AllThingsD » Consumer Electronics Association http://allthingsd.com Wed, 23 May 2012 22:09:39 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 Can We Finally Say: Bye-Bye, Booth Babes? http://allthingsd.com/20120210/can-we-finally-say-bye-bye-booth-babes-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20120210/can-we-finally-say-bye-bye-booth-babes-2/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:37:25 +0000 Joshua Weinberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=173614 Isn’t it time for our industry to stop using “booth babes,” once and for all?

There used to be an annual tradition around Comdex — every year, a week or two after Comdex (and then later CES), InfoWorld or Computerworld would write an editorial complaining about the use of “booth babes” at the show.

These editorials and the maturing of our industry seemed to have had a great effect. Each year, there seem to be fewer and fewer booth babes at major tech shows. They are still there, just in smaller numbers.

Attitudes also continue to change. More and more companies are realizing that booth babes are out of place at tech shows. These companies have also begun to realize that booth babes may be a bad business move.

In writing this article, I Googled to find the gadget and gamer blogs’ annual roundups of trade show booth babes, and was pleasantly surprised to find a comment from Daniel Cooper, an Engadget contributing editor, that said:

Oh, and regarding ‘booth babes:’ scantily clad women trying to tease the über-geeks at CES: if your product needs a semi-nude woman to sell it to nerds, you don’t have faith in your product.

As a launch consultant, I couldn’t agree more. Nowadays, to break through the noise, companies need an innovative product, a great user experience and clear communications. Booth babes provide none of these, and can even distract from the stories that companies are trying to tell. I have typically found that the companies using booth babes do not have much of substance to show, or are trying to mask other problems. And in the unusual case when it is a great product being promoted by a booth babe, many people miss it, because they make an assumption that it couldn’t be a great product if it is being promoted by a booth babe.

As we move into an era where we are no longer just selling technologies to enthusiasts but are selling to mainstream consumers, our industry’s collective attitude and image are important. This year, it was not an industry pub that was covering the issue, but the very mainstream BBC. Not only does this piece highlight the problem, but it tries to send the message that the industry can’t see what’s right in front of its face. If we don’t reform as an industry, we can expect more of the same. Every bit of negative attention focused on our industry is a moment when the media and customers are not focused on our industry’s products. And let’s not forget how many technology purchasing decisions are made by women. Is this the image we want to send these customers?

The industry has done a good job of encouraging women to move into science, math and technology, and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) did a good thing in “divorcing” CES from the adult video show, but for the industry to not try to do something about booth babes sends a very mixed message.

For whatever reason, be it business, social or other, as an industry, we should actively encourage a move away from booth babes at tech trade shows, once and for all.

Unfortunately, the industry does not currently take a strong stand against booth babes and one prominent press event organizer, Pepcom, uses them at virtually all its events.

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the CEA, owners of CES, said “As long as they don’t violate show rules, I can’t do anything about it.” While creating rules banning booth babes will probably never work, that does not mean that organizations like the CEA and Pepcom and others should do nothing.

But Gary also says “… and if some companies think it works, they are going to use models in their booths.” And I think that is where the challenge is for our industry: Educate companies that booth babes do not work, and are not welcome.

As an industry, we should endeavor to teach companies that best practices for launching products, exhibiting at shows and sponsoring events is more about great products and clear messages than sexy women. These shows should begin to include text to this effect in their exhibitor and sponsorship manuals, and should work on other ways to discourage this practice. In addition, industry publications and blogs should stop publishing booth-babe roundups, and should not use pictures of scantily clad women showing off tech products.

Lets get together as an industry and, once and for all, say, “Bye-bye, booth babes.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120210/can-we-finally-say-bye-bye-booth-babes-2/feed/ 36 Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year http://allthingsd.com/20111130/dell-will-drop-the-flashy-vegas-act-for-ces-this-year/ http://allthingsd.com/20111130/dell-will-drop-the-flashy-vegas-act-for-ces-this-year/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:15:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=148648 Dell’s presence at the Consumer Electronics Show the past few years has been hard to miss. This year, it may be hard to find. Sources say the company is scaling back its participation in the annual trade show — drastically.

While it never had a big footprint on the floor of the show itself, for the past three years it has hosted media and showgoers in the Dell Suites — an entire floor of The Palms Casino Resort tricked out with the latest in Dell hardware. This year, however, the company is approaching CES with a bit more restraint.

It won’t be commandeering the The Palms’ Hardwood Suite to create a “smart living space.” Instead, sources say, Dell is opting for moderation, taking meetings in hotel suites and CES conference rooms and perhaps piggybacking on the keynote of one of its partners for a big product announcement (ultrabooks, anyone?).

So the company will still have some visibility at the event, just not the sort of high-profile, conspicuous-consumption-style visibility it has had in years past.

Why the shift? That’s not clear. Dell has had a very spotty record in the consumer gadget market dating back to its Axim handhelds and DJ music players. That has continued to its recent forays into smartphones and tablets. And the company’s attention has been leaning heavily toward the enterprise of late, which makes CES a markedly less useful event for it.

Indeed, speaking at the Credit Suisse conference today, Steve Felice, Dell’s president for Consumer, Small and Medium Business, said the company was looking to “prune” products to focus on more profitable areas. That message echoes comments made during Dell’s last earnings call when the company said consumer sales in the U.S. and Western Europe recently had led it to step away from “low-value” PC opportunities to focus more on servers, services and networking equipment (with a 6 percent drop in consumer revenue in the third quarter, that seems like a reasonable move). This undoubtedly factored in to the company’s decision to scale back at CES.

Dell Suites at CES 2011

Another theory: The Dell Suites concept has outlived its usefulness now that the company has Dell World, the customer-focused conference it inaugurated this year and plans to hold again in 2012. Why pay good money to deliver your message in the free-for-all, look-at-me shouting match that is CES when you can create your own platform from which to deliver it when people aren’t tired of listening?

Reached for comment, Dell confirmed that it is indeed dialing back its presence at CES and that it will be introducing a new product during a partner keynote, though it declined to specify which one.

“Over the last few months, we’ve been evaluating the most effective platforms that allow us to reach and engage our core consumers directly,” the company said in a statement provided to AllThingsD. “We will continue to have a presence at CES 2012, meeting with key retail customers, partners, investors, press and analysts, among others. In addition, we will be joining a key partner in their keynote presentation and we will be introducing a new product at the show. As we look ahead to calendar year 2012, we will be focused on engaging our various stakeholders through uniquely Dell experiences, such as the recently concluded Dell World and other Dell-specific events.”

Reached for comment, the Consumer Electronics Association, which produces CES, said Dell has not yet told them of its intentions for CES 2012.

(Image Credit: Dell Flickr page)

MORE CES NEWS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111130/dell-will-drop-the-flashy-vegas-act-for-ces-this-year/feed/ 0 Industry Heavyweights Say the Future of Gaming Is Console-less http://allthingsd.com/20110428/industry-heavyweights-say-the-future-of-gaming-is-console-less/ http://allthingsd.com/20110428/industry-heavyweights-say-the-future-of-gaming-is-console-less/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:45:27 +0000 Dennis Nishi http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=39538 If you were to mute the seizure-inducing throb of the Electronic Entertainment Expo and distill the crowd, what you’d have left is the Los Angeles Games Conference, an annual trade show that is put on by tech publisher Digital Media Wire and the Consumer Electronics Association.

The two-day event was held in Beverly Hills, Calif., and heavyweights from Sony, Electronic Arts and dozens of other companies that operate within and around the gaming space met with industry analysts for serious powwow about payment models, digital distribution and social media. The latter was the dominant topic in many of the panels—notably discussing Facebook as a gaming platform.

A trio of analysts prefaced the conference with a trend report. Each drew interesting points including a prediction of death for game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation. Like in the music industry, the digital delivery of games and online play is expected to eventually overtake the sales of physical products.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110428/industry-heavyweights-say-the-future-of-gaming-is-console-less/feed/ 0 It's Hard to Cut the Charging Cords http://allthingsd.com/20110215/its-hard-to-cut-the-charging-cords/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/its-hard-to-cut-the-charging-cords/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:24:07 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1649 What if there was a product that made it easy to charge all your household mobile devices and it used just a single cord to do it?

Charging pads are designed to do just that. The WildCharge Pad from PureEnergy Solutions Inc., one of the first charging pads, seemed revolutionary when it came out three years ago. It’s a small, thin pad covered in panels that conduct electricity. It plugs into the wall, and devices can be casually dropped onto it so they can start juicing up.


[ See post to watch video ]

Yet, here we are still fumbling around to find the right charging cord to plug into our phones, iPads, digital cameras and portable music players. This week, I decided to investigate why charging pads haven’t caught on with consumers.

One reason is that people may not want to buy a charging accessory when gadgets come with their own cords. Also, for devices to work with these charging surfaces, they must have special backs or cases that correspond with the pad. These can change the look of a device, making them bulky.

However, manufacturers of smart phones and other gadgets are starting to incorporate the technology behind charging pads at the design level so they aren’t so obtuse. Palm Inc., now a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard, designed a $20 (after instant rebate) accessory called the Touchstone that works as a magnetic charging dock for its Pre smart phones. A special backing still must be swapped out for the Pre’s regular back, but this looks just like the phone’s regular backing. And last week, when H-P unveiled its TouchPad tablet, due out this summer, the company confirmed this device would also work with a Touchstone charger.

DSOLUTION2

Energizer’s Inductive Charger

But why isn’t there one charging pad that works with several different gadgets and doesn’t require an unattractive sleeve? Of the different charging technologies, there isn’t one that has gained a toehold.

A group called the Wireless Power Consortium—which includes a host of different companies like smart-phone makers, wireless carriers and TV makers—created what it intends to be an international standard for interoperable wireless charging, called Qi (pronounced “chee”). The WPC hopes manufacturers will eventually make devices that are Qi compliant so they all work with the same charging pad and don’t require a sleeve, since the technology would be built in. Products using this charging standard would have a Qi logo on their packaging. Compared with the current situation of using different chargers for each device, Qi sounds heavenly.

Though the WPC includes members like Samsung, LG Electronics, Verizon Wireless and Motorola, none of the companies has introduced a Qi-compliant product. When I asked a Motorola spokeswoman if it had plans to use the Qi standard in its products, she would only say that the company is evaluating the technology for future devices. Likewise for BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd., a WPC member. A spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on future product plans.

In September, another trade group, the Consumer Electronics Association, created a panel to sort through various opinions on wireless power technical standards. The sole aim of the group is to collect and share information with manufacturers. This group is examining five issues that include: nomenclature; safety; radio-frequency emissions and efficiency; and standby measurement. A CEA spokeswoman said the panel and the WPC share many of the same members and that the panel plans to share information on a charging standard.

DSOLUTION

Duracell’s myGrid charging pad, which uses the conductive charging technology.

There are two types of charging technology and it isn’t clear yet which one will become the standard. The Qi standard involves a technology called inductive charging, while other companies, like PureEnergy Solutions, use a conductive charging technology.

One big difference is that inductive chargers don’t require metal-on-metal connections to charge a device like conductive chargers do. This means inductive charging will work through lots of different materials, including wood, plastic or leather. This could allow pads to be built into different surfaces, such as airplane trays and office furniture. Late last year, the first Qi-enabled wireless charging station was installed at Windsor International Airport in Ontario.

One product that is Qi compliant is Energizer’s $89 Inductive Charger (http://energizer.com/inductive), but this still requires sleeves for devices. The sleeves cost $35 each and are available for BlackBerrys, the iPhone 3G or 3GS and iPhone 4. Late this summer, Energizer will introduce a universal adapter with micro- and mini-USB compatibility.

Powermat USA’s $60 Wireless Charging System for the iPhone 4 (powermat.com) uses a slightly different technology that requires devices to rest on charging pads in specific positions.

On the conductive front, PureEnergy Solutions has licensed its WildCharge Technology to other companies. All licensees feature a WildCharge Mark of Interoperability on their products so consumers know which products are compatible with the WildCharge charging pad.

Duracell uses this technology in its MyGrid line of products (http://3.ly/A7Yh), including the $85 iPhone Starter Kit and a $90 cellphone starter kit. RadioShack will use WildCharge Technology in its $50 Enercell Charging Pad (http://3.ly/6gcY), which will be available in June, and skins for devices that charge on these pads will cost about $30 each.

In the future, hopefully, one of these committees will figure out which technology is best to establish one standard that saves people from using a rat’s nest of power cords.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/its-hard-to-cut-the-charging-cords/feed/ 0 Proposed Spectrum Auction Could Net $36 Billion, Study Finds http://allthingsd.com/20110215/proposed-spectrum-auction-could-net-36-billion-study-finds/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/proposed-spectrum-auction-could-net-36-billion-study-finds/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:45:35 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=3242 Last week President Obama outlined a plan to auction off a big swath of wireless spectrum currently in the hands of TV broadcasters for over-the-air programming that could be repurposed toward creating a national wireless broadband network. The president said the auctions would raise about $28 billion, which would be enough to cover the costs of the $19 billion network he’d like to build, with the remainder going toward deficit reduction.

Today the the CTIA, the wireless industry trade organization, got behind the president’s plan in a big way, and suggested that the proposed spectrum auctions could bring in billions of dollars more than the president said. Using data from 13 prior spectrum auctions as a model, the organization today released the findings of a study conducted in partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association saying that an auction of 120 MHz worth of spectrum could produce revenue in the range of $36 billion to $48 billion.

The study also found that only in the top 30 markets in the continental United States will TV stations actually have to exit certain spectrum ranges to clear up sufficient spectrum for wireless broadband. In most cases, TV broadcasters will probably be satisfied with incentive auctions that give them some portion of the proceeds raised from the auctions. In a few cases it will be trickier, and the study suggests a few options like channel-sharing and repacking. Broadcasters outside the top 30 markets should not have to give up any spectrum, the study says.

The point of the study, CTIA president Steve Largent told me, is to help nudge Congress toward passing a law that will allow the Federal Communications Commission to hold incentive auctions that can help spur TV broadcasters who currently have the licenses for the spectrum. So far, broadcasters have signaled that they’re not yet entirely willing to go along with this plan. “We think this can be relatively painless for the broadcasters, but it’s still going to take a lot of work at Congress and at the FCC to get it done,” Largent said.

That the wireless industry would be getting behind Obama’s plan is no surprise given their exploding spectrum needs for data services, so there is a bit of a grain-of-salt element to the study’s findings. However it’s also a solid signal that the wireless carriers are willing to bring serious cash to bear for spectrum, which is, generally speaking, good news for all concerned.

Broadcasters are understandably taking a cautious line. In a statement issued last week in response to Obama’s speech in Michigan, Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters said, “Let’s not forget that broadcasters returned more than a quarter of TV station spectrum to the government less than two years ago, and that much of that spectrum has not yet been deployed. NAB is not against the President’s plan. We will work to ensure that incentive auctions remain truly voluntary, and that broadcasters who don’t volunteer to return spectrum–and the millions of viewers that we serve–are held harmless.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/proposed-spectrum-auction-could-net-36-billion-study-finds/feed/ 0 Go-Go Gadget Economy http://allthingsd.com/20110105/the-1-trillion-gadget-economy/ http://allthingsd.com/20110105/the-1-trillion-gadget-economy/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:15:08 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=55128 After a disappointing 2009, the consumer electronics industry grew 13 percent in 2010 and is expected to grow another 10 percent this year to $964 billion, according to a new forecast by the Consumer Electronics Association. And, if the year turns out better than expected, consumer electronics sales could surpass $1 trillion in 2011. “I’m bullish,” Consumer Electronics Association analyst Steve Koenig said on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show. “That number is truly within reach. It’s clear that global retail sales of tech products have rebounded. Tech is at the vanguard in leading the recovery.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110105/the-1-trillion-gadget-economy/feed/ 2 Trade Show Chief Touts Many Gadgets, But Not 3D TV http://allthingsd.com/20101216/trade-show-chief-touts-many-gadgets-but-not-3d-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20101216/trade-show-chief-touts-many-gadgets-but-not-3d-tv/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:52:42 +0000 Don Clark http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=34069 Gary Shapiro promises more cool stuff than ever at the giant Consumer Electronics Show in early January. But the trade group leader sounds less than enthusiastic about one of the most talked-about topics, 3D television.

In an interview Thursday, Shapiro argued that the technology has been over-hyped compared with more fundamental developments like high-definition TV, a huge driver of industry sales for much of the past decade. Giving those digital TVs the capability to simulate 3D images, by comparison, is more of an enhancement than something altogether new, he says.

“3D is not a category, it is not a product, it is a feature,” says Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association. “The truth is that every high-end TV will be 3D.”

But there are plenty of other important new categories, Shapiro says, including tablet computers and Internet-connected TVs. An avalanche of announcements about those and other products are expected at the show, whose exhibit floors are open January 6 through 9 in Las Vegas. “I’ve never been as excited,” he adds. CES this year will be “huge by any measure.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101216/trade-show-chief-touts-many-gadgets-but-not-3d-tv/feed/ 0 The Summer to Go on a Power Diet http://allthingsd.com/20100615/the-summer-to-go-on-a-power-diet/ http://allthingsd.com/20100615/the-summer-to-go-on-a-power-diet/#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:40:45 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1251 As temperatures climb to their highest levels, so, too, do the cost of home utilities bills. So how do you at least keep your energy-sucking electronics in check?


[ See post to watch video ]

Summer months are the most expensive electricity usage months of the year, according to a study from the U.S. Energy Information Association, a government agency. So whether you’re trying to save money or attempting to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, several technologies can make the task a bit easier. This week, I’ve prepared a run down of some of the many devices and websites that can help you to reduce power consumption.

Intelligent Power Strips

Call it standby power, vampire power or phantom power: When your appliances are plugged into the wall and not in use, they’re still sucking up energy. To solve this problem, some people go around their house unplugging electronics, but then they have to go around plugging these in again when they need to use them. And certain machines, like TiVos (TIVO), for example, will reboot every time they’re unplugged and plugged, which takes significantly more time than turning on a lamp after plugging it in again.

mossbergPhoto

Smart strips like the HP Monster Digital PowerCenter let you choose which plugged-in devices stay on.

A number of special power strips have come out within the year that are designed to simplify this process by ensuring devices don’t draw power while plugged in. The $40 Smart Strip Power Strip from Bits Ltd. (bitsltd.net) has either seven or 10 outlets, depending on the model. These include three red outlets for products you never want to turn off and one blue “control” outlet. Electronics plugged into the remaining white outlets stay on or shut down depending on what’s plugged into the blue outlet. So if your computer is plugged into a blue outlet and you shut it down, your speakers, scanner, printer and monitor would also turn off as long as they’re plugged into the Smart Strip’s white outlets.

A similar product, in which plugged-in electronics take their cue from a control outlet, is the $50 HP (HPQ) Monster Digital PowerCenter with GreenPower (http://3.ly/3hXF). This strip, which has six three-pronged outlets, also includes two surge-protected phone connections for fax lines or modems.

mossbergPhoto

The iGo Green Power Smart Tower.

The $80 Power Smart Tower with iGo Green Technology (http://3.ly/C7ce) includes four outlets that are always on and four that power down when anything that’s plugged in turns off. It also has two built-in USB power ports for charging via USB.

Track More, Waste Less

When people go on diets, they’re often told to write down everything they eat so they’re more conscious of what they’re ingesting every day. A study by the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford showed a 5% to 15% reduction in power consumption just by providing energy information to consumers.

One tool that could help you trace your electricity usage is the Consumer Electronics Association’s Energy Calculator (http://3.ly/gp2M). People fill in data on how much they use specific devices—like “digital television, 21 to 39 inches” or “notebook PC”— in their home per day or per month. The site calculates typical watts per device and figures out the energy-consumption costs for each over the period of a month and over a year, and then adds up the totals for each device. The idea is to let people see how small usage adjustments can have a big monetary impact over time.

If you’d rather not do the work of inputting data on your power usage, the Google PowerMeter (google.com/powermeter) might be up your alley. It digitally tracks your usage patterns using meter data supplied by your utility company and its results can be accessed from any Web browser or your iGoogle homepage. A Google representative says this service is gradually rolling out in tests with utility companies. Currently, 10 utilities are partnered with PowerMeter in five countries, including the U.S.

If your utility company isn’t one of the 10 that work with Google’s (GOOG) PowerMeter, you can buy a special gadget that monitors consumption, including some that physically hook into your fuse box. A list can be found here (http://3.ly/Un3h). One relatively less expensive device from Current Cost is $169.

Before You Buy

If you’re buying new electronics soon, you may want to consider a product’s energy efficiency before buying it.

The U.S. Department of Energy has a Web database of Energy Star compliant products, which meet requirements set by the DOE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://3.ly/SSsy).

Information on the Consumer Electronics Association website (http://3.ly/4x9P) helps people decide whether to replace or repair a product, from an efficiency standpoint.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100615/the-summer-to-go-on-a-power-diet/feed/ 0 CES Attendance Up http://allthingsd.com/20100112/ces-attendance-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20100112/ces-attendance-up/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:02:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=32451 cessignThe International Consumer Electronics Show didn’t break any attendance records this year, but it did post a slight increase in visitors–which is something in a down economy.

Preliminary registration figures from the Consumer Electronics Association reveal a headcount of over 120,000 attendees. That’s up roughly six percent from 113,085 last year and far more than 110,000 the CEA predicted.

A small, but not inconsequential bump, and one that suggests the industry is indeed beginning to turn the corner.

“The innovations unveiled this week at the 2010 International CES brought new optimism and opportunity to our industry and the global economy,” said CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro. “This show exceeded expectations with its innovation, optimism and excitement. What a great way to kick off the new decade.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100112/ces-attendance-up/feed/ 0 Behind the Scenes at D@CES Event and Party (Including a Geek Chat With Punky Brewster!) http://allthingsd.com/20100111/behind-the-scenes-at-dces-event-and-party-including-a-geek-chat-with-punky-brewster/ http://allthingsd.com/20100111/behind-the-scenes-at-dces-event-and-party-including-a-geek-chat-with-punky-brewster/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:25:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22806 TSDPUBR EC002

Here’s a lovely video BoomTown did behind the scenes at our interview event and after-party at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last Friday.

While there, the crack All Things Digital team interviewed and reported on sessions with Palm (PALM) CEO Jon Rubinstein, Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings and Google (GOOG) Android guru Andy Rubin.

But we also prepared and then partied. Here is video proof, including interviews with Cisco (CSCO) Flip unit head Jonathan Kaplan, BillShrink’s Peter Pham, Consumer Electronics Association head Gary Shapiro and–drum roll–former child star Soleil Moon Frye, who was there for Kodak (EK).

Frye has actually gone the digital mom route, although she remains well known for her role as cute-as-a-button Punky Brewster on the 1980s television series.

Yippie! Grossaroo! Holy Macanoli! Punky Power!

She uttered none of these classic lines, of course, but here’s the video anyway:


[ See post to watch video ]

(You can see all our full CES coverage here.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100111/behind-the-scenes-at-dces-event-and-party-including-a-geek-chat-with-punky-brewster/feed/ 0 CES: Steve Ballmer Keynote http://allthingsd.com/20100106/ces-steve-ballmer-keynote/ http://allthingsd.com/20100106/ces-steve-ballmer-keynote/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:00:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=31795 ballmernoteces10

Steve Ballmer is delivering his annual state-of-Microsoft address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas tonight–his second since assuming the duties of former CEO Bill Gates.

If anything like last year’s, Ballmer’s address will offer a broad overview of Microsoft’s (MSFT) consumer strategy for the year, touching on everything from the company’s hardware-software ecosystem to its home entertainment offerings.

Likely to figure prominently in tonight’s address: Windows 7 and the new touch-enabled PC form factors it has evidently inspired; Bing; and Natal, Microsoft’s controller-less game control system, which will launch in time for the 2010 holidays.

  • The keynote begins with, what else, some introductory remarks from Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro: “Happy New Year and welcome to 2010 CES, the World Cup of innovation. The past year has been a challenge. The global recession has affected all companies. Fortunately, signs are pointing upward, and I believe CES will be remembered as a turning point.”

    Let’s hope so.

  • Shapiro welcomes Steve Ballmer to the stage, and the Microsoft chief begins by noting that 2009, in case you hadn’t noticed, was a year of profound economic turbulence. But innovation persisted. And with that, he rolls a first video designed to demonstrate his point. It features “one random guy’s” experiences with technology this past year, namely Seth Meyers of “Saturday Night Live.” Seth talks to his grandmother on a Web cam. He plays videogames with a kid and loses. “Before texting existed, I never sent the wrong person a letter telling them they’re a jackass. Thanks, technology….Before Twitter, if I knew what someone’s cat was thinking, I would have had to be an idiot.”

  • Ballmer: “We’re going to focus on three things tonight. The [first is the] increasing importance of the small screen, the ever-evolving PC and the future of TV. The second is the cloud. Third is natural user interface–NUI technology. The last few decades have been absolutely stunning in the changes they’ve brought.”

  • And here’s the sound byte of the evening: “We Bing. And we Bing. And we Bing Bing Bing. At least in my world.” Ballmer says 2009 is a year in which the company has made incredible progress with Bing. “We added 11 million new users….We redefined what search should do for users–we work to understand user intent and anticipate what users are really looking for. We know we’re at the beginning of a long journey, but we think we’re off to a good start.”

    There’s some news about Bing today, a distribution deal that makes it the default search engine on HP PCs in 32 countries.

  • Also figuring prominently in 2009: Xbox. Microsoft first launched it at CES in 2001. Today, there are over 39 million Xbox 360s around the world. And more than 500 million games. The console has generated $20 billion in total game revenue.

  • Ballmer is moving on to the mobile space now. Windows Phone–technically Windows Mobile 6.5, a necessary stopgap on the path to 7.0–which debuted last fall in a nimbus of disappointment. Ballmer notes that Microsoft is announcing a new Windows Phone partnership today with T-Mobile, which is bringing HTC’s HD2 phone to the U.S. He says little about Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft’s “modern” mobile operating system, which at last check was scheduled to arrive at market sometime in late 2010.

  • Ballmer is talking up Windows 7 now. PC sales jumped 50 percent the week the OS debuted, he says. And according to research outfit NPD, sales of Windows PCs grew 50 percent over the 2009 holidays and retailers sold 63 percent more PCs than they did this time last year. Gartner (IT) now sees three percent PC unit growth in 2009–nearly 300 million PCs shipped in 2009. For 2010, Gartner sees a jump of more than 12 percent.

    “Windows 7 is by far the fastest-selling OS in history,” says Ballmer. “Clearly, consumers are saying there’s never been a better time to be a Windows 7 PC….Windows 7 is a rising tide that’s lifting all boats in the PC business.”

  • Ballmer calls Ryan Asdourian, senior product manager for Windows, to the stage. “We’re going to see some of Ryan’s favorite hardware and software,” he says. Among them the Sony (SNE) Vaio L–an all-in-one built for high-definition entertainment–and the Asus NX90, a slick-looking laptop designed with help from legendary audio firm Bang & Olufsen.

    “Being in Vegas, you’ve got to look sexy,” says Asdourian. Ballmer: “Good thing we brought some PCs.”

  • Next, some software demos–Ray Kurzweil’s Blio Ereader App?, then a new Skydrive collaboration in Windows Live. Ballmer: “Developers baby! Developers! I love the people who’ve built this stuff.”

  • Ballmer moves on to Windows Media Center and Mediaroom 2.0, which will now deliver live and on-demand TV through set-top boxes, PCs, and Windows Mobile devices like the HD2. It is coming to AT&T’s (T) U-verse. Streaming video on the HD2 looks pretty slick.

  • “The world of entertainment and content will come in different forms and flavors. But no matter what the source, Windows PCs will offer the greatest entertainment experiences in the world,” says Ballmer. And with that, he shows offs some new slate PCs. Sadly, the Courier–the dual-screen multitouch device that many had been hoping to see–is not among them, as BoomTown reported earlier today. There are, however, some cool-looking offerings from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Archos.

  • Ballmer rolls another Seth Myers video, “Milestones in Technology.” Not funny. Yeah, I don’t really miss “Saturday Night Live” at all anymore.

  • Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, takes the stage. “Computer science is the only science bounded solely by our imaginations,” he says, referring to Xbox. “2010 is going to be a landmark year for Xbox customers. We’ll be offering the best line of Xbox 360 games.” Examples: Mass Effect 2 and Splinter Cell Conviction. Also an episodic “psychological action thriller” called Alan Wake. “Imagine ‘Lost’ written by Stephen King, filmed by David Lynch,” implores Bach.

  • Bach: “What ‘Star Wars’ is to film, what Harry Potter is to fantasy books, Halo is to videogames.” And with that, he rolls some video of Halo Reach that I can’t see because I’m watching the event remotely. The game is coming in the fall of 2010, but will be available as a multiplayer beta on Xbox Live this spring.

  • Bach announces Game Room for Xbox Live! More precisely, a vintage gaming service that offers 30 classics from Atari, Intellivision, etc. The company plans to add over 1,000 games to Game Room over the next three years.

  • And here comes the pitch for Project Natal: “We’re at an exciting inflection point in tech, where we can create an experience that is more intuitive. With Natal we’re freeing you from the last barrier, the game controller.” Bach rolls a video of the folks behind the Xbox’s new natural user interface, or NUI, which is due out later this year. “Project Natal will be available this holiday 2010….It will work with your existing Xbox 360.”

  • “When I said 2010 was going to be a big year for Xbox 360, I was lying: 2010 is going to be the biggest year in Xbox history!”

  • Bach wraps things up with some big-picture remarks and–well, I guess that’s it. He leaves the stage and the house lights come back up.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100106/ces-steve-ballmer-keynote/feed/ 0 Bartz Bails on CES Keynote http://allthingsd.com/20091111/yahoo-ceo-cancels-ces-keynote/ http://allthingsd.com/20091111/yahoo-ceo-cancels-ces-keynote/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:14:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=28701

“Yahoo! is a top global brand whose vision is to be the center of people’s online lives, and Carol Bartz is leading the development of Yahoo!’s approach to delivering personally relevant, meaningful Internet experiences. We welcome Carol Bartz to the 2010 CES keynote stage to talk about what’s next for Yahoo! and the industry.”

– Consumer Electronics Association president and CEO Gary Shapiro, Oct. 13, 2009

547702043_hqzhz-thNow this is odd: Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz has canceled plans to deliver a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. This not a month after the Consumer Electronics Association boasted of her participation in a press release.

The reason for the cancellation: An alleged scheduling conflict. Said CEA spokesperson Jason Oxman: “Carol Bartz informed us late last week that her schedule has changed and she will no longer be able to deliver the speech at the 2010 International CES that Yahoo and CES had announced some weeks ago.”

It’s worth noting that prior to Oxman’s remark, which was posted to the comments of Tech Trader Daily, no official announcement of Bartz’s withdrawal was made. Indeed, the CEA press release issued yesterday announcing the addition of Qualcomm (QCOM) CEO Paul Jacobs to the CES keynote roster made no mention of Bartz at all. Moreover, her bio appears to have simply disappeared from the CES site.

As I said, odd.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091111/yahoo-ceo-cancels-ces-keynote/feed/ 0 CES to Give Apple 25,000 Square Feet of Free Advertising http://allthingsd.com/20090522/ces-to-give-apple-25000-sq-ft-of-free-advertising/ http://allthingsd.com/20090522/ces-to-give-apple-25000-sq-ft-of-free-advertising/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 11:55:44 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18124 oh-my-god-they-killed-macworldjpgIf Macworld isn’t on its last legs after Apple’s withdrawal from the event, the Consumer Electronics Association is clearly hoping the annual Apple-only convention soon will be. CEA, which hosts the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas every January, said Thursday that it is expanding the amount of show floor space dedicated to Apple. Once just a paltry 4,000 square feet, the iLounge Pavilion now maxes out at 25,000 square feet. Once populated with iPod, iPhone, and Mac applications and accessories, the Pavilion will this year feature a section for iPhone apps.

Such a drastic expansion of Apple-related show floor space will no doubt inspire speculation that the Mac maker plans to put in an appearance at CES. But that seems unlikely given the company’s reasons for bowing out of Macworld. “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers,” the company said at the time. “The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.”

In any event, this is unfortunate news for Macworld and IDG, the publishing company that runs it. Without Steve Jobs or even Apple (AAPL) to help it upstage CES as Macworld has done in some years past, the event has far less to offer attendees and presenters than before. Certainly, no one is going to be decamping from Vegas in the middle of CES this year to hit Macworld. There’s no reason to. And with CES ramping up its efforts to woo Apple accessory manufacturers and retailers, well, things aren’t looking too good for Macworld, are they?

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090522/ces-to-give-apple-25000-sq-ft-of-free-advertising/feed/ 3 It’s Not Easy Being a Green Recharger http://allthingsd.com/20090330/it%e2%80%99s-not-easy-being-a-green-recharger/ http://allthingsd.com/20090330/it%e2%80%99s-not-easy-being-a-green-recharger/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:01:53 +0000 Willa Plank http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=9969 My iPhone needs charging every night. Even then, it dies on me by the end of the day, cutting off important conversations. Coming upon solar- and wind-powered portable chargers, I wondered if I found the perfect solution to keeping it going while helping the environment.

How these chargers work is very simple. They take sunlight or wind power to charge their internal batteries, thus able to recharge a cellphone, MP3 player or digital camera through a connector. They are a part of a growing market of products that power up mobile devices on the go.

“For the first time we are seeing innovation,” said Shawn DuBravac, economist and director of research at the Consumer Electronics Association. He said the newest power solutions for portables are in the infancy stage.

I chose the Devotec and the HYmini devices because of their futuristic, sleek looks. The Devotec solar charger, with its cover, can easily fit in a pocket or purse.

I left the Devotec near my windowsill the whole afternoon to catch some rays. The device charged my iPhone, albeit not completely. The most frustrating thing with this device is that I don’t know when it’s done charging. The solar indicator light doesn’t turn off. Also, I don’t know how charged–i.e., quarter- or half-full–the battery is.

The manual says that an hour of sunlight should suffice to start charging. But after speaking with the company, I was told that the battery needed 24 hours of sunlight, equating to a couple of days near a windowsill, for the internal battery to be fully charged.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090330/it%e2%80%99s-not-easy-being-a-green-recharger/feed/ 0 Palm–Without Me http://allthingsd.com/20090108/palm-without-me/ http://allthingsd.com/20090108/palm-without-me/#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:32:02 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=10998

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090108/palm-without-me/feed/ 0 CES Economist: Gadgets Are Necessities Now http://allthingsd.com/20090107/ces-economist-gadgets-are-necessities-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20090107/ces-economist-gadgets-are-necessities-now/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:27:19 +0000 Christopher Lawton http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=7439 Yes, this may be the worst recession America has seen since World War II. But the people who are bringing us the Consumer Electronics Show would like to point out that sales of tech products are actually faring pretty well when compared to what happened during previous recessions.

The evidence suggest that people’s views on devices such as televisions, notebook computers and mobile phones are changing, says Shawn DuBravac, economist for the Consumer Electronics Association. Through November of 2008, 17.22 percent of total durable good purchases were tech goods, the highest share in 50 years, he says.

“While these are typically discretionary purchases, consumers are treating them like nondiscretionary purchases,” says Mr. DuBravac.

That doesn’t mean that consumers aren’t making cutbacks. In fact, in many categories, consumers seem to be gravitating toward lower-priced items for varying reasons. For example, coming out of the 2007 holiday season, nearly 50 percent of all flat panel sales were over 40 inches. Today, Mr. DuBravac says, that numbers stands closer to 35 percent.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090107/ces-economist-gadgets-are-necessities-now/feed/ 0 Family Snapshots in the Splendor of HD http://allthingsd.com/20081125/family-snapshots-in-the-splendor-of-hd/ http://allthingsd.com/20081125/family-snapshots-in-the-splendor-of-hd/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:28:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081125/family-snapshots-in-the-splendor-of-hd/ This Thanksgiving, families across the country will gather around the television just as quickly as they gather around the turkey. And with good reason: Many people will be staring at beautiful high-definition TV sets. (According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 47% of U.S. households had HDTVs as of July, a percentage that’s likely to increase as the date for analog-to-digital conversion approaches.) But if Eastman Kodak (EK) has its way, many people will be gathered round the TV this holiday season, gazing at family memories in full HD splendor.

Family Snapshots in the Splendor of HD
The Kodak Theatre HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a mouse on a TV screen.

This week I tested the Kodak Theatre HD Player, the photo-centric company’s attempt to snag valuable real estate in the living room. This small, black box pulls photos and videos from computers around the house and displays them on an HDTV. It also enables the sending and receiving of photos via Kodak Gallery, and connects to Web-based photos stored on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, .Mac and others. Podcasts, Internet Radio and updates from news feeds, weather forecasts and stock quotes are also accessible using the HD Player. And it has a terrifically simple motion-sensing remote that works like using a mouse on a TV screen.

But the HD Player isn’t all smiles. Its $299 price doesn’t include any built-in storage for keeping content directly on the device. It currently has no way of accessing HD movies or television shows, nor will it work with Macs. In comparison, Apple’s (AAPL) $229 Apple TV has 40 gigabytes of storage, can access HD television shows and movies via the iTunes Store, and works with Macs and Windows PCs. This is important because as budgets tighten in the current economy, gadgets have to prove their value and versatility more than ever.

After using the Kodak Theatre HD Player with Windows XP and Vista machines over the past week, I can conclude that this device’s interface shines in its simplicity and is a lot of fun to use. Kodak teamed with Hillcrest Labs to make the player’s motion-sensitive remote and corresponding software, which includes satisfying extra features like images that automatically magnify when the remote control’s cursor points at them and icons that make chirping sounds when selected. The remote itself is shaped to rest comfortably in a hand and has three simple buttons and a scroll wheel.

Quick-access memory-card slots for six types of memory cards appear on the box’s front, and two USB ports can connect to digital cameras or USB storage devices.

Currently, the player’s software works directly with Flickr, RadioTime (8,750 radio stations) and FrameChannel, which grants access to various “channels” like Facebook, .Mac, Picasa, People.com news and National Geographic. Kodak says it will incorporate YouTube access in January; I got a sneak peek at the interface for this and it looks well-organized.

Yet the HD Player’s smart combination of software and remote left me wishing it did a bit more. Photo sharing is enabled only via Kodak Gallery, so you can’t use another Web-based account to share photos directly from your TV. Likewise, a blue light on the box slowly blinks only when new Picture Mail (a message containing shared photos) is received on a Kodak Gallery account, not when new photos are added on other sources such as Flickr Photostreams or Facebook pages.

The Home screen of the HD Player shows four categories: Pictures & Videos, Kodak Gallery, Music and Entertainment. Subcategories are where you might guess they would be, for example podcasts are listed under Entertainment. And a tiny Home icon appears in the top right corner of every screen so you can always get Home with one click. The Pictures & Videos category holds photos and videos from a currently selected Windows PC.

An unlimited number of Windows PCs can wirelessly pair with the player as long as they have special Kodak software installed on them. But only one PC’s content can be accessed at a time. I toggled between two paired computers without a problem, but would’ve preferred accessing music and photos from both sources simultaneously.

The HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a Wii remote control. Wherever you move it, a tiny leaf-shaped cursor appears on-screen. A Hide button on the remote will hide the cursor while you watch slideshows. The remote’s Back button is helpful; when pressed, it backs you out of one screen using visual effects that make the screen shrink into the TV as if you were moving backward.

A play button appears on the first photo in a folder so users can select this icon to quickly start slideshows. Whenever the HD Player receives new Kodak Gallery Picture Mail, or a slideshow is created on a connected PC, yellow alert circles appear on the screen to notify users and a number in the middle of these yellow circles indicates how many new items are available for viewing.

Some content on my PCs took a little while to be recognized by the HD Player, including podcasts that I subscribe to on iTunes. When they did show up, both audio and video podcasts played without issue and on-screen playback buttons made them easy to control.

The HD Player uses your photos to create automatically generated slideshows, called Picture Chronicles, once a week. These Picture Chronicles use up to 50 photos from the same time of year in all of your folders, for instance grouping all Thanksgiving photos together from the past five years.

Kodak has plans to make its player Mac-compatible in the future and also hopes to add other partnerships with new types of content following its YouTube announcement early next year.

The Kodak Theatre HD Player does its job well, bringing photos and videos that might otherwise live only on your PC to your big screen HDTV. For the holidays, this device could be a real plus. But Kodak has some work to do to make this a more useful Web-connected tool.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081125/family-snapshots-in-the-splendor-of-hd/feed/ 0 Where Your Old Gadgets Find a Second Life http://allthingsd.com/20080812/where-your-old-gadgets-find-a-second-life/ http://allthingsd.com/20080812/where-your-old-gadgets-find-a-second-life/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:32:45 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080812/where-your-old-gadgets-find-a-second-life/ It’s a fact of life and one of the reasons I have a job: digital electronics will eventually break or get replaced. But it’s hard to know just what to do with the gadgets that get left behind. Some people stuff them in junk drawers. Others want to donate or recycle their old electronics, but worry about compromising private data. And plenty of people want some monetary compensation.

Mossberg image

This week I took a look at some options for people who want to get rid of old electronics, one way or another. The good news is that there are a handful of Web sites that make it easy to do this — and some of them may even pay you for your old products. The bad news is that you’ll likely receive only a fraction of what you originally paid, especially if you waited a while to get rid of it.

Some sites, like Gazelle.com and VenJuvo.com, offer cash for your items and/or will recycle products. Another site, TechForward.com, lets people pay a fee to “lock in” a value for how much the site promises to pay for the product in the future. MyBoneYard.com accepts only laptops, desktop PCs, cellphones and flat-panel monitors, and gives Visa (V) gift cards rather than cash.

I was surprised to receive significantly different value offers from Gazelle and VenJuvo when trying to sell the exact same products on each site. In one instance, VenJuvo offered me $30 more than Gazelle for a digital camera; another time, I got $15 more from Gazelle for an old Apple (AAPL) iPod. It’s worth the extra step to shop around at more than one of these sites before getting rid of something.

Both ask a few questions about the item, including its condition and whether or not it still has the accessories that originally came with it. Gazelle determines a product’s value using retail — think Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) — and wholesale channels; VenJuvo uses similar criteria and also looks at competitors’ prices.

If you worry about someone stealing your digital data, you’ll likely not feel comfortable dropping something in the mail that’s chock full of personal information, especially if it no longer powers on to allow the owner to wipe this information.

Both Gazelle and VenJuvo accept at least some types of digital cameras, laptops, MP3 players, GPS devices, camcorders and gaming consoles. Gazelle also accepts cellphones. But they don’t take everything. Gazelle doesn’t take LCD TVs and VenJuvo doesn’t accept satellite radios and portable hard drives or any smartphones or cellphones other than the iPhone; neither accepts desktop PCs.

I took the closest look at newly released Gazelle, owned by Second Rotation Inc., and walked through the simple start-to-finish process of selling a gadget and receiving money from the site. After pulling up the site, people can find their product and its value by choosing from a list of nine categories or by typing some part of the product’s name into a search box.

I sold Gazelle a first-generation iPod Mini with four gigabytes of memory for which my boss paid $249 in 2004. I answered a few questions about the product: Yes, it still powered on; no, I didn’t have the original AC adapter, manuals or software installation CD, and it was in “excellent” condition, according to my assessment. Gazelle placed its value at $25.

At this step, I opted to add the iPod to my box and check out, but users can also add other items to a box, including electronics for recycling. Gazelle’s policy is that it pays 100% of shipping costs for any box shipped to the company, so long as there’s at least one item in the box worth $1. Eighty percent of transactions qualify for a free box; the rest can be sent with printed-out prepaid shipping labels, but you must find packaging.

Gazelle lets users receive payments via a mailed, paper check or using PayPal; money is received either way within five business days. People can also donate their money to one of 23 causes, including the American Red Cross and World Vision. I opted for PayPal, and the $25 amount was deposited shortly after Gazelle received the iPod.

I sent the old iPod to Gazelle in a brightly colored, empty box that arrives at a customer’s door a few days after he or she sells the device to Gazelle. I secured the old iPod in the box using balled up paper, and sealed it with packing tape. A prepaid shipping label was already stuck to it, and I needed only drop it off at UPS.

If Gazelle receives a product and decides that it isn’t worth what you said it was — either more or less — and you’d rather not sell, the company will ship the product back, free of charge. But while Gazelle’s site guarantees users that they’ll receive their money, and that personal data are safe with the company, no money-back guarantee is offered.

Gazelle hopes to calm nerves by posting detailed instructions on the site about how to wipe a device of all private information. But the company hasn’t yet done this, and numerous users will remain skeptical even with such instructions.

I also poked around on VenJuvo Inc.’s Web site of the same name, www.VenJuvo.com, which is derived from two Greek words meaning “support, assist and delight sellers,” according to the company. This site, too, buys products back from people, though it pays via check, PayPal or Kmart (SHLD) gift card. Users fill out similarly simple questionnaires on each product to help assess value. Unlike Gazelle’s style of mailing boxes to users, VenJuvo gives users only prepaid shipping labels to print out and stick on a box that the customer must supply.

One notable difference between the sites is Gazelle’s broader range of products. In the case of digital cameras, for example, Gazelle accepts 80 brands while VenJuvo takes only Canon (CAJ), Sony (SNE), Olympus and Kodak (EK). Unlike with Gazelle, if you send VenJuvo a product that isn’t worth what you said it was, the company won’t return the product free-of-charge; instead, it will charge you for shipping.

If users choose to receive a gift card, they get a 10% added value. While VenJuvo doesn’t let people donate a product’s value to a cause, it will add this feature next week and will include different causes (like Ronald McDonald House and Big Brothers Big Sisters) than those found on Gazelle.

Unlike Gazelle, VenJuvo will always take items for recycling and will pay for the shipping, regardless of whether you traded something in for a value.

A useful resource for general electronics recycling is the Consumer Electronics Association Web site, www.MyGreenElectronics.org, which locates nearby electronics-recycling centers according to ZIP Code. And almost every computer manufacturer has a recycling program in place; some will even recycle computers that aren’t their own brand.

One way or another, it’s time to clean out the old junk drawer. Just be sure to do some comparison shopping if you want money for your old products.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080812/where-your-old-gadgets-find-a-second-life/feed/ 0 Jerry Coming Out at CES! (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That!) http://allthingsd.com/20071017/jerry-coming-out-at-ces-not-that-theres-anything-wrong-with-that/ http://allthingsd.com/20071017/jerry-coming-out-at-ces-not-that-theres-anything-wrong-with-that/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2007 07:19:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071017/jerry-coming-out-at-ces-not-that-theres-anything-wrong-with-that/ yang

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang emerged from his hibernation den over at Yahoo yesterday and didn’t see his shadow.

So do better-than-expected revenues mean spring is on the way for the struggling Web giant? We’ll see, but it means we might see a lot more of the shy-of-late Yang, who accepted a big keynote slot at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

On the first day of the gadgetfest, held every January and run by the Consumer Electronics Association, Yang will appear in a prime slot on Monday, Jan. 7, at 11 a.m., at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater.

Said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of CEA: “As content and technology continue to intertwine and create new ways to connect consumers with information and each other, we look forward to hearing [Jerry] Yang’s views on the evolution of Internet technology and its impact on consumer technology products.”

So does BoomTown, who will be front and center at the show to see Yang, trying to get the attention of our favorite Web CEO. (Zuckerberg’s not even close!)

It would be nicer still to have lunch with him, of course, and we would if you give early and often to our efforts to raise money for DonorsChoose.org.

So go now and click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give early and often!

Why click here?

Because it is well and good to help help BoomTown in the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

(AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.)

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also hope to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the tech blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with Yang.

It’s either that or I will have to rush the stage at CES!

So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!

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