Category Archives: Technology

Wonders of CES 2014

The CES—Consumer Electronics Show—held every January, always promises to amaze. This year is no exception.

Held annually in Las Vegas at the LV Convention Center, the CES dazzles viewers by day with previews of technology to come. Then at night, the convention devolves into a multitude of parties. Electronics companies rent out spots at casinos, bring in musical acts, and just unleash. Indeed the nightlife can resemble a college scene, like when T-Mobile Chief Executive John Legere crashed rival AT&T’s party.

But it’s not about the personalities. It’s about the tech. While not open to the public, the CES and the products promoted there can be viewed online. The show began just yesterday, yet already there are fantastic and fascinating gadgets and machines to be seen.

Television

It’s no longer just about high definition. It’s about ultra high definition. We’re talking 4K resolution. The previous generation of hi-def TVs topped out at 1080 vertical resolution. The new frontier is horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels, hence 4K.

4K resolution, though, is not the only advancement. The truly incredible sight when it came to TVs at the CES were the fact that two of them…were curved.

LG tackled this feat with its  105-inch 105UC9. It’s 4K, curved, and built with LCD technology rather than the flexible OLED display. Top it off with  a cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio and this TV is fit to blow minds—and do some damage to your wallet. It’s absurdly priced at $69,999, at the moment.

The other television wonder of the world is the Samsung Bendable TV. Curved screens are an amazement in themselves. Bendable takes the TV truly to the next level. With the press of a button on the remote and the 85-inch TV quite literally bends to your will. This control over the curve of the TV allows you to supposedly achieve a better picture. It is, of course, only a prototype. We’ll have to wait and see if it ever makes it to the market.

Mobile Tech

The mobile phone—or really, mobile device, as it can do so much more—is seeing both super convenient advances as well as serious hardware upgrades.

Mophie, which created the Juice Pack for extended battery life, have taken another step in the right direction. They’ve developed the Space Pack. With the Space Pack, the pair of battery packs promise to not only double the battery life of your iPhone 5 or 5S, but also double your device’s storage capacity at the same time.

In terms of hardware, Nvidia is completely changing the landscape of mobile gaming. No more simple Angry Birds games. Nvidia’s Tegra K1 mobile CPU intends to bring mobile graphics up to par with “next gen” platforms. That means PS4 and Xbox One’s  level of visual quality on your tablet or mobile device.

3D Printing

It’s all the rage these days. They’re no doubt incredible machines, but so far they seem to be making small to medium size objects. When are we going to jump to the next level?

Enter the Makerbot Z18 3-dimensional printer. We’re no longer talking about replicating simple things like tools or cool looking shapes. The huge Makerbot was built to make large objects. By large objects we mean bowls, lamps, and even small pieces of furniture. Not only that, the Makerbot has a cloud-based sharing space called Thingiverse. Here you can share your designs across multiple platforms. And on top of that, this 3D printer has introduced a digital store (think iTunes) in which designs can be bought and then fabricated.

These are just a few of the incredible technologies that have been unveiled at the CES so far. The show began on Tuesday and continues through Friday so there’s still more time for us to be wowed by technological previews. It truly is a brave new world.

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