|
Technology Today March 2009 More From the CES Mailbag
.by Robert Sanborn
Navigon is one of the long standing leaders in the GPS market as the
primary maker of GPS systems and this time they have done something that
I wonder took so long to accomplish. They have partnered with Rand
McNally to add their travel planning, scenic routes, and city guides to
the Navigon line of GPS units. I have used GPS units for years and yet
when we travel in the US, which we have done a lot, we always take one
of the latest Rand McNally Road Atlas with us. In fact, we have traveled
so much in this country, we have a Rand McNally that we have highlighted
our routes across the states so that it helps us remember our travels
and helps us select routes to destinations that we haven’t been on
before. Naturally one of the things we look for are the scenic routes on
the Rand McNally to help us choose our route. What Navigon has is the
8100T unit available this spring for around $599 and I can’t wait to get
my own.TechToday0903.htm
Something else that Navigon is doing is adding a lot of new content
available for their GPS offerings. Sometime this spring, you will be
able to download new things that make the GPS even more valuable to
drivers including a Red Light Camera database that will tell you when
you are approaching an intersection with the red light cameras, about
$30. Also a 3D Landmarks package to give you nearly 600 landmark and
notable buildings that will appear on your GPS, about $40; a European
Map add on that for an additional $129 will give you a memory card with
the roads in 38 different European countries. A new North American
expansion pack that for around $50 that adds Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, and
Puerto Rico and an upgrade to the latest software. Look for more at
www.navigon.com.
For a computer junkie, I really have to marvel at the way the Consumer
Electronics Show (CES) is blurring the lines between home entertainment
and home networking to the point that you can now connect your HDTV
through a box to your computer and cable or satellite box to share
everything. And you can do it wirelessly. Granted it takes some money
to do all of this but the technology is here and people are doing it. I
am using dual 22 inch monitors on my computer and the temptation is
really there to connect everything together but you know, the chair near
the TV is much more comfortable and when I sit down to watch a movie, I
don’t want to be tempted to use the computer. At least not for now.
However, if you do want to watch those YouTube videos, live internet TV,
or other internet movies on your HDTV, Netgear,
www.netgear.com, has just the box for you. The Internet TV Player,
ITV2000, is a tiny plug and go set top box that connects to the internet
and your home network. It will be available this summer for around $199.
Their Digital Entertainer Elite, (EVA9150) can be thought of as a
digital video juke box for the home. It starts life with a 500 gigabyte
hard drive and then proceeds to search your home network for all the
video files you have to catalogue them for you into an easily accessible
library. A user replaceable hard drive, USB ports for added storage
capacity, and the ability to work with nearly every network imaginable
in the home and you have a powerful video control system. Start a movie
in one room, hit pause, and finish it in the next or have every TV play
the same content. Spread your concert video or home movies to every TV
in the house. Later this spring for around $400.
Finally from Netgear comes their 3G Mobile Broadband Wireless Router
MBR624GU. This is one cool box for the road weary travelers that live
out of their motorhomes. The promise of 3G wireless cell phone
technology is that you can get internet speeds that rival that of DSL
and in fact, lots of business people are already on this bandwagon for
their need to connect at high speeds while traveling and not wanting to
depend on the hotel or wireless hot spots or any other public location.
With this cool box, you plug the cell phone 3G unit into the router and
turn your mobile home or where ever you are into a wireless hot spot of
your own. Available this spring for around $129.
Kodak has hopefully successfully reinvented themselves as a digital
camera company and have introduced a new 12 megapixel digital camera
with a 24x optical zoom lens. A couple of things immediately set this
Z980 digital camera aside from the others besides the superzoom F2.8+
Schneider Optical lens is the two shutter release buttons to make taking
vertical images much more easily. Though you do have to use the zoom
control next to the top shutter button to zoom in and compose your
picture so shifting to take the picture might take some getting used to.
Available this spring for around $399. I am not too sure about the
vertical grip but the good news there is it is detachable. The click to
capture speed on this camera is less than .2 seconds so it is fast to
use. I also like the hot shoe and the 3.0 inch LCD screen on the back.
It uses 4 AA batteries so that is a plus as well as the high capacity SD
memory cards. My quibbles would be the lack of haze filters for the
camera but it is definitely worth taking a closer look at.
Ctera,
www.ctera.com, is yet another entry in the Network Attached Storage
(NAS) arena but with a twist. With their system, you bring your own USB
attached external drive, plug it into their CloudPlug device, and it
becomes your network storage device. What makes them different is that
from there, you connect to the ctera cloud storage system to back up
your critical files. With USB2 for fast file access, gigabit Ethernet
for easy transfer, and highly encrypted technology, this really looks
like a winnable solution for the home and micro business user. It does
it all from the CloudPlug device so you don’t have to have backup
software installed on your computers. Looks like a really cool solution
coming sometime later this year.
Dolby Labs, long famous for the Dolby Surround Sound technology that is
into nearly everything these days, and some others have created what
they call the “Dolby Volume” technology that finally, eliminates the
unwanted and abrupt volume level changes that occur when you change
channels on your TV or worse yet, the program switches to a commercial.
SRS Labs and Pioneer are also working on this development and you can
see the SRS results in the Vizio Surround Bar. Look for the Dolby
technology in some of the latest Toshiba HDTVs including the Regza
models.
I
think I mentioned that last year, I got me a new Bluetooth noise
cancelling headset for my cell phone from Jawbone and it worked great.
This year when wandering the halls of CES, I noticed a lot of people
having troubles with their Bluetooth headsets not working and found my
own cutting out a lot and dropping the signal. Bluetooth technology is
certainly supposed to have a range farther than from my belt to my ear
so I wonder if all the people using the technology overwhelmed it this
time around?
Quick Impressions
Tons of netbooks everywhere both in the press room and on the floor. Do
you really want to use a screen that is that small ? Internet radio is
making a big splash as well with products from Cobra, Colby, and Netgear
among others. If you want to protect your portable device, look no
further than Otter with their new Impact series. Sleek, solid, a skin
style made out of silicon. GPS systems are coming with media players,
internet connections, and more live feeds for everything from
construction info to accident avoidance. Lenovo has a Thinkpad with a 17
inch screen and a slide out 2nd 10 inch screen. Digital
Frames are going upscale. Digital Foci has a cool looking frame and
others now include sound. Memorex has one that you can edit the images.
Case Logic has a new line of gadget bags that look really good and
functional, called the E-Sling.
Battery
Recharging
I
hate my cell phone. One reason is that the manufacturer in its pea
brained wisdom decided that the charger adapter on the phone was going
to be unlike nearly every other phone in the universe. My universal
chargers are not, my universal adapters are not, and the cell phone is
very picky about what you plug into it. And in all my trips to CES, I
drag that miserable phone with me seeing who has a charger for it that
will work and come away not happy with the offerings from Energizer, and
while the TurboCharge unit is nice, I still have issues with it. So, the
next visit was to Lenmar,
www.lenmar.com. They have been making replacement batteries for
years and in fact, just bought one for my Motorola Razr phone and that
helps but they had a charger that was truly cool. Their PowerPort Mini (PPUMINI)
is a rechargeable battery in itself that is used to charge your phone or
any other mini-usb powered device. Even comes with a tip for an iPod or
Blackberry. Comes with a Ziplinq type retractable cable, plug it in one
way to charge it from your computer, another way to charge the phone, or
cooler yet, just use the cable to charge your device from the computer’s
usb port. Around $25 at Staples.
For the person who has all the iPod accessories is a must have from NXT.
NXT,
www.nxtsound.com is a British company that has been doing some very
different things for their speaker technology. Take a look on their
website. But what they do is package their flat panel speakers you get
some very good sound from them. I have been following the company for
quite a while and have always enjoyed the things they do with their
speakers like creating the sound panels for some of the Vizio line of
televisions. What they did there was for Q Acoustics,
www.qacoustics.co.uk, to integrate the NXT sound panels in their
Q-AV sound systems for the home and what a sound it is.
What I have here is something called the iHome. It is a traveling case
for your iPod or any other MP3 player and it is a speaker as well built
into the case. Open it up and you have a place to plug in your player,
insert two AAA batteries, and now you can share your music and for what
you get, you get very good sound. I may even take this along with me
when I travel with my notebook to get better sound than out of the
internal speakers and it is a nice way to keep your MP3 player secure as
well. Around $25 at
www.amazon.com
If you have watched any of the crime shows on television, you know that
GPS locators are being put in nearly everything and I found something
pretty cool for your child. From the British company, Lok8U,
www.lok8u.com, comes a GPS alert device built into a child’s digital
wristwatch. You connect to a secure website from your mobile phone or
computer to find the location of your child anytime, anywhere. Via the
website, you get a map location and you can also set safety zones that
if your child goes outside of the zone, it sends you an alert. It is
also tamper proof so that it cannot be removed inadvertently or if
forced off, it will send an alert to you. ITechToday0903.htmnteresting
technology that will be available this summer for around $200 plus the
subscription.
More on that thought comes from Zoombak,
www.zoombak.com. Theirs is a universal GPS locator great for keeping
track of the family car, boats, motorcycles, and even pets. With it
activated, as soon as the unit leaves its pre-set safety zone, you can
get a message on your phone or email and then use the computer to
pinpoint the device. Really enjoyed talking to these guys about the
possibilities of the device and it is definitely worth looking into.
Around $200 with a $120 annual subscription fee.
It was only a matter of time when Sirius Satellite Radio invaded the
space of the in-car navigation system and they have done it on Ford
Lincoln/Mercury cars. The Sirius Travel Link will give you traditional
GPS and Sirius Radio (130 plus channels), but also the Traffic reports
(which include accidents, traffic flow, and construction, and
alternative mapping), Fuel Prices; from over 120,000 stations which will
then route you to your favorite station, and National Weather
Information, which will even include forecasts as well. How about sports
scores and movie listings?
Are you a geek at heart? Like to build your own creations? If so, check
out
www.buglabs.net.
Robert Sanborn is a technology analyst for PC Lifeline. You can reach
him through the net at robert@pcll.com
|
