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CES gadget round-up

  • Darren Waters
  • 11 Jan 07, 11:39 PM

The Consumer Electronics Show has closed its doors for another year.
We round-up some of the gadgets and devices which caught our eye as we wandered around the three million square feet of show floor, and playing with a few of the estimated 20,000 products on show.

Motofone
motofone.jpg
It lacks net access, you can鈥檛 play your music on it, there鈥檚 no way it will play video and it鈥檚 not even 3G 鈥 so why is the Motofone in our gadget round-up?

Simple - the Motofone is Motorola鈥檚 phone for what they call 鈥渄eveloping markets鈥. In other words, the Motofone is designed for countries like India and China.

It will cost around $35 and sports a screen using cutting edge technology called ClearVision, which is designed to be cheap and durable.

The phone also has a user interface with voice prompts in local languages and is extremely well designed.

It looks desirable - forget whether this is a dumbed-down phone for the developing world; it鈥檚 simply a sexy phone.

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My tech hero

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 11 Jan 07, 09:42 PM

I'm leaving Las Vegas in a few hours but I can't go without doing one thing. No, I've settled my bar bill and paid my gambling debts thank you, but I must name my technology hero of the week.

His name is Steve Adrain and you won't have heard of him - but let me explain how he's opened my eyes to new ways of working.

Back in 1985 I went on my first foreign assignment for the 大象传媒. As an impossibly young news producer (I was about 14) I was sent to organise coverage of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's state visit to Paris - like me, Gorby was on his first big business trip.

I was working with the distinguished correspondent Tim Sebastian, who'd just been ejected from Moscow on trumped-up spying charges. In those far-off days before 24 hour news, we were only expected to serve two main television news bulletins a day.

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CES video blog - Day Four

  • Darren Waters
  • 11 Jan 07, 12:06 PM

If you are sick of all the cables bulging from behind your hi-fi, the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show has the answer.

Click's Dan Simmons has checked out a wire-free TV - and come face to face with an electronic Elvis in the fourth video blog from the expo.

Click here to see the moment he met Las Vegas's most famous former resident.

Taken in good faith

  • Darren Waters
  • 11 Jan 07, 02:43 AM

CES is notorious as an event where this year's story is the same as last year's just with better resolution, higher definition and more connectivity.

So when I interviewed a senior member of the project who told me the group wanted to sell the machine to the general public, "hopefully next year", then I thought I had a real story on my hands.

The story was published on Wednesday with the headline "Public can buy $100 laptop".

If you look at the , however, it has a very different headline.

It now reads "$100 laptop could sell to public".

So why the change?

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Style or substance

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 11 Jan 07, 02:35 AM

I've been fascinated to read the lively debate about Gates versus Jobs and the merits of the iPhone which followed my last two blog entries.

The impossibly shiny new device - on front pages around the world today - has inspired the Macheads and the Friends of Bill to don their weapons and charge into battle.

The case for the prosecution is that Steve Jobs' claim to have re-invented the telephone is absurd posturing.

There are already phones that do everything the iPhone promises and more, it isn't 3g , a two megapixel camera is now sub-standard and text input is going to be a struggle whatever the claims made for the revolutionary touchscreen.

One Windows fan called me to say he'd had his XDA for two years, phoning, surfing and taking picture to his heart鈥檚 delight.

"So what's new?" he sneered.

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Blogs versus 'real' news

  • Chris Long
  • 11 Jan 07, 02:19 AM

In retrospect I think I may have been a bit rude and I guess I could have been a bit more sympathetic to the view point, and, let's face it, I could have kept my trap shut. But then I didn't, so here I am.

Here at the centre of the shiny box universe we are privy to all sorts of treats - if you like nasty soggy rolls they are provided at lunch time and if you desire coffee; that's available too - so we aren鈥檛 starving.

As part of the entertainment there is a press room that has around a hundred notebooks running Windows Vista where the world's technology press goes to file stories, send e-mails - and in my case play a couple of rounds of spider solitaire.

It's entertainment if you like watching a bunch of journalists poring over keyboards muttering to themselves producing a soft cacophony of expletives, laughs and sighs.

Generally, though, it's a rum bunch up for a laugh.

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Behind the wheel gadgets

  • Iain Mackenzie
  • 11 Jan 07, 02:13 AM

Confession time. I only have a tape deck in my car.

This may seem surprising, for someone who surrounds himself with cutting-edge technology in the rest of his life.

I just enjoy driving too much. Flinging my ageing Saab round country lanes to the soundtrack of its wheezing turbo.

Not so delegates at CES in Las Vegas.

The automotive hall is full of "Pimped Up" vehicles with LCD screens and subwoofers filling every inch of interior space.

There's even a truck with TVs under the wheel arches. Presumably to entertain the thieves who are stealing its expensive looking alloys.

But the real buzz this year is "telematics".

It's one of those vague terms that you sense was dreamed-up first, before anyone was quite sure what it should mean.

No-one here is really able to define it.

Depending on who you ask, it's anything from GPS to having a full PC running in the dashboard.

One demo vehicle I looked at has a 1.6ghz dual core processor, 2GB RAM and a 120GB hard drive - that's more than my laptop!

For all the enthusiasm here, no-one actually talks about enhancing the enjoyment of driving.

I can't help feeling it's all about giving the A to B commuter something to distract them from the traffic jams and road-rage van drivers.

While that's fine for some鈥 it's not what revvs my engine.

I'd sooner have more engine power than processing power anyday.

Now where's my tape box?


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