CES 2010: Tools and Technologies to Watch

From the April/May 2010 Issue

It’s been a few months since my annual pilgrimage to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which has allowed me time to reflect on those technologies I was initially impressed with and their possible impact on you and your firms. CES is the largest electronics show in the world and is held every January in Las Vegas to preview the latest consumer electronics that eventually filter into the business world and into tax and accounting firms. Here is my insight on the most thought-provoking tools and techs, as well as those that could be disruptive to the way all of us live and work in the near future.

WIRELESS RECHARGING: The transition to mobile devices where accountants can work from any place and at any time (desired) has benefitted the profession, but it has also led to the issue of needing to have multiple power cords at the office and at home to keep all the batteries charged. While iGo (www.igo.com) has had adapters with multiple tips to connect any device, most of us still have multiple cords intermingled on and under our desks plugging into a power adapter as well as bundled in our computer bags.

Companies such as PowerMat (www.powermat.com) and WiPower (www.wipower.com) were showing solutions at CES that use inductive technology to charge your smartphone by simply laying it on the mat. Imagine having a laptop, scanner, phone, camera, etc. on your desk that were on and charging, but there were no cables anywhere in sight. These pads can even be placed on your nightstand or be built into car dashboards so that your smartphone is charging as you drive to a client location.

TOUCH DISPLAYS: Accountants and consultants have had access to tablet PCs with touch screens for the past five plus years, but they have not really been adopted firm-wide because accounting applications have not been integrated enough to make the extra investment worthwhile.

This could change as new form factors with touch capability move us closer toward “paperless” adoption. Lenovo (www.Lenovo.com) touted the world’s first hybrid laptop called the U1 that looked and worked like a traditional tablet PC, but the screen could be disconnected to work like a Netbook/Slate with its own integrated processor and connectivity.

The roll out of Windows 7, which supports touch screens, may change the way tax and accounting professionals look at tablet PCs since so many users have become familiar with touch capabilities through the use of their smartphones. CES vendors took touch to the extreme with displays and formats as large as your conference room table. Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) expanded ways to use its “Surface” table by adding games and applications, Intel (www.intel.com) rolled out their InfoScape “cube,” which was two panels over six feet tall that enabled you to rotate images as if they were a globe, and Kodak (www.kodak.com) created a “digital river” of images with attached data flowing down a 30-foot display where attendees could interact with objects as they flowed by. All these technologies could eventually converge to replace our desktops with touch capability so we can meet with clients and effectively work with digital images of tax returns or other client documents in a very secure format (and without the paper).

eREADERS: Speaking of eliminating paper, Amazon’s Kindle (www.amazon.com/kindle), The Sony Reader (www.sonystyle.com) and the Nook by Barnes and Noble (www.BarnesandNoble.com/nook) have paved the way for a new industry of electronic readers that are changing how digital content is being delivered. While most magazine publishers think in terms of “issues,” most people think in terms of “searching for types of content,” which people can access from the connected eReaders at their convenience. There were so many innovations in this area that CES actually created a separate eReader Technology Zone where over a dozen providers showed off digital reader products as well as add-ons.