Showing posts with label CES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CES. Show all posts

Thursday, January 10, 2013

High tech pooping


Presenting...*drum roll*...the iPotty.  TaDa!

Really?  Most people will just look at this and chuckle or maybe shake their head and think "whatever."  I look at it and think, "The little fucker has his own iPad?"  So now even 2-year-olds have blown past me on the technologically savvy scale.  OH....THE SHAME!  And does the little tyke have one of those Bluetooth thingys stuck in his ear, too?

Whatever happened to that universal fixture of every well furnished bathroom, the magazine rack?  For that matter, what's happened to magazines?  Have you bought a Newsweek magazine lately?  No?  That's because they don't print it anymore.  Pfffft!  Gone.  Online only.  Every month my magazines seem to contain a few less pages of reading material and a few more pages of ads.

But back to the immediate crisis in my life.  The annual Consumer Electronics Show is now underway in Lost Wages...er...Las Vegas.  Nerds from all over have assembled to show off all their newest gizmos, things that to me look like more nails in my low-tech coffin.  They've even taken over that most holy of passions in my life....cars.

Nowadays most mainstream cars (the kind that I can afford, ie: no Ferrari's or Maserati's or Aston Martin's) no longer talk about performance.  All buyers care about today is a car's iPod connectivity or it's Bluetooth capability or it's ability to electronically parallel park itself.  And getting 60 mpg from their 3-cylinder skinny-tired hybrid "mobility device".  Where's the fun in that?

I read somewhere that a majority of kids these days don't even get a drivers license until they're pretty much forced to.  They just hole up in their rooms with their iThis and iThat and text back and forth to each other, avoiding personal contact (and daylight) at all cost.

Is this what the Apocalypse looks like?

S



Sunday, January 15, 2012

Sex sells

It seems there were some ruffled feathers at this year's Consumer Electronics Show over the presence of "booth babes".  Anyone who's been to a car show is very familiar with what I'm talking about, but apparently they're just now becoming fashionable in the nerdy world of consumer electronics.  The term simply means attractive, provocatively dressed young ladies who mill around by their sponsor's booth attracting attention.  People, mainly men, walk over to get a closer look and are snagged by the product rep and given a pitch and some literature.  


And quite frankly, it works.  Sex (appeal) sells products.  You think Go Daddy would be where it is today without Danica Patrick?  So, I'm wondering....why aren't there "booth hunks"?  Don't tell me women don't like to see good looking men.  George Clooney?  Daniel Craig?  Matthew McConaughey?  Ashton Kutcher?  (I really don't get that one!)  Dos Equis "The Most Interesting Man in the World"?   


We all like to look at good looking people, whether they're in a movie, on a magazine cover, at a trade show, or just walking down the street.  And there is a HUGE mega-billion dollar industry that tries to get us to believe WE are good looking people, too.  (See, there is an upside to myopia!)  So what's the big deal over "booth personnel"?  ;)


S