I’m a geek – I love gadgets, thus I know I can be partial in my way of understanding the digital revolution and especially on my view of the pace with which it’ll impact the world. That being said, I still believe that wireless cameras are just the nicest thoughts ever in the Digital Camera space. I recently bought an Eye-Fi card and connected it to my personal online backup service and have enjoyed such a piece of mind to see the pictures I’ve been taking seamlessly end-up both on my online vault and in my iPhoto library that I can’t help to think that this is the kind of thing my dad needs. Of course initial set-up was a bit geeky but once automatic connection to open networks are working this experience has been as seamless as you could have expected and really give a good piece of mind. Not to mention that once pic are online it’s so easy to share them and publish them to any place you like and a few features like geotagging through WiFi triangulation are very nice additions.

When I showed that yesterday, they told me “c’mon you’re a geek”, which is true but today, Samsung unveiled their ST1000 what they are calling the world’s “first multi-wireless compact camera” in the 12.2 MP ST1000. In addition to it’s 3.5″ touch screen LCD, the ST1000 features WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS geotagging built-in.
With the Wi-Fi technology, users can email photos direct from their camera and upload their photos or videos to selected popular social networking websites including Facebook, Picasa, YouTube, without needing to connect to a PC. The ST1000 is also DLNA compliant (Digital Living Network Alliance), allowing users to wirelessly connect the camera to other DLNA compliant devices, such as HDTVs, digital picture frames, media servers or gaming systems in their networked home to view and share their precious moments.
When I see that kind of new devices popping, I can’t help to think that every source of content creation has to be bound to the cloud to provide a save, share and play experience.

I’m a big fan of connected devices (and I should – my companies built a couple of those) so seeing MIT’s David Merril’s toys at this year’s TED was pretty exciting. I’m especially interested in the use cases they came up with and I could totally imagine having my little boy having fun learning about figures and spelling words with those little interactive devices, just the way I had fun with TI’s Speak and Spell in the 80s.
As you may have figured out there’s a lot of tech in there, I guess there must be about 23USD of parts within each “Siftable” which would put a retail price for a 10-pieces pack + the PC dongle at about 500USD… I guess we’ll have to wait a bit to see such things at Toys’r'us but this is exciting !

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

After Wildcharge, Psyclone TouchCharge kit is next in line to provide wireless power to mass market consumer applications. While I don’t know precisely which vendor is providing with the actual wireless power technology (both companies are “just” device manufacturers), this reminds me of the awesome powercast demo I had during last year’s CES. Would be curious to know which vendor has now taken the lead over that field.

Update: actually I just met Wildcharge’s CEO and it appears that Psyclone is their first OEM deal – I guess it’s not just for nothing that the technology was so similar …