CES 2008 Is No Country for Old Men

CES is one of those trade shows that draws a fair number of gray-haired (or well-dyed) attendees. And yet, despite the maturing audience, the gadgets are decidedly geared for someone who hasn't yet had their first arthroscopic surgery or who squirrels a pair of cheap reading glasses in every nook and cranny.

I wandered the show floor looking for the signs of technology-life for an aging population—slim pickings. I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how those huge LCD monitors can get bigger and bigger, but the type size on the control buttons remains 8 pt. unreadable. Or why black on black is the way so many CE vendors choose to label their control buttons, or why the spacing on telephone keypads shrinks in proportion to how my fingers swell.

There is some progress, though. This year's CES hosted a special one-hour session called "Making Room for the Boom."

Panelists included:

• Arlene Harris, creator of the Jitterbug, a phone and service designed with the needs of older adults in mind.
• Don Jones, from Qualcomm, who's been advocating the use of location-based cell phones to handle a variety of transactions including health care and staying in touch.
• Derek Newell of Health Hero Networks, makers of Health Buddy, a controller unit that monitors patients remotely and has attachments for peripherals like blood pressure monitors.
• Carsten Trads from Clarity, a division of Plantronics, creators a line of products for the hearing impaired.

That's when it hit me. Most of the products deemed "boomer-worthy" are targeted at an infirmity. Not that there shouldn't be technologies that address loss of hearing, dementia, loss of sight, etc., but there has to be more to it.

Deciding that boomer-dom had to be more of a state of mind than a condition, I looked at CES to see what products had a boomer mentality. Here's what I came up with:

The Cue r1 radio. It's an iPod docking station and radio (AM/FM). Too bad it's not digital, but, the screen display is gigantic. It's got touch-sensitive tuning, easy to program station buttons, dual alarms, a touch-sensor snooze control so you don't fumble for the button, and a dimming LCD screen so you can sleep without the display light. Marketing language: timeless design, built with real people in mind.

Realizing that people can get killed trying to program their GPS, the manufacturers are addressing some design issues too. The Cobra 5000 has a large 5-inch screen and a really bright display with big type. You can put your own icons into the map on your route and the GPS shuts down when you turn off the ignition.

Similarly, the Magellan Maestro 5310 also features a 5-inch touch screen to increase map, menu, and image readability by 35 percent. "With 90 million baby boomers in North America representing $2 trillion in annual spending power, developing GPS products geared to their specific needs is critical to expanding the category," said Christian Bubenheim, vice president of marketing at Magellan.

Presto, an old favorite, Presto, prints emails and attachments without requiring a PC connection. It is one of a handful of products targeting older folks specifically.

Expanding my hunt I ran across some real boomer-wannabes whose time is coming:

The videophone made a new appearance with Creative's InPerson Wi-Fi VideoPhone. The thing about this incarnation of the videophone is that it relies on Wi-Fi and that makes all the difference.

You can't mention boomers without talking the robot talk either. Robots have the potential to help cook, clean, and keep us secure and monitored. Still, most of the robots at the show were toys—expensive toys at that. Other than iRobot's E cleaning trio—Roomba (vacuum), Scooba (mop), and Looj (clean gutters)—not much was shown in the really useful robot category.

Home security is on the fast track towards becoming a big boomer category. A home security system can monitor snowbirds' second homes or just add a sense of security to their existing homes. Home Heartbeat from Eaton sounds like it would be a medical application, but it's a wireless, totally modular home control system that can do everything from regulating temperature to fending off intruders.

Already available in China, the Aigopen is one of those scanners that you can hold up to any content in a book (text or image). But the Aigopen will read what it's scanned to you (Chinese or English). The pen only works with Aigopen books that are specially made, but we're bound to see more of these as boomers' eyes fail them.

One of my personal favorites can be found at Brookstone. Urban myth says that this giant remote also shows up at Wal-Mart and CVS now and then. Sure it's a tad on the overgrown size, but maybe it beats keeping one of those reading glasses next to the TV remote.