Two different 3D printers caught my eye. I caught a live demo of Chefjet, a 3D printer for food, churning out whimsically shaped and coloured hunks of food. Someone from my team, lost from the group, caught a demo of another, different 3D food printer as well. This suggests to me that oddly-shaped sugar hunks will be de rigueur in all London hotels with fancy coffee services next year.
The other 3D printer was wirelessly linked to a Samsung Galaxy Note. Whatever you drew or rendered on the Note could be instantly made real. Rapid prototyping just got much, much more rapid.
And there were the 4K TVs I mentioned yesterday, curved TVs, giant curved TVs and today I saw the most amazing screen of all - LG's giant glasses-free 3D TV. The image is stunning. Usually 3D is just too nerdy, too much of a hassle, for the general public, but if 3D is ever going to crack the mainstream, it will be because of this cutting-edge screen that doesn't require glasses.
Speaking of annoying glasses, the award to most-annoying display are the guys who wear Google Glass, ostensibly standing around waiting for people to ask them about that Google Glass they're wearing. Even Robert Scoble has given up on Glass. We're not buying it this year, guys.
Amidst the magical, futuristic gadgets were real, live relics from the 80s. I saw Vanilla Ice (really) poking around and posing at the Samsung booth. And, if that wasn't 80s enough, there was an actual Delorean from Back to the Future on display. It's all a bit weird for CES, we should be constantly looking forward, not amusing ourselves with kitsch.
I hope next year whatever happened in the 80s stays in the 80s.
(The article first appeared on www.marketingmagazine.co.uk)
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