Even if you aren’t tech-oriented, you’ve probably gotten wind of the ongoing Consumer Electronics Showcase this weekend in Las Vegas. Every winter, electronics and computer companies get an opportunity to dazzle us with the latest technological breakthroughs. I’ve never been to any of these conventions before. I’m not there now, as I am on call this weekend. It does amaze me that some innovations are simply spectacular, while others appear impractical.

It seems like the common theme this year is digital screen technologies, like OLED televisions and E-books. The concept of e-book readers like Kindle and Sony’s Reader is enticing, but the weak .pdf support and huge restrictions on certain file formats makes the device an imperfect scientific reading device.

I wonder how many of these devices have application in the medical community. Portable readers? Not really. See-through OLED screens? Nice, but not a necessity. Portable dictation devices? Absolutely. We need to transcribe our referral letters. I will be following Android’s dictation engine closely. Since Google has been harvesting 411 voice data onto its Voice system for the past few years, I can only expect things to improve. It will be an exciting year.

computing rant, tech