Google Maps and its street view functionality is pretty slick, no question there, but a little competition never hurt anyone. So Nokia’s NAVTEQ is raising the stakes with its new fleet of LIDAR (light detection and ranging) and camera equipped vehicles which have spent the last year roaming the U.S. capturing 3D point cloud data of America’s highways and biways.
NAVTEQ True, which is what the company officially calls the new mapping collection system, is able to capture over 1.5 million 3D data points every second, from a range of about 120 meters around the vehicle. This includes items like street and speed signs, or objects as small as mile markers, but also provides data on the height of bridges or lane widths accurate to within a centimeter. What’s even cooler is that the system can be mounted to Segways, allowing the insides of buildings or malls to be mapped as well.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that charging my iPhone with the included sync cable is inconvenient, but I can definitely see the advantage of being able to just drop it on a table to top off the battery. And the Hug from Case-Mate uses Fulton Innovation’s eCoupled Wireless Power system to enable you to do just that.
Now since the iPhone’s battery isn’t removable or even accessible the Hug enables wireless charging via a plastic case. And because there’s an induction coil inside there and other electronicy bits, you’ll have to deal with a bit more bulk than you may otherwise be used to. But the case does still allow the use of the camera and access to the dock connector on the bottom, and it comes with a charging pad that’s compatible with other eCoupled devices if you don’t happen to have a desk with that functionality built-in.
The Hug will be available sometime around early to mid February, for a hefty $90.
LEGO had a fairly decent-sized booth at this year’s CES showing off their slightly-delayed LEGO Universe game which will finally be released sometime this year. And sure, playing around in their bricktastic online MMOG was fun, but LEGO, you had me at “Build your own minifig!” And let me say thanks for not strictly enforcing that “One minifig per person” limit.
We spotted this thing in the Microsoft press room, where at first glance it looks like an unassuming little netbook running Windows 7… There’s more to it than meets the eye, though:
And more:
The Onkyo DX1007AS stores a second 10.1 inch (1,366 x 768) monitor behind the first (kinda like the Lenovo W700DS), and you can slide them apart and double your desktop space in just a few seconds, or flip them around to make yourself a hella long tablet. The dual screens are supported by an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card, but otherwise the insides are basically ho-hum netbook. The price, however, is not… You can buy this, but it’ll cost you just over $1100.
I don’t have a big screen TV, but I can pretend that I do by sitting just inches from the screen. Sony is having none of that, though, with their Distance Alert system, which uses a small camera to measure your distance from the TV screen. If you get closer than about a meter to the TV, a message pops up advising you to back away, and it won’t restore the picture until you do.
The same technology is used for a couple other things, too… Since the TV knows where you (and any other people in the room) are, it can optimize its sound and light output so that if you’re all sitting off to one side, everything still looks and sounds balanced. Also, if the TV doesn’t see anyone in the room, it shuts its backlight off and will turn itself off completely after 30 minutes to save power. Neat tricks, but since the little camera is hardware integrated, Sony is currently only planning to release one model with these features so far this year, and it’s going to be (to quote the Sony rep) “expensive.”
This thing is, seriously, the highlight of CES for me (so far) this year. 3D TVs and eBook readers are fine, but there’s nothing amazing about them.
The Airnergy Charger is amazing.
This little box has, inside it, some kind of circuitry that harvests WiFi energy out of the air and converts it into electricity. This has been done before, but the Airnergy is able to harvest electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practically useful: on the CES floor, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.
The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. Unlike a solar charger, it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket. Of course, proximity to the WiFi source and the number of WiFi sources is important, but at the rate it charges, if you have a home wireless network you could probably just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.
Here is the really, really unbelievable part: RCA says that the USB charger will be available this summer for $40, and a battery with the WiFi harvesting technology will be available soon after. I mean, all kinds of people are pushing wireless charging, but this would hands down take the cake… It doesn’t need a pad and it’s charging all the time, for free, in just about any urban environment.
We didn’t think you’d believe all this, so we made RCA explain it all on video:
Yeah, we’ll definitely be keeping you updated on this one.
GPS devices have definitely come down in price over the years, but they’re still not at the point where you wouldn’t care if one was stolen from your vehicle. So the Maplock ensures that when you leave your car with a GPS unit still attached to the windshield, it will still be there when you return. A locking, adjustable clamp that fits GPS units from 3.5-inches up to 5-inches in size attaches to the device itself, while a steel cable is looped through the steering wheel essentially tethering it to your car. Now it doesn’t 100% guarantee that your GPS in unstealable, but the bright colors also serve as a deterrent telling would-be thieves to swipe the unit from the next guy’s car instead.
$49.99 available in April, though you can pre-order one from Amazon right now.
Remember the I-Tech Virtual Laser Keyboard? It was a little pod-like device you sat on your desk that projected a red virtual keyboard you could actually type on. Well the Light Touch is basically the same idea, but with about 5 years of technological advancement behind it. Instead of just a red keyboard you get an actual full-color, WVGA 10.1-inch virtual touch screen which is powered by the company’s Holographic Laser Projection technology. No DLP here.
The touching part functioned well enough, I mean it was no iPhone, but the infrared technology it was using even allowed for parts of the GUI to be dragged around. However, even in their subtly darkened booth the projected display was kind of washed out, particularly when compared to the results seen from 3M’s and other companies’ latest crop of pico projectors. But the Light Touch is really just a proof of concept anyways since the company has no plans to produce the device themselves, but will be licensing the technology to other OEMs.
I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time. Sure, I have my consoles for certain games, but you just can’t beat the keyboard/mouse combination on the computer. Not long ago I finally picked up a copy of Modern Warfare 2 for my 360 for the simple reason that I have a number of friends playing on Xbox Live. I get by with the controller, but I still long for a mouse that can be used with a console. While at CES, SplitFish showed me their new Dual SFX Evolution, which is exactly what I need.
I got to sit down with not only the SplitFish crew, but Denis zDD Dozier (the #1 ranked COD player in the world) to check out this awesome controller for the PS3. Essentially what you have is half of a modified controller for one hand, and a fairly standard mouse for the other. The result is having the best of both the console and PC worlds together in one package.
Related Tags: CES2010, GPS, Innovation
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