On a beautiful, slightly fresh -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit), Monday morning, 4 AM local time up in the North here in Sweden, I woke up to head over to Las Vegas to visit the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012.
Traveling from Skellefteå (North Sweden), via Stockholm, Chicago and Phoenix, 24 hours later I arrived at my hotel, or rather apartment in Vegas. Pic of the apartment below.
Blue sky, palm trees, sunny and not too cold, not bad for a first day.
It promised to be an exciting show, as several companies demonstrating multi-touch technology hardware were going to use Snowflake to showcase the strength and capabilities of their product.
Snowflake is our award-winning multi-touch software product that includes 29 applications, that are suitable for different market verticals such as consumer electronics, event/exhibitions, museums, digital signage, education and entertainment. Applications include presentation and creativity tools as well as games and other types of apps.
Additionally I had several meetings scheduled to catch up with some of our Partners and Customers, which is always a great opportunity to hear about their experiences and listen to their feedback.
One of the things we were most excited about was the collaboration with Lenovo to display the future of multi-touch, multi-user solutions.
Lenovo used Snowflake Suite during the launch of their true multi-touch all-in-one desktop system called the IdeaCentre A720.
Videos, PR, images, links etcetera, you can find here and here.
Just pasting one of the videos below:
Lenovo executives Peter Hortensius and Liu Jun playing with Snowflake at the CES Press Conference
This news was featured amongst others by Gizmodo, Engadget and PC World.
I ran into was this large PQ Labs based system on the Verizon booth.
It had kind of a cool looking app running on it.
My favorite booth when it comes to pure multi-touch was the one from 3M Touch Systems. It looked great and it had a wide range of multi-touch screens on display including a 19,22,24, 27 and 32" models and even a prototype of a 46" model, amazing!
Its always great to see our friends from 3M again, especially when they have so many exciting products to show, definitely one of my favorite multi-touch hardware technologies.
One of the 3M displays running Snowflake Suite. The game that we developed called Alien Raiders (included in Snowflake version 2.1 and upwards) was in particular a big success on the 3M booth. It always nice to hear that people enjoy using your product.
The 46" prototype, great to see that they were willing to share with the public what they have been working on.
Another 3M system running Snowflake
I really liked the system where they had mounted 9 displays together that worked seamlessly 6 in vertical position and 3 in an angle, like a control panel, ideal for amongst others broadcasting or command and control rooms.
Our friends from Multitouch Ltd in Finland showed several of their multi-touch systems as well.
The beauty of this system is that it stays very cold, its stackable and high performance when it comes to the touch experience.
Far superior in my opinion than the Microsoft Surface 2 that Samsung was showcasing in their booth.
A lot of people showing interest in the Multitouch Ltd hardware.
A Multitaction table with tag recognition.
Our friends from China based UIworks were also present, showcasing their multi-touch displays with Snowflake.
Microsoft Surface 2 at the Samsung booth
My opinion is that the performance of that particular system was not so good, it lagged behind when interacting.
I did like the fact that they showed a few different applications for different market verticals.
Also the tag support is a nice feature, but this is also something the Multitaction supports.
They did a nice job improving from Surface version 1 to 2.
But word around the campfire is that they are still experiencing issues with ambient light with the Surface 2.
But lets give Microsoft credit for creating awareness for multi-touch with the Surface and for enabling people to easily use multi-touch with Windows 7. It has made life easier for sure.
Asteroid shooting game, controlled via eye tracking, by the Swedish company Tobii, fun product and very promising company.
Though I'm more a fan of their serious more useful application of controlling your computer with your eyes for handicapped people (writing emails just looking with your eyes at specific letters).
Expect their technology to be integrated into laptops in the years to come.
Tyco Electronics and Touch Revolution also showcased their multi-touch systems (sorry no pictures).
Summary:
- Favorite fully multi-touch focused booth: 3M touch systems
- Favorite non multi-touch related technology: AR Drone Parrot (control an AR Drone with your iPhone)
- Favorite celebrity: upcoming heavyweight UFC champion, Dutch pride Alistair Overeem
- Favorite quote: "Your Snowflake software really saved our butt on a project."
- Most eye catching, a massive 2,5 meter tall robot that played guitar
- Most shown product: cases for iphone, ipods, ipads
All in all a great show to visit.
Business is pleasure, but I made sure to have some more fun after the show.
I had the opportunity to go and see the Grand Canyon, a 6 hour bus ride, totally worth it!
Ran into the Hoover Dam on the way back to the hotel, quite a decent piece of concrete that is.
Also dropped by the Gunstore, to shoot a sniper rifle, magnum dirty harry .44, AK 47 and the clown in the picture (no not the one with the sunglasses, experienced being shot by a shotgun).
The next show we'll be visiting is ISE in Amsterdam end of January. Our Business Development Manager Dennis Mohi will be on the floor to answer any questions that you might have and you can expect to see Snowflake in action on several booths again over there.