CES 2014 in depth: The Verge reports – The Verge

Goodbye Twitter fridges, hello 3D-printed food

2014-01-13T12:05:43-05:00

Goodbye Twitter fridges, hello 3D-printed food: the appliances of CES 2014

CES has long been the best place in the world to find a bunch of insane and impractical home appliances. Last year saw the category reach its drunk-on-tech nadir, best exemplified by Samsung's incongruous efforts to push Evernote onto fridge doors. But what we found in 2014 may surprise you - some are taking a step back from the bizarre feature creep of 2013, and one new device is a genuine breakthrough that could foreshadow a potential revolution in the kitchen.

That's not to say that all the appliances at this year's show had a firm grip on reality. LG is still pushing its dubious connected equipment hard; its big announcement this year i …

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John Legend and the hidden soul of CES

2014-01-11T10:30:04-05:00

John Legend 1020 stock 2

John Legend took the stage on Tuesday to cap off the Yahoo keynote, and it was good. It was a delight in fact, a brief respite after the certifiably bizarre spectacle that was SNL meets Yahoo meets David Pogue. For me, it was actually something of a surprise. The restraint of it, the un-CES-ness. I caught myself wondering aloud, "Why are you here, John?"

And that was it. The keynote ended, and we were once again swept up in the news of the day. (C'est la guerre.) But the performance itself hit on something about CES that I missed at first.

As much as it's about ideas and innovation, CES is about showmanship - big booths and booth babes. CE …

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Why can’t CES quit booth babes?

2014-01-10T15:55:55-05:00

boothbabes lede

It's pretty common to see scantily clad women at trade shows for industries dominated by men, and CES, the electronics trade show that lures around 150,000 people every January, is typically no different.

But last year, for whatever reason - maybe it was the economy; perhaps it was the political climate - they didn't show up. Despite the high-profile body-paint incident, I only saw one pair of booth babes during the whole week. Perhaps society had moved on.

Nope.

Maybe it's the economy; maybe it's the political climate. Maybe it's the 40 percent increase in the number of exhibitors from China, as one attendee suggested to The Verge. Just …

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I am the interface

2014-01-10T14:46:53-05:00

softkinetic 2

Asteroids barreled towards Earth from every direction, and my only defense was my eyes. I looked at one asteroid. I looked at another. Boom. Boom. Lasers from Earth had blown them into smithereens. And I didn't lift a finger.

At CES 2014, a dozen or more companies are vying to track your arms, legs, and even your eyeballs. This demo was from Tobii, an eye-tracking technology company from Stockholm that wants to change the way we read, drive, and game. The company makes Kinect-like sensors, which each have two or three cameras and sit below your laptop's screen. After two minutes of calibration (which involved staring at several dots as they …

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IQ test: the state of smart TVs at CES 2014

2014-01-10T14:21:56-05:00

ces trend tvs lede

TVs have never looked better than they do at CES 2014. Gorgeous displays are all over the show floor, showcasing awe-inspiring demo footage. This year, perhaps more than ever before, TV manufacturers have all committed to following a similar hardware path: they're building big, beautiful, and nearly indistinguishable televisions. But there's one disheartening trend that remains alive and well this year: terrible software.

Technology giants like Samsung are seasoned experts when it comes to building quality TVs, but they've gotten no better at designing the software that controls them. User interfaces remain overwrought with unnecessary bloa …

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Steam Machines are here, but who are they for?

2014-01-10T13:05:35-05:00

via cdn2.sbnation.com

Last year at CES in Las Vegas, Valve finally announced its long-rumored Steam Machine platform, designed to bring the PC gaming experience into your living room. At the time, the appeal was obvious: a small PC that fits under your television and lets you play the thousands of games on Steam from the comfort of your couch. It even looked like a unified platform that could help simplify the notoriously complex world of PC gaming, making it accessible to a more casual audience. But one year later, the appeal is less clear. The first 13 Steam Machines were unveiled this week, and they don't quite match up to that original vision. They come in a h …

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The 3D printing cagematch

2014-01-10T12:45:40-05:00

3d scanning

Over the past five years, 3D printers have gone from expensive industrial equipment to hobbyist tools that can be had for as little as a few hundred dollars. 3D printing has captured the attention of schools, designers, and companies like UPS, which began offering printing service in its stores last August. And between the Stratasys-owned MakerBot and enthusiasts with homemade RepRap printers, dozens of small teams - several of which were at CES 2014's 3D Printer Tech Zone - are racing to be the ones who take the technology mainstream.These companies' entry-level printers have different names, different designs, and different price points, b …

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Future steps: exoskeleton lets paralyzed snowmobiler walk again

2014-01-10T12:29:25-05:00

Ekso Bionics CES 2014, Paul Thacker (STOCK)

Robotic exoskeletons are a staple of sci-fi, pointing to a future where technology can overcome serious injury and bestow superhuman powers on people. But that future is here today for Paul Thacker, who uses an exoskeleton about once a month to stand up and walk around - no small feat, considering he's paralyzed from the chest down.

The 39-year-old Alaska native and snowmobile enthusiast lost the use of his lower body in a training accident in 2010 and was told he'd be confined to a wheelchair, potentially for the rest of his life. But while in physical therapy at a Colorado hospital in 2011, he stumbled across the Esko, a full-body, powere …

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Booth bots: why we build robots that look human

2014-01-10T12:07:09-05:00

Robothespian

By now, anyone wandering through the robotics section of CES has seen it: a plastic and metal humanoid performing on a hastily assembled stage, immobilized from the waist down. The gears and muscle tubes are exposed, leaving an impression somewhere between a Björk video and the Terminator. Most bystanders are startled at first before settling into a kind of baffled attention. They'll stand there for five minutes at a time, at a conference where most attendees are constantly in motion. "I don't think it's nice, you laughin'," the robot says in an exaggerated Clint Eastwood from A Fistful of Dollars. The overdriven speaker distorts his voice i …

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Automakers want to see through walls in the name of safety

2014-01-10T11:08:34-05:00

Ford V2V 1020

The cars we found parked on a closed course across the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center this week can't actually see through walls, but they come pretty close: Ford is here at CES demonstrating Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication (V2V), a promising technology under development that could have a significant impact on road safety.

V2V has been in development for a number of years, using 802.11p - a simplified form of Wi-Fi geared specifically at the automotive industry - to beam bite-sized pieces of information between nearby cars. The specific mode that Ford is demonstrating is known as "Where I Am," which simply broadcasts your car' …

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