The excitement of what was on show was palpable, the buzz of new products and upgraded old versions impressive and a couple of celebs dazzled attendees with their presence. Mashable described the show as the beginning of the end of planned obsolescence.

These are some of the quirky gadgets and appliances presented at CES, amongst thousands of others:

Alternative power sources for your gadgets, such as ETON’s solar powered, blue tooth speaker system.

The iPad radio quality microphone from Blue Spark.

Karotz, the world’s smartest rabbit that updates your Twitter and Facebook status from anywhere, sends emails and reads texts fully integrating them into social networks, very cute.

Behringer iNuke’s boom sounder at 8 feet tall with 10 000 watts of sound, unbelievable.

Swivl your personal iphone hands free cameraman accessory.

Samsung’s Digital Appliances certainly impressed from the latest washer-dryer with a Smart Control system, allowing users to stay connected to the washer without having to manually control it at the machine, to their smart Refrigerators and Smart TVs.  I love the concept of having all our home devices talking to each other and being able to remotely control them all. And lets not forget LG and its smart appliances, the best part is their smart fridge with its shopping list feature.

And where does that leave the Google TV, well take a look here.

MakerBot showed off its latest 3D printer, the Replicator. It can print creations as big as a loaf of bread and is capable of printing more than one color at a time.

WiMM Watch, the Android 2.1-based watch offers a 160×160 touch screen and other than a watch, it is essentially a tiny Android computer running what WiMM lab calls Micro Apps.

Ion’s Apprentice Guitar, for those who want to rock, it transforms an iPad into a full-sized guitar to help teach new players how to play.

Tri Cascade introduced its smart home energy system with a smart thermostat that allows you to monitor and control your house’s energy consumption even when you’re not at home via the iPhone app.

Murata Boy is a 50 cm tall, 5 kilogram bot that balances and rides (forwards and backwards) on his fully functional bicycle and has everything from Bluetooth, to gyro-, ultrasonic- and shock sensors. Just for fun!

Miveu camera, this lens attaches to the iPhone with a custom ruggedized case, which incorporates a simple tactile shutter button allowing easy operation to snap away.

Worth a mention was Intel’s Social Cockpit Center, imagine an impressive space station control center, it had an Adobe-Air based desktop application that collected CES buzz on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and forums.  The Social Cockpit tracked not only hashtags, but specific topics, products and brands being discussed online. The data was updated each hour to give a sense of who was on top throughout the day, as well as a daily report to sum up social conversations.

These examples are just some of thousands that were presented, with so much to see, so much to do and so little time. Check everything that was on display at CES this year here.

The show centered around social aspects on almost all spheres. Consumers no longer just want to consume products, they want to be able to upgrade easily, have instant gratification and share their experiences. A music gadget, for example, isn’t just about playing an instrument — it’s about creating a new piece of music, learning how to play properly, sharing your progress with friends and doing it all in a way that makes you feel good about yourself.

The consumer electronics that will succeed in today’s market are the ones that stay in tune with the social needs and trends of its users, thereby empowering their experience.

To see the Best of CES 2012 Award Winners go here.

The Big Apple

2011 saw Apple continue its market dominance and passed Exxon Mobil as the world’s most valuable corporation, even with the death of its enigmatic leader. Everywhere you looked this year, Apple seemed to have the golden touch.

From the mobile market where Apple launched the new iPhone 4S with Siri, the voice controlled feature that everyone wanted, pulling in 40 percent of smartphone revenues, nearly 65 percent of the sector’s profits.

Through to the PC and iPad markets, with PC’s selling up to 13 percent of the market share and iPads a whopping 75 percent, nearly 50 million units by the end of the year. The pace didn’t slow down either with the launch of iCloud making device interconnectivity easier for the user, the iPhone and iPad’s increasingly downloaded Apps, with October seeing the 60 billionth song sold on iTunes, never mind opening more and more Apple stores worldwide.  Even in death Steve Jobs sells with his book being the number one best seller on Amazon for 2011. While the company is at the top of its game, one wonders whether this will carry through into 2012 with the loss of their charismatic, volatile, mercurial, creative genius? Jobs was driven to seek perfection in his company’s products through simplicity, and ease of use through elegant design both inside and out, will Apple manage to continue this trend?

The Android Phenomenon

August 2011 saw Google’s Android capturing 48 percent of the smartphone market, according to the Canalys Report.  Successful Android-based products include vendors such as Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, ZTE and Huawei, as catalysts for the platform’s growth. The market gap between the Apple and Android tablets is slowly closing, in 2010 the market share was 83.9 to 14.2 percent respectively, while a small percentage sat with other vendors. However in 2011 this gap is now 68.7 to 19.9 percent, respectively. Will Android begin to dominate the market share in 2012? Projections from Gartner show that by 2015 the market share will be 47.1 to 38.6 percent, so watch this space.

The Social Networking Boom

Wikileaks began the year with revelations about the US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the information on what American Diplomats had been writing home about was revealed. The Arab Spring made the world aware of just how powerful, on the political front, social networking and mobile devices could actually be. With demonstrators holding up placards with Twitter hashtags in Tahrir Square starting the online media frenzy of information, then came the Tunisian conflict, with the government initially not realizing the significance of Facebook or Twitter and Mubarak’s complete internet shut down once they did. With some hackers setting up a “phone to tweet” system enabling Eygptian’s to dial an international number and record a message that was then broadcast as a tweet.  But every disconnected day meant a loss of millions of dollars in revenue for those running businesses there, with most just happening to be some of Mubarak’s Generals, so the country hastily rejoined the networked world.  Lybia saw similar media frenzies with ordinary people on the street sending through messages, videos and blogging about their ordeals, with Gadhaffi’s final moments being recorded and broadcast with a mobile phone. The Syrian conflict continues and moments in history are being broadcast live across the world via social media streaming. When we think back to wars lost and won and how initially media correspondents would put themselves in harms way bringing us broadcasts via satellite phones, then we would watch in horror at live broadcasts via satellite and now we are witnessing, not via the press, but the everyday people on the streets involved in these conflicts “then and there” via modern communication tools. Our perspective on war, on the people (not the soldiers or politicians), on the destruction, has changed and the truths behind these events can no longer be hidden as in the past.

The Facebook phenomenon continues, starting the year with 500 million users and finishing with over 800 million, it is the worlds largest social

network. Every day, Facebook users comment or press the “like” button more than 2 billion times and upload more than 250 million photos. Analysts estimate that the network’s users post 30 billion pieces of content every month. However, it has brought to the forefront the issue of privacy and just how much information users do not know is out there about themselves.  Facebook’s policies, more than any others, seem to be driving the discussion of privacy in this new age. And so it should be, with new features such as the Timeline, where all your information will be available from birth to date, to sharing exactly what you are doing at a specific moment in time with your friends, very little will be left to the imagination about your life. As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, which could come in the spring of 2012, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership.

The Paperless eBooks

eBooks have certainly also introduced us to a paperless more environmentally friendly format to reading books.  Many are not fans yet, but when you think of just how many trees can be saved along the way with the Amazon Kindle or downloadable books for the iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab and other tablet devices, then not paging through a book makes a lot of sense. With smaller thinner versions of these in design, the idea of carrying a small light weight device is much more appealing than a big hefty book which will be discarded or gather shelf dust. Easy to download, read what you want when you want, add audio recordings, visuals and the movie of the book, the idea of eBooks becomes extremely appealing.

2011 can be defined as one of the most interesting technological years, will 2012 hold as many new advancements for us?  I don’t think the pace is going to slow down, if anything it will grow more frenzied, with more to watch, read and participate in.

What defined 2011 for you in our ever changing ICT world?

1.  Are you a musician in the making, then you will want to look at the ultra-compact device that connects any MIDI compatible device to the iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad®?  Then the iRig MIDI should be on your list. It is a standard Core MIDI interface for iOS and connects MIDI keyboards, drum machines, drum pads, pedal boards and more to an iOS device to control a world of MIDI-compatible apps such as GarageBand®. Included is the SampleTank for FREE* and added to this you can also use iOS apps to control external MIDI equipment such as sound modules, DAWs or lighting systems right from the mobile device.

2. The iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy S2, when you are torn between Apple and Android. When you have all the Apple toys, logic tells you to stay with all the i products for consistency, the problem being that you are then locked into Apple apps. The thought of breaking loose is highly tempting and may just be what sways you when you see all the android apps that are available to download.

3. If you don’t own a tablet, then this is the time to go out there and take the plunge. Once you have one, you will never look back. It is convenient to carry around, has wifi and mobile connectivity, with access to the internet, email and social media accounts, you can get work done quickly and efficiently, never mind all the apps you can download to play games, read books, newspapers and they all come in a variety of sizes. For some tablet comparisons go here.

4. So how about a watch that not only tells the time, but also receives calls, sms’ and emails right to your wrist. Not only that you can surf the net, watch the news and look at your photos via a tool which connects design and technology together. This is like having your smartphone on your wrist. Perhaps a bit bulky for tiny wrists (I am sure they will eventually come up with a better more elegant design) but convenient for sure, i’m smartwatch, the complete interconnection of all digital devices.

5. Apple TV “Now there’s always something good on TV”, blockbuster movies, TV Shows, your music and movies, even news and sport.  You can choose what you want to watch when you want to watch, have a look at Apples TV Instant Entertainment here.

6. Kindle Fire, with 8 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, thousands of popular apps and games, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora. The Kindle has ultra-fast web browsing with Amazon Silk, free cloud storage for all your Amazon content, vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle, a fast, and a powerful dual-core processor to view all your favorite children’s books, graphic novels, and magazines in rich color. Why would this not be on your list?

7. The Aldebaran Robotics Nao Robot

It also boasts the first ATP World Tennis Tournament of the year in January each year, the Tour of Qatar cycling event, and numerous football, rugby, gymnastics and athletics meets throughout the year, to name a few.

Yet there has been a vast amount of press in recent weeks surrounding Qatar and the health issues that it faces. References to the nation being one of the most obese in the world, with roughly half the adults and a third of the children suffering from this problem. Added to this, 17% of Qataris also battle with diabetes, resulting in further medical complications down the line.  The nations economic explosion, having recently become the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas, has been blamed for changes in lifestyle and eating habits.

What has any of this got to do with technology? Being an avid exercise freak and always watching what I eat, I started wondering how much Qatar and our technologically advanced world offers online and I was quite amazed at just how much is out there to help to change an unhealthy lifestyle.

Lets take a look at all the great FREE APPS that are now available to download to assist in healthier lifestyle initiatives, here are the top ten from Mashable:

1. LIVESTRONG.com, Lance Armstrong’s health and fitness website has this handy free app to track and look up your daily caloric, fat, carbohydrate and protein intake, Calorie Tracker.

2. The weight management app allows you to set goals, create a daily calorie budget, record food and exercise, and view graphs of your progress.

3. The 40·30·30 app allows you to ensure you are getting the right nutritional balance, it will really come in handy if you need to quickly calculate the percentage of carbs, protein, and fats in your meal.

4. The iPump app, has 4000+ images and videos and 400+ workouts, on top of that it has its own drag and drop workout builder for you to create your own workouts, all in one app. .

5. The BMI Calculator will give you key information for setting or optimizing your fitness goals. And it should work for all but the most muscular of bodies.

6. If music is your ideal motivator, try Nike BOOM. This app syncs your music to your workouts and throws in some audio-visual motivation from pro coaches and athletes along the way.

7. If your day could use some deep breathing and flexibility, try Pocket Yoga, which packs 145 poses in the palm of your hand. You can choose from three different practices, difficulty levels and durations for a total of 27 sessions. Namaste!

8. If you spend a lot of time on the road for work or pleasure, it means time for you to forget about your workout. CrossFit Travel comes to the rescue with an impressive list of exercises that can be done in a hotel room or other small spaces.

9. For more serious bodybuilders, this is the app for the muscle-bound. JEFIT Pro is a highly-rated app to help you track your progress, time your workouts, and beat your own records, all without the hassle of pen or paper.

10. For tracking just how much fat your body is burning, we suggest an app like Instant Heart Rate. It shows your heart rate measurements, a real-time PPG graph and your heart-rate history.

And what about the fun techie equipment you can buy to assist you with your new exercise and eating routine?

Exercise equipment is in abundance in every sport shop in the malls here, especially if you prefer to exercise at home.

Fun assistive equipment for exercise routines include the purchase of the Nike + iPod personal trainer, and how about including an odometer – check these little helpers out for walking or running, some have a GPS system to show routes you could run/walk and the distance and calories burnt, plus heart rate monitors to ensure you are staying within your correct heart rate limit for fat burning.

Qatar itself has plenty of online local programs and companies to assist those requiring help to start or continue with a healthy lifestyle program, these are some of the sites that I found:

Slim and Lite, I loved that I could check out my Body Mass Index (BMI) on this site as well as my Waist/Hip ratio, which can determine whether you have a higher risk of contracting chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart diseases, strokes, etc.  Plus much more….

The Art of Abundant Living, is an all encompassing website from Corporate programs to Individual coaching on health and lifestyle, nutrition, physical fitness, stress management (another cause of diabetes), work/life balance, and so on.

The Qatar Diabetes Association gives insight into the disease with community initiatives and workshops. With 17% of nationals, excluding the expat community which would increase that percentage. diabetes is an increasing epidemic which needs to be controlled. Having a mother that suffers from the disease, I have been exposed to the constant blood testing and injections that can occur up to 3 – 6 times a day. The bruising that can be found all over the fattier areas of the body, the constant swings in blood sugar levels, the numbness that occur in the feet and hands and having to be constantly aware of what to do if she collapses, it is a frightening disease and one we have to learn to control.

The Greenbox provides an online method of ordering fresh, convenient varieties of premium quality organic goat cheese, organic or regular fruit and vegetables and poultry. I liked the fact that you could buy organic foods via this site and that all fruit and vegetables that are imported are seasonal, so there is no “artificial manufacturing” occurring.

Qatar Living includes a section on Clinics and Health Centers in Qatar for quick reference.

The Government has also taken the initiative to enlighten communities on healthcare, here are some of their informative sites:

Qatar Embassy on Health

Qatar’s Supreme Council of Health

Hamad Medical Corporation

Exercising in Doha may have its limits in the summer months when wanting to enjoy the outdoors, but facilities now abound. Firstly, in the cooler winter months there is the Corniche, which allows for great walking and running, and they have included gym exercise machines close to the Olympic Oryx, which can be utilized.

Hotel Health and Fitness Centers are in abundance with separate facilities and classes for both men and women, schedules are easily accessible online with yearly membership, see below for a few options:

Sharq Village and Spa

The Ritz Carlton Hotel

Sheraton Hotel

Four Seasons Hotel

The Grand Hyatt

Private gym membership is also available more readily in Doha now:

Aspire Active

Fitness First

Yama Yoga

Villagio Gym at Villagio Mall, unfortunately no website yet which was disappointing

It just takes time to look and find this information online, but it is all there for the picking and if you are concerned about your weight and ensuring that you stay fit and healthy take the time to get to grips with what your body needs and avoid the obesity and diabetes trap.

When it comes to staying healthy, online facilities and techie equipment have made our lives so much easier. So as a nation, lets get those couch potato bodies into the zumba pumping, yoga stretching, body rocking, dumbbell pushing swing of things.

Cool Stadiums

One of Qatar's Many Proposed Amazing Stadiums

This is probably the piece getting the most attention in terms of the technical bid. Is it really possible to create state-of-the-art open-air stadiums that remain a cool and comfortable 27 degrees when it is 50 degrees out? I have no clue, but it better be possible otherwise the Qatar games will be remembered as the games of heat stroke. Anyone that has lived through a summer in Qatar knows it is brutal and even a 10 meter walk to your car can leave you drenched and winded. Can you imagine if you are running up and down a soccer field for 90 minutes? I don’t care how good of an athlete you are, that is not physically possible. And can these really be carbon neutral stadiums? If not, I can only imagine the carbon footprint left behind by all this cooling.

Indoor Cities

Keeping the fans cool and entertained is also a big technological challenge. Even if the stadiums are cool, what will the fans do in their free time? How will they get between matches without suffering? Well it seems as though virtual indoor cities that are connected by air conditioned trains will be needed around each of the stadiums (some of which are planned in “cities” that don’t even exist yet). People will need indoor places to eat, activities, lounges, etc. I am picturing some indoor Disney Worlds, which may be what it takes to convince fans to travel to Qatar in the summer.

Ultra High Speed Connections

Perhaps the most difficult challenge – but also the one that will benefit people living in Qatar the most – is the need to develop an ultrahigh speed internet here, with multiple points of access (i.e. not just a submarine cable that could be cut!). Qatar basically promised to be just as connected as countries like Japan and Korea, which is ambitious to say the least. The good news is that Qatar is small, so building a network should be manageable. In terms of new points of connection, ictQATAR’s announcement that they plan to launch a satellite is a good step, and hopefully more major cables will be explored. This is important for fans that visit Qatar of course, but even more important for broadcasting the games to the world. We all remember the broadcast issues with the last World Cup – Qatar must make sure this doesn’t happen for their games.

The Compact Proposal - Yes Qatar is Small

Crowd Control and Management

One of the selling points of Qatar’s bid was that it was compact – most stadiums will be less than 30 minutes apart. This will make it easier for fans and players to get to/from matches. But, this also means much more congestion. Previous World Cups have been spread out over much larger geographic distances, meaning no one city was slammed with people. Well for Qatar, Doha will be slammed. Technology will need to play a key role in managing crowd movements, keeping any public transport running smoothly (at cool temperatures!) and keeping traffic flowing. This is going to require sophisticated sensors and monitoring devices– The Internet of Things will be in Qatar! And of course, security personnel will need to use technology to help protect the large crowds – expect a lot of surveillance cameras!

Is all if this doable? It will be a challenge, but I remind everyone that almost no one thought Qatar would win the rights to host the World Cup when they first announced plans to bid. I don’t think anyone should bet against Qatar hosting the most technologically advanced World Cup – and I am very excited about what the coming boom in ICT investment means for people living here. Now let’s get started!

There is of course the impressive technology being proposed for the stadiums. It is certainly an ambitious goal of creating a stadium that will be open-air, but keep the on-field temperature a comfortable 27 degrees in a Qatar summer. But the technology that will be necessary for Qatar to win the bid goes way beyond the flashy stadiums. The most important technology is the communications systems that will allow the games to be shared with the world, enable security and public works to operate without interruption and also create a new experience for the thousands that would come to Qatar for the matches.

In terms of sharing the games with the world, you really have to push your imagination to think about where technology will be in 12 years. Right now we think it is amazing to be able to livestream a game to our mobile phones anywhere in the world, but in 12 years that may seem old fashioned. We might expect a 3D immersive experience with each match – like we are actually there. Or maybe we’ll want to be able to virtually jump into a game and know what it is like to watch the match from the goalie’s eyes. All this will require an ultra high speed network. This may mean fiber, satellite – who knows, but I am sure Qatar will need to be ready to build the most state-of-the-art network available at the time – and fast.

And when it comes to security, public works and the fan experience, Qatar better be ready for the Internet of Things! They will need to be able to monitor and communicate with all sorts of devices in real time to manage things like crowd movement, traffic, air temperature and even concessions.

If Qatar wants people to “Expect Amazing,” here’s hoping they promised amazing when it comes to technology for their 2022 bid. It very well could be what sets Qatar apart from the other nations. Good luck Qatar!

People trust their friends. We make decisions based on what we learn, and recommendations from trusted sources – particularly our friends – have a huge influence in our decision making.  While press releases and formal company announcements are still required ways of spreading your message broadly, it’s just as important that your customers and web site visitors tell your story for you – and tell it to their friends and so on.  The reality is that people are not listening (as much) to your press releases,  they are too busy listening to their friends.

Facebook Connect is a free service that will let visitors to your web site share what they do on your site with their Facebook friends. For example, if a visitor to your site leaves a comment on a page or post, on a site without Facebook, that comment can only be seen by visitors to your site. Using Facebook connect that comment gets shared with all of the commenter’s Facebook friends through their activity stream.

As you can see, building word-of-mouth awareness of your site just got a lot easier.

Turning on the feature is easy, your web master simply embeds some ready-to-use code snippets into the pages on your site where you would like to add Facebook sharing.  To learn more about getting started, head over to Facebook and learn more.