One bright spot for me at the CTIA show was the Wireless Home. CTIA built a 7000 sq ft. showcase home, and had over 90 vendors showing home products.
Part of the fun was that Talking Street (disclosure, a firm that I am involved with) did a cell phone tour of the home. It came together really nicely, and you can still listen in by calling (212) 505-8687, or by browsing the web site via web or wap browsers.
The home got a bad rap from some journalists like Davis Janowski of PC Mag. He complains that the home showcased many separate technologies that weren’t integrated.
But me, I liked the fact that I could see lots of different technologies all in one place. Some things that I noted were:
1. Seeing Moto demonstrate their UWB radio send two simultaneous HD feeds to two separate plasma screens. This technology promises to solve AV wiring clutter. Cool.
2. I thought the internet enabled fridge would be a joke, but you know what, I thought it might actually be pretty useful. The tabled screen embedded in the door detaches and has wifi. Think of it as a convenient storing place for a tablet PC in your kitchen. The GUI on top of it lets you easily check weather, stream video, leave sticky notes, control the fridge functions, select your degree of crushing for ice and the temperature at which you want your cold water, or browse random sites on the internet.
3. There was various kid monitoring and tracking stuff. This stuff still gives me the willies.
It would have been fun to take a lot more time and go through the whole house. I would recommend allocating a few hours if they do such a thing at future shows.