CES 2008 - early press releases reveal the mundane

I have begun reading through the pre-CES press releases that we get each year before the January event.

The Consumer Electronics Show is the largest trade show/convention in the US. This is the event that many of the biggest electronics manufacturers choose to make their big announcements for the year to come. Many of the products that we see at CES are not released to consumers for months, years or - in some cases - never.

By far, the revolutionary products are out numbered by bad ideas and poor concepts.

We see companies pour what is likely all of their VC funding into this single event.

We love the bad ideas - here are a few from years past:

The digital camera gun - This was such as bad idea that I can't even find mention of it on Google.

It looked just like a hand gun but it was a digital camera and the lens was in the barrel. I wouldn't recommend it for taking pictures of police officers.

The dumb visor thing - It probably had a different name, but we have always just called it the dumb visor thing at COMDEX 2002.

So far it looks like CES 2008 may be a little disappointing. Rather than trying to revolutionize the industry, everyone seems to be copycat-ing (if that is a real word) each other's idea.

Rather than trying to create the next gadget that will reach the same popularity of the iPod, everyone just wants to create another iPod. Every GPS company duplicates the features offered on the TomTom GPS rather than create a new GPS that does something new.

We are excited to go to CES and see what's new, we just hope that there is something new to see when we get there.

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