CES 2012 Archives - Serious Startups

CEA Opened Eureka Park In 2012

The Consumer Electronics Association, the producers of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), this year introduced a new area to CES. Over the years CEA has added several category specific areas to the ever-growing show floor. China, Korea and Japan all have their own areas in addition to the ability to spring for a full booth on the main show floor.

Eureka Park was housed in the Venetian hotel which was also home to the exhibits in the 70000 area and PMA which is the photography convention that merged with CES this year.

Putting Eureka park in the Venetian hotel as opposed to the convention center, allowed CEA to offer start-ups their own place to play and show off their wares, apps and ideas. It also allowed CEA to offer booth space at the largest trade show in the western hemisphere at a lower cost than the premium spaces at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

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Video Game Manufacturers Razer And Red 5 Take A Stand Against SOPA at CES

The interwebs are going wild about SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act). We’ve all read the story by now about XDA and many other web companies like Reddit, who are going dark this week on January 18th to raise awareness about SOPA.

Well these guys at CES could not have said it any better. Although many in the video game industry are believed to be protected by SOPA because of online piracy, many companies actually agree that SOPA is too restrictive and that the government shouldn’t be able to exert as much control as they are proposing.

It’s true that millions of dollars are lost in online piracy but it’s very hard these days to associate actual numbers to the losses of the copyright holders and creators. On one hand copyright owners may be losing initial dollars from someone downloading an mp3 or a torrent of a movie, on the other hand it’s well-known that even pirated copies of music, videos, movies and software lead to building not just scale but popularity.

SOPA affects everyone who uses the internet. If SOPA is to pass than then websites could be shut down without warning if a site is believed to be violating copyrights. In addition SOPA could cause websites from being blocked from ad payment networks and payment facilitators like PayPal.

For more on SOPA read this wiki

CES 2012: Surf Easy Personal Internet Web Browser

At CES 2012 we met with the investors of a new start-up called Surf Easy. Surf Easy is a personal web browsing product.

The Surf Easy personal web browsing solution is actually Mozilla’s Firefox on a secure and encrypted USB flash drive. When you put the Surf Easy USB key into a Mac or PC it asks you for your password and then opens up your own personal, private and secure web browser. Unlike traditional web browsing, everything you browse while using Surf Easy is stored on the USB key.

The Surf Easy web browser keeps your cookies, passwords, and history safely on the key itself and send your information encrypted to their cloud based servers. This way whether you are using your own computer, a hotel computer or a friend’s computer your information stays with you.

Surf Easy also saves your bookmarks, and as much history as you would like so you can pick up where you left off. They were at CES 2012 in Eureka park with their private investors.

Surf Easy may miss the boat though, as the service costs $60. We’re not sure that the price makes it an attractive solution to something that can be easily replicated. We are also nervous about the fact that they wouldn’t allow us to self test.