This week on VentureBeat: CES 2015, Trello, cooking robots, & more

Every week, the news team at VentureBeat brings you a blitz of news day after day, but even for our most dedicated readers it can be a challenge to catch every single story.

So, we’ve decided to pull together a handful of the best stories from VentureBeat this week, just in case you missed them, or want to read them again.

Note that this week was the annual International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, so much of our best stuff came from it. (Check out our full coverage of CES 2015 here.)

Here’s what I learned by trying on almost every single wearable on the market

Earlier this week, I tried on 56 wearables. Fifty-six. And, unsurprisingly, most left me wanting more. But, by subjecting myself to a torrent of trackers, Android wrist computers, and even a smart sweatband, I came to a few conclusions that you might find helpful — if you’re buying a wearable, or if you get a kick out of gadget-watching. Read more

Inside Trello, the venture-backed task-list app that’s determined to get big fast

NEW YORK — Over the summer, highly regarded New York softwaredevelopment shop Fog Creek Software spun out Trello, a product that a couple of developers had cobbled together three years earlier to help people keep track of what they have to do. Now Trello is taking off in a big way. Fog Creek helped the new startup pull in a stockpile of venture capital and made sure Trello was outfitted with its very own corporate swag. But why now? And what made Trello so different from Fog Creek’s other developer-centric products, like bug-tracking system FogBugz and source code-hosting software Kiln? Read more

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund pours funds into the company behind Leafly, an online cannabis community

Venture capitalist Peter Thiel is investing in marijuana. Well, sort of. Founders Fund, a venture capital firm he cofounded, is announcing today that it participated in cannabis-focused private equity firm Privateer Holdings‘ $75 million round of funding, of which it has secured about $50 million so far. (To be clear, Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis is leading this investment, not Thiel.) Read more

CES Diary: Wearables may be headed mainstream, but many still aren’t ready for prime time

LAS VEGAS — The quantified self movement has come a long way over the past couple years, and many in the industry believe that health and fitness wearables will be everywhere — from Walgreens to Bloomingdale’s — in 2015. Many of these will have been first trotted out at this year’s CES. But companies selling wearables still have a problem. The percentage of buyers who abandon the devices is still very high. One study says that a third of these devices end up in the junk drawer within six months of purchase. Read more

How Apple won CES — again — without showing up in Vegas

Apple famously never goes to CES because, well, why would it? The tech giant can get all the attention it wants just by snapping its fingers. But that doesn’t mean the Cupertino giant isn’t watching and waiting for the right moment to tweak the noses of all the gadget hounds in Vegas. And once again, whether the company played a direct role or not, a couple of well-timed leaks have managed to remind everyone at CES that Apple completely dominates mindshare when it comes to new tech products. Read more

One big lesson from CES: Our tech still fails us when we need it most

LAS VEGAS — The Consumer Electronics Show is a logistical nightmare. Even for a veteran like me (who gave advice on how to survive the show), things inevitably fall apart. Murphy’s Law kicks in. Even as I was tweeting about how much fun it was and all of the important people I was seeing, I was barely surviving. Almost from the start, I either suffered or witnessed technical and human failures at the at the show this week. I would argue that these failures are more common than we would like to admit, and they tell us a lot about the failings of technology and how far it has to go before it really gives us relief. Read more

Robots can now learn to cook just like you do: by watching YouTube videos

Researchers have come up with a new way to teach robots how to use tools simply by watching videos on YouTube. The researchers, from the University of Maryland and the Australian research center NICTA, have just published a paper on their achievements, which they will present this month at the 29th annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Read more