Tag: ITVT

Is There Really A Loss Of Allure To CES 2013?

Posted on by tvangelist

200px-The_Bubble_British_PosterWhen you don’t go to a Trade Show that you have been regularly visiting for the past 8-10 years it is a slightly uncomfortable feeling.    It sort of feels like you are missing out on something…but are you really?  CES is after all a gadget show and do we need to go if we are not Retailers of Consumer Electronics?  What a lot of people do not know is that there is a lot going on behind the scenes in more of a Business-2-Business nature; especially in the Television world that I move in.   A lot of networking takes place, and a lot of  ‘private suites’ allow for plenty of businessmen to gather, show of their wares in private, discuss and potentially deal-make!

However as a ‘tech journalist’ you might think that things have a different allure.  Certainly the BBC’s writer David Pogue has just publishd a very poignant article from his perspective.  It can be found in full here: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130104-does-ces-have-a-future

His outlook is that there is mostly years of repetition of  technology along with what I call ‘catch-up’ Companies there ‘en-masse’ with cheaper but the same gadgets from the year before and therefore swamping the floors, the industry and the news with old stuff in effect.  There is also a decline in the Big Companies with Microsoft having pulled out!   Apple is not there either and if Apple is not there how can it truly be called THE Consumer Electronic Show?  Qualcomm even did the keynote speech this year – Qualcomm?

Another journalist from our immediate industry Leslie Ellis pointed out that the the trending products were waterpoofing gadgets for your smartphones and tablets.   I suspect the Hunting Knife Company and the Mini Flying Helicopters will still be there in the South Hall and that Spearmint Rhino will still get its CES clientele.  Ummm, so what is it I miss?

Well in all honestly I do miss it as it kicks off the business year with a hectic, manic traipse around Vegas!  Therefore life without an early dose of CES certainly makes for a less-tired more calculated start to 2013.

The Death of Friends – Unstoppable Virtual Lives – A Social Media Problem?

Posted on by tvangelist

As you grow older family, friends and colleagues pass away and for all of us our time will eventually come. Today I received a ‘Social Media Website’ call-to-action in the form of an E Mail; ‘Send Allan McKinnon a Birthday Card’, because Allan’s Birthday is in 7 days! Despite time being a healer this made jump in my seat because Allan died of prostate cancer in March 2009. I have over the years received these notices including spam from Allan courtesy of FanBox – (San Diego) who I wrote to giving them a piece of my mind – pointless but fulfilling nonetheless. Unfortunately we have a WWW that is growing exponentially and we are populating it, but are we cleaning it up as we move along? Trillions upon trillions of bytes of data that is out-of-date, worthless & abandoned on hardware in storage-farms worldwide. Electricity, cooling and control required to keep useless dead data alive! I also lost some colleagues in a plane crash many years ago. I thought I would do the right thing by informing the Companies where we shared our Social and Professional details, that they were no longer with us. This was in order to stop receiving reminders about their birthdays et al like Allans today. However I did not get far as I had to prove that they were dead! My word was certainly not good enough. Why? Because people often call up and claim people are dead when they are not, in order to have profiles removed, is what I was told! I had to send a ‘Death Certificate’ as proof! This was something that I,not a member of the family, was unable to deliver! So here we are periodically or randomly reminded of the people we once loved, who are no longer with us but are alive in the ether! Interestingly we don’t get asked for a Birth certificate when we create a Social or Professional Media Account nor do we have to prove that we are alive at any time along the way. When we pass away however there are no mechanisms to clean up what we have left behind; and who the heck knows where we have created our Virtual Presence? We have a WWW that is filling with people’s personal details – creating potentially unstoppable Virtual Lives. May Allan rest in peace and continue to live in his virtual world. I wont be sending him a card though some people might! I have unexpectedly shed a tear today for a dear, dear friend (pictured) that has never actually left me despite, for me at least, these passionless reminders!