Gary Shapiro is the President and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, the organizers of the Consumer Electronics Show CES. He says that CES 2013 has been the best CES ever. They call CES the center stage for innovation.
My only complaint (other than them closing the press room at 6:30pm, do they expect us to upload and publish all our videos filmed during the day in only half an hour?) is that I had nowhere near enough time to see everything. All 3300 exhibitors, 800 people speaking, so many different conferences and other related things around CES, tons of company’s private meeting rooms also showing off so many things. By the next year’s CES, maybe I can find a way to optimize my video-blogging further, somehow get the time to film more than the 75 videos that I’ve posted.
Giulia D’Amico, Vice President of Business Development at One Laptop per Child Association (OLPCA) launches the OLPC XO Learning System, a user interface optimized for Children’s learning on Android Tablets. Vivitar is licencing XO Learning to launch their first OLPC XO Tablet in all WalMart stores in the USA by the end of Spring 2013. The initial Vivitar OLPC XO tablet features a 1.6Ghz dual-core (my guess Rockchip RK3066), 1024×600 screen, and the price is going to be very competitive (perhaps $99?), the target for WalMart is to reach all the Children in the USA in the next few months with this OLPC XO Tablet.
Every child has dreams and XO Learning directs the child’s passion, creativity and energy for these dreams into a new user interface that has 12 dreams. Such dreams include “I want to be” an artist, a musician and a scientist. Each dream features a rich learning experience and applications, books, games and videos that allow children ages 3 to 12 to naturally explore their dreams and learn at the same time.
“The challenge in computing and education is to use the technology to develop new ways for children to learn. The rich content of the dreams allows the child’s natural passion to be directed into learning experiences,” said Giulia D’Amico, the lead designer of XO Learning. OLPCA teamed with the legendary designer Yves Behar of Fuse Project and his team to create the XO Learning user interface and cover.
The content in XO Learning has been curated and selected for age-appropriateness and learning value by OLPCA, in collaboration with Common Sense Media, the leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping parents and teachers make informed decisions about media. Common Sense Media offers more than 18,000 media ratings and reviews based on both robust educational research and child development guidelines. XO Learning also offers a full range of parental controls and user IDs for up to three children, a dashboard where the child or the parent can review usage, types of content and the skills the child is developing. Press a single icon and XO Learning switches from English to Spanish with all new content depending on the language. Additional languages will be available in future releases.
Giulia D’Amico, OLPC Vice President of Business Development, unboxes and talks about the all-new XO-4 Touch One Laptop Per Child laptop, featuring the new Marvell Armada PXA2128 dual-core 1.2Ghz 40nm processor, Marvell 8787 WiFi chip and the Neonode IR Touch touchscreen technology. The OLPC XO-4 Touch now also features a HDMI output. Currently still running Fedora Linux based Sugar OS, the OLPC is thinking to port Sugar to Android to use on all OLPC Laptop/Tablet devices during 2013. Thus far, OLPC has shipped over 2.8 Million Laptops to children in schools worldwide. Australia is going to be the first country to deploy over 55 thousand OLPC XO-4 Touch laptop/tablets in the months to come.
Marvell shows off the new OLPC XO-4 powered by the Marvell PXA2128 dual-core 1.2Ghz, Marvell 8787, and uses Neonode IR touch screen technology to thus add touch functionality to the One Laptop Per Child XO-4 laptop. Performance is thus increased and battery life further improved by using this latest 40nm process node Marvell ARM Processor in the upgrade.
The XO 4.0 is powered by the Marvell ARMADA PXA2128. Optimized by ARM v7 high-performance mobile processors with Hybrid-SMP technology at up to 1.2GHz, the PXA2128 reduces power consumption by roughly half and enables an extended battery life thanks to a low-power mobile (LPM) processor.
Features of the Marvell ARMADA PXA2128 include:
Marvell optimized ARM®v7 dual High-Performance Mobile (HPM) processors with Hybrid-SMP technology at up 1.2GHz
Architecturally matched ARMv7 Low-Power Mobile (LPM) processor optimized with Hybrid-SMP technology for extended battery life
Dual-channel independent memory controllers (LPDDR2 or DDR3/DDR3L)
Multiple power islands, dynamic voltage/frequency scaling, clock and power gating and standby modes
Powerful hardware accelerators for 2D/3D graphics, 1080p video, HiFi audio codecs and camera ISP
Dedicated security engine with hardware keys, secure memory and ARM® TrustZone® for secure boot and cryptography
Marvell’s Avastar 88W8787 delivers the wireless performance and range that will make the XO 4.0 a connected learning experience. Designed for both simultaneous and independent operation of the following:
IEEE 802.11a/g/b and 802.11n payload data rates for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)
Bluetooth 3.0 + High Speed (HS) (also compliant with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR)
FM transmit and receive (digital encoder/decoder FM radio with RDS/RBDS)
The device supports the 802.11i security standard through implementation of the AES/CCMP, WEP with TKIP, AES/CMAC, and WLAN WAPI security mechanisms
Pansonic is showing off their 4K Camcorder prototype, displaying real-time 4K 30fps video to their 20.4″ prototype 4K IPS alpha LCD display, they are also showing playback of recorded 4K video to their 47″ 4K prototype IPS alpha LCD display.
Check out the $99 (retail MSRP) http://www.wime.tw NanoPhone that can be used as the NanoWatch wrist watch. It connects to your Smartphone using Bluetooth and it can also use its own built-in GPRS SIM card modem. The Wime NanoWatch does not run Android, but its embedded Linux OS synchronizes with Android: “Smart advisor that will remind you the new SMS, miss call, Gmail of your android smart phone”. They gave me a review sample, I’ll try to post a video review in the days/weeks to come. I’ll try to figure out exactly what kind of features work yet in sychronization with my Bluetooth Android devices. Let me know in the comments what I should try to test on it.
3D Printing is being hyped by some bloggers as possibly enabling some type of peer-to-peer device printing revolution. I’m not totally sure about that. But as all the worlds consumer electronics and pretty much everything that we use in our lives most likely has been 3D printed while the industrial designers, architects and all creative creators think up, design, improve upon all the devices that we use. Upcoming new more affordable 3D Printers such as Cubify’s $1299 Cube 3D printer, printing in PLA or ABS plastics, allows more people to take part in the process of thinking up, 3D printing all types of mockup, molds, 3D print basic forms that possibly also can be used in certain basic circumstance.
The MHL Consortium (Mobile High-Definition Link) shows some of the latest uses for the MHL connector, using Micro-USB to output to HDMI and charge at the same time. Providing up to 7.1 audio and 1080p video. HDMI sticks like the Roku Streaming Stick can charge through the MHL connector.
MOQ 1000 is $148 with a 1280×800 screen, they show 11.6″ prototype, $140 Remote controlled quad-copter drone with camera and self balancing (similar to Parrot) with support for WiFi and Bluetooth Android and iOS remote control, $122 9.7″ RK3066, $102 10.1″ 1280×800 VIA8850, $76 7″ 1024×600 IPS RK3066, A31 9.7″ and more. Eken sells about 150 thousand tablets per month. They also sell 600-700 thousand tablet PCBs per month to other small to medium sized Chinese tablet manufacturers.
World Wide Touch Technology (Holdings) Limited shows their Biometric Fingerprint platform for encrypted chatting. Including an Android smartphone cover case that includes such biometric fingerprint reader.
