IDG News Service - IN PICTURES: The best of CES 2013
It's painful to watch demos go wrong, but we love it anyway. Sony offered a spectacular example on Monday when it wheeled onto the stage the star of its press conference, a giant 4K OLED TV, only to have it immediately crash in front of the world's media and display the Windows blue screen of death. Sony President Kazuo Hirai did well continuing to present without skipping a beat, and even joked about it. "This revolutionary TV combines the world's largest OLED display with dazzling 4K resolution, including this beautiful ... interface screen." We wouldn't like to be the engineer who set that demo up.
Game Church is a Christian group from Ventura, Calif., that came to CES to spread the word that Jesus and video games don't have to be worlds apart. From a small booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center, they're giving out hip T-shirts that say Jesus Loves Gamers and the booklet "Jesus, For The Win!", which includes bits of gospel and advice about sex, death and love. It's hard to miss their booth as behind it hangs a giant picture of Jesus, wearing headphones and holding a game controller. The group has been to CES before but usually attends more focused gaming shows like E3. So why target gamers in particular? "Because we're gamers," one told us. Stupid question.
Right after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that his agency will act to make more spectrum available for Wi-Fi, a man stood up in the audience and interrupted him, shouting a question. Most of the audience had plenty of questions -- "How much spectrum?" "How soon?" -- but the man wasn't interested in that. "Mr. Chairman," he demanded, "is it wise to aggressively pursue a broadband policy knowing that we're exposing people to a known carcinogenic? We do not have safety guidelines in place!" he said. "People are suffering innocently, and you know it!" CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro, who was interviewing Genachowski, asked the audience to applaud the call for more Wi-Fi spectrum, which it did. After the man yelled a bit more, security guards ejected him.
At the CES Unveiled product showcase on Sunday night, we were slightly amused to see a man with long, gray, curly hair who looked like an older version of the sledgehammer-wielding 1980s comedian Gallagher, a Vegas-type performer if ever there was one. Amused, that is, until we saw the man's conference badge, which read, simply ... "Gallagher."
Tech conferences are still largely male affairs so it was refreshing to look in the bag of swag that Intel gave attendees at its press conference Monday and find ... nail polish and an emery board. Apparently the theme was touch, as there was also some hand sanitizer and gloves with touchpad fingers. But whatever the reason, it was nice to see Intel getting in touch with its feminine side, and a refreshing change to mini-Maglites and crappy pens. Intel, we salute you.
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