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TECHNOLOGYFriday 8 January 2016
CES gadget show:
Devices connect us from the crib to old age
K. PIERCEALL
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Umbili-
cal cord? These days, it’s
more like a USB cord.
Whether in the womb or
in one’s twilight years, our
lives are becoming ever
more connected. No-
where has that been more
evident than at the annual
CES gadget show in Las Ve-
gas, where everything from
pregnancy tests to beds to
David VanderWaal, vice president of marketing for LG Electronics USA, knocks on the door of a
new LG Signature refrigerator during a news conference preview for CES International, in Las Ve-
gas. LG Electronics lets you peek through an opaque glass window on one of the double-doors
that lights up from the inside with a tap, saving electricity and maybe keeping you from making
a poor decision about a late night snack.
dog bowls now come with
apps at the ready, collect-
ing valuable data along
the way.
BLUETOOTH FOR BABIES
Until now, that three-minute
wait for a home pregnan-
cy-test result comes with no
built-in distraction beyond
staring at the stick to see if
one line or two is fading in.
No longer. First Response
will start selling a Bluetooth- Another company con-
enabled test in the spring
that links with a woman’s
smartphone, recommend-
ing BuzzFeed quizzes and
videos or health-related ar-
ticles to pass the time while
a clock ticks down the sec-
onds to her result.
The test, which could cost
$14.99 or $21.99 depend-
ing on the retailer, also
claims to tailor itself to the
test-taker from the very
first yes or no question: Do
you want to have a baby?
And it doesn’t stop once
the test is done, as it can
track a potential due date,
add that to a woman’s
phone calendar and offer
to share the news with se-
lected friends and relatives
via email or text.
SMART FRIDGE, SMART BED
No need to open the fridge
door to know what’s left
inside. LG Electronics will
let you peek through an
opaque glass window that
lights up from the inside
with a tap, saving electric-
ity and possibly preventing
your next poor late-night-
snack decision. With a dif-
ferent fridge, stocking up
wouldn’t require a grocery
run; one from Samsung
and Mastercard comes
equipped with an installed
ordering app in the appli-
ance.
tends you don’t need a
smart fridge to make yours
a thinker. The company
Smarter expects by sum-
mer to begin selling mats
with sensors and in-fridge
cameras that can remotely
tell you what’s left in your
fridge.
They’ll set you back $130 to
$150 each.
Making beds smarter is
Beddit’s goal. The compa-
ny’s thin belt-length sensors goes about other daily
sold for $149 go under the
Twitter appears ready to expand
beyond its 140-character tweets
MICHAEL LIEDTKE
sheet and are supposed to AP Technology Writer
measure your heart rate, SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter appears ready to
respiration and restless toss- loosen its decade-old restriction on the length of
ing and turning throughout messages in a bid to make its service more appeal-
the night. ing to a wider audience accustomed to the greater
freedom offered by Facebook and other forums.
MAN’S BEST BLUETOOTH-EN- CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey telegraphed
ABLED FRIEND Twitter’s intentions in a tweet posted Tuesday after
Call it torture or training, but thetechnology news site Re/Code reported the com-
the creators behind Clever pany is exploring increasing its limits on text from 140
Pet hope their $299 light-up characters to as many as 10,000.
dog dish can teach criti- Dorsey didn’t directly address the Re/Code report
cal thinking to canines. The that cited unnamed people, but he made it clear
bowl dishes out portions of that Twitter isn’t wedded to the 140-character limit.
He illustrated his point by posting a screenshot of a
text consisting of 1,325 characters.
If Twitter were to allow tweets to span 10,000 charac-
ters, it could produce 1,700-word dissertations, based
on the size of Dorsey’s extended post.
San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. declined to com-
ment on its plans.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In his message, Dorsey wrote that Twitter has already
noticed that many of its roughly 300 million users al-
food if the pet paws at the ready have been including screenshots of lengthy
correct light; if all goes well, texts in their tweets. He indicated Twitter is examin-
it might eventually train ing ways to give people more room to express them-
them not to inhale a bowl selves without polluting the service with gasbags.
of food all at once. Imposing some restraint “inspires creativity and brev-
The company created sev- ity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feel-
eral games with the lights ing,” Dorsey pledged.
that get progressively more At the same time, Dorsey said Twitter isn’t “going to
difficult the better the dog be shy about building more utility and power into
gets at winning the food. Twitter for people. As long as it’s consistent with what
The dog’s owner gets all people want to do, we’re going to explore it.”
the data. “A persistent Analysts said Dorsey is probably trying to avoid a
dog will always get food,” backlash among long-time Twitter users who consider
said Philip Meyer, the com- the 140-character tweeting limit sacred. At the same
pany’s product officer. “A time, he needs to respond to company sharehold-
motivated dog will get it ers pining for a bigger audience that would generate
faster.” more advertising revenue. More revenue eventually
could help Twitter turn a profit for the first time in its
BIG MOTHER history. Twitter can’t afford “to become stagnant,
The mother hub is watch- they need to get bigger if they want to build a more
ing. Sen.se’s Silver Mother relevant advertising platform,” said Topeka Capital
hub, that is, which aims Markets analyst Blake Harper.
to help adult children or After a long streak of robust growth that turned it
caregivers make sure that into one of the Internet’s hottest companies, Twit-
an elderly person living ter’s growth has slowed dramatically during the past
alone takes his or her pills, year-and-half to leave it scrambling to catch up with
drinks enough water and social networking leader Facebook and its 1.5 billion
users.
routines.q Twitter’s malaise resulted in the departure of Dick
Costolo as the company’s CEO last July and ushered
in the return of Dorsey, who had been ousted as the
company’s leader in 2008.
The pressure has been building on Dorsey to take
drastic measures to accelerate user growth as Twit-
ter’s stock has sunk further below its November 2013
initial public offering price of $26. The shares shed 64
cents Tuesday to close at $21.92, a decline of nearly
40 percent from where they stood from when Dorsey
became CEO last summer.
Dorsey helped invent Twitter in 2006 and imposed a
140-character limit on messages so the service would
be easy to use on cellphones that had 160-charac-
ter limits on texts at that time. Those texting limits on
phones faded away several years ago as the advent
of smartphones enabled people to use other Internet
messaging services, making Twitter’s restrictions look
increasingly antiquated.q