ATV in space and CeBIT technology fair 2008

PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK

Space News : ATV in space
Yes, the ATV has gone into space. No, Mark Perry is not taking acid. It's the Automated Transfer Vehicle, taking supplies to the International Space Station. I'm excited about this, as I was actually in the testing lab for this spacecraft and I reviewed it in a previous column. This was in a building whose floor had to be 'disconnected' as its simulated launch shaking would otherwise have caused an earthquake. I was only slightly nervous that I could see a test being run by a Windows PC. Anyway it's finally going up. The guys that originally designed it have since retired. Hope they'll be watching with pride.

Technology News: CeBIT Hanover Fair, Germany 2008
Came over to Germany for my annual wallowing in the new hardware, devices and ideas at the big international CeBIT technology fair. The event has changed a bit this year, running Monday to Sunday instead of Wednesday to Wednesday. There was also more of an emphasis on Germany and so it was a bit less useful. Nevertheless I did get to see some cool things.

For instance there are large new 3D screens that should be around in 2 months, and they make a big proportion of existing video games come to life. You do have to wear Polaroid glasses to appreciate the effect though. They weren’t showing it with regular TV, although it looked like it would work for that too. It’s mainly a film across the regular TV screen that does the clever 3D stuff.

The most exciting gadget I saw was from a firm called meta4hand.com. They had a PC the size of a camcorder which had a built in projector and which you could run from a smart phone (target price 1000 Euros). This means no more laptop, and much more secret agent style pocket fun! The guys really impressed me with their ‘let’s change the world’ attitude, particularly CEO Ray Moschuk, who is a whirling dervish of enthusiasm and innovation. I’ll have a pint of whatever he’s drinking!

They’d spotted the potential of teaming up with another firm called planon.com, who had a pen you could roll across paper (4 seconds for a sheet of A4), and a printer the size of a stick (called…Printstik, costing $299), which could both be used without wires. Put me down for the gift set…

Another excellent ideas guy I met was John Brazier of mindyourit.co.uk. As the name suggests, he’s from the UK, and he’s been trying to prevent the laptop data loss balls-ups that we seem so prone to. He’s come up with a useful add-on that if you’re not in the know will ever so gently remove any files you want it to if someone other than you switches the power on.

CeBIT is good for seeing ideas from around Europe that you might otherwise miss: a Portugese firm called ndriveweb.com were showing satellite navigation using real pictures (with a better resolution than those you see on the web). It was cool to see a satnav that doesn’t think you’re in Toytown.

A big concept being pushed was IPTV. I did mention this in a previous column, but it’s obviously been growing since then. TV firm Thomson were ‘pushing’ a French approach, where a special box connected to a special network downloads everything and then you pass it around the house. Watching TV on phones is something they imagine us doing, but with a local connection instead of paying a mobile phone call rate. Amazingly, they didn’t see the need to link to the internet distributed programmes…

Ericsson’s alternate model was based on the multimedia all being stored on big central servers, and us just accessing them more regularly through phone and other networks. This approach was based on research they’d done, but I wasn’t sure if the phone network providers were ready to have their infrastructure used so fully without charging us masses.

There do seem to be more moves to link mobile phones to the broadband high speed connections that we’ve got these days. There are already some schemes in Germany where you only pay mobile rates when you are outside of your ‘home zone’. There are also a range of new multimedia hard disks which can download big programmes from the web but then give you a ‘scart’ connector so you can play them out onto normal TVs. It’s starting to get hard to know which way to turn with all these wireless and high-speed download devices.

There was also a section of the show given over to ‘green’ IT. I’m afraid this was rather a ‘re-branding’ of previous efforts to make PCs energy efficient, and to follow through on European legislation that wants all electronic devices to be recyclable and not cause too much damage when they get thrown away.

Finally, I must give a mention to a new wave of emergency and personal paranoia devices I saw. One was from idobber.com: a 299 Euro tag for the frail that would enable you to find them and to get a text alert when they crossed a ‘geofence’ that you defined e.g. half a mile from home. Inosat had 2 further devices for tracking kids (299 Euros) and pets (329 Euros). These are apparently already available on Amazon although they’re making some enhancements which will stop you getting them for a couple of months. Maybe this will mean kids can get their lives back rather than being either under the constant supervision of parents or the equally dubious attention of late night gangs to hang around on street corners with.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]