Mobitrends

This is called the npower PEG from greenpower. It’s a bit big, but if you have a big girl’s bag you can hook one inside and charge your mobile as you go. Apparently, the device would charge your mobile in under one hour walk. One drawback though, the device has to remain in vertical position to be able to harvest energy efficiently.

Mattel has taken a huge step in CES this year, while competitors have kinda faded out (the wowwee booth for instance is empty and not showing anything really exciting). But Mattel has come up with exciting new products that really blowed me away.

First for little girls, they have the “F.A.M.P.S”, made of a starter kit (14,99USD) which holds a RFID reader and a famp and additional famps at 4,99USD… From a technical point of vue it’s exactly the same as Violet’s mirror, only they came up with a cool environment where girls can use their cute little famps to convey emotions during chat sessions with their buddies. For instance, I’m mad, I get the red famp and by putting inside the reader’s circle automatically I’ll be typing in red bold font and in caps. And they have a really girly easy-to-use interface to associate actions to their famps.
It’s cheap, it’s cute, it’s fun, I love it !

For little boys now, they have released the funkeys who are kind of lower tech in my opinion, but just as fun. The core package retails at 24,99USD has a USB hub funkey where you can plug a funkey on top of the head, and additional funkeys come at 9,99USD. What’s impressive about funkeys is that they are totally bound to an online game where kinds can design funny 2D scrolling games with assets being unlocked through the buying of additional funkeys. Once again, universe is really cute and seems a lot of fun !

It’s impressive to see how Mattel has evolved towards those kind of “gadgets” and designed coherent univers and reasonable use-cases based on dead-simple devices. Kudos !

PogoPlug is here at CES demonstrating their upcoming (March) product which from my point of view is the best I’ve ever seen in that category. Basically it’s a fairly easy concept, a tiny (and a bit ugly – even Jed the VP of Products could not disagree on that one) box that you power upu, connect your USB drive, a network cable to your home router, and that’s it, your drive is available.
You can access it either through an smooth Ajax web interface hosted by pogoplg where you can browse your content just like it it were local, indeed the box has an embedded processor to help with on-the-fly data processing to save your limited tiny upload bandwidth while keeping the experience optimum. If you prefere, a small deamon can run on your PC and mount the drive just like if it were local.
The real difference here comes from the software which is really amazing compared to what other vendors such as Netgear, LaCie or Linksys have been providing. The whole experience is really smooth and simple which is what an end-user is looking for.
The box will be retailed at 79USD and reminds me a lot of the RiiMOTE project we used to work on. Preorder will be up soon on their website.

Like each year, it’s always good to get a morning coffee with the flamingos living in the patio! Can’t help it, like nature ! (even when it’s grown-ups Disneyland style).

2008 has been a pretty amazing year for consumer electronics, ranging from smarter communicating devices (better sensors, better screens, better connectivity) to amazing sales successes such as the xbox 360 beating the initial xbox sales and the Wii skyrocketing to the top.

But, lots of expectations went short:
Connected devices’ hype is on the down, while they can sense and interact with their environment like never before, no real use case has emerged to enable a steady growth beyond the hype.
Technologies such as Wireless USB or Wibree failed to deliver working mass market devices due both to technical aspects but mainly because of their need of building up a whole device ecosystem to get useful, and WiFi + Bluetooth has definitely become a standard there leaving little room for other standards.
RFID too, which was expected to launch e-wallets and many consumer applications failed to deliver their promises, due to a heavy ecosystem including banks, operators and security providers to organize.

So here come a few predictions for 2009:
First Prediction : 2009 will be the year of the introduction of the Gyroscope in many mass market devices, just like 2007 was the year of the accelerometer. This will lead to massive cost reductions over that component (currently about 10USD and should drop to sth around 2USD)
Second Prediction : 2009 will be a really bad year for connected devices, will new revisions will try to renew the hype, short of use cases and new ideas the industry will be reluctant on re-investing a lot on those devices. Yet, some small vendors will be able to create innovative devices designed to break-even under 50000 units and allowing them to leverage on the gadget fan base to build a strong learning curve. Those devices will also mostly be bound to web services.
Third Prediction : The actual trend for an all-in-one device will start to reverse as the number of sensors and use cases start growing in numerous niche markets (ie fitbit) (read business opportunity). Mobile phones who have imposed over the years as the all-in-one digital life device will have to make defining choices regarding which function is core and needs to be treated with high quality and which can be seen as a gadget and thus be lower quality. Solutions around bluetooth stand-alone add-on devices will start appearing.

Note: pictured on top-left is a MEMS gyroscope – isn’t that kind of design amazing? Source

I’m starting to set up my schedule at CES 2009 next january, so if you feel like we should meet on either subject addressed in this blog or in my ventures (mobile, gaming, wireless, wireless devices, consumer electronics production, virtual worlds…) don’t hesitate to leave me a note i’ll be happy to meet you onsite !

See you in Las Vegas!

Benjamin just spotted another fun mod of or beloved Spykee, the “compact” mod by Zuneo. Pretty easy, they took the head apart and fed it into the body of Spykee. Can’t do any smaller than that !

Back in 1995 – those units called “Virtual Boy” still retail on Ebay at 139€. Those were using Monochrome display made of blue and green LEDs. More on its wikipedia page. Trying to be strong and not to buy one!

More videos on spykee’s website