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Great gadgets at CeBIT
janeko writes: "CeBIT is propably the largest techno/gadget exhibition in Europe. Every year there is great news of new gadgets and this year is no different. A company from Israel called VKB has created a vitual keyboard that can be displayed, using a laser, on almost any surface. Connect it to your PDA and use your kitchen table as a keyboard. Talking of surfaces, Olympia has created sound device called Soundbug that uses any hard surface as a speaker. Again, attach this to your PDA and kitchen table and enjoy your mp3's. News.com has more." Soundbug was also mentioned in this earlier story; what other gadgets from CeBIT are worth talking about this year?
Nice looking tech and potentially very useful, if you need a keyboard only occaisonally.
Remember the keyboard on the Atari 400? Ugh..
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
The laser keyboard mentioned may be vaporware, but in the meantime Logitech had on show at CeBit a very cool little wraparound fabric keyboard that doubles (when not in use) as a case for a Palm PDA. It's water-resistant, has hot keys, and folds out to be about the size of a notebook QWERTY keyboard. I think it's retailing in the UK at about £100 ($140), which seems steep, but I'll find it very useful for use in libraries as it's totally quiet. On sale in the UK next month.
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The company's press release is here (has pix):
http://www.logitech.com/cf/newsarticle.cfm
If you are a real mobile phone freak like me, you ought to be interested in the new Nokia 7650 mobile phone. It has a color display, digital camera (640x480), bluetooth, does MMS, has MIDP JAVA support and uses the Symbian OS.
:-)).
Look at the live CeBIT web-thing demonstration the MMS feature here (it has girlie pictures
sigfault. comment dumped.
Additional it may be interesting to the American readers, that there will be a "CeBIT america" next year in New York, which will be positioned against Comdex. (Heise reports here. In German, couldn't find the English announcement... I'm sure it's somewhere on www.cebit.de...).
Ambitious undertaking, will be interesting to see how they'll do. On the other hand there are already several CeBITs worldwide which AFAIK are doing quite well...
I am excited about the new wireless monitors. I was seriously concidering the PaceBlade, a laptop with a wireless monitor! But felt it almost what I wanted, just not quite. For instance, no mention of whether or not I can use the monitor with a standard computer or if it takes analog signals for watching TV. I'll wait for that perfect combination.... hopefully not too long! I'm salivating.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
ok, so how does this virtual keyboard work? How does it know what keys you're pressing?
Is it just me or is the guy using the keyboard on the car dashboard driving in the middle of the road, right over double yellow lines?
The message there is pretty clear... :-)
I have a hard enough time finding keyboards that I like and trying to type on a table top sounds like a bad idea. I'm pretty picky about key travel (the distance that a key moves when pressed). I really like the small key travel of laptops and I searched around for weeks before finding a desktop keyboard that had an acceptable key travel. Even if you're not anal about key travel like I am, it's nice to have some sense that your keys are in the right place by having something move. I imagine it would be pretty easy to get lost trying to type on a table with no feedback from the table.
I just read a post here written by someone at SCEA confirming that CeBIT required all PlayStations to be removed from the show floor - even though they were not showing any games. (You can't play games at CeBIT, which I understand and agree with - but the Linux kit isn't a video game.) She even mentions that the signs with the apology could not mention the name PlayStation - they had to refer to it as "our computer system".
This was a gadget I was wanting to hear about from CeBIT, too bad I won't be able to.