The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV… where about 150,000 people converge into 3 city blocks for 4 days to see the latest and greatest in tech and gadgetry, and where I have built new relationships and gathered many resources for my future articles, and best of all for you, collected some prize donations to give to you, the reader!

I’m exhausted after a day of walking the floors and talking to many vendors at CES 2012 in Las Vegas, NV. But before I sign off of my consciousness tonight, I wanted to recap what I’ve seen today, and so much of it is very promising.  Some of it means prizes you may win, and some of it means info to show you what is coming in the future of public safety and technology.

I started the day with a visit to Kodak, and they have a new WiFi enabled camera and a new palm-sized videocamera (that shoots an amazing 250fps at 720p!) coming in the second quarter of this year, and they plan on sending me some demo units. Then I met Sara at Nokia, who promises to send me a Nokia Windows Phone for demo.

Then I met Wayne and Laura from the Alcatel-Lucent booth, where they were presenting their Striker vehicle with the 4G LTE system on-board, and I must have spent a solid hour talking about all the possibilities that were presently doable with that amazing setup and how it could be adapted to EMS. Wayne is a retired NJ State Trooper, and had a helping hand in the immediate response to 9-11 in NYC on the communications side. Although he admits he is tech saavy and a law enforcement man, he knows Fire and EMS are not his forte, and so we talked extensively about how EMS could benefit from the deployment of this amazing system. He even showed how you could use any connectable device to access it, whether it is an iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, webOS, or otherwise. Laura, it seems, helped run a photo contest a few months back for public safety photos (which I incidentally placed 3rd for in the EMS category, so I got a chance to personally thank her for the prize which helped me get to CES this year), and she is getting me some specs on the Striker to share with you. They want to hear and collaborate some more with EMS, so expect to see them at EMS World and/or EMS Today to bring their presentations to EMS and to solicit feedback. I learned of a couple of really neat iPad/iPhone apps that I wanted to share with you from Wayne. The first is “Voxer” and it is free. You can chat with IM and with Push-To-Talk, send photos, map, conference, and more with this one. The second is not free, at $9, but it is still quite neat, and worth every penny, and it is called “Vippie”. Vippie allows the user to dial into a network, like a SIP phone (think Vonage for businesses using a switchboard or PBX) and directly into a digital radio system, like our 700/800 MHz radios, to allow you a direct line of talk without the rest of the radio network listening in.

QMadix is moving out of prototype with it’s new safety glasses that feature built-in hearing protection AND Bluetooth audio. I can’t tell you more yet (since I don’t know all the specs), but a demo will be coming my way to review, complete with my experience at the shooting range.

iGrip is a German engineered and German-made universal phone holder that offers either suction cup or a permanent mount, and I teased their gentleman, Oliver, into letting me demo their mount to see how it would hold up to a typical Nevada day (suction holders that can handle most areas 10-30 degree per day temp changes are all wimps compared to the 40-60 degree per day temp changes we get in the desert). He graciously accepted my challenge and promised that if his product wouldn’t hold up, he’d have it re-engineered to meet our demanding needs. When I’m done with their product, I fully expect a mount that will hold your phone, GPS, or light tablet with no problems whatsoever, and it will be “EMS Rated”. Not to be outdone by any other company, RAM Mounts issued me a demo unit to try out as well, with the assurance that if their product can hold up to the military fleets in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Nevada desert will be a breeze, and the vibrations of a diesel ambulance will be a non-issue. Expect reviews on these soon too.

Qualcomm was generous enough to provide an onsite barista/coffee shop and lounge so you could take your time to view all their supported technologies. I received an autographed copy of “The Creative Destruction Of Medicine” by Dr. Eric Topol, MD, and a coming demo of a dog tracking GPS locator called “Tagg” (which I will review for the Canine SAR folks).

The gracious folks at Wrapsol have donated a couple of their cover systems to me to gift to my readers. I currently have covers for iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, so if you are interested in helping me evaluate one of these, please let me know what model you have and I will see what I can do (I only have one of each).

I also spent a huge amount of time at the Verizon booth going over some health informatics and telemedicine projects they have in the mix. One is intended for use in the Critical Care Transport arena primarily, and another is an awesome headset based computer system that has the potential to revolutionize training, hazmat/CBRNE response, homeland security, EMS and Fire responses to places where IR and thermal imaging might be necessary, collaboration, and so much more!!! I can’t wait to cover this one in more depth with you. In the mean time, I have this video to offer you as a tease for what may be to come in the future of public safety, regardless of discipline, and it is made by a company called Kopin who is presently partnering with Verizon…

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=2667338997376

And some pics to view here…

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2667376838322.2121113.1073081262&type=1

Wilson Electronics is sending me home with a very nice passive antenna booster for any network’s cell phones.  I’ll be all too happy to see if it gives me any more than the average 10% coverage for the trip from Vegas to Reno up US 95, but no towers means no signal regardless of who the carrier is or how good the receiver.  Still, I expect I won’t be disappointed with the results, as Wilson’s products have never failed to impress me in the past 12 years I’ve owned them.

I’ll have an aluminum machined LED flashlight courtesy of one of the vendors, a pair of neat Scrubz microfiber cleaning cloth (good for phones and cameras), bluetooth headsets, and a few more goodies to give away to my blog subscribers, and to followers of Twitter (@unwiredmedic), Facebook (facebook.com/unwiredmedic), and Google+ (https://plus.google.com/108555607884740751823) - and the more you follow, the more chances you’ll have to win, since I will have some giveaways for each different social media outlet and for the blog.

And I’ve only seen part of one exhibit hall.  Tomorrow, I plan to see the rest of my main exhibit hall, and that only leaves me three more exhibit halls to explore for Thursday and part of Friday!  Ugh!  Last year it was 20 miles/day average walking.  Today was probably only 5 miles, but no sitting AT ALL!  But I need the exercise, so this should cover me for the entire year, right?!