This year's
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas brought something for everyone who may not have received the gifts that they were hoping for during the holidays. Handhelds and wireless are sharing the spotlight with new gizmos such as wrist watch-sized devices that can receive weather, news and stock quotes, as well as Ultra-Portable PCs hardly bigger than a PDA that can run a full-fledged Windows XP environment. As
CRN Daily notes, though, many vendors are using the forum to launch products aimed at business at least as much for individuals - enterprise-quality video from Real Networks, corporate-oriented APIs for NewsGator's weblog subscription management tools and conference-room display systems. A legion of Web-tutored techophiles is helping to push the leading edge of content-enabling technologies ever closer to individuals who use them to fulfill both personal and institutional roles, with both professional and consumer content suppliers needing to follow their suit. Workflow-oriented professional content is great, but the need to understand professional content in a lifestyle setting will become increasingly important in this dual purpose world of content and technology.