being moved back to the server (aka main-frame).3. The hard disk is aging out. SSD's have grown tohave enough storage and low enough latency to bereally useful.

Solid state memory means that large amounts ofdata can be analyzed in ways that are very difficultfor humans. Data can be modeled in 3 dimensions,not just two. Four dimensional modeling is in theworks.

Jim Pappas of Intel led a panel looking at Software inthe Fast Lane: the Impact of SNIA's NVM program-ming Model.Jim feels that the move to nonvolatile memory isequivalent to the invention of the transistor.

Panel members:Andy Rudoff- Intel: Rationale for combining storage &meomory.Why do we have to store our data “ out there” some-where when we now have memory that's 1000 timesfaster than NAND, has 1000 times the endurance of


CES 2016 RE P ORT

devices are strictly separated at Honeywell Aero-space where she works. This is accomplishedthrough training on the job.

Matthew Smith is using DeVry University and notedsome of the challenges of being an online student.Sam Mitchell – Embry-Utah State University.Keeton Hodgson – University of UtahClayton Jacobs - Riddle Aeronautical University hasa personal file organization system that works forhim. It may not be clear to others, but by sticking toit he can find files easily.

These students noted the benefits of working col-laboratively face to face, at least some of the time.They noted gaps that occur when a team works re-motely. They also discussed the benefits of ad-vanced degrees. Expense is one issue. While somecompanies will support continuing education, it gen-erally takes some longevity to become eligible.Some time on the job also helps refine a focus anda reason for working toward a degree in a special-ized field of interest.

Cloud, Archiving and the FutureDave Elliott, Global Product Lead and Jeff Kember,Cloud Solutions Architect spoke about storage atGoogle.

Dave described 3 versions of cloud storage. One isco-location, in which a user maintains local files butalso sends a version to servers “in the cloud” forbackup storage. A second is uploading to their serv-ers where you manage data and the processes ofuploading and downloading. The third level is char-acterized by data living on remote servers and beingmanaged transparently so that the user experiencesthe function of choice but does not manage it. Mov-


interfaces. All this will take massive amounts of stor-age. Just the mandate to maintain records of virtualmeetings for public corporations. Trend number 3 willbe the consumer demand for more immersive experi-ences such as 360 degree photos.

John Feland, Argus Insights noted that the currentmodel of the smart home involves shipping hugeamounts of data from our homes and cars into thecloud eats up bandwidth that interferes with importantactivities like Netflix. More of the workload needs tobe relegated to the home, so that it becomes trulysmart and not just a node to a storage cloud.

Chris Ely of CTA looked at some consumer trends.Smartphones, wired headphones, TV, laptop/notebook/netbook, blue ray/DVD were the major con-sumer market areas in 2015.

The panel agreed that consumer demands are likelyto continue to grow faster than capacity. The growthin the smartphone market is due to the younger agesat which kids get their own and the fact that a smart-phone is no longer an option, but considered an es-sential personal utility. Also, in many parts of theworld a landline is not an option.

Bev Crair of Intel led off the first afternoon ses-sion of the 2016 Storage Visions conference. Shedefined a revolution as a rapid change in structure:i.e., what's going on in technology. Many new smallcompanies do not have in-house storage at all. Willthey change when they become large employers.Cloud-based systems assume that hardware is unre-liable. The problem has shifted from “how do wekeep the company safe and secure” to “how do wehelp our customers solve their customers' problems?”Storage needs to be seen as a part of the equationrather than as a disaster-recovery strategy. Intel isdeveloping xenon-based processors which aresmaller and more powerful and more energy efficient.Intel will never walk away from its hardware commit-ment. But they are also working on software to bringdata and the hardware closer together.

2016 Rising Stars, Young Engineers PanelFive students in university engineering programs dis-cussed storage from their points of view. In responseto audience questions, they responded to audiencequestions and discussed different aspects of thebenefits and problems and being young.Phoebe Henson discussed how work and personal



CES 2016 RE P ORT

Vivien Lien, Asus Chief Marketing Officer for NorthAmerica noted all the features and collaborationsthat have made Asus products the world-wideleader for gamers. The Republic of Gamers (ROG)is an Asus concept. Asus has partnered with Occu-lus virtual reality to meet the next horizon of gamerexpectations.

Mike Gazanno, marketing manager of Delta Elec-tronics, explained Delta's power managementequiment. Sales and manufacturing operations arespread around the world. You may recognize theInnergie line of moblile power management. Vivetekis another end-user brand name you're likely to rec-ognize.

ShowStoppers LaunchIt!

The ShowStoppers LaunchIt angel pitch was pref-aced by a review by host Dave Leon of the history ofNew York angels suporting young companies andentrepreneurs. (As far as I know, the New York an-gels are not a baseball team, yet.)

LaunchIt is proud to be associated with the IBMWatson Environment. Sponsored and coordinatedby IBM, Watson helps developers and funders findeach other. The fundamental purpose is to makemachines more useful, including giving them toolsto manage unstructured data in a way that is usefulto humans.

The products presented at LaunchIt address a vari-ety of issues, from cognitive development to recrea-tion and leisure to personal and public health andwellness. Everything from diabetic food planning toturnkey single-serve cocktails.


ing to the cloud allows businesses to focus on theirbusiness and reduces the need for IT support, up-grade management, etc. Google's pricing has fol-lowed Moore's Law, declining per service/time of us-age as

Jeff noted, once again, that the amount of online traf-fic is exploding. At Google, he encourages customersto store a back-up copy of data online. It is orders ofmagnitude faster to access; hence it is cost-effective.

Henry Ford's Horse

Several speakers at the 2016 Storage Visions Con-ference referred to the quote, accurate or not, attrib-uted to Henry Ford that he was not trying to sell afaster horse to people. The implication is that wecan't look at today's technology and accurately pre-dict what will be introduced tomorrow, and how it willevolve the day after.

Taiwan Excellence:

Walter Yeh, of the Taiwan External Trade Develop-ment Council introduced the presentation of specificcompanies by noting the importance of US-Taiwantrade, the importance of technology to Taiwaneseindustry, and its ubiquity in technology implementa-tion word wide.

Sean Wang of ITRI (Industrial Trade Research Insti-tute) summarized Taiwan's revitalization as itchanges to keep up with industry trends. New cross-strait policies call for a delicate balance of politics,national security, and the long-term benefits of work-ing with China.

Peter Chang of Acer Global Marketing described howAcer is at the new fronter of the notebook. TheChrome line-up has expanded, as have 2-in-1 de-tachables. The Acer Revo Build was developed toupdate desktop machines. The Preditor line dependsof the AeroBlade fan design to maximize the gamingexperience.



CES 2016 RE P ORT

A couple of companies showed single button accesssolutions for smartphones. Do we see a trend?Something else noted by several presenters: manyfolks already wn a device with sophisticated motionsensors and connectivity. It's called a smartphone.By incorporating a user's smartphone into a product,the cost of developing and implementing thee func-tions can be subtracted from the end-user cost ofthe device. Better controllers and remote controlsalso propose to simpllify life in the neodigital age.

Speaking of life in the connected universe, the win-ner of this pitch competition is SmartPet. This is asystem for keeping your dog busy learning newtricks while s/he is lounging at home while you goforth all day. Think of it as Lumosity meets Game-boy finding buried treasure. This was an articulate,well-organized presentation that used fact withoutbecoming pedantic and emotion without gettingmaudlin.



MCC

TE C H TODAY CES 2016

MCC

when the battery finally gives up after about fiveyears and so when that happens, just replace thetop portion of the battery from Roost and you aregood to go. It takes maybe five minutes to set it allup. Available at Amazon for $34.99.

As to downsides, some of the smoke detectors outthere have two batteries installed in them and youneed to figure out which one is to be swapped out. Itook a wild guess and when I tested the detectorafter installation, I got the warning on my phone.Good guess? The other is that if things go the waythey should, I hopefully will never hear anything atall for the next five years. That being the case, I willhave swapped out my smartphone long before I dothe battery. If so, why do I need an app sitting on myphone to do that? I suspect that when I get moredevices like this plugged in, a centralized app thatwill monitor all of them will be what I want ratherthan having one for each device. Technology ismarching on and it gives us much more to thinkabout. As for Roost, I should get a few more for therest of the units in the house.


MCC

Chuck, Robert and Cruz waiting for an event Bayle at CES 2016

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MCCEditor - Charles Hajdú [email protected] Technology - Linda Webb [email protected] Editor - Megan Ehrhard [email protected] Editor - Bayle Emlein [email protected] Editor - Tim Ehrhard [email protected] - Jan Fagerholm [email protected] - George Harding [email protected] - Diana Meade [email protected] - Kate Meade [email protected] Bob Sanborn [email protected] - Lee Schwab [email protected] - B. T. Woody [email protected]

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I call that bold talk from afour-eyed fat man.

LS/MFT

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