Being geeky is awesome; number-obsessed performance geeks should be able to wear their devices loud and proud. Last year saw an explosion of calorie-tracking wearable devices, but none of these plastic-looking gadgets were fit for the runway. At the Consumer Electronics Show, BodyMedia revealed an upgraded armband that aims to make data-driven weight loss a fashion-forward accessory by embedding their device into a chic jewelry bracelet. “If I’m taking care of myself, it’s no different than my glasses that help me see better or my watch that helps me tell time.” says BodyMedia CEO, Ivo Stivoric.

The sleek design seems to have accomplished BodyMedia’s goal. At a private dinner held during CES, I witnessed a woman compliment the BodyMedia representative wearing the silvery Core 2 bracelet without her even knowing it was their new model. Ivo says that “intelligent jewelry” is the next step for BodyMedia, which he hopes is “something that people would even wear if it was off.”

Unlike popular alternatives such as the Nike+ Fuelband or Jawbone Up wristbands, which estimate calories from body movement, the BodyMedia device can distinguish between picking up a pencil and picking up a 300lb Olympic barbell. Sensors capture skin temperature and galvanic skin response (sweat) for a more individualized measure of performance.

The distinction is especially important to someone like me who has the resting metabolism of a sleeping gerbil. The Fuelband may estimate that I burned more calories than I actually do, because it assumes I’m an “average” amount of calories while resting, when in fact I pack on pounds by merely thinking about Twinkies.

For the past year, I’ve used the BodyMedia device for various dieting experiments, but the current bulging, white plastic sensor leads many people to believe I have some sort of odd disease. A more fashionable tracking device would reduce stares and help make my geeky obsession with minute-by-minute calorie tracking a chic statement. Perhaps more important, in the near future, it might incentive those without the predilection towards calorie tracking to becoming more weight-loss oriented simply to seem cool.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Beyond their own pet projects, members of Congress often know little more than the public about what the legislature will actually accomplish in a given year. The International Consumer Electronics Show provides a rare escape for America’s tech-savviest policymakers, who are normally inundated with budgets and crises, to focus on their geeky agenda. We sat down with the members in attendance at this year’s show to give you a glimpse of what Congress will–and will not–accomplish in 2013 on privacy, immigration, intellectual property and cybersecurity.

Intellectual Property – Free software zealots may get a small present this year, as a few congressmen, including those close to the powerful Judiciary Committee, are aiming to exempt software from strong patent protections. Members seem to agree that crazy attempts to patent obvious technologies, such as Amazon’s ‘one click to purchase‘ button, demonstrates that software is uniquely prone to abuse.

Democrats and Republicans were also happy to demonize so-called “patent trolls,” those companies who purchase patent rights solely to extort others, with no intention of innovating themselves. “There’s a tremendous amount of bi-partisan support,” says Representative Peter Defazio (CrunchGov Grade: B), for a surgical approach to patent reform, especially on software and litigation issues. “we are focused on getting at the worst actors out there and confront them with costs,” he says, who believes that Congress should be able to pass a law that requires patent trolls to pay legal costs if they lose in court.

Given the recent comprehensive intellectual property legislation, the America Invents Act, no one was optimistic that there will be any broad redefinition of how the U.S. approaches intellectual property.

Immigration — Don’t expect any love for high-skilled immigrant visas without comprehensive immigration reform. After last winter’s spectacular failure to pass the STEM Jobs Act, which would have given out 55,000 more STEM-related visas at the expense of unrepresented nations, it became clear that congress will likely need to solve low-skilled and high-skilled issues at the same time. “There are certainly those who insist that any immigration legislation be apart of a comprehensive, broad-based plan,” says Sen. Jerry Moran (CrunchGov Grade: A), sponsor of the Startup 2.0 Act, which aims to create a visa for self-employed entrepreneurs.

So, can the sequel to the ‘do nothing Congress’ actually pass immigration reform, after failing to pass the comprehensive DREAM Act? “I think we have an opportunity, potentially, because of new Republican leadership interest in getting this issue behind them so they can once again elect a president,” says Rep. Zoe Lofgren (CrunchGov Grade: A), referring to Republicans need to appear immigrant friendly to win over minority voters in future presidential elections.

Privacy – After Gen. David Petraeus’ email snooping scandal demonstrated that even the nation’s top spies don’t fully understand the scope of state surveillance, there was strong support to require warrants for email spying. All legislation needs to be renewed after the election of a new Congress, but Sen. Ron Wyden (CrunchGov Grade: A) seemed to think his colleagues will again broach a law balancing privacy and security.

The specter of Sen. Al Franken’s location privacy bill loomed at CES, though the SNL-writer-turned-policymaker was not in attendance. Franken’s proposal would place new rules related to smartphone location data, especially how often users would have to expressly give applications consent to use data and how they could seek legal redress for violations.

Honorable Mentions – there are a few low-flying issues to keep an eye on

• Pandora founder Tim Westegren donned a button-up shirt to push the Internet Radio Fairness Act, which aims to equalize royalty rights between streaming internet radio and traditional radio.
• Data Caps – a few policymakers, including Senator Wyden, expressed concern over telecommunications companies imposing limits on the amount of data users can download, so-called “data caps”. Whether rules over data caps will come from congress, or the Federal Communications Commission, is anyone’s guess.

There you have it folks: the (partial) tech agenda for 2013. Some people may be uncorking champagne bottles in the streets; others may be crafting tinfoil hats in a makeshift bunker. But, don’t get too excited, since all of this requires them to get along to some degree.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The government wants to help ensure that conference Internet wifi actually works. Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, announced a new plan to open up a portion of the wireless spectrum for faster and more reliable wifi devices. Specifically, the FCC will work to open up the unlicensed slice of 5 Mhz spectrum to make way for gigabit Internet devices, “to relieve wifi congestion at conferences, at airports, and in people’s homes,” said Genachowski on stage at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

This solution could not come quick enough. At one the premier tech gatherings on the planet, CES, the Internet is barely usable. All three ways I connect to the internet–iPhone tethering, a wifi hotspot, and hotel wifi–have slowed to a crawl.

A spokesman for the FCC did not give a timeline for the implementation of the new rule, but says that it must coordinate with other federal and military agencies that use overlapping portions of the spectrum. “We are convinced that the spectrum can be shared,” concluded the Chairman.

Wifi has also been hailed as an important solution to general smartphone Internet speed problems, since it allows users to offload data downloads to their home wifi, rather than congested cellphone networks.

I’m about to pull my hair out waiting for webpages to load here at CES, so let’s all pray we can find a solution soon. Otherwise, my posts may contain a lot more expletives.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Consumer Electronics Show, that turgid January gadget fest in Las Vegas, has been widely seen in the industry as a great place to show off your wares if you’re not Apple. But is that true? SigFig, the stealth investing startup that’s growing out of stock portfolio manager Wikinvest, has run some numbers on the market performance of the show’s big-company attendees during the event.

The main trend is pretty clear: there’s lots of buying and selling, but no significant gains. And actually, losses are not uncommon.

This data, I should note before getting further, is from SigFig users — a relatively small but statistically significant group of retail investors who use nearly 70 brokerages to handle stock sales and purchases. The overall market data also shows similar big volume changes, but is partially obscured by the large-block trading activities of institutional investors (which in many cases happens for other reasons).

So, in other words, for all the money and time that electronics companies put into the event, they’re not winning many more believers than they’re losing. Maybe it’s just what they’re announcing that isn’t building enough new enthusiasm to drive prices up? Maybe it’s these sorts of data points that helped convince Microsoft to dial down its participation this year?

Now that all the trades have closed from that week, here’s more detail on how this year looked for some top publicly-traded attendees versus previous years.

Intel, which makes semiconductor chips used by many of the electronics companies in attendance, grabs the spotlight every year with a CES keynote about its plans for the future. This year, on keynote day, its stock price jumped a relatively small $0.82 per share — even though shares bought increased by 129% and shares sold also rose by 123% among retail investors on SigFig. Overall, the stock closed down 2.22% by the end of the four-day show. In 2010, meanwhile, the stock ended up 0.48% on top of an 1402% increase in volume, and in 2011 it ended down 0.05% with a 215% increase in volume.

Google, whose Android operating system can be found in more and more devices at the show, has also not seen big gains among SigFig investors. On its biggest day of trading during the show — 90.64% above the average volume — its shares fell by 0.6%. In 2010 it grew by 1.4% during a 374.84% volume increase, and in 2011 it fell by 1.21% with its trading volume at 369.7% above normal.

What about other firms with a big presence at CES?

AT&T’s CES keynote on the 9th mostly failed to register this year, with only minimal volume increase to show — the volume of those buying actually dropped by over 13%, and continued falling during the conference. Verizon, meanwhile, had purchases surge by 1209% (there’s no decimal missing from that number). The price, however, only increased by 0.82%. Both carriers had volume increased around 100% in the past two years, with AT&T losing 2.77% in 2011, and Verizon losing 3.82%.

More analysis is needed to fully understand what’s going on here, like a broader view of all publicly traded companies that have news at the event, over more years. But I have a bit of speculation, following on my earlier point. Maybe CES is really good at generating attention for these companies, but their own announcements are perenially underperforming the hype? If that’s the case, there’s nothing wrong with attending CES, it’s what you bring with you to launch that matters.

By the way, TechCrunch made the CES trek in a big way this year, and generated all sorts of coverage about the events whether it helped the above companies’ stock prices or not. Check out our hub site here for all the details.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Makerbot creator Bre Pettis and his musician friends from Scary Car made this cute little video featuring 3D printed action figures being created in (near) real-time and then discovering love.

The video is celebration of Makerbot’s big debut at CES last year and the launch of the Replicator, the company’s new complete 3D printer that we featured on our CES stage.

A lot of folks would equate a 3D printer with frippery but it’s clear that these things are plain fun and, more important, they work.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As I noted earlier this week, I’m not a fan of all of the “Company X Won CES!” jibberjabber that goes on around this time of year. It’s posturing for the sake of posturing, with the “winner” generally determined by anecdotal evidence and perceived mindshare.

If only someone could find a way to graph the show! To chart each company’s buzz (be it good or bad) over time, using cold, hard numbers to extrapolate trends from the barrage of tweets fired off during the show. Oh! Here we are..

The folks over at SimplyMeasured have pored over the 182,112 tweets that were sent with the #CES hashtag from January 9th (CES Day 0, otherwise known as “Press Day”, during which most of the big announcements happen) to January 13th (Last day of CES).

Here are some of the most interesting bits they were able to pull out:

Tweet Frequency:

I complain that CES forces companies to cram too much into the beginning of the year, but even CES itself is clearly front-loaded. That big peak you see on the left side is “Press Day”, which actually happens a day before the convention itself starts. At least 2 companies are holding their press conferences at any given time (this year pinned Intel vs Monster, Panasonic vs. Nokia, etc), forcing editorial teams to split their staff and dilute their coverage. Meanwhile, the rest of the week goes relatively quiet and the buzz tapers by about 20% for two days in a row, balances for day, then plummets down by another 40% or so on the last day. Why not spread the love a bit?

182,112 #CES tweets went out during the show, compared to 120,628 last year.

Brand Buzz:

Microsoft may not have won CES, but they came pretty close to winning #CES. By buzz alone (again, “buzz” here being a simple count of tweets at any given moment), Microsoft’s press conference garnered the most attention. With that said, I’d bet that at least a third of those tweets were “What the hell? Why does Microsoft have a Tweet Choir at their press conference?”

Total Share Of #CES Tweets:

And sneaking in with the biggest chunk of the #CES tweets by a hair was… Motorola! This may be a bit surprising given their seemingly small showing on the Brands Mention graph above, but they took it with consistency. They launched the Droid 4 and Droid RAZR MAXX on Day 0, announced a partnership with Intel on Day 2, and then lucked out with some well-received Motorola-themed giveaways that went down on Twitter on Day 3. Behind them by the slimmest of margins: Microsoft.

Meanwhile, Samsung (who almost certainly had the most actual news of the show) comes in at third. That seems wrong.

Oh, and whether or not you agree with MG that Apple won the show before it even started, you’ve gotta love that they pulled a solid 1% of tweets without even being there. That puts them in front of RIM, Verizon, Panasonic, AT&T, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm, and countless others who were actually, you know, there.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

We’ve all seen the Kinect, or at least heard about its wonders. Well, the same company that hooked up Microsoft during “Project Natal” development has showed off some pretty wonderful technology at CES last week.

It uses a 3D camera on top of your TV to let you interact with your television through gestures. To be honest, it looks a lot like any touchscreen interface you’re already used to (with similar transitions and gestures) but you just happen to be 10 feet away from the screen.

The next-gen interface lets you flip through channels and navigate the TV guide just by waving your hand around and throwing in a few pinching gestures. It made me hate my remote, if that’s any indication of how cool it is (and I love TV).

But watching TV is just the beginning. PrimeSense showed us a (somewhat bizarre) dancing implementation for the technology that lets you get jiggy with it in front of what looks a lot like Windows Media Player visualizations. The camera follows your movements and lets you throw out bursts of “energy” on screen. I didn’t really get the hang of it while I was there but it seems like an excellent technology for a rave or a group of stoned college kids.

PrimeSense even mentioned ways to let you see yourself in clothes you’d like to buy, right on the screen, and purchase them directly.

Now it’s just a matter of time until a major OEM snatches up the technology and we all find ourselves waving at the TV.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

There are plenty of smart watches out there in the world. The iPod Nano doubles as one, and the new MotoACTV watch is a pretty solid offering, too. But over at Wimm Labs, they’re taking the concept to a whole new level.

We got the opportunity to sit down with Wimm Labs VP Tim Twerdahl who let us get up close and personal with the new Wimm One Smart watch. It’s “a wearable platform” as Twerdahl would call it, based on Android and packed with fun features like WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, accelerometers, magnetometers and plenty of other fun stuff.

There are all kinds of apps that can track your workouts, keep your calendar information, and post alerts from your smartphone, but as Matt points out in the interview the Wimm Smart watch is a watch first.

But the module itself can be toted around in a number of ways, including on a carabiner. Right now the Wimm One is only available to developers for $299, but we’ll be sure to let you know once it’s ready to hit store shelves.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

When I think of tablets, I think of the usual suspects — Apple, Motorola, Asus, HTC, and the like. Viewsonic never really comes to mind, but that hasn’t stopped them from pushing out their own tablets and smartphones, and their VP of Business Development Mike Holstein joined us at CES to show us what the company has been up to.

First up on the agenda were two new Android tablets, the Viewpad 10e and the Viewpad e70. The bigger 10e sports a 10-inch IPS display and is surprisingly light, but it only runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Don’t expect to be blown away by its performance as it sports a single-core 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, but its $279 price aims to make up for it (whether or not it succeeds is up to you).

Despite being smaller, the E70 is arguably the more interesting of the two — it’s a 7-inch Ice Cream Sandwich-powered tablet that only costs $169. It’s no barnburner with its single-core 1GHz processor and 4GB of internal storage, but budget shoppers could do worse. That said, they could also do better for just a bit more, as the budget segment Viewsonic occupies is growing more crowded by the day.

And lest you think that Viewsonic is all about churning out low-cost tablets, Holstein also took a moment to trot out the Windows 7-powered Viewpad 10pi. It’s a far cry from their budget offerings at $849, but its Oak Trail processor, 64GB SSD, and its ability to boot into Android make it an intriguing (but iffy) option for companies looking to trick out their workforce.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

CES was a blast this year. It was the best show in recent memory. Everyone from the press to vendors were upbeat and seemingly truly happy to be there. Attendance was up. The show was the largest ever (too big for some). Best of all, we shared a wonderful booth with the Engadget crew, which allowed us to conduct more interviews and chill on some comfy couches when not livestreaming from the show floor.

Below is the best of our booth interviews and roaming coverage. We truly hope you enjoyed our unique coverage. Any outlet can stuff people in a room (or trailer) and write up press releases nonstop. We strive to bring the entire show to you by webcasting our shenanigans from the floor and interviewing the smaller guys from the booth. Here’s our nine favorite videos from this year’s show.

50 Cent interview

Mr. Cent stopped by our booth and we took the stage to talk about his new headphones among other things including why Twitter works for him. It was an insightful and fun interview.

Gary Shapiro on the future of innovation and CES

Don’t believe the nonsense. CES is not dead. It’s far from it. In fact it’s getting too big. Gary Shapiro, the president of the CEA, weighed in on the debate while also clearly stating Microsoft is not completely done with CES.

Schick shaves John

Schick, you know, the razor company attended CES this year. They had a small booth in the North hall where two barbers shaved show-goers free of charge. John, being one to never turn down something free, jumped on the opportunity. What this video does not show is the post-shaved John who looked ten years younger and a lot more happy.

G-Form does its best to destroy and iPad

Watch G-Form drop a bowling ball on an iPad. Spoiler: It survives.

The Butt Show

Fun game! Count how many sexual innuendos John slips in during his interview with the 80-year Dr. Fuji.

Days Of Wonder’s Ticket To Ride iPad board game

Picture a board game that’s also playable through the iPad. That’s sort of describes Ticket To Ride. Just watch the video.

Broksonic humidifiers

CES is a huge place. It’s not all smart TVs and Android tabs. Within the LVCC is a wide range of products including Broksonic’s new scented humidifiers.

OhMiBod, the vibrators with an app

This shouldn’t be here. Sorry, everyone. Watch Jordan interview a dildo company. It’s kind of NSFW. “It’s what makes mommies happy,” said the dildo lady.

The TechCrunch Gadget’s Final CES Webcast

We had a great time at CES 2012. This was our final live podcast (here are the rest) where we interviewed Parrot, GoPro and gave away a bunch of free stuff to show goers and people watching the webcast. We hope to do CES 2013 even bigger. Thanks for watching, everyone!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch