TVs galore at Ceatec 2008.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)TOKYO--The Ceatec 2008 circus is packing up the tent, but it won't be long until we see many of these same gadgets again. As the Japanese consumer tech showcase winds down, let's take a look at the major themes of this year's show and look forward to what will make it to the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Although the show was a bit smaller this year, it's still the place to see highly imaginative prototypes, as well as get a glimpse of what will actually be on U.S. stores shelves in the coming year.
The most prevalent theme among the electronics giants: thin TVs. Just like at CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin, and CEDIA Expo this year, they're jostling with each other in a race to see who can make the largest screen on the skinniest panel.
Sony continued to push its current 11-inch OLED TV model, the XEL-1, and showed the prototype 27-inch version. But the company also showed an even thinner prototype, whose display is a mere .3 millimeters thin.
But those are small. In larger TVs, Hitachi showed off a 15-millimeter LCD and a 35-millimeter plasma set (see picture), as did Sharp, which announced its new 23-millimeter thin Aquos XS (for "extra slim") model. Toshiba also lined up to show off a concept Regza that looks and leans like an oversize piece of mirrored glass.
Hitachi's super-thin LCD.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)
A slim and trim plasma TV from Hitachi.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)Many companies also showed new types of interfaces, such as gesture-based technology. Panasonic showed its connected-home concept, which included an impressive video wall. Users could theoretically call up an exercise program onto the wall, and a video of an instructor would appear and respond to users' movements. Hitachi showed digital signage technology that used human gestures to play games and create interactive advertisements.
... Read moreIf there's a place that's more of a sensory overload than Las Vegas, it's Tokyo, which makes it a perfect place to host what many say is the best consumer electronics show in the world: the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, or Ceatec, for short.
It's that time of year again, after IFA in Berlin and before the madness of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, when Ceatec gets its turn on the world's technology stage.
It's a huge show: just less than 206,000 people showed up to see the 895 companies show off their wares last year. The 2008 confab, which runs from Tuesday to Friday in Chiba, Japan, just outside Tokyo, promises to be even bigger.
While Ceatec offers a glimpse into the future of gadgetry, it's also a parade of practical products. Some tech exhibits can be merely a glance at what a company's R&D department is toying around with in a basement laboratory, with no practical application in sight. However, it's very likely that Asian and European consumers will see them in stores sooner than those in the United States.
From the standpoint of a manufacturer or marketer, this show can be kind of dramatic. It's often the last tryout before products get cut from a company's portfolio. Although many products shown are made especially for the Asian or European markets, it's also a final test in another way.
"The reception these products get at Ceatec will help decide if they will enter the U.S. market," according to Richard Doherty, a consumer electronics market researcher at The Envisioneering Group. Doherty hunts the halls every year at Ceatec looking for the best upcoming technology.
But just like at CES, not everything is designed to become an actual product. Both big and small names in electronics come to Ceatec to display a large portfolio of products so that investors, journalists, potential partners, and retailers can take a look.
While some of the products will already be in development, others are just strategic deterrents, designed to throw competitors offtrack from where a company's real product road map is going.
But Ceatec is probably a better show for consumers and gadget hounds, since much of what will be in a company's booth isn't so far from sitting on a store shelf. For example, according to Doherty, 60 percent of the products shown by electronics giant Samsung at CES this past January will become actual products by year's end.
"At the Japan show, more like 9 out of 10 products will make it to market within the year," he said.
And for the stuff that does make the cut, it will sometimes take two to five years before it appears on this side of the Pacific.
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Roz Savage, the Brit who aims to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific, is back on land for the first time in nearly 100 days and is marking a milestone.
She arrived in Hawaii on Monday morning, completing the first of three legs of her journey across the Pacific Ocean. That's after setting off from San Francisco in her 24-foot rowboat known as the "Brocade" just before midnight on May 24. In all, she rowed about 2,600 miles.
Roz Savage arrives in Hawaii after nearly 100 days of rowing solo across the Pacific Ocean.
(Credit: Courtesy of Roz Savage )Savage was met by family, friends, other well-wishers, and the media. After she landed at the dock of the Waikiki Yacht Club, one of the first things she did was hug her mother, Rita.
"It's taken me about a million oar strokes to get here from California," Savage said, according to a story in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. "If I just said, 'One little oar stroke isn't going to make any difference,' I'd still be standing in San Francisco. What I really wanted to do was let people know they can make a difference. Every action counts."
On the ocean for 99 days, Savage relied on a number of gadgets to keep her on course and keep herself entertained. She chronicled her journey with daily blog postings, a semiweekly podcast series, and Twitter messages.
In an interview via satellite phone last month, she talked about having what she calls "a ha" moments during her time on the water. "You never regret being ready sooner rather than later," she said in August. There's a flip side too. "You'll never be 100 percent ready." But, as Savage said, "I've managed."
Now back on land, Savage said she most looked forward to taking a shower and getting some rest on a bed that doesn't rock back and forth, according to her representative.
As part of her historic quest, Savage aims to raise awareness about the effects of pollution--in particular, plastic--in our oceans. Her trip is a project of the Blue Frontier Campaign, whose focus is on "seaweed (marine grassroots) efforts" surrounding ocean and coastal conservation.
Dan Basta, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, said in a statement: "Roz's steadfast determination reminds us that we must connect our everyday actions to protecting the ocean."
It is her second attempt to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific. Last summer, Savage set off only to be foiled by bad weather some two weeks into the trip. She was rescued by the Coast Guard about 90 miles off the California coast.
Early next year, she plans to row another 2,600 miles to Tuvalu. In all, she expects to travel more than 7,000 miles, ending up in Australia in 2010.
Roz Savage rows near Diamond Head in Hawaii on Monday.
(Credit: Courtesy of Roz Savage )Bug Labs, maker of do-it-yourself kits for electronic gadgets, has quietly raised a third round of financing from Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, and Court Square Ventures, CNET News has learned.
A spokesman for the New York-based Bug Labs confirmed the new round of financing Tuesday, but he did not disclose financial details of the deal, much like with the company's previous two rounds. Virginia-based Court Square Ventures led the investment.
Union Square was Bug Lab's first venture capital investor in April 2006, shortly after the start-up was founded. Spark Capital, based in Boston, signed on as a stakeholder a year later to help the company finalize its open-source software and hardware platform for electronics. (Red Hat founder Bob Young is also an angel investor.)
Now that Bug Labs started shipping its products this spring, the company raised a third round so that it could expand its engineering staff and marketing efforts, and widen adoption of the products beyond hobbyists or early adopters. It also hopes to grow internationally by the end of 2008.
"We want to get the product in more hands," said Jeremy Toeman, Bug Labs' vice president of marketing.
The idea behind Bug Labs is to give developers relatively inexpensive tools to build electronics. Today, for example, a Web programmer could build a virtual application with relatively little cost beyond the computer itself. A gadget developer, on the other hand, would need to invest significantly to prototype, manufacture, store, and ship their hardware.
Bug Labs aims to remove some of that friction by selling the "guts" of a gadget--or a minicomputer called Bug Base--so that developers don't have to start from scratch. Building from that component, developers can create a gadget of their own, by adding modules like an LCD screen, motion-detector or a 2 megapixel digital camera. The company soon plans to sell a weather module that can read the barometric pressure of the environment. (Bug Labs' kit costs $629, for the base and four modules.)
Do-it-yourself gadgets seem to be spreading around. The Chumby, for example, is a flexible toy with an LCD screen that invites developers to create new applications for it.
Toeman said that the latest funds will also help Bug Labs boost its manufacturing. Earlier this year, the company had a slight delay shipping its products.
"We want to bring electronics well out of the mystical arts to something a lot more accessible," Toeman said.
Updated 8:45 a.m. August 13 to correct the model of Sinclair computer. It was a ZX81.
Ask Roz Savage what her favorite gadgets are aboard her rowboat and she's quick to answer.
"The ones that are still working."
The 40-year-old Brit has set out to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean, and she passed a milestone recently: She's now halfway to Hawaii. That's after setting off from San Francisco in her 24-foot rowboat just before midnight on May 24.
Roz Savage set off from San Francisco more than two months ago to row across the Pacific Ocean. Here, she's seen early in her voyage, near the Farallon Islands.
(Credit: Roz Savage )With under 1,000 miles left to go on the first leg of her voyage, she took time out late last week to talk via satellite phone. Her location? Somewhere in the Pacific. More precisely, around 140 degrees west.
So what's still working?
"The TomTom GPS is working. I consult that six times a day," said Savage, adding that she's been using it to update the ship's log. She got the TomTom GO 720 last year for her car. (Savage wrote in a photo caption on her blog: "The TomTom GPS from my car is rather confused to find itself in the middle of the Pacific.")
She also has a handful of iPods onboard, but she said she's only used one so far: the one that TWiT.tv's Leo Laporte loaded up with more than 300 audio books. (Laporte checks in with Savage a couple of times a week for the podcast series "Roz Rows the Pacific.") A few of the titles that have stood out so far include the fantasy novel A Game of Thrones and the nonfiction work A Crack in the Edge of the World, which covers the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
She has two laptops onboard, a MacBook and Panasonic Toughbook. Savage sends updates for her Web site via her satellite phone. (She also has a spare phone this time. When Savage rowed across the Atlantic Ocean in a race a few years ago, her satellite phone went dead about a month before she arrived at the finish.)
One gadget Savage is relying on is her TomTom GPS device. As she quipped in a photo caption on her blog, 'the TomTom GPS from my car is rather confused to find itself in the middle of the Pacific.'
(Credit: Roz Savage )What's not working? Her energy-efficient Spectra desalinator that was capable of producing 25 liters of water an hour. "It's totally corroded." But she has reserve water supplies and a hand-pump water maker. Her onboard chart plotter also isn't working, so that's where the TomTom comes in. (In a blog posting Monday, Savage wrote: "The death toll on electronic components continues." Over the weekend it seems chargers for her satellite phone and iPod conked out. Luckily, she's got backups.)
Even so, as Savage has said, her boat is a little model of self-sufficiency. She has solar panels and a wind generator providing the power for her electronics. She is growing her own bean sprouts. So what could this mean for the world at large?
"Sustainability is rather limitless," said Savage. While she doesn't currently have a home, Savage knows what she would do if she did. "I would very much want to make it energy-efficient, self-sufficient." She said she finds value in being an example to people in different ways, and one aspect of that is embracing green energy.
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