Smart basketballs and other gadgets from the wise man of tech (interview)

I’ve been meeting with Jim Barry for many years, and he doesn’t want me to call him the old man of tech. So I’ll refer to him as the wise man of tech. Every year, he tours the country with his gadgets and encourages people to come to the sprawling tech trade show, International CES, commonly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, every January in Las Vegas.

The Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on CES, calls Barry the Digital Answer Man. He’s a former tech journalist and serves as the face of the CEA. This year, the wise man brought a smart basketball from InfoMotion, a company that got a lot of attention at last year’s show. It’s shipping the basketball, which measures your shot accuracy, and through an app, offers you coaching advice on how to shoot better.

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Barry has a good eye for what’s new because he gets to look at a ton of products for a living. We caught up with him in a recent interview in Silicon Valley. Among the interesting topics: The Internet of Things is getting bigger, and CES’s Eureka Park startup zone will have twice as many startups as last year (200 companies).

I enjoyed talking with Barry, particularly when he turned all the heads in the café where we met by blasting Waylon Jennings on a Bluetooth speaker. Here’s an edited transcript of our talk.

VentureBeat: What’s new?

Jim Barry: What I’ve been talking about this year, mostly – and it fits also into our holiday survey, which just came out – is wearable tech and the Internet of Everything. As I said earlier this year, if you want to see somebody with a complete blank “what the heck are you talking about” look on their face, mention the Internet of Things or the Internet of Everything.

This is what I’ve been using as an example: The company is called InfoMotion, from Dublin, Ohio. It’s a smart basketball. At the show, we had everything from basketballs to onesies to crock pots to toothbrushes with sensors in them. Here’s the app. The app gives you all kinds of workouts and stuff, and then the coach will coach you up. It’ll tell you to go faster and all the rest of this stuff.

VB: I saw that demo’d last year at the booth. That got a lot of attention.

Barry: It’s cool. It’s very demonstrable. Under here is the sensor. I use it as an example, because people can relate to it. Everybody’s at least seen basketball played.

Everything will have a sensor in it. Then you figure out what to do with that sensor, whether it’s to count things or coach you or all this other stuff. Have you seen these? This is the Samsung Gear. That’s the Gear, and this is the Up, the Jawbone Up.

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VB: I like this Intel Basis Health Tracker because it has the little laser light thing coming down. It monitors your heartbeat, so it knows when you sleep.

Barry: This will do that too. It has a number of things – heartbeat, steps, all the rest. This doesn’t do heartbeat, but it does sleep. And then this is the Motorola, the Moto360. This does a whole bunch of things too. This one works with any Android, but they recommend the MotoX. This works with Galaxy.

VB: What do you think is going to happen to this category, with the Apple watch?

Barry: I would say the jury is out. The jury will not be in for a good amount of time after Apple gets into the market. That may have an impact on this holiday season.

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Slightly tangential, but not completely, this year again, tablets, laptops, TVs, smartphones, and video game consoles are the top five. That’s the same as last year, on the wishlist. That’s what people want to get. On the gift list, it’s a little less — people aren’t necessarily giving all of that. But people are giving a lot of headphones. Wireless Bluetooth speakers will become a big thing. There are millions of those.

For the first time this year, a couple of categories showed up. One is fitness tech, whether it’s FitBit or Jawbone or others. Smart watches showed up for the first time as well. The third thing that showed up, which I find is really interesting if you look at it historically, are action camcorders – GoPro and all of those. That’s another thing we’re going to see a lot of at the show.

VB: That one hasn’t been dominated by GoPro yet?

Barry: I think it is. But there are others, and there are going to be lots more. I’ve heard several people mention it. GoPro is the big player – not only in what they’ve been doing, but also in the general media. One of the interesting things is, I saw a graph of digital cameras. They were at or near the top of the list 10 years ago, what people wanted for the holidays. Digital cameras, obviously, have now been taken over – certainly for snapshots – by smartphones. For special events, weddings and that kind of stuff, you still have a lot of people who like to get a digital camera.

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This case works with an app called FLIR, which is Forward-Looking Infra Red. This turns your camera, on an iPhone, into —

VB: Radar?

Barry: No, into an infrared camera. This is good at night, if you’re outside and want to see what’s hot. It’s also good this time of the year if you’re tightening up your house for the winter. You can see where the heat’s escaping. They introduced this at the CES as well.

VB: Somebody was saying that’s a good way to see if someone’s spying on you. You can see the IR signatures of cameras.

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Barry: This company is a commercial company. I think this is their first venture into consumer products. The neat thing about it, I was in a TV station with a guy, and he says, “Oh, you could see ghosts with that!” I don’t know about it myself, but they have an app developer’s kit out. The applications of this are going to be mind-boggling once people figure out what to do with it.

VB: So it attaches a new camera onto your camera?

Barry: I guess it does. This case is the camera. It’s a two-part case. Again, it’s the kind of thing that has the potential for people — like, the one guy said you could see ghosts with it. Another guy I showed it to likes to go hunting. Apparently it’s not legal to use this hunting at night, because I don’t think the deer can see that way.

VB: It would make it too easy.

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Barry: Yeah. This isn’t so much an Internet of Things application. The basketball is. We have a couple of home devices in that area, which also fit into the same category as that bed from several years ago. This is the WeMo, from Belkin, which is basically an outlet that then uses Wi-Fi and an app. You can use that to smarten up the outlet and use your phone to turn on or off whatever you’ve plugged in. It steps into the whole electronic house, the controlled house, the networked house, whatever you want to call it.

This is from a company called ThinkEco. You plug your air conditioner into this, and again what it does is it smartens it up. Any dumb window air conditioner can be controlled from your phone using the app and this, once it’s connected to Wi-Fi.

Consumers hear about this all the time — the connected home, the electronic home. That’s going to be a big deal at CES this year. These are ways to renovate your home and get stuff started in that direction. Lowe’s has one, their Iris system, which is the same idea. I think it’s something like $179 for the basic system. It’s a controller, a couple of window sensors, and a motion sensor. Then you can add to that with things like water-level sensors for the basement. It’s great for people who go away for long trips or who have a vacation home. You’re able to convert an older house into an electronic house.

VB: On a corporate level, one thing I find interesting is this free-for-all to get chips into all these devices and then design and build the devices themselves. Intel is going in that direction – not only doing chips for the Internet of Things, but also making the things that use those chips.

Barry: You might ask, “Why would they want to get into the device business?” The margins are low to begin with and only going lower, with few exceptions. Apple’s been able to maintain their market with good margins. But televisions are a good example, UltraHD televisions.

This market, the wireless Bluetooth speakers, is very quickly becoming an analog to the docking station market seven or eight years ago, right after the iPhone. Suddenly there were lots of them at the show. You’d see that whole iLounge area. But this isn’t just for iPhones now. It’s any Bluetooth device. Bluetooth has gotten better. It’s very simple now. Just google for “wireless Bluetooth speakers,” and you’ll see scores of them for $29 and up. Waterproof ones, everything. These are from a company called Scosche.

There was another very cool one you may have seen called the SpeeCup. The idea there is, you buy a new car now, and you get Bluetooth built in. You get in, connect your phone, you’re in business. The SpeeCup is designed for people who don’t have Bluetooth in their car, but do have cupholders. It looks like a tall cup of coffee. It has gesture and touch control. More than anything, it’s a remarkable statement of industrial design and ingenuity. “Everyone has cupholders. Let’s design a speaker that fits in there.”

These are more Internet of Everything, these types of devices. You mentioned clothing. Lots of clothing. Everything has sensors in it. It’s what used to be known as embedded technology. That’s now the Internet of Everything. More people will be talking about it. I’m sure there are big battles going on for control of that market and over the types of sensors.

I have some new tablets as well. The LG Flex, have you seen this one? This is the one that does bend. It comes with the bend built in. It’s a six-inch screen.

VB: That’s nice. An intentional bend.

Barry: Again, the bend there is twofold. It’s supposed to give better acoustics when you’re holding it up and talking. It’s also a statement about the OLED technology, which is flexible. It’s getting into more and more big-screen TVs. Until now it’s only been in small screens, and it hasn’t been flexed, although we’ve seen a lot at the show. Sony, a couple of years ago, had the wristband screen. We’re going to see more of those.

UltraHD television is another big thing that’s happening. Prices are already down remarkably low for a new technology. Last year the sales were 75,000 or 80,000, which isn’t a lot. This year it’s supposed to be 800,000, ten times as many, and next year more than 3.5 million. That’s a pretty good ramp up. Part of that’s the price coming down. I’ve seen them for $1,500.

This is an industry that just eats its young, the television business. It’s wonderful for consumers, but look at the roster of TV manufacturers that have come and gone. Part of it is this fierce price competition. Part of it is the cycle of purchase. So many people bought TVs from 2000 to 2010 as the transition from analog to digital and from CRTs to flat panels happened.

On the software side, not a lot yet, but two things strike me about that. One is the insurgence in delivery. Netflix in particular is already producing a whole bunch of original content in 4K for UHD. It’s going to take a while for the networks. But there’s as much innovation and change happening in the delivery. You have the announcement by HBO that they’re basically going the Netflix route, the streaming route. There’s going to be a lot in the next year.

The other good thing is, if you buy one of these, it’ll up-convert what you’re watching already. That’s good news for people who say, “Why would I buy one now when there’s nothing to watch on it?” There’s plenty to watch. All the regular HD you watch will be even better. Some of those will be curved also. Sony has those, Samsung, LG.

VB: As far as brand new categories that weren’t around last year, do you see anything?

Barry: A couple of things. A lot of these kind of percolate in the background for a while and then grow. We’re going to see two or three times as much in the 3-D printing area. As a consumer product, it may be a little ways away still, even though there’s all this cool stuff people have been making – everything from candy to all kinds of other stuff.

There’s digital health and digital fitness. Fitness is more this kind of stuff, fitbands and stuff. Health is more the blood pressure monitors and so on. You’re also going to see this Eureka Park area growing more than four times now, this innovation incubator. There’s a university part to that now that’s bringing in people from university-based innovation hubs. You’re going to see more of that.

The whole automobile thing, the car show. We joked that we went to CES and an auto show broke out. That’s been true for the last several years. We had nine of the top automakers there last year. We had the chairman of Audi last year calling the automobile the consumer electronics platform of the 21st century.

Sooner than later, my feeling is that we’ll see self-driving cars a lot more. We saw a bit more last year. You guys out here, with the Google stuff, see more of than we do back east. But you just look at the ads on TV – cars that will brake if you get too close, sensors that tell you if you’re drifting into another lane.

VB: I’m finding that with the boom times in Silicon Valley, the freeways are more crowded and the drivers are more distracted. I’m looking forward to more self-driving cars.

Barry: Remember, I’m from Boston. The roads there are the worst, at all hours of the day.

We had this conference in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, Innovate, which is kind of the successor to the old fall conference, the industry forum that CEA has had for years. Nolan Bushnell spoke there. He was great. He had some stuff about self-driving cars, about the economics as compared to investing in public transportation. All I can remember was a difference of like $0.35 for self-driving vehicles versus $2.79 or something like that for public transportation. Which sounds like an astonishing number. Once it makes economic sense, and the technology is getting closer all the time, he was talking about self-driving Ubers and all that kind of stuff. It’ll be pretty interesting.

One of the things I told people for a long time, if you can imagine it, it’s probably possible. With the exception of the beam-me-up-Scotty stuff. That, I think, is still a ways away. I wouldn’t want to be the first guy to try that, either.

VB: Does any of this stuff worry you, or does it all make you happier, this internet of Everything?

Barry: A lot of these things certainly have the potential to make us happier, to make life easier. One of my theories, personally, I think technology is neutral, if not benign. It’s what you do with it. You go all the way back to radio, the early days of radio, when it was used to great effect. On the one hand I was just watching this Roosevelt program on PBS. It’s spectacular. You had his fireside chats. But on the other side, radio was being used by Hitler and Goebbels and those guys. Does that mean radio is good or bad? It’s what it is. It’s how you use it.

The thing that’s a concern, especially in the medical part of it. When everything is connected, the issue is privacy. Years ago, when they had the Clarence Thomas hearings, you had people talking about how they found the video store where he rented porn or whatever. That was the Dark Ages compared to what everybody knows now. If you’re connected, someone can potentially do something with that. Security and privacy, especially with health records — some of the fears are unfounded. Some are certainly issues that have to be addressed. As an optimist, I’d say that the technology will solve these issues, too. But it takes time for that lag to catch up.

VB: Some of the stuff that’s disturbing about possible privacy invasions—There are so many groups on the internet now organizing hate campaigns. You have GamerGate. Some gamers in this group are up in arms about feminists coming into the industry and lashing out by doxxing these women, putting their home addresses out on the Internet and threatening them. It’s easy for them to invade privacy and easy for them to organize a hate campaign around that.

Barry: Yeah. They have this Internet megaphone they can use to stir all these guys up.

VB: That part of it is very unsolved so far, how you deal with that. How do you stop that?

Barry: That’s one thing I’ve seen. As I was saying about one of my theories, technology is basically neutral. When people say things have changed so much — one of the great things about watching that Roosevelt program is seeing how vicious and wicked politics were. Everybody says it’s worse than it’s ever been now. Bullshit. That’s not true. If you look at the stuff with our founding fathers, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, they hated each other, at least politically.

Human nature doesn’t change. Technology gives you different ways to be a jerk or a Mensch, basically, to put it nicely. But one big difference is that capability on the Internet to megaphone hate or love or anything in between. You can gather a cohort of like-minded people, hopefully for something good. There are as many examples of good stuff – all these different campaigns. The ice bucket challenge or whatever.

VB: You could set up a bunch of cameras to protect somebody’s house.

Barry: Exactly. The other biggest change in the last 30 years, nowhere do product introductions happen more quickly than in the smartphone business. They just keep on coming. This is going to be a challenge here, because the watch business is one … accessory to your smartphone, [and] at this point it’s a pretty expensive accessory.

The watch business has only been around for 150 years. That started with the railroad guys, in the late 19th century. Then everybody had to have a watch. You had a nice watch and passed it along. Then, in the last 20 years, watches have fallen off, except for fashion watches and the real high end. Kids say, “Why do I need a watch?” It’s an interesting market to see if it does become something where I can talk into it or hear.

VB: People said Apple killed the watch with the smartphone, and now they’re going to bring it back.

Barry: It’s interesting. That’s a market that’s not like the other markets they jump-started, the ones that were moribund or hanging around – the MP3 market, the smartphone market, the tablet market.

The key to anything here for the mass market – you name the product – is convenience. Computer guys have been talking about that forever, about plug and play. Plug and play is a television set, or it used to be anyway. Now you have to hook all this other stuff up to it. But any of these devices, if they’re easy to use, reasonably priced, and do stuff that you want, you gotta have them. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There’s always this overused term, “innovation.” It’s become one of those things where if you need a drinking game at these events, you wouldn’t make it through the first five minutes. But when you think about all this stuff, all these product categories like the smartphone: The TV did it, and the VCR created the video industry, letting you watch what you want when you want. Then things like Tivo made it easier. Then where you want, with things like the Slingbox, and now all these Internet connections. Wireless has gotten so good ….

The game-changer, probably the biggest of all, is the smartphone. Think of all the apps. Think of what’s beginning now with mobile payments. Another big part of our holiday survey this year, more than 50 percent of people now are buying online, up from 40-some last year. But using a mobile device to purchase, those numbers are way up. I think well over three quarters. The mobile phone has changed that, and that’s going to change all these payment things.

VB: You see Apple Pay coming in. These new things they introduce, you wonder whether they’re going to become dominant, or just become one more thing – Apple Watch, Apple Pay.

Barry: The Apple Pay, I think, is another area. Even in phones, if you look worldwide, they’re not really dominant. Even in tablets now, especially the less expensive and smaller tablets. There are some who see them as actually reacting to the success of Samsung primarily, but also just about everybody else in the tablet market. Amazon really shook that up when they introduced the Kindle Fire at $199, with the smaller screen size. Apple took note.

That’s going to be a tight squeeze there for big phones and small tablets, bigger tablets and laptops. For a lot of things, you’ll still need a laptop. If your kid’s going off to school they really need a laptop. A tablet’s good for fun, but you really need a laptop.

VB: There’s a thought that they were going to do bigger laptops for the enterprise, but that didn’t happen.

Barry: Bigger tablets, too.

VB: Yeah, the 13” tablets didn’t arrive.

Barry: Did you see the 20” tablet? There’s a company called Fubu that’s basically making kids’ stuff. It’s designed to lay on a table and play games. Microsoft’s had those a long time.