CES 2012

With CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2012 in full swing, any tech-geeks worth their salt will be following updates with anticipation to see what new innovations will be hitting shelves and screens in the coming year.

Microsoft Keynote

While a majority of the keynote was less than inspiring, one thing did catch my eye. News that Kinect will become part of Windows 8 opens up new possibilities for those with physical or learning disabilities to be able to interact with technology. This could range from simple use of computers, to controlling everyday objects. Take this example of how hand controls can be used to drive a longboard:

via Mashable.

Very exciting!

myspace

After what seems to be a virtual beating over the last few years, myspace is taking steps to reclaim some of the social market share under the influence of new part-owner, Justin Timblerlake. At CES this year, Mr Timberlake took the stage with Panasonic to introduce a new social app that will be integrated with televisions to enable real time sharing of your viewing habits.

While cost of entry for this service is high (purchasing a new television), social sharing on this level is still largely seen as tiresome and the target audience of myspace probably isn’t the same as a Panasonic television customer, …I tried to find a positive end to that sentence, but I don’t think there is one.

Facebook demotes ticker?

While having a little browse of Facebook earlier (to look at some app Insights, I swear!), I noticed that sponsored ads had made their way to the top of the right hand sidebar. However, a page refresh shuffled things back into the previous order (Ticker on top).

This may have just been a temporary move, but if not, it further highlights how prominent Facebook ads have become over the last year or so. With more companies and organisations allocating greater shares of their advertising budgets to Facebook ads, it would make sense for Facebook to give them the more prominent screen real-estate.

Change on the cards for Google Analytics

Last year, we heard news that Google would be introducing a premium version of their excellent web tracking software. However, there was always a question over what they could possibly offer that would warrant paying for a service that has been (and will still have) a perfectly serviceable free version.

Well, it appears that security and privacy related changes in the way that Google handles collection of data for logged-in users could have an affect on the data reported in the analytics dashboard. This post goes into much more detail about what may or may not be included in the premium version, but by the looks of it, we won’t be queuing up for a premium account just yet.

I’m hitting the slopes next week, so I’ll be leaving next week’s #beautifulbytes in the very capable hands of Miss Doubtfire.

Until then!

Ash

Tags: beautiful bytes, CES 2012, Facebook, Google Analytics, Google search, Social sharing