The Consumer Electronics Show reminds me of that restaurant Yogi Berra was talking about when he said “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Just about everyone I know who comes here each year complains that it’s not worth the trip, yet they keep making the trip.

I’m no exception. I’ve said many times that the week of CES is my least favorite of the year.  My feet hurt, I’m constantly being jostled by crowds and a couple of times I’ve come down with terrible colds. One year I had a severe case of laryngitis, which is not good considering I am on radio and TV several times a day from CES. I got around it by using text-to-speech software to deliver my radio segments.

Also, most of the products I see here are either old, boring or stupid. Every year I ask myself “why,” and every year I wind up making the annual pilgrimage to CES in the hopes of seeing a cool gadget I might otherwise have missed or picking up on trends that will dominate the tech world for the rest of the year.

It’s also a time to see old friends from the industry and the tech press corps and to take a quick look at products that I might want to review sometime later in the year.

I wouldn’t miss it

But despite my complaints, I wouldn’t miss CES because it’s the one time of the year where just about everyone in the tech world comes together not just to look at products, but to talk about them, get a beter understanding of how they fit into our lives and try to figure out where things are headed. It’ a messy event, but it’s useful and it definitely provides a picture of how technology is evolving.

What’s interesting so far

What I’m seeing this year is a fascination with tablets. It’s not just all of the iPad wannabes that are being shown, it’s also the apps, the accessories and the creative uses of tablets which are definitely emerging as a new class of personal computers.

It’s also interesting to see how TVs and PCs are merging. At a pre-CES press event, Lenovo showed off the K91 — a 55-inch TV powered by a Qualcomm chip and Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) operating system.  For all practical purposes, it’s an all-in-one computer for the living room that’s also an entertainment center. This particular model will be sold in China starting in April but there will be plenty of other Android powered TVs on display at CES this year.

So, it’s time to stop griping and lace up my walking shoes and start walking the miles of aisles. Sure, I’ll have to see a lot of “frogs” for each “prince” I encounter, but the good, the bad and the ugly are all part of the mix that makes tech such an interesting beat.

World's first solar powered e-reader cover (Credit: SolarFocus)

At CES this year, SolarFocus will introduce SolarKindle, billed as “the world’s first solar powered e-reader cover.”

The cover will have a built-in solar panel with a dual-charging (USB and solar) reserve battery. The company said that there is “a guarentee of three-months of unplugged Kindle use” under normal sunlight environment.

There is also an built-in LED reading lamp that will last 50 hours without using the Kindle’s main battery, according to the company.

The SolarKindle Lighted cover will cost be available January 15th for $79.99.

I’m writing this post from the restaurant at Casa de Fruta –which is exactly 59 miles from my home in Silicon Valley and 478 miles from my destination – the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Map display from TeleNav Plus

I usually fly to CES but this time I’m driving my 2010 Prius. At $3.50 a gallon, I’m estimating it will cost about $75 round-trip for gas.

One of the cool things about this trip is that I’m always aware of my exact location, distance to destination and the next turn thanks to the TeleNav GPS Plus app on the iPhone. I’m also constantly entertained thanks not only to my music stored on the iPhone but also Pandora – the Internet music radio station that, so far, hasn’t missed a beat, even on the relatively remote Pacheco Pass that connects Highway 101 with I-5.

iPhone connected to car audio system

I have the iPhone connected to my Pioneer AVIC-Z130BT Audio and Navigation System (see my review) which was introduced at last year’s CES. The Pioneer has its own GPS but, frankly, the TeleNav App on the iPhone and Google Maps on Android are superior and more to date. What’s good about the Pioneer system is that it allows you to control the iPhone (and iPod) music app along with Pandora and Aha Radio directly from the Pioneer’s large screen. Most car audio systems — including stock factory radios — have a 3.5 mm jack that can connect to the iPhone’s headphone jack.

There are two TeleNav apps for the iPhone – a free one and the 99 cent TeleNav GPS version. They’re not too different but the buck buys you a slightly improved interface. There’s no charge for basic service but if you want turn-by-turn audio you’ll pay $10 a year after an initial free trial.

I like TeleNav’s voice commands, which are non-modular. Just tell it what you want like “drive to nearest Starbucks” and most of the time it will get you there. No voice recognition system is 100% accurate but this one is pretty good. I also like the turn-by-turn directions and the display that tells you distance to the next turn, total distance and estimated arrival time. The text displaying distance to next turn is big enough to see without squinting but — my only complaint is that I wish the text on the other two fields is a big small.

The iPhone comes with Google Maps, which is OK but lacks turn-by-turn directions and doesn’t do a terrific job of updating as you drive. Google Maps on Android phones is great, but the iPhone version is lacking.

The biggest challenge was getting the phone to stay put in a convenient place that’s easy to see when driving. I tried a couple of mounts but wound up settling on Velcro instead. I put the fuzzy part of the Velcro (called the “loop”) on the dash and the other part (called the hook) on the back of my iPhone bumper case. The hook side is less likely to pick up lint from my pocket. It works great and hasn’t come lose, even on a bumpy road. The black tape blends in nicely with my dashboard but you can easily find white Velcro or order it in lots of other colors.

So, I’m about to get back in the car and head towards Vegas. Truth be told, I’m looking forward to the drive more than my time in Vegas. The roads between here at Sin City are a lot less crowded than the aisles at CES.

I’m about to leave for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to hang out with 140,000 of my closest friends. This show — the mother of all tech trade show — is where people find out what many companies plan to release at some point during 2012. Not all products shown at CES will make it to market and many of the ones that do will be flops. But there have also been some successful products and product categories launched at CES including the VCR in 1970, the Commodore 64 personal computer in 1982, the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985, HDTV in 1998, satellite radio Tivo in 1999, Blu-Ray in 2003 and that wildly successful (not) Palm Pre in 2009. CES is also where many people first saw 3D TVs in 2009 and a parade of tablets in 2011.

So here are a few things we can we expect at CES 2012.

3D TVs without glasses.  We saw that in 2011 but we’ll see more of them and larger ones in 2012. We’ll also see lots of 3D TVs that use inexpensive passive glasses instead of the $300 a pair active ones that were common just a couple of years ago. These new developments are a good sign, but I’m still not convinced that people will want to spend more on 3D TV. As CES chief Gary Shapiro said in a podcast interview posted at CNET, 3D is a feature, not a new category of TV.

Ultrabooks: Apple has done very well with its thin and lightweight MacBook Air but the so-called Windows “netbooks,” never did catch on big time. That’s because they were under-powered and often had skimpy keyboards. Ultrabooks are thin and light but they’re not cheap and they don’t skimp on power. Expect Lenovo, Dell, HP and others to feature them at CES and expect Ultrabooks to be the hot category of PCs in the coming year.

Thin OLED TVs: OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode and unlike other technologies, there is no need for a backlight so it’s more energy efficient. It also allows for thinner TVs and for richer colors, better contrast and resolution. LG has already blogged that it will be showing the “world’s largest OLED,” a 55-inch model.

Connected TVs

It should come as no surprise that the hottest thing on TV has nothing to do with an antenna or even a cable or satellite connection but the ability to bring in streaming video from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and others. As with previous years, there will be plenty of TVs with built-in Internet connectivity. I wouldn’t be surprised if it emerges as an almost standard feature.

Connected Cars: There will be keynote speeches from the CEOs of both Ford and Mercedes and plenty of connectivity solutions for cars. There will also be mobile apps to control cars, such as Ford’s MyFord Mobile App to help owners of its electric cars find charging stations.

iStuff: As usual Apple won’t be at CES but there will be plenty of vendors with apps, cases and accessories for the iPhone and iPad. There will even be an “iLounge,” with 300 exhibitors who are focused on supporting Apple products.

Like a silent movie star who never quite made the transition to talkies, the once venerable Eastman Kodak company could fade from the picture. Kodak is reportedly on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, according to the Wall Street Journal.

While a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing doesn’t necessarily indicate the impending death of a company (many companies have successful emerged from bankruptcy), it’s certainly an indication that the company is in serious financial trouble.  In Kodak’s case, the filing could pave the way for court supervised auction of some of its patents. Kodak has reportedly tried to raise much needed cash by selling patents on its own.

As someone who has owned Kodak cameras ranging from a Brownie Hawkeye when I was a kid to one of  the newer Easyshare digital cameras I purchased just a couple of years ago, I guess I could say that I’m a long time fan of the company.

Death of supply business

There was also a time when I purchased a lot of Kodak film and developing services. As a kid I even bought flashbulbs from Kodak. But the glory days of Kodak’s supply business are long passed. When people buy a Kodak digital camera, they have little reason to return for additional supplies. Sure Kodak sells paper and even printers and that highly profitable printer ink, but — despite some valiant efforts and a pledge to turn inkjet sales into a profitable business, — they haven’t been able to make a serious dent in that market.

Not keeping up

Kodak has had some success with its digital cameras where it was an early market leader, but it hasn’t kept up with competition from Canon and Nikonor even Sony. Also, Kodak’s main strength is in the lower-end point and shoot cameras and — as anyone who owns an iPhone 4s or a top-of-the-line Android phone knows, the role of low-end stand alone digital cameras is diminishing rapidly. The photo quality of my iPhone 4s, while not quite as good as that of a $99 point and shoot camera — is good enough. If I’m going to bother carrying around a dedicated camera, it had better be one with an excellent lens and a high-end sensor and for those cameras, I’m more likely to turn to Canon or Nikon.

Still, as someone who has fond memories of Kodak products, I’m and anxious to see what develops.

This post also appears on Forbes.com.

This post appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on January 2, 2012

by Larry Magid

Construction at Facebook's new office complex (Photo by Larry Magid)

As I sat down to write my “2012 tech predictions” column, I recalled a visit last week to Facebook’s new offices in Menlo Park, which may herald a business trend in the new year and beyond.

What impressed me — besides the cafeteria and fabulous employee gym to work off all that free food — is how the company is allowing workers to organize their own work and meeting space. In a sense, the offices are a bit like the company’s flagship social network.

Facebook provides the infrastructure to make things happen, but doesn’t dictate exactly where and when.

That’s up to the “users.” And when it comes to collaboration, the atmosphere is both open and social.

It might be stretching the analogy to suggest that Facebook employees are encouraged to “share” by default.

But they don’t generally work in cubicles and even the executives don’t have walled-off offices. Instead, as you walk through the various buildings on the campus that used to house Sun Microsystems, you see lots of spaces where people can sit — or stand — to do their work or conduct their meetings.

There are glass-enclosed conference rooms, including some that still have the Sun logo on the glass — one of the few reminders of the campus’ former occupant.

But there are plenty of other “spaces” to work, including small and large tables and spaces under stairways where workers can stand up to take a call or read an email on their phone or tablet or conduct an impromptu meeting with fellow employees.

The Facebook campus is very much a work in progress.

There are still plenty of hard-hat-only areas where construction workers are erecting bridges between buildings, turning paved areas into grassy outdoor gathering places and otherwise sprucing up and modernizing the facilities.

Unlike the Googleplex in Mountain View, it doesn’t yet have that college campus-like feeling. I’m told that at least one outdoor area will eventually resemble downtown Palo Alto — the scene of Facebook’s original office.

What Facebook and Google offices do have in common is that sense of openness and the constant mixture of work and play.

It’s become a Silicon Valley tradition to offer on-site distractions, ranging from foosball tables to volleyball courts, and to give employees maximum flexibility as to how they use their time.

There is a rush hour at these companies when many employees arrive in the morning and leave in the early evening.

But there are plenty of people working long and odd hours because — as any aware manager should know — creativity doesn’t always strike between 9 and 5. And, by offering food, exercise and other amenities, companies like Google and Facebook encourage employees to hang around.

Sure, I’ve seen Google employees “waste time” by playing impromptu soccer games on the company’s parklike lawns. But when the game’s over, they’re back at work within minutes and — who knows — there may very well be some creative work getting done in their heads as they play.

I’m a firm believer that flexibility can lead to creativity and productivity. I started writing this column at 5:30 on a Thursday morning because that’s when I’m at my best when it comes to conjuring up ideas. And — truth be told — it’s also a few hours before my deadline. Procrastination aside, that rush to produce before an impending deadline forces me to focus and — in my humble opinion — improves my writing.

I have an office at home, which I use a lot, but at the moment, I’m plopped in front of my kitchen table. I sometimes write from a local coffee shop and I’ve been known to start, finish and file a column on a cross-country flight, thanks to Gogo Inflight that provides Wi-Fi service on Virgin America, American, Delta and some other airlines.

Being able to access the Internet from 35,000 feet takes cloud computing to a whole new level.

The technology that makes this all possible is not only getting better, but getting even more portable.

When I visit Silicon Valley companies, I often notice employees walking around with their laptops and, increasingly, tablets. It’s not uncommon to see a Googler or Facebook staffer walking down a hall and peeking at an open MacBook or ThinkPad to consult the cloud-based company calendar to find out what meeting room they’re headed for.

And when they arrive, there are plenty of electrical outlets to power laptops.

There are even preinstalled power adapters for the most popular laptops. I’ve seen a few people carrying iPads or Android tablets and I expect that trend to grow over time.

Unlike a notebook PC, a tablet works great when you’re standing up walking between meetings.

So my optimistic prediction for 2012 is that we’re going to see some fundamental changes in the way companies organize their employees work environment.

Work will become more flexible, more adaptable and, for companies that implement it correctly, more profitable.

Tagged.com CEO Greg Tseng (Photo Credit: Tagged.com)

by Larry Magid

Scroll down to listen to a podcast interview with Tseng

Tagged.com CEO Greg Tseng knows how to face reality. The company, which has been around for seven years, used to compete directly with MySpace and then Facebook. But, said Tseng, “In 2007 we decided relatively early on in the game that we actually weren’t going to win.” It was then that the company got “into a space that we now call social discovery.” In other words, Tseng has no intention of competing with Facebook when it comes to keeping up with old friends. Facebook owns that space. Tagged is squarely in the business of helping members meet new people.

In November, 2011, Tagged was listed by Forbes among “America’s Most Promising Companies.”

Not just dating and flirting

Tseng estimates that about half of Tagged’s members are interested in dating or flirting and the rest are looking for other types of relationships. “We have plenty of people who are married, who are in serious relationships or otherwise are not on the site for romantic or flirting reasons. Meeting people for lots of different reasons is a core need that everyone has.” In addition to dating and flirting, many of Tagged users are looking for people who share interests ranging from sports, to food to politics, to parenting to what Tagged calls “social games.” Tagged has a “find groups” page where members can chose from a wide range of interests.

He said that the site used to mainly attract teens but now reaches a much broader demographic. The average age is in the 30s but “we have a wide range of ages from the teens to 50 and older,” he said.

Acquisition of hi5 doubles active users

In December Tagged acquired hi5 a social network with 200 million registered users and, said Tseng, 10 million users who are active on a monthly basis. “The hi5 acquisition doubled Tagged active users to 20 million, he said, “and grows combined registered users past 330 million members.” Tagged and hi5 will initially operate as two ”independent and freestanding brands,”according to a company press release.

About half of Tagged’s users, said Tseng are interested in dating or flirting. The rest have other interests such as finding people to play games with or explore interests in the physical world such as dining, spots and other activities. He called meeting people, “a core human need.” Tseng said that the company ”once did a survey asking ‘have you met anyone on Tagged that later you met in real life’ and about 70% of our active users said they had done that.”

Keeping safe

Tseng said the site offers users lots of safety tips including “how to conduct your life online and offline in a safe manner,” including “If you choose to have a face-to-face meeting, always tell a friend or family member where you are going and when you will return, meet in a public place with many people around, provide your own transportation, do not agree to be picked up at your home.” Good advice.

Podcast interview

Listen to Larry’s Interview with Greg Tseng

More from around the web

Expanding social discovery, Tagged-style (from my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier)

Tagged Acquires Facebook Competitor Hi5 (Wall Street Journal blog)

Underdog Social Network Tagged, is Building a “Pandora for People” (San Francisco Chronicle)

Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Tagged and several other Internet and social networking companies. 

Steve Jobs may have been a visionary, but his vision wasn’t always 100% in focus.  For example, I was at the 2005 All Things Digital conference where Jobs said Apple was unlikely to produce a cell phone because, as conference co-host Walter Mossberg wrote in his Wall Street Journal column at the time, “he would have to offer it through what he called the ‘four orifices — the four big U.S. cellphone carriers.” Last year Jobs reportedly said Apple wouldn’t make a 7-inch iPad and, perhaps that will remain company policy, but after seeing the success of the Amazon Kindle, Jobs’ successor ought to reconsider,  just as Jobs eventually reconsidered making a phone.

I’ve owned a Kindle Fire from day one and have mixed feelings about the device. For the most part I like it and I’m especially pleased to have a tablet that’s small enough to fit into my pants or jacket pocket. Though I wish it were even lighter than it is, I appreciate that it’s slightly lighter than an iPad 2.

Still,  I was disappointed when I took it on a trip a few weeks ago and had to struggle to sign into Gogo In-Flight WiFi service. The site’s web interface simply didn’t lend itself to such a small screen, or so I thought. I then logged into the same service on an even smaller iPhone and realized that the problem with the Kindle Fire was not-so-much its screen size but it’s poorly thought out user-interface and sluggish responsiveness (which is somewhat improved with a recent over-the-air update).  Hence my point. The issue isn’t size but software. IfApple software engineers can create software that makes web surfing tolerable on its smaller iPod Touch and iPhone, they can certainly figure out how to make using a 7 inch iPad a great experience.

Price is also an issue. At $199, the Kindle Fire is an impulse buy which explains why so many were sold during the Christmas season. True, a lot of people are obviously willing to spend $499 for an iPad but if Apple could cut the price in half, it could probably sell far more than twice as many.

The rumor mill was buzzing with earlier reports that Apple would introduce just such a device but the latest rumor published at Digitimes says that “Instead of the previously-rumored 7.85-inch, the upcoming iPad models will still feature 9.7-inch screens.” The article also says that Applewill unveil two new iPads at iWorld (formerly the MacWorld Expo) in January.   I agree with my friend David Needle over at TabTimes who is smartly skeptical about the latest Digitimes rumor.

Just as Apple has a range of sizes for its MacBook PCs, it needs to offer a range for its iPad. In a sense it does that already if you think of the iPod Touch as a mini-iPad with its 3.5 inch screen but there is a big difference between 3.5 inches and 7 inches. Apple needs to fill the gap.

In addition to the reviews you can find in the Apple App Store and Android Market,  there are several excellent sources of information about apps.

Start by looking at this article from iPhoneLife Magazine that recommends a number of sites for findings Apps including MacWorld AppGuide and AppShopper.com.

You’ll find reviews of Apps for both iPhone and Android at Best Apps.

PCMag.com has an article with the 100 Best iPad Apps and another with the 50 Best Android Apps. Appolicious and AppBrain recommend Android apps. Huffington Post has published the Best-Rated Apps of 2011.

To keep up with news and reviews about tablets of all stripes, check out TabTimes.

Trending Apps section of Android Market (Screen shot by Larry Magid)

At a recent Boston TEDx Boston event, Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab,  spoke about a very inexpensive way to turn cell phones into eye exam machines (scroll down for video).  His solution is called NETRA, a $1 eye piece that goes on top of a cell phone to calcuate the data for an eye glass presecrip0tion.  He said that it can measure near nearsightedness, farsightedness and automatism.

Source: YouTube Video at TEDx Boston talk

“More than 2 billion people have refractive errors but unfortunately more than half a billion people need glasses but don’t have them,” he told the audience. Raskar said that “It’s not just about a problem of blurry vision, but blurry vision means lack of education which leads to illiteracy, lack of employment which leads to unemployment which, of course, leads to poverty.”

Clinical trials of NETRA (Source: MIT Media Lab)

He said that the cost of providing eye glasses “has come down dramatically,” but there has been “no easy solution” on the diagnostic side.

The technology uses the inverse of the Shack-Harman wavefront sensor “instead of shining lasers iinto the eye, it asks you to look into the cell phone.” When you look through the eye piece your goal is to align the spots on the LCD. The number of clicks it takes to make the alignment, provides the data for the prescription.

This has become possible, he said, because “cell phone makers have been increasing the resolution of the LCD display.”