I was lucky enough to attend CEATEC, a very big international consumer electronics show, yesterday at the Makuhari Messe (This translates to about an hour and a half from my apartment in Mitaka by train - or about forty minutes from Tokyo Station. For reference, this is pass Disneyland so it is in Chiba not Tokyo). There were quite a few different interesting things to check out and needless to say the place was bustling with people. I saw on the official CEATEC web site that about 30,000 people visited on the first day.
The first order of business for me was attending a talk by two VPs from Microsoft - Brad Brooks and Shoji Doyama entitled "Magical Windows". Mr. Brooks is a VP of Windows Consumer Marketing and this was pretty obvious in the way his presentation was designed. He was very energetic, pacing from one end of the stage to the other while talking excitedly about how with Vista and then Windows 7, how the OS is designed to come together with components of Windows Live and Windows Mobile making the whole experience seamless as one moves from one to the other during their everyday life. They showed a new phone for the Windows Mobile platform, called HTC Touch, which supports multi-touch and is integrated tightly with Windows Live, letting users take pictures and upload them seamlessly to Live Photo Gallery/Skydrive (which apparently is going to be called Skydrive with the rollout of the new version of Live). They also did a demo of Microsoft Surface for the first time in Japan (though they said the plans for how Surface will be used in Japan is not completely clear yet).
After the talk, we were off to checking out the booths and the first booth I stopped at was Microsoft which had one of the biggest and brightest booths. I was curious about the new Microsoft Arc mouse and I got a chance to try it out as well as checking out the HTC Touch which will be available in Japan under multiple carriers. The phone has a very nic
e and crisp display and it is relatively light and thin but unfortunately I will not be getting it as it does not have integrated IC so it cannot be used with Mobile Suica and all other IC based conveniences in Japan. I was pleasantly surprised with the mouse, it was light and responsive but if you are one of those people who like to grab the mouse from the sides this one may not work out for you. The MS booth also had a cool little toy that I guess goes with the local culture - a Visual Studio robot. I put the one of those little guys on top of the mouse and snapped this picture.
Next stop - Sony and Nissan booths. Sony had its extremely thin, 27 inch OLED TVs on view, boasting 0.99 cm of thickness - about 0.39 inches. I am guessing these right now are a bit on the impractically expensive side since their 11 inch cousins sell for around $1000 now. They also had this very interesting booth with Sony cameras lined around a half circle. There were two Japanese models in swimsuits, against a beach type of background drop, and you could use one of the cameras there to take their pictures since they were basically there to pose for you - interesting way to get people to like a new camera I guess. 
On Nissan's booth they had a very interesting demonstration - a new technology for predicting a car crash before it happens based on bees. They also had this prototype little robot for your dashboard that's supposed to represent the mood of the car and talk to you. Interesting? I would like to think so. Useful? Not at this point but who knows, may be in the future...
After checking out lots of other random stuff, I saw this big group gathering around the Murata booth. Murata is actually a electronic component manufacturer but in order to showcase their new gyroscope and other circuit components they built two robots - one riding a bicycle and another one riding a unicycle and keeping in balance by themselves while moving back and forth. Of course this being Japan both robots have names and genders, the one on the bike is a boy, and the one on the unicycle is a girl.
Tokyo Game Show will take place at the same location and I really wanted to go but it looks like I actually will not be in Tokyo during that time. This smaller taste of a "show" made me dread that even more but oh well, there is always next year I guess.
1 comment:
Sure you didn't flock to the Microsoft booth because you're their #1 fan instead of their bright lights? ;) That looks like one amazing tech show. Was it covered by G4? They seem to cover tech shows in Japan quite often. So how is that robot related to Visual Studio? And just how many pics did you take of the models with their new camera vs. your own? :P
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