CES 2019 is here and there has been a lot of technology announced at the show. From the latest autonomous vehicle technology to the coolest personal gadgets, here’s a roundup of the best from the show so far.
We will be holding a small event during CES in Las Vegas and we want to see you! We’re looking to meet some cool hardware and crypto startups, so the good folks at Work In Progress have opened up their space to us and 200 of you all to hold a meetup and pitch-off.
We’ll have some pizza and beer and we can hit a bar after the event for some one on one time with the TC folks.
The event will be held at Work In Progress, 317 South 6th Street on Wednesday, January 9, 2019 between 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM PST.
The meetup is sold out but please attend if you’ve picked up a ticket. Thanks!
See you in Vegas!
In moments of stress and anxiety, there are those of us who find it difficult to breathe — and paradoxically, many reach for a cigarette or vape as a way to manage that. But what if instead of nicotine or smoke, the device you grabbed put fresh air in your lungs and helped you calm down? That’s the idea behind the Kitoki.
Looking a bit like an oversized bean with a sippy cup tip on the end, the Kitoki is a striking but not immediately attractive device. It’s not really clear what it’s supposed to do. And indeed after trying it, I’m still not entirely sure. But I like it anyway.
The idea is this: When you need to calm down, you grab the Kitoki. Its rounded shape and smooth cedar make it a pleasant thing to hold in the first place. Then you put your fingers on the little buttons and take a deep breath through the mouthpiece. A tiny LED lights up when the device senses that you have taken a deep enough breath. The idea here is to prevent hyperventilation and promote calmness, and sometimes a cue can be helpful for that.
[gallery ids="1766902,1766904,1766901,1766903"]While and after you’re taking this breath, your galvanic skin response (an electrical measurement affected by sweat) is measured via the little metal dots. This is supposed to be a general indicator of stress (take all these claims with a grain of salt, naturally) and the device monitors it and, the company claims, de-noises the signal and finds something worthwhile in it. If it decides you’ve calmed down while you’ve been using the device, it gives you a little buzz. If not, take another breath.
The air I breathed when I tried the device seemed different, but I don’t think there’s any kind of scent module in there. It might just be that it is drawn through channels in the cedar and given a fresh sort of taste. If anything it might just be some tiny bit of essential oil — no nicotine or e-juice or anything like that.
The Kitoki isn’t going to change the world, but I like the design and the intent behind it. It’s a friendly little device, simple and well made, and it’s about calmness and mindfulness rather than productivity and speed. We could all stand to stop and take a deep breath once in a while.
Mercedes-Benz has often reserved its best tech for its highest-class models — the S Class being the first vehicle to get the latest and greatest. Now Mercedes is bringing more tech, namely its new MBUX infotainment system, to other vehicles in its portfolio.
Enter the new CLA Class. Mercedes-Benz unveiled Monday the new CLA at CES 2019 — a slightly bigger, sleeker, sportier and techier car than its predecessor in a direct appeal to a younger American customer.
The exterior of the new CLA hasn’t changed too much. The rear license plate has been moved down, and it has a bit more aerodynamic and sportier look, with a long stretched bonnet featuring powerdomes. It’s sportier and sharper looking.
The more exciting stuff is what’s inside the vehicle. Inside the CLA Class, Mercedes has put its new MBUX system, which debuted in the new A Class. The GLE-Class SUV also has the new MBUX system.
This system is a major upgrade from its old COMAND interface. It’s loaded with features such as augmented reality for navigation, the ability to understand indirect voice commands and operational gestures from the users. The new Interior Assistant, as Mercedes calls it, includes a robust gesture control system.
In the dark, a reading lamp can be switched on and off by briefly extending a hand toward the rear-view mirror, for example. If the driver reaches over toward the unoccupied front passenger seat in the dark, it will be illuminated automatically, Mercedes said. The interior assistant includes a personal favorites function, which is accessed by holding a hand over the center console with the index and middle finger spread in a V-shape. A favorite command could be “‘navigate me home.” The driver and front passenger can even assign different favorites to the same hand position.
And then there’s the voice assistant, which can handle complex questions.
Ola Källenius, Daimler AG board member responsible for group research and Mercedes-Benz Cars Development, demonstrated the voice assistant at CES. “Drivers can speak even more naturally,” he said, adding that the days of yelling at your voice assistant in the car are over. “It’s the ultimate wearable.”
The driver or passenger just needs to say “Hey Mercedes,” to engage the voice assistant. From there, they could ask for something as complicated as asking “Find child-friendly Asian restaurants nearby with 4-star rating which are neither Chinese nor Japanese,” an example Källenius gave during the demo.
Finally, there’s the “Energizing Coach.” This service is based on an intelligent algorithm. If a user is wearing the new Mercedes-Benz vivoactive 3 Smartwatch, which had its world première at CES, or another compatible Garmin wearable is worn, personal stats will be provided, such as stress level or quality of sleep. The user’s pulse rate supplied by the integrated Garmin wearable is also shown on the media display.
The CLA is an important vehicle for Mercedes in the U.S. market. Mercedes first launched the compact four-door coupe in 2013 as its smallest and least-expensive vehicle in its portfolio that customers could buy in the United States.
It was the first compact Mercedes-Benz on the American market. And while it wasn’t viewed as the best vehicle by some critics, it proved to be popular with U.S. customers.
“With the first CLA we celebrated a huge success by selling some 750,000 vehicles and created a totally new segment with a four-door coupé,” adds Britta Seeger, member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG, responsible for Mercedes-Benz Cars Marketing & Sales.
The automaker has recognized the need to give this vehicle a boost of tech, especially considering that on average CLA customers in the U.S. are around 10 years younger than the typical Mercedes-Benz customer.
And it has. As Mercedes puts it, all elements of the interior are arranged according to the “overarching design themes of ‘high tech’ and ‘youthful avant-garde.'”
Translated, this means designers ditched the cowl above the driver cockpit, giving the dashboard a grander look that continues uninterrupted. A widescreen display is completely free-standing. The youngs like screens.
The lower section is visually separated from the main body of the instrument cluster by a “trench,” and it appears to float in front of the instrument cluster. The ambient lighting enhances this effect. The air vents in a sporty turbine-look are another highlight.
The new CLA will be manufactured at the Kecskemét plant in Hungary and comes onto the market in May 2019.
To paraphrase P. T. Barnum, “there’s a Bluetooth speaker born every minute.” At no time of year is that more true than at CES in Las Vegas, where they are bountiful beyond belief. But very few — nay, only one that I found — are made of concrete. And it’s French!
The speakers immediately attracted my attention because of their simplicity and of course material. I’m generally repelled, like water, from the plastic and silicone that most speakers are made out of these days. If it’s going to be visible in my house, shouldn’t it be wood or ceramic or steel? (That’s why I like Joey Roth’s stuff so much.)
And why not concrete? It’s hard-wearing, cool-looking, tactile — and, like ceramic, actually has good qualities as far as using it for audio purposes. Or so the honest folks at Le Pavé Parisien tell me.
The speaker itself is single-channel, meaning it will mix down your music to mono (like many such speakers), but you can easily daisy chain a couple together for stereo or wire a bunch for a concrete wall of sound like they had on display.
I won’t speculate on the audio quality (it was extremely loud in the hall), but they’re marketing it as a high-end device, so it’s probably not bad. Although 60-20,000 Hz means you’ll miss out on the low end somewhat, that’s kind of expected with small speakers.
[gallery ids="1766869,1766870,1766865,1766867,1766868,1766864,1766873,1766866"]One of the company’s engineers, Aurelien Bertini, explained that concrete is actually also more eco-friendly, as it can be recycled by being pounded into dust and recast. Sounds labor-intensive, but that’s how recycling is.
Bertini noted that concrete also can easily be customized — laser etched, dyed, etc. The magnetic grilles on the front are easily swapped out as well. They’re really not as heavy as they look, either: about 3 pounds. It’s mostly air in there.
More importantly, the device is designed to be repaired; you pop the grille off and there are only four screws holding the guts in; take it out, replace a piece, fit something back in place that fell off, that sort of thing.
You’ll want to repair yours, too, since Le Pavé Parisien is currently selling for $400, rather higher than the average Bluetooth speaker. If you simply must have them, they’re on sale now (following a successful recent crowdfunding campaign) and expected to ship next month.
Managed By Q, the office management platform that launched back in 2013, has today revealed that it raised an additional $25 million as a part of its Series C, led by existing investors RRE and Google Ventures, with participation from new investors DivCo West, Oxford Properties and others. The fresh capital brings the total round to $55 million.
Managed By Q launched as a all-encompassing platform for office management, offering IT support, supply inventory management, cleaning, and equipment repair. Since, the company has added a full-fledged marketplace, allowing office managers to choose vendors for various needs around the office.
But for 2019, the company is focused on tools and services.
“We want to spend 2019 putting even greater focus on the tools used by our vendors and workplace management teams, like task management tools,” said cofounder and CEO Dan Teran . “We want to build the first set of collaboration tools for the workplace team, the same way that designers use InVision and engineers use GitHub and salespeople use Salesforce. Something purposely built for the workplace team.”
Teran described tools that would allow for employee requests, work orders, task management, inventory management and budgeting to all live on the same platform.
The company hasn’t shared much by way of revenue or customer growth, but Teran told TechCrunch that the marketplace business has been doubling since it launched and is on track to continue on that trajectory. He also wrote in a company blog post that Managed by Q’s top five vendor partners have done over $1 million in business on the Managed By Q platform, and more than 30 partners will have earned over $100K on the platform in 2018.
The NY-based startup also brokered a partnership with Staples to provide office supplies to clients, and acquired Hivy and NVS to further fill out their office management suite of products.
Managed By Q has raised a total of $128.25 million, according to CrunchBase.
Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors is exploring strategic collaboration with Mobileye . Through this deal, GWM hopes to integrate Mobileye’s solutions into its vehicles. Starting with L0-L2+ within the next three to five years, the companies are also exploring opportunities for Mobileye’s Level 3 products.
The word comes at CES 2019 where Intel-owned Mobileye has a big presence alongside a large number of automotive technology companies.
GWM’s domestic market offers unique challenges for self-driving technology. Mobileye’s L0-L2 feature set focuses on driver safety and includes forward-collision warning, automatic emergency breaking and lane assist. Its L2+ is a bit more complex and features driver assist features that utilize Mobileye’s road mapping data, adaptive cruise control.
Initially the auto maker plans to build-in L0-L2+ technologies within domestic vehicles in the next three to five years. Eventually, though, GWM sees building some of the systems into vehicles headed for international markets.
Rather than just focus on Facebook’s problems like his 2018 challenge, this year Mark Zuckerberg wants to give transparency to his deliberations and invite the views of others. Today he announced his 2019 challenge will be “to host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society — the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties.” He plans to hold the talks with different leaders, experts, and community members in a variety of formats and venues, though they’ll all be publicly viewable from his Facebook and Instagram accounts or traditional media.
This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has held a series of public talks. He ran community Q&A sessions in 2014 and 2015 to take questions directly from his users. The idea for Facebook Reactions for expressing emotions beyond “Likes” first emerged during those talks.
From his initial framing of the 2019 challenge, though, it already sounds like Zuckerberg sees more Facebook as the answer to many of the issues facing society. He asks “There are so many big questions about the world we want to live in and technology’s place in it. Do we want technology to keep giving more people a voice, or will traditional gatekeepers control what ideas can be expressed? Should we decentralize authority through encryption or other means to put more power in people’s hands? In a world where many physical communities are weakening, what role can the internet play in strengthening our social fabric?”
The implied answers there are “people should have a voice through Facebook”, “people should use Facebook’s encrypted chat app WhatsApp”, and “people should collaborate through Facebook Groups”. Hopefully the talks will also address how too much social media can impact polarization, self-image, and focus.
[Update: Zuckerberg asked me in the comments of his posts for format suggestions. My ideas include a formal debate between him and a civil but pointed critic. An independent moderator asking him questions with no pre-brief and/or selecting questions from public submissions. A talk where he’s challenged to never say the word “Facebook” while discussing larger issues facing society & technology. A mythbusting talk where he addresses the biggest Facebook conspiracy theories. An open discussion between him and Jack Dorsey. A referendum where he asks or is asked questions where the public can select from multiple choice answers, with him then discussing the publicly visible tallies.]
It nice that one of the de facto leaders of the world will shed more light on his thoughts. But given Zuckerberg is prone to sticking to his talking points, the public would benefit from talks held by moderators who don’t give the CEO all the questions ahead of time.
Hearing Zuckerberg’s candid thoughts on the inherent trade-offs of “bringing the world closer together” or “making the world more open and connected” could help users determine whose interests he has at heart.
Zuckerberg’s past challenges have been:
2009 – Wear a neck tie every day
2010 – Learn Mandarin Chinese
2011 – Only eat animals he killed himself
2012 – Write code every day
2013 – Meet a new person who isn’t a Facebook employee every day
2014 – Write a thank-you note every day
2015 – Read a new book every two weeks
2016 – Build an artificial intelligence home assistant like Iron Man’s Jarvis
2017 – Visit all 50 states he hadn’t already to meet and talk to people
2018 – Fix Facebook’s problems
Google made a flurry of announcements at CES this week, many of them coming rapid fire this morning.
Don’t have time to dig through it all? That’s ok. Here’s the condensed version:
As you can probably tell, Google went all in on Assistant at CES this year; effectively every single one of their news items has to do with Assistant in one way or another. They built a two story building right outside the convention center, entirely dedicated to demonstrating Assistant. Google has made it pretty clear at this point that it sees Assistant as the next evolution of Google searches, so expect Assistant to play a role in almost everything consumer-facing the company does moving forward.
Muse, the maker of a meditation headband, today unveiled its latest product at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The sleep meditation headband, dubbed the Softband, is designed to help people meditate as they fall asleep.
The idea is to put it on before you go to bed, play a meditation and then fall asleep as normal. Thanks to Muse’s acquisition of Meditation Studio, Muse now has an app partnership with Amazon Alexa that will enable Softband owners to play a meditation via Alexa as they fall asleep. For those without an Alexa-enabled device, Muse recommends having a speaker nearby so you don’t have to fall asleep with headphones on, Muse Director of Brand Marketing Nadia Kumentas told TechCrunch on the showroom floor.
In the morning, you can pop open the app to see how you slept. Over time, you can see improvements and changes in your sleep behavior. Down the road, Muse will likely use this Softband in other use cases, Muse VP of Product Management Alec Singleton told TechCrunch.
“The Softband is exciting because of the new use cases it opens up,” Singleton said. “You can fit it under a helmet or wear it to yoga.”
Muse Softband. Photo by Megan Rose Dickey for TechCrunch
But for now, Muse is focused on the sleep use case. The Softband, for example, will be able to tell when you’ve fallen asleep and will then turn itself off. Singleton said he expects the Softband to launch sometime in Q4 of this year at a price point that is comparable to what the Muse 2 costs ($249).
Muse also recently announced voice coaching, guided meditations and biosignal feedback to its app as part of its software as a service offering. Later this month, Muse headband owners will be able to subscribe to in-app content focused on stress management, work, travel and relaxation. Phase two of this is to provide intelligent voice feedback that will chime in if it senses you’re drifting off.
This is Muse’s third headband, but its first soft headband. The first came out back in 2014 and the second, the Muse 2, was released just last year in October to offer real-time feedback about your mind, body, heart and breath.
