CES 2011 - Day Two

While walking the floor at the 2011 CES Show, I examined a few products that caught my eye. Here's what I found.

Gorilla glass, made by Corning, is something that is already in use, although not many know about it. I have seen plenty of people with phones with broken screen covers that could have used this. It is a very strong and thin glass that can be used on just about any screen, although currently is only used on a few products. Corning had a nice demonstration showing how strong the glass was compared to other options currently in use.

A dynamic credit card that can change its number was another product I found interesting. The card comes in a few varieties, but the main idea is that it can change the information on the magnetic stripe portion of the card on the fly. The card looked and felt like a normal credit card but has built-in electronics. One version of the card had two numbers so you could have one card that served as two; with the press of a button on the card, you could chose which one was being used. The other version had a display for part of the numbers and could generate one-time-use numbers for each purchase. This virtual account number adds security since that number can only be used with one vendor. To generate a number, you had to enter a pin number on the card so that if it was stolen it would not useable.

Tablets are another item that is getting more popular, although I haven't seen as many as I thought I would. Many of the tablets have no keyboard, but a few do. For the ones that have no keyboard, a number of companies make add-on keyboards. For the tablets that have keyboards, they have come up with some interesting ways to open them up. One from Samsung slides open like a keyboard phone and then the screen can bend up like a normal laptop.

Lastly, one company was showing off a very small computer, built into a box that can easily fit in your hand. For its size, the computer has plenty of ports for video audio USB, and Ethernet.