shop to show off its imaging technology.
Lantos developed a device that creates 3D images of the human ear canal. Shahid Azim, founder and senior vice president of Lantos, says the company is edging its way into the consumer market, which in part drew it to CES. “This a great place to get feedback and build relationships,” Azim says. The company expects to release its product in the second half of the year, he says.
Meanwhile, Alvir Navin, co-founder and vice president of client services of San Francisco-based Flingo, says he was surprised by the attention his company is getting at CES. “We’ve had a lot of people who are really interested in what we are doing,” he says. Flingo develops software for sharing media with Web-connected televisions. “There are a lot of social tools for people on connected TVs,” Navin says. Flingo is self-funded and has a staff of about a dozen, he says.
Education technology could also be found at Eureka Park. LectureTools, a startup from Ann Arbor, MI, displayed its online platform for educators to teach students interactively. Students with laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other devices that connect to the Web can respond to questions posed during lectures. “We’re helping instructors engage their students in learning,” says Bret Squire, a software engineer with LectureTools. The technology was born at the University of Michigan to help large lecture-style classes function more personally. LectureTools was founded in 2010, is primarily bootstrapped, and an iPad app version of the software is in development.
One of the more futuristic ideas presented at Eureka Park came from Innovega, a Bellevue, WA-based company developing eyewear technology that would put images into the wearer’s vision like a personal display. Innovega combines contact lenses that have embedded optics with glasses that use organic LED and LCD displays to project images. The technology is backed by some defense contracts. “We like working with the defense community because they are very aggressive in terms of their expectations,” says CEO Steve Willey. The company is also developing consumer uses for its technology, which attracted him to the conference. “CES is our first opportunity to raise some awareness to this new personal interface system,” he says.
