As a break from all this CES news, let’s talk about robots—specifically, which countries are chock full of them. Unsurprisingly, Japan has the densest robot population, with 295 industrial automatons per every 10,000 workers.
The folks at ZPower, who make the silver-zinc batteries that get 40% better run-time than Lithium-Ion, just told us that a major laptop and a major mobile phone manufacturer will use the technology this year.
Hey, we’re back at CES. Yesterday was day zero, full of press conferences, but today is the day we all hit the floor. I actually never made it there.
Hands-on impressions: ahhhhhhhh. Adam Frucci left, Mark Wilson right, some dude we don’t know in the middle. More:
Today at CES, I met with Steven Sinofsky, Windows 7 development chief, and asked about the unprecedented free-for-all Windows 7 Beta available tomorrow to anyone who’s interested. Is this the “free upgrade” people wanted?
newVideoPlayer("/fordsync3.flv", 475, 286,"");Ford Sync 3.0′s lovely Samantha robo-voice can now soothingly guide you to any destination you tell her, incorporating real-time traffic updates to help plan your trip. This is how it works.
Today, with the floor open, is the first real day of CES. By now we’ve seen a good deal of gear from the big companies, and here’s the best so far.
I love the Palm Pre’s UI. Lots of it is original and revolutionary on a mobile, but some feels borrowed from desktops. Which somehow makes it an amazing phone.
2008: Verizon’s cookie lady hands out baked treats as readily as Washington Mutual doled out housing loans. 2009: Need to shred your deed and get outta town? Staples says: Easy.
When Peter Kafka asked if the Palm Pre’s price would be less than the iPhone’s $US199, Palm CEO Ed Colligan replied, “Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product?”
