Monthly Archives: December 2016

The Ultimate Home Tech Christmas Show 

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This house, on Beverly Glen, happens to be a few blocks from where my cousins live in Sherman Oaks, CA. 

I spend every Thanksgiving there. I wish this annual exhibit would have been set up when I was recently there. I would have loved to have seen it live. The house is decorated with 50,000 custom-programmed LED lights to be the ultimate Christmas display.

Homeowner Mike Ziemkowski has been setting up a display of this nature for four decades. He is a film editor in Hollywood. The show has been covered by several local news stations and has won awards, including last year’s grand prize on ABC’s The Great Christmas Light Fight. 

I’m bringing it to you.

Please watch the video. Read the story from Curbed LA.

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Google Wi-Fi Eliminates Dead Zones

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https://youtu.be/P0GoYzq_KAY
My brother Steve tipped me off  about this new gizmo. I believe you are going to love it. It solves a major problem. No Internet. 

Too many of us have unreliable Internet connections. There is always an excuse; the walls are too thick, the building is too old, and the equipment is outdated. 

Google to the rescue. The company has a new connected system that replaces your router for seamless coverage throughout your home. Google claims that this is absolutely the best and quickest Wi-Fi system on the market. 

Google’s press release says Google Wi-Fi was designed to handle multiple devices streaming, downloading, and sharing at the same time. No interruptions. Fabulous.

Google even tells you how many units you need to cover your entire home– one for a 1,500 sq. ft. apartment, two for a 3,000 sq. ft. home, and three for a 4,500 sq. ft. house.

 A companion app allows you to control all of the units. Here’s a bonus. You can even shut one unit off if you think your teenager or child had been on the Internet too long.

Price is $129.00 each. No more excuses. You found a great connection. 

 
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A Sneak Peek At The Next Type Of Robot 

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The world of robots just keep getting more diversified. If you are concerned that robots will totally replace people, now you can start worrying about pets. 

Marc Raibert, CEO Boston Dynamics, a Google company, just showed a group in Europe, SpotMini, a four-legged robot that resembles a small dog.  It can perform tasks like opening heavy doors and climbing stairs to deliver packages to the front door of a home.

Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google in  2013 for $500 million. 

MIT Technology Review, recently quoted Rainer, saying, “Many people are talking about drone delivery. So why not just plain legged robots?” 

Weighing 55-pounds, the dog can trot, move sideways, and perform delivery functions at various speeds. SpotMini is presently controlled remotely. The future calls for total automation.

SpotMini may soon be delivering your groceries, dry cleaning, and flowers. Instead of  tips in cash, you may need to start providing treats.

Happy Holidays 

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Three videos that make you want to get out there and shake it all up. 

 

Photo by Eliot Hess

Wynn Vegas First To Offer Alexa  

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https://youtu.be/7QM7izjVqug
Boy, that Alexa’s gets around. Wynn Las Vegas just announced they are the first hotel in the world to feature Amazon’s Echo, better known as Alexa, in all of their 4,748 hotel rooms. Echo is Amazon’s hands-free voice-controlled speaker. Guests will be able to control various hotel room features with a series of voice commands. They include lights, temperature, and audio/video components.

What a PR move. Steve Wynn, Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, couldn’t have timed it better. Some of the first guests to room with Alexa are CES showgoers. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I’m at the Venetian. I would love to hear guest reactions. Lucky for me, Eliot received an Amazon Echo for a birthday gift. We love it. 

In a company press release, Wynn said, “Techology has always played an important part in our resorts. The thing that Amazon has done with Alexa is quite perfect. If I have ever seen anything in my 49 years of developing resorts that has made our job of delivering a perfect experience to our guests easier and help us get to another level, it is Alexa. The ability to talk to your room is effortlessly convenient. In partnership with Amazon, becoming the first resort in the world in which guests can verbally control every aspect of lighting, temperature and the audio-visual components of a hotel room is yet another example of our leadership in the world of technology for the benefit of all of our guests.”

Amazon claims “Alexa is capable of reading the news, set timers and alarms, recite calendars, check sports scores, control smart devices in-home, and more. Since Alexa runs in the cloud, she is always getting smarter – plus, it is simple and free for developers to build Alexa skills and integrate Alexa into their own products. In the U.S., there are already more than 6,000 skills available for Alexa.”

I’m starting to believe that Amazon is becoming a member of everyone’s family. 

 

You See What I See 

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This will be my 50th year attending CES, the largest tech show in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. It showcases more than 3,800 exhibiting companies and more than 165 thousand people from 150 countries.

I am pretty sure that I am the only one who has attended every show. There are others who claim to hold my title, but when I question them, I find it not to be true. The important thing for me is that my PR agency continues to introduce innovation.

This year, I believe we will be introducing one of the most innovative products at the show.

All the way from Vienna, Austria, Viewpointsystem will showcase their VPS 16 eye-tracking glasses in booth SV-6 at the Sands Convention Center during CES 2017, January 5 – 8, 2017.

Viewpointsystem is a technology company specializing in eye-tracking systems and vision analysis. Their main product, the VPS 16 eye-tracking glasses, is the most advanced system for recording, displaying and interpreting human eye movements. 

If the paramedics are wearing the VPS 16, doctors in the hospital can precisely view how a patient is being treated.

The VPS 16 is capable of identifying not only where someone is looking, but also what the wearer has really perceived. By precisely tracking the wearer’s eye-movements and following the chronological and spatial changes of the viewing coordinates, one could accurately determine what was subjectively perceived. 

Three high performance cameras record precise spatial images and the exact view that the user has with no time delay and streams them live on to the laptop or tablet of an expert in a different location in the world. 

This is perfect for 

· Training, e.g. in driving schools

· Medical sector

· Vision training in sports, rail, air, water, industrial processes

· Road safety

· Prevention of industrial accidents

. air, water, industrial processes

· Road safety

· Prevention of industrial accidents

So here I go again, promoting an entirely new product. This one, at the present time, is priced at $16,000. That’s because it’s a business-to-business product. One day this will be a consumer product at a much lower price.  Just think what it can do.

Stay tuned.

 

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Driving Myself Meshuga 

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Sometimes I think I can “will” things to happen. When I decided I didn’t want to drive anymore, I prayed for a limousine service. Puff, Uber was born. Lately, I have been hoping for some sort of mechanism that can prevent car crashes. 

Many Miami Beach roads do not have traffic lights. Every time we drive down one of these streets, I am constantly checking the cross roads for oncoming cars, and I’m not even driving.

Tonight my prayers were answered. Lester Holt, of NBC Nightly News, announced that the Transportation Department is forcing all new cars and light trucks to wirelessly talk to each other, talk with traffic lights and with other roadway infrastructure. That means it will dramatically reduce traffic deaths because of constant communications. Holt said there are 600,000 accidents a year, a deadly one every 15 minutes. 

The Transportation Department said future automobiles will be required to have Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications, or V2V, which enables cars to transmit their locations, speed, direction and other information 10 times per second. The Associated Press reports that new cars will be able to detect when another vehicle is about to run a red light, is braking hard, changing lanes or coming around a blind turn in time for a driver, or automated safety systems, to prevent a crash.”

This is such excellent news. Watch the video and let’s pray for safe roads and zero accidents. 

The Gold Ring 

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One of the major players in the music business just emailed me to say that finally there is an on demand music service for folks over 50. 

Fred Goldring, one of the founders of Music Aficionado, recently told the Wall Street Journal, “The over-50 “ demographic is largely being ignored in the digital world even though these folks are the most passionate about music because they lived all of it the first time around.”

Music Aficionado now draws more than 800,000 monthly visitors who spend an average of 23 to 24 minutes on it at a time. The  Wall Street Journal details how Music Aficionado plans to get older folks to pay for streaming music. I say, “Give us the music we love, without many interruptions, and we will pay something for it.” 

I met Fred almost 40 years ago when my PR agency represented HBO Video. He was very friendly with one of the VP’s, Eric Kessler.  I may have been in Fred’s company once or twice, but we corresponded over the years on different business matters. I spotted his name in the press many times and just smiled that at least I could get in touch with him.

I am including his career, as documented on LinkedIn, a networking site for business and academic professionals. Microsoft owns LinkedIn.  I thought it would be more fun to read about Fred this way. 

Read What I Read 

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Sex With Robots Is Almost Here 

Image: Pinterest

Shelly Palmer, TV tech personality, explores the ethical and moral issues arising from the advent of robots. Palmer claims there is incremental technological steps between where we are now and where this is clearly going. Click here to read more.
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Get Ready To Have A Good Laugh 

Don Rickles, Johnny Carson, and Frank Sinatra.  I sure hope this link works. You need a good hearty laugh. Click here. If it doesn’t work, I will try to post again later this week. This was posted by many friends on Facebook because it was so funny. 

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STAY TUNED

Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandberg among tech execs to meet with Trump this Wednesday. Read about it here. I will let your know the results of that meeting. 
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Fake Tweets

Trump fires a member of his transition team for tweeting fake news. Be careful what you tweet. Read here.

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Avoid Toys That Talk

You should probably still avoid toys that talk with your kids. Companies are collecting voice data. Click here.

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