LAS VEGAS — Here’s a morning routine for you. After the alarm on your smartphone goes off, it’s time to roll out of your smart bed and give your hair a good run through with your app-connected brush. Don’t forget to use your smart toothbrush in front of your smart mirror.
After that, your smart pillbox will remind you to take your medication. And remember to put on your smart jeans, so they can give you directions while you leave your phone in the pocket.
Sound like a typical morning? Tech companies at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas would like it to be. They’re unveiling products that do all these things and more. But do we really need them – or even want them?
“When an industry is nascent, you will see experimentation,” said Mark Hung, a vice president at Gartner Research. “Companies will throw things against the wall to see what sticks.”
You decide whether these are cool innovations or just junk.
Can’t express your feelings adequately through emoticon-filled text messages? For you, there’s the Lovebox. The wooden box – made by a French startup, of course – plugs into an outlet and connects to Wi-Fi. A heart on the outside spins when you get a message. Open the lid to see a digital screen with the message. You can reply with a digital heart by rotating the heart on the box.
The Lovebox won’t be out in the U. S. until June, so forget Valentine’s Day. And these virtual smooches come with a price: $120 for one box or $185 for two.
The Hair Coach from L’Oreal’s Kerastase brand uses a microphone, gyroscope and other sensors to monitor how fast and how hard you’re brushing. An accompanying app recommends how to brush for optimal quality and minimal breakage and split ends. It can also factor in heat and humidity and even discern if hair is wet or dry. Kerastase teamed up with tech company Withings on the battery-powered brush, due out in mid-2017. It comes at a hair-raising price: $200.
If sharing your pictures on Instagram isn’t enough, why not wear them? A California startup called Pop-I has a backpack for just that. A built-in digital screen displays photos you just snapped or have in your photo gallery. The backpacks will come out later this year and range from $99 to $399, depending on material and screen size. Pop-I is looking to expand to clothing and other products, too.
Want to look smart while tooling around an unfamiliar neighborhood? How about a pair of vibrating jeans to get you where you’re going? The jeans from Spinali Design, another French startup, will vibrate on your right or left hip to let you know which direction you should head. Sure, a smartwatch can do the same thing, but why not get something that can do more? If that’s too much clothing for you, try bikinis that buzz when you’re out in the sun too long and need to apply more sunscreen. The jeans cost about $100, and the bikinis about $140.
Want body monitoring that rivals that of an intensive care unit? Xenoma’s “e-skin” is essentially a shirt with sensors that measure movement, breathing, pressure, perspiration and body temperature. The shirt connects wirelessly to a smartphone or personal computer for real-time number crunching. Developers at the Tokyo-based Xenoma say the shirt can be used for health monitoring, fitness tracking and even virtual-reality gaming. But they’re still working on it, so it’s not available for sale yet.
Elsewhere at CES, connected pet feeders and dog collars were on display, while chefs for humans could see Wi-Fi-enabled air fryers and sous vide cookers. Run out of an ingredient? A smart trash can automatically adds it to your shopping list.
And if you don’t have time to read to your kids, the Lunii storytelling speaker can come to your rescue. Never mind that this can be done through a phone app rather than a $60 device.
With all that help, you’ll have plenty of time for 18 holes with your 3-D-printed connected golf club. It promises to let you know – through an app, of course – just how bad your form actually is.
Just don’t forget to send a note to your loved one – through the Lovebox.
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) — Russian President Vladimir Putin had a direct hand in ordering, in behalf of Moscow’s government, a large-scale effort to interfere in the U. S. presidential election — in an attempt to get Donald Trump in the White House and sully the image of Hillary Clinton , an unclassified intelligence report said Friday.
The office of the director of national intelligence released the highly-anticipated report on Friday, which followed a classified version being given to President Barack Obama Thursday and President-elect Donald Trump Friday.
For weeks, U. S. intelligence officials have implicated the Russian government in a series of cyberattacks before the Nov. 8 vote. Friday’s 25-page report showed investigators concluded «with high confidence» that not only did Russia’s government interfere, but that Putin directly ordered it to do so. It also says agents of the Kremlin also employed third parties to impact the vote — including the Moscow-funded network RT and «trolls» on social media channels.
«We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election,» the report states. «Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.
«We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. »
The report said both the CIA and FBI were highly confident in the conclusions implicating the Kremlin, and the National Security Agency was moderately confident.
Authorities in the report expressed alarm at the brazenness of Russia’s purported involvement, saying its efforts «demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations. »
The report bolstered its conclusions by citing Russia’s track record of ordering covert actions related to American elections, which dates back decades to the former Soviet Union and the Cold War.
«In the 1970s, the KGB recruited a Democratic Party activist who reported information about then-presidential hopeful Jimmy Carter ‘s campaign and foreign policy plans, according to a former KGB archivist,» it noted.
Intelligence officials said Russia will likely use the lessons it learned from Trump’s election to try and influence elections in the future.
Included in Friday’s report is the claim that the U. S. intelligence community intercepted communications from Moscow in November that revealed high-level Russian officials celebrating Trump’s win and congratulating themselves — a development first reported late Thursday .
«Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior
since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and
goals,» the report says.
Three top intelligence officials testified in the Senate Thursday and defended their claims of Russian complicity.
Russia had been suspected in multiple cyberattacks last year against Democratic targets, including the Democratic National Committee, that officials believe were motivated by a desire to obtain and expose information embarrassing to Clinton.
«When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency,» the report added.
While the report accuses Russia of direct interference with the cyberattacks, it said there was no evidence that Moscow tampered, or even attempted to alter, the vote tally.
Trump has expressed great skepticism about Russia’s potential involvement in the election. Friday, he took aim at the news media for a report that was published before he was briefed on the investigations.
«I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it,» he tweeted .

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(CBS) – As anticipation builds toward President Obama’s Jan. 10 farewell speech, his South Side neighbors are breathing something of a sigh relief.
At McCormick Place, preparations well underway for the president’s goodbye address to the nation, starting with distribution of free tickets Saturday morning.
The ticket distribution begins at 8 a.m. Saturday at an office next to the McCormick Hyatt Hotel lobby. The free single tickets will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis, the White House says.
No one may line up prior to 6 a.m.
Motorists can enter Parking Lot A starting at 6 a.m. and wait in their vehicles until the ticket handout begins.
Meantime, the presidents Kenwood neighbors are taking heart at what Obama told CBS 2’s Jay Levine this week, that he’ll “always be a citizen of Chicago.”
“I think maintaining residence here and having his (presidential) library here means he will have a presence, and I think that’s a great thing,” Ald. Sophia King, 4 th Ward, says.

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Under the arrangement plant owner Entergy Corp. will shut both reactors at the Westchester County facility by April 2021. A person familiar with the agreement but not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the agreement on the condition of anonymity to The Associated Press on Friday.
On Sunday, anti-nuclear activists held a vigil for the victims of Fukushima and a demonstration to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power stati…
It remains to be seen how the state would make up for the loss of electrical generation once the plant, which supplies a quarter of the power used in New York City and Westchester County, closes. The facility’s reactor units began commercial operation in 1974 and 1976.
More than 17 million people live within 50 miles of the facility, which sits alongside the lower Hudson River about 30 miles north of New York City, the nation’s biggest city. Cuomo, a Democrat, has long argued that operating a nuclear plant so close to a major population center poses a potential safety hazard.
On Sept. 11, 2001, one of the hijacked planes flew over the nuclear plant before crashing into the World Trade Center.
More recently, there have been a number of mishaps at Indian Point , including a power failure in the reactor core, a transformer fire , an alarm failure, and the escape of radiactive water into groundwater.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen and it should be shut down,” Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper, a watchdog organization dedicated to protecting the Hudson River, told CBS News earlier this year.
New Orleans-based Entergy declined to comment on the deal, which was first reported by The New York Times.
Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said any discussion of an agreement was premature.
“There is no agreement,” Azzopardi wrote in an email. “Gov. Cuomo has been working on a possible agreement for 15 years and until it’s done, it’s not done. Close only counts for horseshoes, not for nuclear plants.”
The agreement would allow the closure deadline to be delayed a few years if the state and Entergy agree.
Others who worked on the agreement include Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, also a Democrat, and the environmental organization Riverkeeper.
“If we can shut-down Indian Point under an agreement that enhances public safety and kick-starts investment into safer and more reliable renewable energy sources, that will be a major victory for the millions of New Yorkers who live in the region,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

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As I swim in the ocean of shiny new tech that surrounds me at CES, I find myself wondering where on earth I would put all this stuff if I had to take it with me.
One firm I met there thinks it has the answer — in the form of a jacket with 42 secret pockets, each tailored for a specific device.
Scotte Vest’s $150 (£120) sleeveless gilet is an Aladdin’s cave of pockets: it includes a laptop-sized space on the back, somewhere to store a tablet in each of the front panels, an inside breast pocket for smartphones made out of touchscreen-friendly material and a channel for headphone cables or chargers.
It also contains a sunglasses pouch with attached cleaning cloth.
However, the firm does not recommend using all 42 pockets at once.
«It is having a pocket for what you need at the moment,» said spokesman Luke Lappala.
«If style isn’t necessarily your number one priority, you could fit everything you ever need in there. »
I can vouch for that, after stashing my 11in (28cm) laptop, charging cable and plug, smartphone, tablet, radio equipment, battery power bar and notebook in a single Scotte Vest garment.
I didn’t look or feel particularly elegant, and the weight of the laptop alone almost tipped me over twice — but once the load had settled onto my shoulders I began to feel like I was wearing a backpack rather than a gilet.
It was surprisingly difficult to get everything back out again after this little experiment. I could feel the charger about my person but it took me a while to locate the pocket it was in. Helpfully, each garment comes with a small fabric map setting out the location of all the pockets.
The idea was born in the year 2000 when chief executive Scott Jordan almost damaged his ears in an airport after getting a headphone cable tangled on a doorknob, Mr Lappala told me.
It was inspired by the traditional fisherman’s vest.
Scotte Vest claims to have sold more than 10 million garments so far, ranging from trench coats to shorts, all with varying tallies of pockets.
It is great for travellers, said Mr Lappala. And drone pilots.
The firm even has a rival in the form of the J25 made by AyeGear — although as its name suggests, that one has a mere 25 storage areas.
I can’t believe I’ve come to Las Vegas to write about pockets.
Read all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017

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