What was supposed to be liveblogging turned into live-tweeting…and now extremely delayed blogging (better late than never though, right?). To start off, here’s a video (courtesy of Arielle) about our thoughts on Intel:
In summary, most of us relate Intel with microchips and processors and then we don’t know much else about the company, because Intel is “just a sticker” or “inside of another product”—another brand we’re more familiar with. I mean, how would a regular consumer know that Intel does augmented reality research in the tera-scale lab and video-game efficiency testing in the gaming lab?! Why would I ever google “fiber optics” or “usb4?” or even know that silicon photonics was possible, let alone happening in the Intel research labs?! I’m not nerd enough to ever consider the computational possibilities with getting light (via fiber optics) into a piece of rock (silicon) and somehow encoding data (without blowing anything up); nor would I ever just somehow know that the next generation of fiber optic usbs would change the design possibilities for say, a laptop (because the vga (monitor connector) and the ethernet are currently the biggest limitations for thickness and an optical usb could potentially replace all of that). This stuff needs to be taught to me. It makes sense then, that Intel would spend so much on publicity on youth like us, who can then share with our audiences in “normal people talk”, not 133t sp34k jargon. Light Peak, say whaaa?
Aside from educating the public about Intel’s research and innovations, I think Intel should also publicize readily accessible services to spread brand awareness. In the video above, I come in at 3:54 and mention the Intel Dispute Finder, which currently has a working prototype as a Firefox plugin and a database of about 3000 disputed topics (but Intel labs & Cal grads are working on it). I briefly explain in the video that this is a service, not a hardware product, and because we’re a generation of prominent service users, this makes a lot more sense to us (e.g. research paper helper!). When Intel becomes this relatable, it no longer seems like an obscure brand where we can’t see the “Intel Inside”.
Of course, the easiest way is still to demo a bunch of products that do have Intel inside and develop the brand by association.
Here’s Intel’s Home Energy Management System designed by IDEO! (video courtesy of Fred)
It’s still a prototype but as I’ve mentioned before and I’ll repeat again, high-tech homes is where the future’s at!
Here’s the WiDi, which is actually an Intel product, not just “Intel inside” (video courtesy of Arthur)
You connect your laptop to your TV via wifi and stream video and audio without too much latency. Huge potential for gaming geeks in the future, I guess.
Lastly, here’s a picture I took of the Dell Adamo XPS (with an Intel core 2 duo inside) compared with my iPhone (uncased).
Clare’s got more pictures on her blog post!