Assorted CES Gizmos

Frank Buckheimer writes "The CES 2003 show in Las Vegas will give us some pretty nice introductions of some brand new products." Other submitters sent in news about a "Mini PC" the size of a paperback book, and a spiffy digital sound projector. mbstone writes "Bill Gates announced a line of MS wristwatches that receive email, stock quotes, sports scores, etc. by FM radio. Gates claims it's a 'whole new product concept that was completely incubated by Microsoft Research,' but it's really just a reprise of the Seiko MessageWatch -- mine became just a watch, sans atomic time, as of 12/31/99 when Seiko called it quits. Once bitten, twice shy. Has anybody proposed an open standard for such gadgets so that new wristwatch-data-service providers can enter the market when the old provider leaves?"

Comments

Market for these Devices?

[webword]

I'm very skeptical of these kinds of devices. For example, how many people really want stock quotes on their watches? Is there real value in that? How is a stock ticker on a watch significantly better than a stock ticker on a PDA or cell phone? Also, beyond the cool factor, how important is atomic time to Joe Sixpack? Let's face it, if it isn't significantly better, then only technogeeks will care about it. It'll die a quick death. But wait, there's more. The other factor is this. Even if the product is significantly better in terms of functionality, if the usability sucks then uptake of the product in the market could be minimal. IMHO there are many strikes against these products becoming mainstream products any time soon.

1. More on usability: webword.com (Disclaimer: This is one of my web sites.)

2. Bell Labs Reports on Progress Towards "Dick Tracy" Watch

3. Check Out a Watch Dick Tracy Would Envy

4. IBM stuffs Linux into "Dick Tracy's watch"

5. A User Interface Toolkit for a Small Screen Device

6. Is Timing Ripe for Wrist PDAs?

Absolutely right

[HEbGb]

You are correct.

While it is possible to create reasonable amounts of bass using a sufficient number of small transducers, the 'real' advantage of big woofers is generally their long throw. A good woofer can have a clean displacement of several millimeters, while these small transducers cannot, without causing extreme distortion.

[The transducers don't use the helix method, as far as I can tell. They look like the same ones used in consumer audio systems by Harman and Creative Labs. The helix stuff is a different technology they're hyping.]

As for all of the 'beaming' claims, it's a load of nonsense. There may be vague lateral effects possible with this, but a phased array has to be much, much larger than the wavelengths its generating to create any substantial beam steering. Quite telling is that there isn't a shread of data available anywhere on their website or published reports.

Traditional "3D Audio" systems are a much better bet - far cheaper, and I'll bet they work as well as this (which isn't saying much).

1Limited is a VC backed company, and do not have any reasonable prospect of becoming profitable. Thus, they have to rely on hype to convince investors to keep propping them up.

802.11a Leaves me Cold, compared to apple Macworld

[goombah99]

Does anyone else find these offerings utterly tepid compared to Apple innovation the day before?

Bill gates announces a recylced idea for a Nerd watch that shows sport scores, headlines. The debut the smartScreen, a 1500$ screen-only that hooks to your compute by wi-fi but cant play movies or mp3s, then they announce that anyone who already bought was is out of luck since that they will be changing the specs to use 802.11a to get better bandwidth for movies. then an oversized so-called "video" ipod that also cant show DVD movies, for more bucks than a ipod.

The only thing I thought was interesting was that they decided to go with 802.11a and not 802.11g
I dont know much about these standards except what Jobs said. 802.11a is dead, because it is not backwards compatible with 802.11b hotspots whereas 802.11g is.

How is it possible that one company can lead the entire market year after year going back all the way to the taming of dynamic memory. While the other company can lead the bussiness world and innovate nothing.