Technologizer » IFA

IFA: Still More Photos

Harry McCracken — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:10:44 +0000

I’m still playing catchup with all the photos I took on the IFA show floor…

A company called Vogel’s was showing neat remote-controlled mounts for flat-screen TVs. I hope that the Yellow Pages people don’t get wind of Vogel’s slogan, though:

If you told me that Toyota was exhibiting at CES in Las Vegas, I’d assume they were showing off something like a Prius with built-in Wi-Fi. The company was at IFA–but it was with their sewing machines (which, I just learned, are also available in the U.S.):

IFA had a “Room of Silence.” I didn’t visit it and am not positive what it was, but if it’s anything like what I’m thinking it might be, I think every gigantic tradeshow should have one:

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IFA: It’s Not Just a Coke Machine, It’s the Hub of Your Digital Lifestyle

Harry McCracken — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:54:30 +0000

In the United States, about the furthest Coke machines get away from their core purpose of selling you a Coke is selling you a Diet Mr. Pibb. In Berlin, where I’ve been visiting the IFA consumer electronics show, I ran across some Coke machines that sell you ringtones, music downloads, and games, and which double as Wi-Fi hotspots.

I didn’t make use of any of them myself–I was in a rush, and have forgotten nearly all of my two years of college German–but I did take a few snapshots of one of them…

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IFA: One Laptop, No Child

Harry McCracken — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:02:10 +0000

Unlike most tradeshows in the U.S.–which are open only to grown-ups who are involved in the trade in question–the IFA show in Berlin is open to the general public, and some attendees bring their offspring. In fact, there’s an area called the Kids’ Playground, which is basically a couple of rooms equipped with electronic toys and kid-oriented gadgets.

When some of us American journalists dropped by, we saw four kids deeply engaged in using Asus’s eee PCs–and ignoring a One Laptop Per Child XO laptop that was sitting off to one side. That may or may not be a commentary on the relative appeal of the two low-cost notebooks, but it makes for an interesting photo:

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The T-List: Special German Edition!

Harry McCracken — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:48:27 +0000

My trip to Berlin for the IFA electronics show is winding down, but I still have stuff to talk about. And it’s a slow news day. So here’s a T-List about my visit–be thankful it’s not in German!

IFA Wrap-Up
I’d somehow managed to spend seventeen years as a tech journalist without ever attending a European tradeshow, even though some of the biggest in the business are held here, such as CeBIT and Mobile World Congress. So I’m glad to have had the chance to attend IFA as a speaker (for which I was paid a fee). And I’m leaving feeling kind of upbeat about the U.S. technology industry. Yes, we’re behind in key areas such as wireless and broadband. But as sprawling and jammed with products as IFA was, it felt like a recap of January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the U.S. is clearly ahead of Europe when it comes to HDTV and digital entertainment. It’ll be interesting to see just how long we maintain that lead, though.

GMail by Any Other Name
I think I knew that Google doesn’t have the trademark to the name Gmail here in Germany, and is therefore forced to call the service Google Mail. Even so, just about every time I tried to log into my account here, I forgot and went to www.gmail.com, where I got this kinda prickly-sounding message: “We can’t provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we’re called Google Mail here instead…Oh, and we’d like to link [mail.google.com] but we’re not allowed to do that either. Bummer.” According to Ars Technica, a recent EU court victory for Daniel Giersch, who operates a service called G-Mail, means that GMail is forced to go by Google Mail across the continent. Double bummer.

Read more at: Ars Technica

Abroad With the iPhone
I brought my iPhone 3G to Berlin, and it worked just fine–as good or better as in the U.S., which made sense since GSM networks are so robust here. I still used it sparingly, though, since international roaming costs are not only extremely high but pretty mysterious–I couldn’t tell for sure how much it cost me each time I checked my e-mail, and i didn’t even dare do anything bandwidth-intensive like listen to streaming radio. Ironically enough, AT&T introduced cheaper international data plans partway through my trip. At $120 and $200 a month (for 100MB and 200MB respectively) they’re still way, way more pricey than the $30 we statesiders pay for unlimited data at home, though.

Read more at: CNet

Silicon Valley, German Style
One of the highlights of my Berlin visit was a field trip we took to Adlershof, an area in Berlin that’s known as Germany’s answer to Silicon Valley. It’s in what was formerly East Germany, and is chock-full of scientists and engineers, many of them formerly East Germans, who are founding and running successful high-tech startups. One big difference: Adlershof is operated by the German government as an initiative to encourage development of the technology industry. Another difference: Amazingly few of Adlershof’s startups fail. The Adlershof representative we visited with says that’s both good and bad: Failures are rare in part because German businesspeople tend to be wary about risk-taking in general, since failure is embarrassing. In the U.S., gambles that could lead to failure are part of life–and so Silicon Valley has both more companies that never go anywhere and more that are massive successes.

Read more at: Wikipedia

Meeting of the Blogging Minds
Another highlight–and the most fun of the three panels I participated in–was one that brought together bloggers from the U.S. and Germany. Participants besides moi included metablogger Robert Scoble, CBS News’s Larry Magid, BusinessWeek’s Steve Wildstrom, and two leading German bloggers: Thomas Knuwer and Robert Basic. Knuwer and Basic said that acceptance of blogging and the Internet in general in Germany lags behind the U.S.–again, in part because German folks stress out over the prospect of failing in public, which you inevitably do from time to time when you blog without an editor. Knuwer and Basic, however, were clearly as smart and passionate as any American blogger. And I’m going to check out what they’re up to–even if I have to run their stuff through Google Translate to make sense of them.

Read more (in German!) at: Indiskretion, Basic Thinking

Like the T-List? Read it as a feed.

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IFA: A Few More Photos

Harry McCracken — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:43:02 +0000

My time at the IFA electronics show is winding down, but I’m still catching up on reporting back here on everything I’ve seen on the show floor. Herewith, a few more items…

Beko had a booth full of pretty generic looking TVs and other products, but in a world chock-full of electronics companies with pompous taglines, liked its slogan: “Buy It Before It Becomes Famous”:

American domestic robot manufacturer Ugobe wasn’t just at the show with its Pleo dinosaur–it brought along a cool giant-sized Pleo:

IFA isn’t as thick with booth entertainment as an American show like U.S., but it wasn’t entirely devoid of it, either. I never quite figured out what a company called 2DF did, but its giant walkaround mascot was downright adorable:

Becker had an in-dash navigation system called the Indianapolis Pro–and while I assume it refers to the Indy 500, it was still startling and entertaining to see a German product named after a midwestern American city:

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IFA: Yet Another Monster to Keep Track of

Harry McCracken — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:55:33 +0000

In the U.S., we have both Monster the cable company and Monster the job-hunting service. That’s confusing enough–the San Francisco 49ers play at Monster Park (née Candlestick Park), and I can never remember which Monster it’s named after.

Here at IFA, there’s yet another Monster on the show floor. This one makes…$1200 ironing board/iron combos that blast your laundry with more steam than I’ve ever seen in my life. As far as I know, this one doesn’t sell its products in the U.S., at least under the Monster name–which is probably just as well. Even though the product looked kind of nifty. At least for those who’d spend $1200 to keep their clothes looking sharp.

Here’s a Monster employee demoing the company’s wares by pressing the jacket of CBS News’s Larry Magid:

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IFA: Convergence in the Kitchen, Kinda Sorta

Harry McCracken — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:30:15 +0000

IFA has been doing consumer electronics for far longer than anyone’s called them consumer electronics. (The show dates back to 1924; in 1930, the keynote was given by Albert Einstein, who talked about a newfangled device know as television.) This is the first year that the show’s focus has broadened to include appliances as well as consumer electronics; at first blush, that sounds like it makes a lot of sense. After all, the two worlds are converging, right?

Well, maybe a little bit, but as I strolled the appliance halls at the show today, I was mostly struck by how separate the worlds of electronics and traditional appliances remain. Yes, virtually everything from microwave ovens to irons are packed with sophisticated ciruitry these days. But I had visions of new-wave kitchen and laundry gadgets that sit on a home network and do double-duty as entertainment devices, and I saw almost nothing at the show that even hinted at such a merger of devices in the home.

I said almost nothing. Vestel, the Turkish company whose Yoda laptop I already covered, also had a large booth full of kitchen equipment. And it was demoing some concept kitchen/entertainment products which it doesn’t intend to actually sell to anyone.

One was a dishwasher with a built-in TV…

Another was a refrigerator with a TV…

And the third was another fridge with built-in, touch-sensitive MP3 playback. (It was also the shiniest appliance I’ve seen, so it serves a third purpose as a mirror–that’s USA Today’s Ed Baig snapping a photo in the reflection.)

I can kind of see why Vestel isn’t planning to turn these into real products, since none of them look particularly practical. (Especially the dishwasher, unless you’re a midget for whom the TV is at eyelevel.) All the technology exists to make appliances that have consumer electronics-style functionality. But designing ones that make sense is still a challenge. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any examples of anyone succeeding at doing so, unless you cound iRobot’s Roomba.

I’m still convinced we’ll see more examples of smart appliances, including ones that have consumer appeal. Just not at IFA 2008, and maybe not anywhere for a while…

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IFA: A Cow-Spotted Yoda Laptop Vesta Makes

Harry McCracken — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:33:11 +0000

The Empire Strikes Back’s Yoda has appeared on notebooks–of the spiral-bound kind. PC manufacturer has been synonymous with cow spots for more than two decades–but if they’ve ever made a cow-spotted PC, I’ve forgotten about it.

And then there’s Turkish electronics and appliance manufacturer Vesta. Here at IFA, they’re showing a notebook that A) has a “Yoda” label (though no imagery of the little guy–it may have nothing to do with Mr. Lucas’s creation) and B) is covered in cow spots:

Maybe this makes sense if you’re Turkish…

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IFA: The Luxury of Leather…in a TV?

Harry McCracken — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:08:18 +0000

The IFA show floor (floors, actually–the event takes place in multiple halls spread over numerous buildings) is full of flat-scren TVs we probably won’t be seeing in the U.S., from companies I’ve never heard of. Some of ‘em look pretty nice, such as those from Loewe, a German company that specializes in stylish sets at high-end prices.

Then there are the ones that we can probably live without. A company called Galactic was showing off flat screens wrapped in interchangable cases made out of leather, a material you don’t see much in consumer electronics of any sort, and which I’ve never seen on a TV:

It’s a weird effect. And apparently, Galactic wants it to come off as, well, kinky. Witness the signage it had up with its leather set:

Creepy, no?

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IFA: The First 200-Hz LCD TVs Are Here! But From Who?

Harry McCracken — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:46:07 +0000

I’ve been spending the day at IFA, the giant consumer electronics show in Berlin that’s Europe’s equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I’m having a good time, but one conclusion I’ve drawn so far is that CES has the edge when it comes to major announcements about flashy new technologies and jaw-dropping specs. CES isn’t CES without stuff like the world’s first OLED TV or world’s thinnest LCD or the world’s largest plasma. IFA, however, seems to be dominated by more mainstream products and technologies that are cool, but not cutting-edge. You could argue that that’s a good thing, since very few of us will buy the first OLED TV or biggest LCD or thinnest plasma. But it does make for a somewhat more subdued show.

One exception: There’s plenty of hoopla about the first 200-Hz LCD TVs, which run at a faster frame rate to provide smoother action with less motion blur. The company that’s first to market with this breakthrough is justly proud about it. Here’s a snapshot I took in Sony’s booth:

..and here’s one from Samsung’s booth:

Yup–both companies are claiming credit for being the first. (Sony and Samsung share some LCD production, which might explain the synchronicity here.) The dualing firsts kind of point out the silliness of specsmanship in general: Ultimately, it doesn’t matter much which company was first and which one was second. Unless, of course, you’re talking about marketing campaigns. (“The World’s Second 200-Hz TV” just doesn’t have the same ring.)

Is 200-Hz worth getting excited about? The jury’s still out. Samsung has a demo that showed 50-Hz vs. 200-Hz, but it was so obviously rigged that it wasn’t a useful data point: The 50-Hz video was more flickery than a Charlie Chaplin film. I didn’t see any similar comparison at Sony’s both. Both 50-Hz TVs did, indeed, display extremely smooth imagery, but I learned a long time ago not to pay much attention to TV demos at trade shows, since they almost always look gorgeous. What will matter is how much better 200-Hz looks with real-world data sources like cable and satellite TV and standard-def DVDs and Blu-Ray discs almost nobody ever uses those sources when showing off sexy new technologies.

More IFA tidbits to come, and full disclosure: I’m attending the show as a paid speaker at several panels.

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