This is the fifth in a series of posts on random observations about CES. The first was about screens. The second was about fashion. The third was about sustainability. The fourth was about phones.

More Gadgets

Here are some gadgets that caught my eye. All exhibit an interesting use, or combination of technology, or an interesting aspect of design.

The first is a wifi-enabled, motorized skateboard, which uses a hand held controller to control the speed. A lazy man’s skateboard?

Talking about lazy, how about this electric mountain bike?

Then there’s the mandatory virtual golf game, which didn’t seem to respond as quickly as my camera lens :)

Chinese companies showed a large variety of form factors for mp3 players:

When prices reach $25 or less, mp3 players can become keychain dongles and fashion accessories even more than than the more expensive iPods. Even utilitarian items like USB port expanders can have different form factors, showing more of a fashion trend:

And who can live without the singing, animatronic Elvis from Wowwee, the people who brought you Robosapien?

Here’s an interesting keyboard concept, a laser displays the keyboard on a table, allowing you to use a keyboard with your portable device in a meeting, at a coffee house, etc. It’s an interesting solution to useful interfaces on portable devices, but like learning to use a stylus to write on a Palm device, it takes some getting used to, especially since there’s no tactile feedback when you press down a key.

There were a number of Karaoke programs for iPods, typically with video/audio out connections to a TV:

SD Cards can now show the amount of free space available on them:

The problem with home theaters is all the wires going to all the speakers, which need to be spread around a room to provide the full effect. Then, there are the speakers themselves. This solution is a wireless speaker in a torchier lamp.

Sony showed their e-book reader. The screen is more like an electrostatic etch-a-sketch than an LCD screen; there’s a lot of contrast between words and the white background, making it read much like paper. The really cool thing is that the screen only uses power to change, not to maintain the screen, meaning loooong battery life.

Ever realize photos taken with a digital camera have meta-information associated with them, including date and time, camera attributes, etc? Well, an interesting use of this information is a Sony GPSdevice that records GPS information over time. Turn it on when you go out shooting photos and then plug it into the same computer you transfered your photos to. Then, you can sync up your photos with where you took them automatically. Great for real estate agents:

With the success of Lego Mindstorms robot construction kit (which, oddly, was not at CES this year, nor was Radio Shack’s Vex robotic kit), iRobot introduced their own programmable robot, iRobot Create. iRobot is famous for their Roomba vacuum cleaner robot.

There were a number of Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner knockoffs:

The Nabaztag rabbit is a wi-fi enabled device that has a voice to text processor that allows it read emails, websites, RSS, feeds, etc. out loud. Send it an email or text message and it’ll read it out loud, too. You can make “friends” with other Nabaztag owners so that when your rabbit moves its ears, the other does, too, and vice-versa.

Trend: More gadgets, more innovation. I find the odd little things around CES as interesting as the big name, high profile stuff. It shows an interesting ecosystem of innovation. While many of the above devices may not survive in the marketplace, it sparks ideas about what is possible. Even with consumers who are tech late adopters, many still have a device that they have in their minds that would do something useful or entertaining for them that doesn’t yet exist. Gadgets like these break the mold and get the creative juices flowing.