The Electronic Hidden Gems Of 2006
Not all the interesting gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show come from big companies. For every Microsoft, Sony or Samsung there are plenty of small companies hoping to make a big splash at the big show.
One of my favorite gadgets was the SkyScout from Celestron. This $399 handheld device can instantly identify and locate any of 6,000 celestial objects in the night sky. The device uses GPS (global positioning system) to know exactly where you are and a compass to know which way you're facing. With a database of heavenly objects, it can figure out what you're looking at, even if you can barely see it with your naked eye. The 16-ounce device is being marketed to serious amateur astronomers, but it strikes me as a great teaching tool for kids.
CBS News technology consultant Larry Magid reports from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.At $40,000 and up, Atiz Innovation's BookDrive is beyond my budget but it could be a must buy for major libraries, Google and other technology companies that want to digitize the world's printed literature. The machine is an automatic book scanner. Stick in a bound book and it turns the pages as it scans at about 10 seconds per page. Built-in optical character recognition software turns the printed words into computer text which can then be archived and searched. It also keeps a graphic representation of the page.
Have you ever run out of battery power on your cell phone or PDA? Unless you carry an extra battery or have the charger and an outlet handy, you're off the air. But Turbo Charge can come to the rescue. This little $19.95 device from Voxred International can recharge your cell phone with a single AA battery. When you order it, you indicate the type of cell phone you have and they send you a tip for your phone. It works with about 85 percent of the phones on the market according to the company.
As I said in my other CES columns, portable video and audio players are the rage of this show. GPS units are also quite popular and one company offers both in a single product. The Solo from Dream'eo is an 8-ounce handheld device with a 3.5-inch screen that functions as a GPS system, a portable media player and a mobile hard drive.
With 20 GB of storage, there is ample room to hold music and at least a few hours of video. At $999, it's not cheap, but it is versatile. The product competes with the Magellan RoadMate 800 that I've been testing. It's a great GPS system and a so-so music player and photo viewer, but unlike the Solo, it can't record video.
The world of analog TV will soon enter the history books when the FCC mandated switchover to digital takes place in 2009. Already, many TV stations are broadcasting digital signals. That's good news for Ritek Advanced Media which showcased a $59 digital tuner for PCs. It plugs into the USB port of a PC and captures over-the-air digital TV signals so you can watch the program on your laptop or desktop. It's tiny and it's affordable.
Unfortunately, there weren't any digital TV signals floating around in the hotel room where I saw the device so I can't testify how well it works.
Although you can use a standard mouse on a laptop computer, it's kind of a pain to carry one around. Newton Peripherals has an interesting solution. Its MoGo Mouse fits in a laptop's PC card slot. About the size of a business card, the BlueTooth wireless mouse recharges automatically in about an hour while it's being stored. When you pull it out of the slot, you use it just like a desktop mouse. No more fiddling around with that touch pad. It costs $69.95 but you do need a BlueTooth enabled laptop to use it.
A lot of road warriors carry both a laptop and some type of personal digital assistant. They need the laptop for their full-featured applications like Excel or other Windows software and they want the convenience of a PDA to look up important information. The trouble with Windows XP laptops however is that they take awhile to boot up so, even if they're small, they're still not all that convenient.
DualCor Technologies has an interesting hybrid PC that runs both Windows XP and Microsoft Windows Mobile.
Steve Hanley of DualCor Technologies talks to CBS News tech guru Larry Magid about a new handheld computer that runs two operating systems and two processors.
While XP is necessary for the big applications, Windows Mobile, which starts up instantly, is adequate for many tasks including checking your schedule, looking up a contact or checking email. This handheld PC comes with both operating systems and enables you to quickly move back and forth. It has a 40 GB hard drive that's shared between its two personalities so you can easily access data created in one operating system on the other one.
The company claims it gives you hundreds of hours in standby mode and 8 hours of continuous use. It also has a built-in speaker and microphone so you can use it as an audio note-taker. It will cost $1,500 when it becomes available later this quarter.