The few days at CES 2013 featured keynotes from Samsung and the Brand Matters Keynote, plus SuperSessions focused on the future of technology innovation and award winner announcements.
The Mega Trends and Mobile First World SuperSession featured an interactive panel discussion with moderator Rajeev Chand, managing director and head of research, Rutberg & Compant. Chand was joined on stage by panelists: Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm; Glenn Lurie, AT&T; Kevin Packingham, Samsung; and Vaughan Smith, Facebook. Discussion centered around the most important trends in the mobile first world. Panelists discussed the mobile ecosystem, future of wireless devices and the concept of “the Internet of things.” Processor capabilities, connected cars, smart homes and the smart TV relationship were among the top mobile trends for 2013 named. Panelists named healthcare, education and travel industries as industries ripe for change.
The Verge's Joshua Topolsky and Nilay Patel led the Argue the Future 2: Return of the Future SuperSession with panelists Eric Chen of Lytro, Andy Forssell of Hulu and Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal. The session focused on the future of content distribution and video displays and how much resolution consumers will give up for greater flexibility in video accessibility.
Jay Esguerra, Kevin Castle, Chris Woolum and Aurelio Agundez took home the $4,000 grand prize from the CEA MoDev Hackathon, sponsored by the Travel Channel, for their creation of the app “Travel Social,” which allows users to select a destination and have social networks tell them all about where they're going and what's popular. Twenty-six teams of up to four people competed in the Hackathon, where teams worked for eight hours developing apps that incorporated aspects of travel or adventure. Second place winners Dani Sparks and Scott Motte received $2,500 cash and Beats by Dre headphones for “Posted,” which provides actual custom postcards from wherever you travel.
Tim Westergren, chief strategy officer and founder of Pandora, delivered the keynote address at the 2013 CES Leaders in Technology (LIT) Dinner Wednesday evening, an annual event that features a distinguished audience of government guests, top policymakers and technologists. In his remarks, Westergren detailed the challenges he encountered while building Pandora into the success that it is today, and addressed the need to fix the broken royalty payment system. Westergren reported that 100,000 artists are represented on Pandora via millions of songs across all genres and that technology allows the company to deliver customizable radio to its customers and to mobilize them, when necessary, to action.
Winners of CNET’s Best of CES Awards were announced on Thursday, with Best of Show honors going to the Razer Edge. Other category winners can be found at ces.cnet.com.
Today's Developer University brought together app developers to meet platform developers, see live demos and network. The Last Gadget Standing competition resulted in the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC winning the top online award. In an onsite run-off, the Luminae keyboard edged out the Misfit Shine as the top product in the event. The Mobile App Showdown featured 10 companies and their innovative apps. MyScript Calculator won the showdown and allows users to write down a mathematical equation and then solves it on the spot. The app recognizes all types of math equations and its range of difficulty was demonstrated on the Mobile App Showdown stage.
