Look how old this is! I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 16 years 9 months 24 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.
Wowpen
One of the few things I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show that really made me say “Wow” was this invention, that enables the user to write on a regular pad of paper with a wireless pen sized device, and have the words pictures and characters instantly displayed on the computer screen. I got to try it out and it worked flawlessly.
There were other similar items at the show that involved a cabled unit, which in retrospect might actually be better to prevent loss, but the cabled units that I saw also required purchasing special paper from the company. The Wowpen required no special paper, and the only thing cabled was a small “reader” unit that went into a USB ort and sat at the top of your desk to monitor hand position. Wow.
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PowerAir – Zinc Energy Source
Until today I had never even heard of zinc as an alternative fuel source. I have a few affiliates in the alternative energy space, but this one really stood but, as I got to see the world’s first indoor generator. It was only about the size of two monster gaming PCs side-by-side, and it runs indoors, with re-cycleable fuel.
The fuel it runs on is a little bit smaller than a BB, but colored silver, and with a rough texture. When the fuel is spent, the owner can return the fuel for reprocessing, so there is literally no waste created.
The home size generator pictured above will not be around for a while yet, and vehicles powered by zinc are at least three years away according to Don Ceci, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. However, they do have andheld units available now, that are about the size of an old palm pilot, and provide up to 40 hours of electricity for recharging your cell phones, iPods, and handheld electronic devices.
Once activated, the 40 hours of electricity can be accessed instantly for up to 90 days of use before the unit gets sent back to the company for a trade in.
Retail pricing on the handheld units is going to be $39.99 for the first purchase, and substantially less for the trade ins.
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CallPod
This company had three very cool products that thet unveiled at CES. The first was a Bluetooth headset that would work from 300m away, which is more than a football field. I can barely get from my desk to the printer against the other wall of my office before I start hearing the signal fade when I’m on a conversation. The unit is pretty large, so not exactly unnoticeable. However, as technology improves it will undoubtedly shrink.
The second was a wireless charging device that acted as a pod in the center of your table for putting everything in all at the same time, eliminating the unsightly cable mass that plagues us all. Very useful, and well monetized, since every unit requires its own short cable be purchased from the factory.
The final item was a Bluetooth conference call system, enabling the extended range headsets to be, a conferencing system. Obviously this eliminates the need for people to be gathered around a table speaking into a center unit, and will enable people to have conference calls with their coworkers in the same building, without having to go to the conference room.
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VieVu – No Hands Personal DVR
About the size of an old Motorola pager, this is a video camera that you wear on the front of your shirt or jacket, that only has two modes – on or off. There are not switches t ocontrol, and just sliding the lens cover open or closed with one hand is all it takes. It includes a microphone and you’ll see everything that you see recording up to four hours, at 640×480.
If you want to capture the details of an event you’re attending or perhaps protect yourself from liability in certain situations, without the need to go through the hassle of a handheld camera, this seems like it will fit the bill quite nicely.
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Lumus – Electronic Eyewear
There were lots of manufacturers with glasses that you could hook up to your TV, video game or video iPod, while showing you what appears to be the equivalent of a 50 or 60 inch TV from about 10 feet away. Those are great, and the resolution on those glasses is pushing 1080i, getting better every year. Most hhave built in sound too. However, but all of them completely block your vision, and this company has added a new twist.
Instead of blocking your vision entirely, this one allows for an opaque control screen to come up and still allow you to look through it. The demo they had to try was hooked up to a handheld Windows mobile device and it really worked very well. The glasses themselves were heavy, but fairly stylish, and I could see wearing these in public, unlike any others I’ve seen. Remember the old IBM commercial with the guy waving his arms in the air while sho uting voice commands to his computer? We might not be quite there yet, but these glasses will definitely make it easier to drive down the freeway while you’re reading and sending e-mail 😉
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Data Locker
A simple idea, but one sorely needed. This company has a portable USB hard drive that includes a screen on the front requiring that a password be entered before data can be accessed. They offer it in several sizes and versions, including (I believe) one that’s just an encasement to use your own size drive. The password gets embedded to the drive, so there’s no way someone could just break open the case either. On occasion I have carried around a couple hundred gigs of information and I shudder to think what might happen if I were stupid enough to lose it, and for the additional $90 premium that this adds to the price of a drive, it’s peace of mind worth having.
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NoahPad
A sub compact notebook computer, that folds, up, and allows the screen to flops over backward like a tablet pc, (but it’s not a tablet). The twis is that , rather than run the whole desktop on such a small screen, they have turned the keyboard into two large touchpads, allowing you to “one touch” pan around the screen as needed in any direction. Another “touch” and it’s right back in keyboard ode easily enough.
I used it for a few minutes, and the lack of tactile feedback on the keys made it seem a little funny, but I got used to it quickly. With it’s compact size, a 10 hour battery life and a sub $600 price tag, I can see these catching on big time.
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Redfly
Why didn’t someone think of this one sooner? It’s simple, but brilliant, and worked perfectly. It’s just a compact laptop sized unit, with a screen, touchpad and keyboard for using your Windows Mobile device. Easy to use and instantly plug-in, this thing is very useful. An interesting thing to note is that if you’re using one, it actually ADDS power to your mobile device and will extend the life of the charge, even when the Redfly is running on batteries. If you had one of these, you could probably do just fine without your laptop on an extended trip.
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S-Xgen by Seamless Internet
Holy cr*p, now THAT’s what I’m talkin’ about! I WANT one of these bad boys… Forget Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm, this is next gereration stuff baby – Woohoo!
This unit weighs in under a pound, comes with a 20 gig hard drive, TFT screen, 2 USB ports, a Webcam, speakers and 
microphone, connects with WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular access.
This thing has he power of a laptop, the portability of a PDA, and the connectivity of a cell phone, and promises t ocontinue to change the way we think of mobile computing. Very cool.
I hope they keep developing the seethrough Electronic Eyewear so that eventually you will have a video game projected on objects around you. Imagine how much fun kids could have running around the neigborhood shooting virtual army guys. That is truly “off the couch” gaming.
Did you pay any attention to the fact that the S-XGEN isn’t available for sale?
Or to the fact that the company making it is insolvent (a few hundred dollars cash in the bank and liabilities in the million$) with 3 employees?
Or to the fact that they showed the exact same unit at last year’s CES, got a fair amount of media hype, and then never shipped any products?
@Portland Fisher – Yeah, I can envision lots of applications when combined with technology like the Nintendo Wii.
Maybe some sort of USB device might allow you to wave your arms around and voice activation to control your desktop, like that old IBM commercial?
@Anonymous – Thanks for commenting on the Xgen – I guess. Yes I did know that it was not available for sale yet, as are many things still in the conceptual stage that are shown at CES.
I had no idea that they were “insolvent”, and I wonder how they afforded the booth at CES.
Yes I did know they showed it last year in even earlier conceptual stage, and yes I do know that they never shipped.
Personally I would rather they wait until it’s done right than ship too early, like Windows Vista or countless PC video games that need to be “patched” because they released them according to some marketing department deadline.
I’m really not clear how it hurts my credibility by reporting what I saw, and that I think it was cool, and I STILL want one when (and if) it becomes available.
You sound like you have more insight into the inner workings of the company and I’d love to hear more, if you’d care to share…
TechGage announced their Best of CES 2008 yesterday, and the S-Xgen unit was on their list. I suppose you’d better go straighten them out, Anonymous
http://techgage.com/article/best_of_ces_2008/5
I agree that products should not be released until they are ready, and prototypes are interesting.
However, Seamless is not a start-up showing off a prototype. It’s a company that has a long track record of announcing products, services, acquistions and mergers which never happen. It is also a publicly traded company which increased its outstanding shares nearly 5-fold since the last CES when they debuted the S-XGEN, using ‘progress’ in the development and production as the fodder for PRs promoting the company.
They made a big deal about doing a production deal in China, and developing distributor relationships, and receiving 1000’s of pre-orders, and then never shipped anything. All the distributors they had lined up have gone away. A year later, they don’t appear to be any nearer to delivering. It’s not a product — just vapor-hardware.
I would think your credibility would be affected if you pump a non-existent product which is being used to promote a stock scam. They take your coverage (and techgage’s) and turn it into PRs which generate interest in the stock.
As far as ‘affording’ CES, they have always managed to come up with a few thousands to promote the stock. Just not the hundreds of thousands needed to complete production.
Look carefully at the technology here — the processor, the OS. Do you really think it’s $1400 cool? How about $1000 cool? How much are you going to drop on a product like this from a company with no resources to stand behind the product (tech support, warranty)?
What price did they tell you? Perhaps something like ‘pricing is still under development’.
I think it was $1095 show special, but I didn’t know what the price was at the time I wrote the post – I didn’t ask, because I was in a hurry and just snapped a photo.
Yeah, although $1500 isn’t a killer, but $1k is better, and yours is the first thing I’ve hear about their solvency issues.
I’d be paying for the size and flexibility, but no, for that price i may as well get the little sony lightweight, I guess you would be right.
Actually, right above it in my post, Redfly seems more practical, and that little Noah Pad above that was really cool too, both under $600.
You claim “it’s a non-existent product which is being used to promote a stock scam”, but you’re questioning MY credibility for merely REPORTING that I saw something I thought was cool at CES? Are you kidding me?
How do you know this potentially libelous “fact”? Or, did you just work there and get fired for something you feel was unjust, and this is all you can do to get back at them?
Call me a dreamer, but I think I’ll prefer to believe that the product I saw was “real” until some facts show me otherwise.
I do expect I’ll get a letter from them or their attorney to take this post down at some point in the future, so I’m not going to spend much more time on it, but I’m curious how you might back up your claim?