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Karaoke, Digital Endoscopy, Near Field and More

There were just too many things at CES to see, touch, poke and play with - the show was bigger than most Comdex's we've been to. Although CES claimed only about 100,000 attendees, less than half of the largest Comdex shows, it felt just as crowded.

I really liked the new 3D world that There launched, and certainly Garmin dominated in the PDA space with a GPS and Palm integrated product due out this summer.

But here are some of the more interesting, innovative and outlandish products and technologies I came across during my three days walking the show floor.  I've got pictures, descriptions and links, so turn the page and take a look!

ADS Technologies will be releasing a box that will help improve the picture quality of standard television, DVDs and VHS tapes when viewed on HDTV ready sets.  Available in March, the UpConveter will convert 480i or 480p into 480p, 720p or 1080i.  The $449 box uses video processing technology from Genesis Microchip, who now owns Faroudja -- the gold standard line doubling technology. 

Although the demo looked a little fuzzy, company representatives said that the final version will be clearer.  Competing products cost many hundreds, or thousands more.  This is another of the many signs from this year's CES that HDTV is going mainstream.

I spent a little bit of time exploring the SPOT technology that Microsoft rolled out.  Certainly the watches offer some neat features, like personal information downloads and little pictures.  But still.  Could you see anyone really wearing one of those geeky behemoths.  I mean they are really big.  To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a watch should just be, well, a watch.  Oh also what about battery life.  Do you really want to recharge your watch every night?  I certainly don't.

Still, Brian Halla, CEO of National Semiconductor, claims that they'll be able to shrink the circuit board to a single chip by the end of the year.  Still, I thought Fossil's Palm watch was even cooler.

See this tiny capsule?  Forget SPOT, this is the real deal.  According to Halla, who showed it to me, it's got a tiny camera that shoots two frames per second, a built in radio, battery and a white LCD flash.  It shoots pictures for 24 hours, from insertion to splashdown, and costs about $450.  What's it for?  That's right, a truly internal endoscopy that's much more comfortable than sticking a tube up your, well, digestive track.

They call it "The Mouse That Roars", and it's an interesting, if wacky, use of technology.  The MouseCaster from Smartec embeds a digital FM receiver into a standard two-button PS-2 mouse, and then feeds music from the mouse to your PC speakers.  What about the antenna?  It's the mouse cord!  It should be available for around $30 or $40, within the next few months.  Too bad it relies on mouse balls, rather than light, to track motion.  

Blame it on my misspent youth, but there's something about liquid, glowing colors that turns me on.  Loyd Case did a great job covering the new cases, but I thought Antec's tri-color fan was even better. Maybe I'm just a sucker for neat colors, but I really liked this cool fan.  It's called the TriLight, and it's a 120mm completely translucent fan -- even down to the bearings!  The TriLight is available now for $25.

I stopped by Transmeta's suite to get the details on the new embedded processor plan, and the new Astro chip.  Instead, I saw a range of new, gotta-have products.  My favorite?  The Medius Muramas from Sharp. Available only in Japan, this thin notebook puts the new Apple PowerBooks to shame -- and makes my Thinkpad X20 look like a wonder-brick.  Come on Sharp!  Bring this sleek metal wonder to the US!

Aura Communications laid out its new wireless technology for personal devices.  Using near field magnetic induction technology, which uses a non-propogating quasi-static magnetic field to transmit data, rather than the wave-based technology used by Bluetooth and other wireless solutions.    This is the same technology currently being used for RFID tags.

According to the company, its solution results in privacy -- as the RF information forms a shell around the user, but cannot be detected from further than about four feet from the source. It also consumes less power than competing wireless technology as well.  Aura claims that its first near field wireless solution will deliver about 200kbps of bandwidth -- enough for voice, and even mid-fi audio.

Aura has completed a reference design, using its technology, for an inexpensive wireless cell-phone headset.  Reason Products has agreed to bring this product to market, and will be available by the end of March for $99.   Competing Bluetooth solutions generally run between $150 and $175, so this is a substantial price difference.

Aura claims that headsets built around its products could drop to $40 very quickly.  I got a chance to try out a prototype, and it sounded pretty good -- and it was considerably smaller and lighter than Bluetooth devices I've used.

UmeVoice was showing off its new noise-canceling technology for cell-phone headset microphones.  The company claims that this technology has been used for years by traders on Wall Street, and has now been shrunk down into a new consumer hands-free headset called theBoom.

Available now for $150, the company claims that it can filter out sounds as loud as a black hawk helicopter, which should be a boon for weekend warriors or those playing hooky from work.  Unlike the Aura-based headsets, this one's got a cord.

Although I can't tell you all the details, but iRiver is rolling out some tiny MP3 players this year.  The first, and most intriguing?  A tiny flash-based MP3 player with 512MB of internal storage!  Now I've always pooh-poohed the flash music player as being just too limited -- who wants to listen to the same eight songs over and over again.  But with this you can load up four hours of decent MP3 music, or eight hours of WMA. iRiver expects that the iRiver iFP-195TC will get about 20 hours of battery life from a single AA when it ships later this month.  Alas, they expect that it will cost $350.

Due in March is probably the smallest MP3/CD player yet.  The SlimX 550 is only slightly larger than 5 CDs stacked on top of each other, about 13mm.  It runs on a rechargable Lithium Ion battery, and will cost about $150 when it is released.

And iRiver plans on getting into the hard drive based player soon too.  The iHP 100 will be available with the same Toshiba 20GB drive that the iPod uses.  It's smaller than the Zen, and looks like it will have larger, and more readable screen.

I ended up staying at Dave Salvator's own version of Heaven, the Alexis Park. That's where all the specialty audio vendors were stationed -- the ones with $5,000 tube amps and $10,000 speaker systems. I think the company that makes the biggest subwoofer in the world was stationed right next to my room. But while I was wandering around, I ran into the Italian speaker maker U-vola Speakers. Now I'm no audiophile -- I leave that to Dave, but these speakers sounded pretty darn good! But even better, check out how they look! Pure Pop For Pod People! I want these speakers. And at only $2,500 a pair, they're actually, well, affordable!

And finally, who couldn't use a little dose of fun?  TAO Music was showing off its shiny, happy Karaoke machine that's fun for everyone.  The iktv Karaoke Station lets you have four microphones plugged in at once, includes digital recording, and plays back DVDs, Karaoke CDs, MP3 and regular music CDs, and photo CDs.

At only $150, it's cheap, comes in five fun colors and it's even small enough to tote around to parties.  This is what you do when the LAN party games end!