CES 2011 wrapped up about a week past, and from the the look of things, there is some pretty sweet new tech on the horizon. There are tablets, smartphone/laptop combos, tablet/netbook combos, concept cars/bikes, connected TVs, WiFi-connected refrigerators, unifying cloud storage services, and much much more.
After the jump, I’ve listed three of the things I’m most looking forward to, as well as links to a few articles from folks who were at the event. Have a read, be tantalized and amazed — and let us know what you are most excited about in the world of tech and gadgets this year!
Motorola Xoom
There’s a reason this year is being heralded as the year of the tablet — and there’s a reason that this tablet stole the entire show. Motorola’s Xoom tablet was the only one at the show using the new, optimized-for-tablets Android Honeycomb. It’s packing a 10.1 inch display, 1280×800 resolution, 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, and front and rear cameras. It’s ridiculously fast, can take 720p video, and will have 4G capability in the second quarter of the year.
There’s no word on the price of this beauty, but it ought to give the iPad — possibly even the iPad 2 — a serious run for its money. Just the fact that it has all that power, supports Flash, and is on a network other than AT&T (Verizon) might be enough to sway some users. It is unknown whether there will be a WiFi-only version or not, or if anyone outside of Verizon will get a hold of it — but I hope that Motorola would be smart enough not to limit themselves.
Motorola Atrix 4G
Motorola came to win at CES this year, and their smartphone offering is, in a word, awesome! I own an iPhone and an iPad, and I thoroughly enjoy them both, but the geek in me is loving what companies like this are doing with Android. The phone itself is beefy (the dual-core Tegra 2 chip and 1GB of ram make playing 1080p video and Flash a breeze), but the coolest thing about it is the dock — which turns it into a laptop.
Seriously.
The phone just plugs into the back of the 2.4 pound laptop dock, and voila! You get an 11.6 inch screen with a compressed keyboard, a trackpad, and webtop software that lets you surf the full-sized web, even picking up where you left off on the phone. You can also access the phone’s interface, and run its apps in full screen. According to LaptopMag, you can even run Citrix Receiver, which allows you to basically run full Windows right there on the machine.
Very cool!
Real Networks Unifi: One Cloud Service to Rule Them All
Real Networks is coming out with a cloud service to combine all cloud services. Unifi will allow you to aggregate your multimedia files — or whatever files — that are on multiple devices and online services. This would allow you to keep just one central online media and file library to organize, manage, and access all of your stuff. Its incredibly convenient, especially as we are moving more and more to the cloud. The interface looks pretty good, too.
Apparently, Unifi will be open for public beta in a couple of months, and Real Networks plans to offer the standard freemium model: 2GB of storage for free, with paid plans that climb up to 100GB. iOS and Android apps should be available around the same time as the beta lanch, with Windows Mobile 7 and Blackberry apps to follow. It ought to be useful for Google Chrome OS when it finally goes live, as well.
So those are the things that really stood out to me in CES 2011, but there were many, many more — good, bad, and weird. Here are a few links:
cNet: http://ces.cnet.com/best-of-ces/
LaptopMag: http://www.laptopmag.com/mobile-life/best-of-ces-2011.aspx#axzz1B4NBYH9c
enGadget: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/11/best-of-ces-2011/
What tech are you most looking forward to? Anything you definitely did not like?
Google Turns On the Torrent Censor
In December of 2010, Google announced that it was planning to make “copyright work better online.” One of those steps was to remove “terms that are closely associated with piracy” from autocompletes, making it slightly more difficult for those looking for ways to find less than legit files to use their service. It seems that Google has made good on its promise, removing several search terms — and portions of search terms — from both autocomplete and Google Instant.
While some may cheer this move on Google’s part, there are several parties who are finding this censorship to be unfair. 40Tech has taken an anti-piracy stance on more than one occasion, but we are also not fans of censorship. Companies like RapidShare, Megaupload, and BitTorrent are most definitely used by those participating in shady file-sharing, but they are also used for legitimate, and often useful, purposes, yet these sites can no longer be found via Google’s autocomplete or Instant features. Is it fair that they be given selective treatment when, as a representative of RapidShare states: “A search engine’s results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody else’s?”
The selection of banned terms seems to be arbitrary, as not all well-known torrent sites are affected — you can still find The Pirate Bay, for instance. Anything using the search term “torr,” however, has been removed, along with several other terms and bits of terms. This is unfortunate for anyone doing some quick research on the torr symbol (a non-SI unit of pressure), or the high-IQ society Torr.org, or Torr the thin film and nanotechnology company, or anyone with the last name of Torr — which shows that Google’s approach is somewhat less than perfect.
Image from TorrentFreak
At this point, only autocomplete and Instant are affected. You can still find whatever you might be looking for when you press enter — but good luck if you are looking for something legitimate that incorporates one of Google’s banned terms and are hoping for some suggested results.
What do you think of Google’s approach here? Is it a good thing — or is it yet another form of relatively pointless censorship? Will making torrents a little bit harder to search for on Google actually have any impact on piracy at all? Let us know in the comments.