Channel Partners – Drive Sell-Thru and Affect the Point of Sale
Date: Wednesday, February 8
(part 1)
This webinar will show you how to build a successful loyalty program that engages and drives an audience to a desired behavior. They will increase your insight, impact your bottom line and drive your long-term relationships.

Consumer – Attract, Retain, Engage and Excite Consumers
Date: Wednesday, February 15
(part 2)
Uncover key factors in developing a successful loyalty program and become familiar with the most popular types of promotions, how they differ, and the benefits of each and how to measure their ROI. 

The Changing Landscape of Digital Photography
Date: Thursday, February 16
Using the insights from CEA’s latest research study, this webinar will uncover how alternative image-capture devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are revolutionizing digital photography.

Employee – The Cost of Employee Engagement vs. Disengagement
Date: Wednesday, February 22
(part 3)
How new technologies can be integrated into loyalty programs including game mechanics, social media and how they facilitate greater communication.

Smart Anti-Counterfeiting Strategies
Date: Wednesday, March 7
This presentation will provide practical advice on reducing the occurrence and impact of counterfeiting.

We do hope you’ll join us on one of all of these events. And, come with your questions for the presenters. Each webinar ends with a chance to connect with the experts during a live Q&A session.

No, I didn’t spot any tape decks–the last new U.S.-market vehicle with one rolled off the assembly line in 2010. But as in earlier years, my visits to the show floor offered plenty of other exhibits of an earlier decade’s thinking about mobile electronics.

Take DVD-Audio–if you remember what it is. This proposed ultra-hi-fi replacement for the CD failed in that quest years ago but lingers on in the dashboards of some Acuras and Cadillacs. (I don’t know why the competing, also less-than-successful Super Audio CD format didn’t get comparable support from vehicle manufacturers.)

I saw a similar sort of throwback design in all the in-dash CD players touting the ability  to play MP3 and Windows Media Audio files. Microsoft’s WMA has been fading for years–its own Zune Marketplace now supports MP3–and yet support for it lives on behind the wheel. Meanwhile, I only noticed compatibility with the AAC format employed in Apple’s iTunes Store on some Scion car stereos.

You can ignore those features if you want, just as you can opt of paying for SiriusXM  satellite radio should your next car support it. (Another next-gen radio option, iBiquity Digital’s no-subscription-needed HD Radio, was far less widespread at the show; I only spotted it in some Scion, Lincoln, BMW, Volvo and Lincoln vehicles.) But it’s harder to overlook the absence of increasingly valuable forms of device-to-car connectivity.

The minimum to expect is a simple auxiliary input that will connect anything with a headphone jack. (If only Toyota had thought to build one into our 2005 Prius, but instead our car came with a tape deck–not that I’m cranky about it or anything.) But you can’t count on that feature, even in 2012: The Infiniti sedan I inspected somehow left out this essential input.

USB ports are almost as valuable. They can play music stored on a phone (although iPhones require specific support from a car, while Android devices usually demand an extra swipe of the screen before the stereo can access their storage) or even a flash drive. They can also recharge a phone without needing an extra power adapter.

But they’re not a given either: An Audi, two Mazdas, a Nissan and one VW seen at the show provided iPod/iPhone connectivity but not USB. What will owners of those cars do if they retire an iPod in favor of some other vendor’s phone?

Most vehicles at the show smuggled these connections inside center-console storage compartments or, less often, glove compartments. That tidy-but-hidden layout may prevent some owners from even discovering these options–especially after those cubbyholes accumulate the usual stash of receipts, napkins, snacks and trash.

Bluetooth wireless can replace both types of cable and end the need to find the right plug in the dashboard. But first a car must support its audio-playback option, and a minority still only allow hands-free calling. Many older phones, in turn, don’t offer this “A2DP” feature of Bluetooth.

Ideally, you’d go beyond piping sound from a phone to a car’s speakers to allowing the driver to control a music app with the same steering-wheel controls governing the car’s radio and CD player. Better yet, a car could also borrow a phone’s brains for tasks like navigation. (As you may have heard, the government is not happy about drivers fiddling with phones.) But the industry is still just tip-toeing in that direction with offerings like Ford’s Sync, Cadillac’s upcoming CUE and Hyundai Blue Link.

In car manufacturers’ defense, it can take serious time and effort to change hardware that must function properly in millions of vehicles, without the advantage of quick bug fixes through software downloads. In that respect, they have a harder job than makers of connected TVs, which can at least hope to add missing Internet apps over time.

But that design-to-manufacturing latency also suggests we’ll be stuck with this confusion for a while. And while that lasts, you can’t even count on solving the problem by throwing money at it. The evidence was all over the show floor: sub-$20,000 vehicles that, unlike most of their more expensive siblings, offered a full set of analog and digital inputs in plain view instead of stashing them in one compartment or another.

Or consider the new econobox I rented over a long weekend in April–with roll-down windows, hand-adjustable side mirrors and a prominently-located USB port in its dashboard.

The television in my house is a far cry from any of the televisions shown at the 2012 International CES^®. This year at CES, LG unveiled a 55-inch 3D OLED TV that was only 4 mm thick and practically disappeared when you viewed it from the side. In contrast, my TV is almost a perfect cube with a screen that has “decent” picture quality and only one optimum viewing angle—head on. For this reason, my roommates and I never worry that it’ll be stolen. No thief is going to look at it and think it’s worth the jail time (or the hernia). It’s probably not even worth the time it would actually take to break into our house. Needless to say, the sad state of our living room technology also means no one is coming to our house to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday. Maybe it’s time to trade up.

According to CEA’s 13^th Annual CE Ownership and Market Potential Study, 69 percent of U.S. households had an HDTV in 2011. If you’re in the 31 percent without an HDTV and are looking to upgrade, the days leading up to the Super Bowl are a great time to score savings. Keep in mind that using the phrase “big game” will yield more search results for these deals since companies have to pay the NFL big bucks to use “Super Bowl” in their advertising. Here are a few models to get you started:

Sharp 70″ AQUOS^® LED TV – LC70LE632U

Sharp’s AQUOS^® LED TV comes with a huge, 70-inch screen, but if you’re worried about the power consumption of Sharp’s self-described “magnormous” television, you’ll be pleased to know it actually boasts an ENERGY STAR^® label. Smart TV capabilities and Wi-Fi connectivity also allow you to stream web content directly to your TV without any hassle.

Toshiba 32″ Class LED 1080p 240Hz 3D HDTV

This Toshiba 32” TV features 3D capabilities, Wi-Fi connectivity, 1080p full HD resolution and a gaming mode meant to prevent controller lag. Its size makes it a perfect fit for any room in the house.

LG 55″ Class 3D Capable 1080P 120HZ LED TV with SMART TV (4 pairs of 3D glasses included)

This television has a 2D-to-3D conversion feature that allows you to create 3D content whenever you want, and the Wi-Fi connectivity lets you access streaming content and LG apps without any of the clutter that comes with cables.

If buying a new TV isn’t an option or you prefer a more interactive Super Bowl experience, you can always watch the game online with your mobile device or computer at NBCSports.com and NFL.com.

An Innovation Plan for 2012, FoxNews.com, January 3, 2012

Want Innovation? Go to a Tradeshow, Forbes, January 4, 2012

A threat to Internet innovation and job growth, Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 11, 2012

Americans Revolt Against Copyright Powergrab, Forbes, January 11, 2012

Score one for the American people and Internet freedom, FoxNews.com, January 18, 2012

Ten Questions Candidates Have Yet to Answer, Forbes, January 18, 2012

Revenge of the Geeks: The Day Washington Reversed Course, Huffington Post, January 19, 2012

What We Did Right and Hollywood Did Wrong, Digital Dialogue, January 20, 2012

Congress must keep the Internet OPEN, The Daily Caller, January 23, 2012

“American Exceptionalism Means Politicians Who Take Responsibility and Face Our Problems”  Forbes, January 25, 2012

To stay up-to-date on Gary’s thoughts, join the Innovation Movement and you will receive the weekly “News from the Trenches,” a digest of op-eds and articles that impact the CE community. 

Then comes a long chat with veteran tech analyst Gary Arlen, who has now been to CES some 30 times. We compare notes about the just-concluded show, discuss such ongoing tech issues as spectrum availability, speculate about how CES might change without Microsoft as a headline act and stroll down Memory Lane for a bit. Yes, the Apple Newton does come up in our Q&A.

The podcast wraps up with a few words about this month’s post-CES Web chat and our plans for more along those lines.

Rob’s January 2012 podcast

Click if you missed October, November or December’s podcasts!

Between Netflix and Amazon alone, we can easily spend as much time watching TV over the Web as we do over the air. (We canceled our TV service back in 2009.)

Even for the vast majority of TV viewers who have not cut the cord on cable or satellite, “connected” has become a major selling point. Some people call these Internet-linked sets “smart TVs,” but you could argue that eventually we’ll just call them “televisions”: The NPD Group’s DisplaySearch unit estimated in November that 27 percent of all flat-panel TVs sold worldwide last year would have some level of Internet access, with that number hitting 54 percent by 2015.

For now, though, “some level” covers many different things. Most connected TVs, along with connected Blu-ray players and other under-the-TV boxes that stream Internet media, sacrifice compatibility for simplicity. They’re less work than tethering a PC or Mac to a TV, but they can only connect to a site or service if they offer an app for it.

(You don’t have to like that trend. But with the failure of Adobe’s efforts to turn its Flash format into a common language among living-room hardware, you’re stuck with it anyway.)

That means these connected devices’ menus don’t all offer the same entrees. After Netflix–a service so near ubiquity that it’s campaigning to have its own button on other vendors’ remotes–the selection quickly gets less consistent.

YouTube would seem like an obvious call, but it’s absent from Roku’s otherwise absurdly-comprehensive Web receivers (although the company says it’s working on that) and Vizio’s sets.

Amazon’s popular video-on-demand service, in turn, gets a prominent spot on Panasonic, Sony and Vizio TVs and Roku boxes but not the Apple TV, Sharp’s sets or recent Samsung models.

Hulu’s Hulu Plus service, a newer entry in the Internet-video market, has a home on some LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Vizio TVs, plus Roku devices, but not the other hardware noted here. A similar pattern holds with YouTube rival Vimeo and Netflix competitor Vudu and the video services of Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL.

Those sports sites, unfortunately, usually limit real-time game watching to people outside of a team’s city. ESPN, in turn, only offers its ESPN3.com service in app form on Microsoft’s Xbox 360, although Google TV owners can watch it using that system’s built-in browser.

(I often hear from readers who want access to the major TV networks’ own sites. But since those companies usually block Google TV users from watching video clips there, the odds of them providing connected-TV apps look poor for now.)

Things are even less settled outside of video. The Pandora Web-radio service may be on its way to securing a spot in every other car stereo, but among these vendors only LG, Roku, Sharp, Sony and Vizio tout support for it.

I suppose this disarray shouldn’t be a huge surprise in a category of hardware that didn’t exist six years ago. But in the interest of speeding up this evolution, I have three suggestions for the industry:

One: Social-networking sites belong on your small screen, not your big one. I don’t get why so many connected sets provide access to either Facebook, Twitter or both–don’t most buyers of such hardware already own a smartphone or tablet that provides better access to those services?

(Maybe I’m just old. If there really is demand for reading tweets or Facebook status updates from across the room, please inform me via telegram.)

Two: We need better home media-sharing options. Outside of the Apple TV, playing your computer’s photos, music and videos generally requires setting up DLNA (short for Digital Living Network Alliance) file sharing.

This can work reasonably well in Windows, but Mac OS X doesn’t support DLNA without assistance from third-party software. And in either scenario, it falls short of the simple, reliable synchronization I saw when I tested a Squeezebox music player eight years ago, which used a simple bit of add-on software to simplify complicated media sharing.

Three: If nothing else, can manufacturers at least agree to provide searchable, sortable lists of their connected devices’ Web-media apps on their own Web sites, so shoppers can know what they’re getting and buy accordingly?

While I’m at CES, I try to capture the highlights of the show through the eyes of attendees. This year I hit the floor with Lindsay Bianco to ask attendees what the coolest gadgets were and why they thought it was important to come to CES this year. Although it’s interesting to hear what attendees think is cool, it’s even more interesting to learn why they like a device and how they would use it. The video below captures some of the enthusiasm at the show. My other favorite interviews are Why is CES Important to You? and Coolest Gadgets Day 1 and 2.  For more CES interviews and fun product demos, visit CESonthetube.

That CRT probably has company in a closet, basement or attic: other obsolete electronic items that also deserve better than the trash. They and other gadgets incorporate hazardous materials like lead and mercury; although the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that a properly run landfill will contain that refuse, other studies suggest that refuse can leak out into the environment under some conditions.

As a result, 17 states have banned throwing out electronic hardware with regular trash, even if they rarely enforce these bans. (CEA, as you might imagine, would prefer one nationwide law about electronics recycling.)

Fortunately, it’s gotten easier to send your electronics to a more suitable fate: recycling, followed by safe disposal of whatever toxic trash is left over. And more people realize their “e-cycling” options: While a 2007 CEA survey found that only 24 percent of consumers knew about nearby recycling programs, that number is now at 58 percent.

They do, however, face a potentially confusing variety of choices–as you can see by searching at CEA’s greenergadgets.org or the widget below this post. Let me walk you through the ones I’ve tried.

The most tempting solution is to make money off the problem by selling your e-junk. Sites such as BuyMyTronics, Gazelle, MyBoneyard and YouRenew will pay for older electronics and in some cases cover shipping costs. But I’ve found that you can eke out a little more money through eBay–even for castaway items like old chargers for camera batteries.

Donation works as well. Beyond charities and Freecycle, remember that many local user groups (in the Washington area, for example, the Capital PC User Group and Washington Apple Pi) will refurbish old computers.

In terms of recycling, you have three main options: an electronics manufacturer, your local government, or a retailer.

I’ve recommended recycling programs run by such companies as Apple, Dell, HP and other before. But I have to admit that I’ve yet to try any of them. Why? I always forgot about any dead gadgets at home whenever I was making whatever purchase would have qualified for free recycling through these systems.

I have, however, used municipal e-cycling many times. Most are not that convenient: Just as many jurisdictions handled paper and glass recycling in an earlier decade, you have to drop off their e-trash at a designated central location.

Around Washington, that’s how the District of Columbia, Fairfax County and Alexandria in Virginia, and Montgomery County and Prince George’s County in Maryland operate. But in 2009, Arlington County, Virginia–where CEA and I are based–launched a more convenient curbside electronics pickup option.

Finally, you have programs run by such retailers as Staples and Best Buy. (Both retailers’ options get a nod from the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, which has criticized some e-cycling programs for exporting the toxic problem to prisons or other countries.) The latter–unlike many other recycling programs–also stopped charging to recycle CRTs up to 32 inches back in November.

Short of curbside pickup, this is my current favorite. Even if you weren’t planning to to go one of these stores, it easily beats trekking out to a trash-transfer station. The stores, of course, hope you’ll decide to pick up something while you’re there.

Yet after this progress, a further holdup to recycling hasn’t improved much: Computers still demand extra work to scrub the sensitive information stored on them.

Consider how smartphones mostly get this right: Almost all include a hard-reset option in their system-settings apps to delete your data and restore the original configuration while keeping any system-software updates intact; see the Factory Reset wiki for device-specific instruction.

(If you don’t want to wait for traces of your old data to get washed away by the next owner’s information, iOS devices should make your data unrecoverable automatically, while on Android phones you will probably need to run third-party software.)

Computers, on the other hand, tend to hide their factory-reset option in a startup sequence (in Windows) or on an operating-system disc (on a Mac). They also don’t preserve any system updates you’ve installed.

Securely deleting your data, as I’ve outlined before, gets trickier yet. First you’ll want to create a new “administrator” account in Windows or Mac OS X, then delete your old user account’s files using the open-source Eraser in Windows or the “Secure Empty Trash” command of OS X.

This looks like an odd oversight. With the effort companies put into their setup experiences, I’d like to see more attention paid to easing the user’s farewell to a device.

That may leave one final last obstacle to safely disposing of old electronics: our own apathy. As I write this, I have an aging HP printer/scanner collecting dust at home. Anybody want to make me an offer for it?

By Jamie Helgren, Temporary CEA Librarian

After ten weeks at the CEA library, I’ve picked up a lot of trivia about the tech industry.

For instance, fax machines are still quite common in small businesses in the UK. 3D printing is incredibly cool. And I had no idea electronic toothbrushes were so popular among women in Japan.

My first day in the Market Research Department, I felt like a fish out of water when everyone introduced themselves by sharing what was on their technology wish lists, and only half of the devices were familiar to me. I am in no way an early adopter. In fact, if I hadn’t won an iPod as a door prize six years ago, chances are good that I still wouldn’t have one.

Despite my apparent lack of interest in the latest and greatest tech gadgets, I’ve developed a growing curiosity about one aspect of the CE industry in particular: consumer behavior. Even if I don’t have a smart phone, other people do, and they’re using them in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes. What I find fascinating – more so than the device itself – is what people do with it and why.

Answering those questions not only offers incredible insight into the evolution of our society and culture, but also provides valuable feedback for companies to utilize in their product development. Improved CE products means consumers can do whatever they need to do more quickly, more easily, and (hopefully) better.

Though I’ve admittedly tried to avoid following some tech trends in the past, going forward I will embrace them in a new way. Working at CEA inspired an appreciation of their impact even when I choose not to participate myself. Or at least, participate in the expected ways.

My professional interest in news and information forces me to consider all platforms and channels through which people are creating and sharing content, including electronic devices. Eventually I suppose I’ll get an e-reader or something similar, but until then I’m content to observe and analyze how others choose and use their own devices.

And when I am ready to make a purchase, I’ll be ahead of the game – thanks to everything I learned at CEA.

Jamie has recently received her  Master’s of Library and Information Science from the University of Denver, and she has research experience in various internships such as the Library of Congress and CNN, and now she is on to do one for NPR in January. 

by Gary Shapiro

Today, Congressional advocates for the anti-innovation legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) formally declared defeat and said they would pull the legislation from consideration. I had confidentially and publicly predicted this result in early December.

With this victory fresh in mind, I want to make sure the CE.org audience knows my view of how this happened.

First, many of you know (especially if you have been around for a while or read my book The Comeback), I have spent more than 30 years fighting for innovation and against efforts to restrict it. Often this meant going head to head with the copyright lobby, who always wanted to ban, restrict, and/or tax almost every CE innovation. Think of the VCR, DAT, minidisc, DCC, PVR and even the Internet. We won many battles in Congress and the courts, but there is no question that the content lobby has in every case spent much more than us on lobbying; given more in campaign contributions; and had a more single-focus on copyright legislation while we cover other issues like the environment, labor, trade, etc. Indeed, Politico recently estimated that we have recently been outspent by a factor of 10 to one.

So along the way the content community successfully extended the copyright term 14 times since LBJ, enhanced penalties for infringement beyond reason, expanded the definition of copyright and even forced design changes in certain CE products. Most of these changes to the law hurt the American public and were unhelpful to innovation. Indeed, many of these Congressional acts had real-world consequences. When Congress expanded the copyright term they extended it to works that had been in the public domain including music performed by school orchestras and bands nationwide. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said that Congress had the power to do this, however harmful to the public and despite the “limited” term mandate in the Constitution.

But we won a big one this week also as a public avalanche of input persuaded politicians that they should actually read the legislation they cosponsor and support. Internet sites, including CEA’s, went black in protest, and a record number of people contacted Congress in one day. Politicians declared their opposition or withdrew their support for the legislation. By Friday even the final supporters retreated. Members of Congress gave various reasons, but the truth is it was simply political calculus that swayed the day.

What we did right was being there first to warn members of Congress that this was really bad legislation. This has been CEA Senior VP of Government Affairs Michael Petricone’s passion, and he has been nonstop for a year with our friends at association CCIA and the public interest group Public Knowledge. At first it was a lonely exercise. Few believed the legislation was as bad as we claimed. Another technology association even suggested a few minor changes and suggested they would support it. But Michael, recognized as one of the best lobbyists in Washington, and his team work hard and get things done and just smile as other groups claim credit. Michael contacted many other groups, explained the legislation to them and slowly gained allies. CEA members understood and engaged. Conservative groups like the Tea Party and Heritage Foundation and liberal groups like Move-On saw the harm and spoke up. A few Members of Congress, especially Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), took the time to read and understand the legislation. They spoke up early and forcefully and were so concerned they made stopping it a top priority.

And even the White House officials listened. In October I participated in a university conference on innovation and was thrilled to see a breakout session with a top White House official report back to the larger group that a priority to encourage innovation was to defeat this legislation. I don’t know if the ultimate White House decision opposing the legislation was as politically motivated as Hollywood crudely claimed, but every indication is that this was a decision grounded in substance.

And we never gave up. Our main legislative message to the more than 150,000 attendees at International CES last week was that we needed an “army of geeks” to defeat this legislation.

What our opponents did wrong is more obvious than what we did right. It really comes down to arrogance.

I had a great early career and was cautioned that “pride cometh before the fall.” I made many mistakes and am more humble, although I still try to grow CEA and International CES by taking risks. With CEA owning and running the world’s leading trade show, I remind our staff frequently that we cannot take our success for granted and must be honest and fair with our customers, partners and constituents, including the media.

But look at what we confronted with PIPA and SOPA: The Senate Judiciary Committee never held a hearing and passed the bill by voice vote. We failed in our efforts to get any opposition or any focus on the legislation. Chairman Leahy (D-VT) – of Batman fame – and his Republican counterpart Orrin Hatch (R-UT) – a songwriter – were rightly convinced that piracy abroad is hurting U.S. companies, but they may have overly trusted their friends in the content community in concluding that the legislative approach was fine and did not require a hearing or much scrutiny. By skipping a fair and balanced hearing and simply relying on moneyed “friends,” these lawmakers missed an opportunity to improve the legislation to make it more of a rifle shot and less a nuclear bomb.

A similar process occurred in the House Judiciary Committee, albeit without a final vote. The Committee did hold a hearing and did allow one witness in opposition. This approach also did not succeed in disclosing the grave harm to national security, the Constitution, the Internet, innovation and small business creation that many of the same politicians who supported the legislation now describe. In several hours over two days in late December, the Committee rejected almost every effort to improve the legislation.

My, how things changed in a few weeks! Almost all the supporters are now on record opposing the legislation.

These politicians have to look at this as cautionary. It can’t just be the outpouring of a public tired of money controlling policy. This is truly legislation that would have had horrible consequences, and yet it almost passed. They should be angry at those in industry who advocated for the legislation and misled them on the consequences, which they either did not know or did not understand – or they were intentionally deceptive.

The Chamber of Commerce led the support for the legislation. It took out daily ads pushing the bill and listing companies allegedly supporting the legislation. Many of these companies quickly insisted their names be removed as supporters as they had simply signed on to a letter decrying piracy – not supporting the specific legislation. More, how the Chamber even ended up supporting this legislation is not clear. I suspect that the Chamber staff is paid to get revenue, and the content community provided new revenue so the Chamber forgot its substantive, free market, pro-growth and anti-litigation brand and let this content community subgroup draft and endorse the PIPA and SOPA legislation.

And what about the content community? With MPAA heads Jack Valenti and Dan Glickman gone, there is no real trusted leader. Current MPAA President Chris Dodd is ducking any responsibility as he says he just does strategy and cannot lobby, but the strategy is what failed here. The strategy was to push a one-sided approach, ignore objections and rely on your well-financed friends on the Judiciary Committees simply to approve whatever you give them. The overreach was so huge, the arrogance so large, the result so horrid – that they truly hurt their so-called friends. That’s why the legislative process should have fair and balanced hearings.

And this past week MPAA head Senator Dodd and his movie mogul constituents have made the situation worse by bashing Obama as not staying “bought.” Every fear that Americans had about a broken political system has been reinforced by the MPAA special interest approach.

This is the first time the standard copyright lobby playbook has been exposed to sunlight, and it is not only cautionary, but it is also mortifying how the public can be thrown to the wolves to satisfy the insatiable hunger of crony capitalism.

Thankfully, CEA’s reputation as an honest broker – asking for little more than that the government leave our companies alone to innovate and sell – has remained intact and is probably enhanced.

But it is never over. Be assured we need you active, engaged and aware.  And we need to confront the real issue of piracy of trademarks and copyrights. We will continue to post ways for you to contact your members of Congress on these issues via email, Facebook and Twitter at our Innovation Movement site, DeclareInnovation.com. Please keep our voices strong and loud.

And let me know what you think.

Or if you’re a Guest Blogger, feel free to use one of these buttons – you can even link back to your blog post.

Enjoy, everyone!

And let me know in the comments or via email lbianco [at] CE [dot] org if you put it on your blog!

Millions of Americans have already contacted their lawmakers in opposition to these bills but the fight is far from over. Despite growing recognition that the bill is not yet ready for consideration, the Majority Leader is insisting that PIPA be brought to the Senate floor on January 24. Thus, CEA joins many tech-related entities in having its websites, CE.org and declareinnovation.com, go dark today. We are asking that the bill not be brought to the Senate floor until there has been a hearing, and until serious concerns about private rights of action, search, overly inclusive definitions, third-party liability and other issues have been resolved.

It’s absolutely critical that we stand together and continue to fight these bills to save the Internet. Join us and contact your representatives today through social media or email.

video via

With a record 1.86 million square feet of exhibit space, I and the other estimated 153,000 attendees had a lot of hardware to survey.

It’s easy to get caught up in the specifics of new models on display and judge the show by the dent they made in the market. But you’ll get more useful insights if you zoom out a bit to see what patterns emerge from those details.

So instead of considering the new hardware unveiled at this year’s CES, I’d rather assess how all that gear might answer a few questions I often hear about the electronics industry.

“Will my next TV cost any less?”

HDTV manufacturers might as well have hoisted a “Mission Accomplished” banner over the Las Vegas Convention Center. The surest sign that prices haven’t finished dropping was not a wave of bargain-priced flat-panels on the floor (CES exhibits rarely lead off with loss leaders), but the spotlight manufacturers turned on expensive, breakthrough TV technologies like OLED (organic light-emitting diode) and 4K (four times HD resolution) screens.

I am in even less of a rush to buy either of those next-gen sets than I am to buy a 3D TV. But if a fresh round of high-end sets, with appropriately magnified profit margins, in effect subsidizes TVs for the 99 percent—please, go right ahead.

“Will I get a better, cheaper choice of things to watch?”

Once again, manufacturers are stepping up their efforts to provide a wider set of Internet media sources on connected TVs—in some cases, including full Web browsers, whether as part of a Google TV package or in a homebuilt setup.

Unfortunately, manufacturers don’t cast the only vote here: Most sports sites continue to shut out law-abiding viewers with regional blackouts. And if you want to get your cable or satellite box’s monthly cost out of the equation—forget it. After more than a decade of work, box-free cable viewing remains confined to TiVo owners and tinkering types willing to watch on a computer with add-on hardware like the HD HomeRun tune I saw. It’s sad that manufacturers have to brag that a new Fios TV app lets subscribers watch 26 channels without a separate tuner; that’s nothing we couldn’t do 15 years ago with a “cable-ready” TV.

“Will my remote get any easier?”

After the overwhelming success of no-remote interfaces like Microsoft’s Kinect, TV manufacturers may finally be taking the hint. At CES, many of them demonstrated control systems built on voice, gesture and even facial recognition with microphones and cameras on upcoming TVs.

Many of these experiments won’t make it into products. But recognizing that cramming ever-more buttons into a handheld device has become a problem is the first step towards fixing it. Maybe the answer will simply be more elegant versions of the smartphone apps some vendors already offer to control TVs and Blu-ray players. Maybe we’ll all wave our hands, Kinect-style, to control our video gear—hopefully after standardizing on the same gestures to change channels and adjust the volume.

“Will the tablet market remain an iPad market?”

After last year’s dismal debuts, I hate to express too much optimism. Vendors do seem to have learned that you can’t hope to compete with a tablet thicker and heavier than today’s iPad—much less whatever model will be on sale six months from now—but until I see more prices announced it’s hard to judge the prospects of their hardware.

Software developers also need to come through with interesting, useful apps for tablets running Google’s Android operating system. So I can’t give tablet competitors more than an incomplete grade here.

“Does the digital camera have a future?”

The point-and-shoot digital camera continues to look like an endangered species. The vendors I spoke to who were directing their efforts into such niche categories as ruggedized, water- and drop-resistant models or “ultrazoom” cameras with extreme telephoto range look to be in better shape than those pitching pure photo quality, even when augmented with smartphone-style features like “tilt-shift” effects. Sorry, but in the mass market that no longer outweighs portability.

A few vendors, such as Samsung and Kodak are going further to add WiFi-sharing features that are supposed to work with phones and tablets, not just computers. I hope somebody gets this right—because I do, in fact, need a new camera.

“Will my phone have better battery life?”

To judge from CES 2012, the fix for a phone that dies too often is an external battery pack–because the phones themselves seem to be headed in the wrong direction.

Screens are getting ever larger–the 4.5-in. displays on many 2011-vintage smartphones look compact next to the 4.7-in. screen of HTC’s Titan 2 or the 5.3-in. display of Samsung’s Galaxy Note—even as many of these new releases include fast but power-hungry LTE wireless support. Their power sources just aren’t keeping up.

It’s a sad state of affairs when you get more detail about battery life in Intel’s pitch for “Ultrabook” laptops than in a presentation for a new Android phone. Just ask any reporter who covered CES.

Have other questions about the show? You can ask me in real time at noon Friday, when I’ll host the first in a series of Web chats for CEA. http://blog.ce.org/index.php/live-chat/

By: Crossroads Public Relations (On Behalf of Valencell Technologies)

For me, the highlight of Day 1 at CES was the “It’s Not Just Tech,  It’s About Aspiration” panel at the Sports and Fitness Tech Summit.  Panelists included  Valencell CEO Steven LeBoeuf , Justin McCarthy of Garmin International, Jim Minarik of Polk Audio, James Park of Fitbit, Dave Wang of Striiv and Rich Schmelzer GeoPalz Technology consultant, fitness fan and avid blogger Denise Lee Yohn served as the moderator.

It was an interesting collection of fitness related technologies targeting everything from kids, families, elite athletes, mainstream fitness fans and everything in between. As a matter of fact, that was one of the challenges panelists discussed – developing and delivering a technology or product that has broad market appeal while also focusing on what you know best. For these companies, partnering is a good way to make the most of their products.

The fitness technology panel experts explained not only the importance of getting feedback from your customers and prospects, but integrating those comments your products. However, there is a balancing act between giving consumers what you can give them and what they actually need and want. Many of the panelists focus on delivering their fitness technology in a way that leverage’s a consumer’s current behavior through something they already do or use. In the end, the goal is to improve the consumer’s lifestyle without too much disruption.

For a hands-on experience, Denise had the unique opportunity to “try” each of the panelists’ technologies and products prior to the event to reflect on her personal experience with the audience. She seemed particularly interested in access to and accuracy of her fitness data both during and post-workout, including the ability to learn from that data to improve her fitness going forward. And like many consumers, wearability, convenience and appearance were important factors.

While the panel was fun and the technologies were interesting, the appeal went well beyond that. For me, the panel and all of the technologies demonstrated what I think is an important shift in the consumer electronics industry – one from “technology just for entertainment’s sake” to “technology that is really helping people live better (and hopefully healthier) lives.” With all the bright lights, loud noise and buzz about the latest and greatest consumer gadget, that message can get lost at a show like CES. Hopefully with more emphasis, such as events like the Sports and Fitness Tech Summit and Fitness and Digital Health Tech Zones, the message will be heard a little more in the consumer electronics industry.

The 2012 International CES show floor officially opened this morning with a record number of exhibitors — more than 3,100 — but before the show floor even opened, companies introduced more than 100 exciting new products to the press at the CES Unveiled event on Sunday, and Press Day yesterday, Monday, January 9.

Press Day kicked off at 8 a.m. at The Venetian and featured a jam-packed scheduled of press conferences and press day power sessions up until 5:45 p.m. The media then made their way up to the Palazzo Ballroom to hear Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s pre-show keynote address, hosted by well-known TV personality Ryan Seacrest (insert blushing emoticon).

Press day was full of unique presentations, product launches, displays and demos. A few noteworthy new products we observed include:

LG Electronics: 55-inch 3D OLED TV, 4mm thin and weighs 16.5 pounds

Dish Network: Hopper, the industry’s smallest and most energy-efficient whole-home DVR entertainment system

Nokia: The Lumina 900, a Windows-based smartphone with Nokia Drive GPS and integrated apps

Audiovox Electronics: A new product line called Insite, featuring a series of personal property tracking devices that monitor everything from automobile on-board diagnostics to personal property tracking

Ford/NPR: Together with Ford, NPR announced that its smartphone App is coming to SYNC, making it the first news organization to embrace Ford’s voice-activated in-car operating system

I’m excited to walk the endless length of the show floor this afternoon and witness the cutting-edge technologies making their way into 2012!

What products made you “oooh” and “ahhh” on the show floor today? Let us know in the comment box below!

A great deal has changed about this show since I stepped off the plane at McCarran Airport in 1998 and encountered the first of many long taxi lines. The exhibit space has sprawled outward; the laptops of reporters have gotten lighter and smaller; the total bandwidth consumed has escalated exponentially.

While this year’s show was getting into gear, I was mulling over these changes and what they mean for the industry as a whole.

Decline of the defining product.

Back when its official name was still the Consumer Electronics Show, you could define each year’s show by the genre of gadget that dominated it. In 1998 digital TV took the stage; Blu-ray had its turn on the runway in 2004.

But the last such defining category was 3-D TV, the big deal of 2009—which has since proved to be a much smaller deal for consumers. You can blame part of that on the declining role of new physical-storage formats in the electronics industry; companies like Amazon and Apple also get credit for reinventing the e-book reader, smartphone and tablet away from CES.

Either way, CES looks less like a showroom and more like a bazaar. Since I think a decentralized market offers more openings for innovation, I’ll count that as an upgrade.

A lead actor loses the limelight.

You also could count on one firm landing in the bulk of the headlines about CES: Microsoft. Its keynotes kicked off the show, and its product launches set many other firms’ agendas. But between such high-profile flops as SPOT smart watches and the less-public but more significant failure of its effort to make its Windows Media formats industry standards, this company no longer moves the market as it once did.

So I was less than shocked to see Microsoft announce that it would no longer keynote the show, although its decision to stop exhibiting was more of a surprise: In Windows Phone 7 and the upcoming Windows 8, the company seems to have some good stories to tell.

(Note that, as CEA’s Jason Oxman wrote here earlier, Microsoft will almost certainly continue sending executives and engineers to the show.)

Our eyes wander from big screens to small ones.

From 1998 onward, TV screens got larger (and flatter) at every CES. But as the size of an affordable flat-panel set steadily expanded, a funny thing happened: The smallest screen we carry, the one on our phones, got a lot more interesting. It brings us the Web, it steers us home, it runs a growing universe of apps, and it even plays video. The smartphone may even help make the big screen more useful: An app on my phone lets it double as a remote control for our Blu-ray player.

Everything will connect to the Internet.

Because the cost of adding connectivity to a device has collapsed while the bandwidth available in many homes has broadened, it’s getting to be an assumption that anything big enough to have a remote control will incorporate an Ethernet port or a WiFi receiver. Those have helped to liberate Web media from our computers; they’ve also made it easier to keep hardware up to speed with updates from manufacturers.

Sure, some of this gets a little ridiculous. The WiFi-connected fridge I saw last year certainly seems a bit much—but you know, I wouldn’t mind seeing a major appliance report its electrical consumption to me over the Internet.

Marginalization of audio- and videophiles.

News flash: Customers have voted overwhelmingly for portability over purity. The successor to the CD turned out not to be the ultra-high-fi SACD and DVD-Audio formats, but MP3 and AAC files that sound no better than the CD, while the future of video looks increasingly like digital streams and downloads instead of optical discs.

There will always be a market for high-end audio and video—this year, I expect to see many “4K” screens with four times the resolution of HDTV—but those products no longer mark the outlines of the average customer’s aspirations. And that represents an enormous shift in how the business has been able to present itself.

Green is a go.

You’re well advised to be a little skeptical of manufacturers claiming a newfound environmental sensitivity. But from what I’ve seen, the change is real: Eco-marketing has gone from simply claiming an Energy Star certification by the Environmental Protection Agency—something that hasn’t been that hard to obtain—to offering hard numbers, as I saw three years ago when TV vendors began showing off sets with power meters to report their electrical consumption.

Cooperation isn’t.

Sadly, the electronics industry hasn’t lost its appetite for format wars. Standards continue to arrive late (a pointless dispute over memory-card formats only ended in 2010) or not at all (you still can’t buy a TV that can tune into cable or satellite service without the help of an external box).

This history of self-inflicted conflict makes the industry’s biggest success at standardization over the last decade—the HDMI cables that carry audio and video between most of our gadgets—look even more remarkable in retrospect.

During the keynote address, Microsoft Corp. President and CEO Steve Ballmer announced that there are more than 1.3 billion Windows devices in use around the globe.

“We have a chance in next year to really raise our game across all of our products,” said  Ballmer.

Microsoft announced Kinect is coming to Windows on February 1, 2012. They demoed the Windows phone showcasing new models launched at CES today including the Nokia Lumia 900 and HTC Titan 2. They continued with a demo of Windows 8 designed to deliver a no compromise experience, and announced the global launch of the Windows Store coming this February with free and paid apps.

Finally they showcased the new Xbox experience with Kinect as an entertainment hub offering a different kind of entertainment experience delivering the content you want with the people you care about. They announced Comcast’s Xfinity will soon launch on the Xbox and a partnership with News Corporation to bring Fox to the Xbox along with many other partners making it truly the all-in-one entertainment device for the living room.

CEA President & CEO, Gary Shapiro, presented Ballmer with a gift to commemorate 14 years of Microsoft keynotes at CES. Here’s a video of that moment:

And here are the faces of CES! These are the people who work tirelessly behind-the-scenes to build and design the amazing booths you’ll see tomorrow: