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A flying visit to CeBIT 2007 With technology – and in particular IT – changing at a near-impossible-to-keep-up-with rate, we try to keep up-to-date by visiting shows such as CeBIT. After last year’s CeBIT, which we visited but didn’t report on (we rated it pretty much a dead loss), we were a little reluctant to take the time out for CeBIT 2007. And while there was plenty of “more of the same but different”, CeBIT 2007 did have enough to make the visit worthwhile. Of course, the exhibits are only one part of CeBIT – there are also virtually continuous seminars held either in any of several “open” venues within the exhibition or in the adjacent, purpose-build auditorium. While some of these looked more than interesting and would, no doubt, have provided valuable insights for those involved in those areas, time simply did not permit us more than a cursory glance at any of the seminars. A few individual products and services stood out and we hope to review by Ross Tester some of these later (assuming exhibitor co-operation!). That’s one of the negatives we’ve found about shows such as CeBIT: plenty of hoop-la and promises from those on the stand but very little (often no) follow-up in the days and weeks after. These people pay a lot of money to exhibit but then waste the opportunities that present themselves. Enough of the negatives, what did You might have to look closely but those are working mobile phones the girls are holding in the water (fitted with SKINS). And yes, they still work perfectly. Phones? They’re near the bottom of the picture . . . 86  Silicon Chip siliconchip.com.au PocketSurfer 2 is the fastest cellular-based web browser around and comes complete with 20 hours per month on-line time with no extra charges. we find at CeBIT 2007 (of course, this is just a small selection). • A pocket-sized internet surfer. No, it’s not a PDA, nor a phone, nor anything else. All it does is allow completely mobile internet access. So what’s so great about that? Serious surfing of the internet on PDAs and phones is a joke – you’d only do it if you had to. The screens are too small to read unless you enlarge to the point where you’re forever chasing parts of the page across the screen. And for the most part, access is slow and relatively expensive. Of course, you can use your notebook computer but who wants to lug around even a lightweight notebook just to get internet access? The PocketSurfer2 doesn’t try to be anything but a fast, cheap internet access device for those away from their desktop. It’s large enough to give a full-width screen with easily-read characters. But it’s tiny – at just 155 x 75 x 15mm and 174g. It’s fast, too; five to seven seconds per page and that’s coming in over the Vodafone cellular network. Most importantly, it’s cheap: the retail price of $399 includes 12 months of air-time (up to 20 hours per month) and there are no call charges, activation fees or air-time service charges. If you want up to 50 hours per month that’s $7.99 per month or unlimited siliconchip.com.au usage will cost you just $14.99 per month. More information: www. pocketsurfer.com.au • Speaking of the internet, we think we have at last found a way to make money from it – not by trying to sell stuff but by sharing your unused broadband capacity with the world – and they pay for it! Tomizone offers a free-to-join, freeto-maintain system where you add wireless to your broadband, turning it into a hotspot. They charge users a low rate ($4 per day or $20 per week) and give you half! Most people under-use their broadband capacity so it looks like it could be a winner. You could get your broadband paid for by others! It’s a system we plan on investigating more fully in a future issue of SILICON CHIP. www.tomizone.com • A condom for your mobile? OK, that’s not how they are being marketed but that’s what they look like! The idea is to completely waterproof your phone just in case the worst happens. (And according to a mate in the mobile phone repair business, that’s the vast majority of phone “service”, whether by washing the jeans with the phone in the pocket or taking an unexpected swim with your phone . . .). They’re actually called Mobile Skins and they roll on to the phone just like, well, a condom. When fitted properly, the phone can be totally immersed. You could take it swimming or surfing! What’s more, it’s also protected against mud, paint, beer, moisture, dust . . . in fact, just about anything that could play havoc with your phone. It’s not just consumers who would benefit from Skins – trades people/ construction, sportsmen and women, boaties and so on. They’re very low priced and are very east to fit – and the phone retains total functionality. At CeBIT, they had a spa set up with models to demonstrate the fact that the phones could go under water. At least I think I saw a phone. More info? www.skins-mobile.com Soanar’s General Manager Neil Walker (shown here with Jaycar’s Gary Johnston) was very happy with the response he received from CeBIT visitors. June 2007  87 • Face and eye recognition. There were several organisations showing their wares in these areas, mainly for security applications – from building down to PC. But one which really did catch our eyes (pardon the pun) was the “Dikablis” eye tracking system from Germany (part of the large international contingent exhibiting at CeBIT 2007). Originally developed by the Technische Universitat Munchen to “fine tune” their own documentation and computer screens, this system is now being sold to the world. In a nutshell, this hardware/software system is designed to track eye movement as a person reads – either a computer screen (web page, for example) or printed material. The software then analyses the movement to show how the information is being interpreted. A medium which allows smooth, efficient eye movement is much more effective than one which forces the eyes to jump all over the place. The same system has been used to evaluate car dashboards, for example, to see how efficient they can be made to keep the eyes off the road for the minimum amount of time. Exhibited by Ergoneers GMBH (ie, ergonomic engineers), you’ll find more at www.ergoneers.com (especially if you can speak German!). • Still on a security theme, Adel Australia had a number of fingerprintrecognition doorlocks. You may recall we featured a fingerprint lock in SILICON CHIP in January 2007; now Adel has introduced all-in-one models where Walletflash MP3 (right) is said to be the world’s thinnest MP3 player – it’s the same size as a credit card. Above is the company’s WalletFlash cards. the fingerprint reader is actually built into the lock. • Credit-card size MP3 players and flash memory. They’re the slimmest in the world. Called “WalletMP3” and “Walletflash” and literally credit card size (90 x 55mm and perhaps 2mm thick) these are about to hit the market in Australia (planned for July). Because the MP3 player is small enough to go in your wallet, you don’t need to carry yet another device. They’re also waterproof, very tough (they’ve been put through a lot of tests including being baked in an oven!) and can store up to about 400 songs in their 2GB memory. They have the usual MP3 player controls on the card and the headphones plug in to the same USB adaptor used to load up the player. The Walletflash is the same size, so now you can store your important backups (they come in capacities up to 2GB) with no risk of loss (unless you lose your wallet!). www.walletflash. com.au • From the world’s slimmest to the world’s largest! Panasonic displayed If you were looking for hardware, software, peripherals, add-ons or any other bits and pieces, there was a stand at CeBIT to satisfy you. Some specialised, others had bits of everything. This photo shows a typical example. Many exhibitors offered “show specials” – some of which were actually special! 88  Silicon Chip their 103-inch Plasma High Definition TV, along with a new range of tough notebooks (and a lot of other goodies!). • GN had the 24-carat gold and stainless steel Bluetooth headsets for mobile phones from Jabra (Bluetooth really appeared to have taken off this year. WiFi was of course there but it appeared to be significantly down over last year. VoIP was also highly visible with quite a number of exhibitors, as was GPS/mapping software). • Soanar Electronics – we also caught up with General Manager Neil Walker and Managing Director Gary Johnston. Soanar, who specialise in component distribution, embedded processor boards, displays and touch screens told us that they were very happy with the response from CeBIT visitors and the business generated by their stand. • Agilent Technologies had their range of test equipment for neworking, wireless and RF. • Google was there, selling, demonstrating, promoting . . . ummm . . . Google, I guess. And if you wanted entertainment, you could get that too with several stands showing interactive games with exceptional graphics. Then there was the football field. Yes, a real, live, football field to play on, with an overhead projector marking out the field. No, boss, I didn’t get a game . . . SC siliconchip.com.au