Category: Hardware

This new photo frame by Kodak is connected to Flickr through a wireless home network. It automatically shows you the newest photos on your own photostream, of those of someone else if they register on your photos (and if they're public). You can also look up the news, weather and sports through the touch screen. Obviously you can also play videos. Other than that, the frame fronts can be replaced by something more suited to one's own interior.

With Nintendo WII- Speak it's possible to have contact with other players in another physical location and to communicate through speech. A separate microphone is needed for this.

Chinese CKing is the first in the world to create a cell phone, the CKing E1000, with a built-in projector. With it users can easily share movies with others through using a wall in the vicinity.

Google has unveiled a telephone with a built-in compass. 360 degrees recordings of a location (for example seen through Google Maps) can be looked at realistically where you are. You aim for a specific point and if you turn the image will turn with you. It looks very logical.

Based on where you currently are and who's in your contact list, Apple's new iPhone looks for nearby contacts. This is possible through the built-in GPS module and the contact list if it has addresses added.

LG has released a telephone onto the Korean market with a silicone key pad that feels like human skin.

The WII Balance Board is a sort scale that can accurately determine where you put pressure on it. Apart from all kinds of fitness exercises, the Board also makes it possible to train your balance (fc).

Promoting balance in mind and body is not a short contemporary hype, not a trend like ‘we are going to play games again’, but a very long term trend. This trend however is only beginning, and will only further develop after the world economy has come to balance, we can hardly speak of low wage countries, and the automizing and robotizing trends have allowed us to work less. We then will finally have the time to structurally work on ourselves. We will then be able to do things we now consider ‘inexplicable’, as ’magic’, or supra natural. It will take some time, I am talking about 2050, but the first products to help us in this are now introduced. And these are just brands again.

The Epoc right and left ear hearing aids from Oticon work closely together to strengthe the sounds from the environment as natural as possible. Through this, the user can hear exactly what direction a sound is coming from. It doesn’t stop here though: via Bluetooth these smart ear plugs are aslo connected to a mobile phone, MP3 player or navigation system, thus forming a personal communication center. Because of this, Epoc already is a gadget for music loving youth in the USA (vo, Dutch). Ear plugs are becoming a standard accessory, used even more than glasses. Visible, as (costly) jewelery, or invisible in our ears. With that, we get endless possibilities for communication with the (virtual) world around us.

It is now possible to send an MMS to the Parrot DF7700. Thanks to a built-in SIM card the device has its own phone number that can be used to directly communicate with it (mc, Dutch). All hardware products get their own number we can use to directly communicate with. And not just us: when we start a dialogue with the brand, the producer of a device, it directly is clear what copy we are talking about. Products will no longer be anonymous, and producers will always stay connected to their products. No matter if they are with their original user, or the second or third user. Five, ten or fifty years later. This is a development in that direction.

Apple’s new laptop, MacBook Air, reacts to finger movements on the touch pad. Of course you can move the cursor with your finger, but apart from that you can scroll with two fingers, and with three fingers you can browse through the website. The laptop also reacts to turning, pinching, and stretching movements. Brands will soon start using these applications. On their websites we will be able to point at things, to quickly browse through their offers, and drag things together. First on the touch pad, later on the screen and after that from a distance of the screen. And after that, even our speech and posture are included. Then we really get into the dialogue. This laptop with these possibilities contributes to that evolution.

The new Sony T-200 camera recognizes up to 8 faces in a photo and automatically controls focus, exposure, color and flash to bring out the best in everyone. With that, making bad pictures is history. (al). We always want to look better than we do. Our holiday pictures always need to have a lot of sun. We always want to look our very best at pictures. Sony helps us here. Soon we will be able to participate in a Sunday morning video conference with colleagues in our underwear. Background, makeup and clothes are added automatically. Now in still images, soon in moving images. It will soon be the most normal thing in the world.

With Bluetrek’s Sense callers can operate their headset (picking up or ignoring calls) with their voice. Besides, the Bluetrek Sense is also equipped with some so-called Voice Alerts, which literally tell you what phone function you are using, or just have activated, like ‘Redial last number’ or ‘Call rejected’ (mc, Dutch). Now we operate devices with our voice, soon we make contact with all kinds of brands through these devices. We then call our personal contact brand, named Joyce for example: ‘Joyce’, ‘Yes Erwin’, ‘Connect me to Yvette please’. We think it is completely normal for technology to react to us. Now still bound to a device, but soon Joyce will appear on a display in the store, in a hotel in Malibu, and in a rental car in Bangkok. This future gets closer every day.

Norwegian designer Thomas Heyerdahl sells iDiamond ear, 18 carat golden ear speakers with 204 tiny diamonds. It goes for $6,400 (en). Technology disappears, and everything we still carry on our body becomes some kind of jewelery. Like the glasses, a mobile phone, or a watch, the ear speaker also is completely refreshed. Soon ear speakers will be wireless, and then they will also let other sounds come through. We then will start wearing them permanently. Either completely hidden, very deep in our ear, or the opposite: clearly visible, like this type of ear speakers.

A new device featuring GPS, made by Satski, follows your routes at the ski slopes, guards the trip you planned upfront, and gives information about the restaurants on the way. You can also see how many miles you have traveled, what top speed you reached, and you can print the road you have traveled. You can save this, and compare it with other athletes (vo, Dutch). Thus personal sport brands slowly evolve. Now connected to a device, in the future also available through all kinds of screens, like our mobile phones among others. Now it measures the results after the achievement has been made, in the future it will give you real time tips when you’re going down the slopes: bend your knees a little bit more, now ‘carve’, put your hand on your side, etc. Our ski coach then always accompanies us.

Amazon.com introduced its own e-paper reader: the Kindle. This device contains so-called e-paper: electronic paper that can be rolled up and doesn’t use energy once the page has been loaded. Books can be imported from Amazon.com. Now it still is a technical device in black-and-white, but Philips in the mean time has shown a color version. For the time being it is mainly a toy-for-boys, but once it gets out of its hard shell, and can be taken in any writing pad, in any beach bag, in any inside pocket, then the reading experience will get a totally new dimension.