Get A Digital Life
I cruised by Digital Life yesterday, a friend was doing pr for a publishing company and we had time to catch up after the show. While he was working I wondered the main floor of The Javits Center to see if there was something I could learn or give me some inspiration. As the average age of the people in attendance was twenty years my junior, I certainly felt out of place.
The show was a mish mash of gaming (both fixed and mobile), consumer electronics, audio and communications. It was interested to see the old style Ms. PacMan alongside a mobile version of the same. What was interesting was that hardly anyone was playing the mobile version, but rather opted for twenty year old technology, certainly an oxymoron given the nature of the show and my belief that twenty somethings were early adopters of mobile gaming?
I did meet Frank Greer, CEO and President of Zipit Wireless, a company with the Z2 a $150.00 mobile communicator, I called it the Blackberry for the under twenty set, I think they liked the comparison. Given the growth of IM, texting, social networks and media sharing, they are in the sweat spot for their target market. Along with the units ability to download music and image content via Wi-Fi networks one could certainly futurecast out such capabilities such as streaming video content to users, both peer too peer as well as from content servers. Remember the IR beaming capability of the Zune? People want to share content and given the restriction with music and movie content such a capability would not prevent people from swapping their own content, be it on YouTube, Revver, or something they editing themselves. Add Wi-Max and the experience expands.
Another interesting technology was the $328.00 Supacam mini video camera/personal entertainment unit. With the capability to record up too 4-hours of 720x480 video with a 2GB SD memory card, a 12 mega pixel/8x zoom for still photos and the ability to play MP3's and video content you have what was in the Nokia N93 until they retired it, due to form factor and cost reasons. While the unit has USB capabilities, imagine Firewire in/out as well as Wi-Max, it could become the choice for Citizen and perhaps News Journalism. It you add some of the capabilities of the Zipit, you would have a platform for sharing of content.
There were a couple of other interesting technology ideas that I could fit under the general umbrella of Internet TV, but at the end of the day gaming was the main draw and I found it easy to spend a few minutes blasting someone away in Halo3, after all when in Rome...
