Alan Wake’s American Nightmare kicks off high-quality game releases on Xbox Live Arcade

Alan Wake was a high-potential game that didn’t sell as well as expected in 2010. Critics said that the story was great, but the game play of the psychological thriller title was mediocre. Amid rivals such as the spectacular western Red Dead Redemption, which came out at the same time, Alan Wake got a lukewarm reception. With a new downloadable game coming, the question at hand for Alan Wake is whether the franchise can make … Continue Reading

Quantifying our lives will be a top trend of 2012

The Quantified Self is one of the big trends of 2012, as we noted in our recent summary of the Consumer Electronics Show.

As everything analog shifts to digital, we can collect a huge amount of data about ourselves. As I noted in our earlier story, the trend was spearheaded by researchers who wanted a “quantified self,” or self-knowledge through numbers that measure things such as how long we sleep or how many stairs we … Continue Reading

Synaptics shows how touch controls will change in the next year

Synaptics showed off how touch controls will change in the next year at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Synaptics has a big market share in touch application hardware and it showed off its latest products at the show.

In the picture at right, you can see that upcoming touchpads for laptops will be able to handle the simultaneous input from more than just two fingers. The image at the right shows how you can use … Continue Reading

App maker SkyGrid hits the big time with LG deal (video)

App maker SkyGrid has a plan to bring TV to your iPad. It’s also landed a promising partnership with huge Korean electronics maker LG to integrate its app technology into tens of millions of televisions.

We spent some time on the floor of CES last week talking with SkyGrid chief executive and founder Kevin Pomplun about his app and the new LG deal. (Watch our short, two-minute video interview below.)

“All you have to do … Continue Reading

The view from CES: The top 10 trends in technology for 2012

The International Consumer Electronics Show is a huge festival of gadgetry, but there’s no better place to get a bead on where technology is going in the coming year.

Among the 153,000 attendees at the show in Las Vegas last week were five VentureBeat staffers who were sniffing out the big trends. This story is our list of the most evident trends among the rows and rows of gadgets at CES.

The convention is like … Continue Reading

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Dylan’s Desk: Saddle your horses and fire up the 3D printer

Is there anything more American than a robot that can create anything you want out of little more than a spool of wire and some electricity? It's only a slight exaggeration to say that the MakerBot offers levels of Jeffersonian self-reliance that our founding fathers only dreamed of.

If CES was any indication, car tech is going high tech this year (pictures)

More than any other time in the history of the Consumer Electronics Show, car manufacturers showed up in full force to last week’s show in Las Vegas — a major sign that cars are going high tech this year.

While CES used to be filled with tech companies showing off car stereos, car manufacturers themselves are now taking up space on the floor to show off all the cool things their vehicles can do. And … Continue Reading

Our test for the best cell phone service provider at CES 2012

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, everybody wanted to talk. And when they talked on their mobile phones, they put a great deal of stress on the mobile phone carriers. We tried to figure out who handled the load the best.

CES is the biggest technology convention in the US. This year it once again broke attendance records with 153,000 analysts, exhibitors, and journalists. Regardless of your place in the industry, having mobile … Continue Reading

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx, hands-on with the first smartphone with enough battery life for a full day’s business use

It’s an unfortunate truth: if you want a phone that will last all day, get a dumbphone. Smartphones aren’t designed to last all day, and as the features and uses increase incrementally, the battery life has stayed a consistent not long enough. Business and power users know this all too well – it’s one of two reasons why too many of us carry around two phones at all times.

Motorola may have just solved … Continue Reading

CSR shows how your phone can navigate inside large buildings

CSR, the leading maker of navigation chips, showed how you can use its upcoming platform to find your way inside large buildings such as the giant Las Vegas Convention Center. Now a combination of several new technologies makes it possible to navigate with map-based directions inside large buildings, giving you even fewer reasons to get lost or be late for an appointment.

At the Consumer Electronics Show last week, CSR showed a demo of its … Continue Reading

The 10 most promising products of the coming year, as revealed at CES

We spent hours combing the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to sleuth out the most compelling tech trends and the most exciting new products of the coming year.

Now that we’ve returned from Vegas, pounded enough Emergen-C cocktails to get us back into a semblance of health, and compared notes, we’ve settled on this list of the show’s top products.

Read on to see the most promising hardware that will be … Continue Reading

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Hands-on demo of the Basis Band for tracking your daily health (video)

Basis Science is a Silicon Valley company that wants to inspire you to be more healthy and make it easier to track your health.

The company showed off its Basis B1 Band (pictured right) and its accompanying web application at the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas. The device is one of many startups dedicated to the Quantified Self, which is all about understanding ourselves through data we’ve collected about ourselves. Rivals include … Continue Reading

Ubisoft developers explain the experimental survival game I am Alive (video)

The game play of I Am Alive, a title developed by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio, is unconventional. Instead of a plethora of weapons and ammo, you’ll often find that you have very few resources for fighting. It’s a big problem if you run into three mean strangers and you’ve only got one bullet.

But that’s part of the experiment behind this downloadable game for Xbox Live, according to Stan Mettra, creative director on I Am Alive. … Continue Reading

Hands-on with Jawbone’s Up movement-tracking band (video)

Jawbone is one of the new entrants into the market for quantifying your life. Its Up movement and sleep-tracking health wristband is aimed at people who want to keep track of and improve their health.

The product had a good launched in November, but Jawbone decided to put sales on hold because it got complaints that the Up units died suddenly within the first week of use. Jawbone offered to replace the failed Ups for … Continue Reading

Consumer Electronics Show breaks record with 153,000 attendees

The 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show was the biggest such event in the show’s 44-year history, with more than 153,000 attendees, up from 149,000 a year ago.

The show drew 3,100 exhibitors across 1.861 million square feet of space. The show drew more than 34,000 international attendees and 20,000 product launches.

The show attracted executives from business, government, entertainment, automotive, consumer electronics and every major industry. And so it should, as it is the biggest … Continue Reading

The coolest technology and moments from CES 2012 (slideshow)

Last week, four VentureBeat reporters and our videographer braved the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. They covered 1.861 million square feet of show floor, visited many of the 3,100 exhibitors, and sorted through the 20,000 new products that were launched at the event to find the most interesting stories and gadgets.

They also took a lot of photographs. Here are some of our favorite images and finds from the CES 2012 floor, including … Continue Reading

Wireless controlled cameras let you broadcast your ski run live to Ustream

Contour is a fast-growing video camera company that lets you capture your favorite outdoor activities — like skiing down a momentum — at the moment of maximum fun.

The company announced a partnership with Cerevo that allows you to stream your video live to your friends via Ustream, so your friends can see the view from your helmet or your surf board. Contour made the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Marc Barros, chief executive … Continue Reading

More than just hype, Ultrabooks are the future of laptop computing

There’s a good chance that your next laptop will be thinner and lighter than you can possibly imagine.

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel unveiled its grand plan to make Ultrabooks — its snazzy name for ultraportable MacBook Air-like laptops — the next big thing in computing. This year alone there will be more than 75 Ultrabook models on the market, and Intel has said that it’s gearing up its … Continue Reading