I’ve seen some awesome sights at CES (especially since the Adult Entertainment Expo is next door ) but the booth with Nancy in the hot tub became a regular meeting point and navigation spot. Nancy demonstrated the skins-mobile a pretty interesting way to keep wet stuff and grime off your device. A big thanks to Charlie of Gizmodo for the video, enjoy!

One of the perils of walking around a trade show is that people will walk the isles shovelling random leaflets into your hands as you navigate the show floor. Such was the case with Shadownumber. Much as services like Mailexpire can give you a one time email address, so Shadownumber gives you a temporary extra phone number attached to your existing mobile line.

Neat enough idea although I’m not sure you just shouldn’t be more careful who you give your number to in the first place! If I’m reading it right it’s 30 bucks a month so you’d have to really want it but you can see the details for yourself at www.shadownumber.com

At the CES show in Las Vegas, Trimble has announced a way to get more use out of the GPS ready phone that you likely already have.

The full expected rollout is late January 2007 for their Guideworks GPS solution.

What it does is use your existing phone’s GPS chip in cooperation with their software, together you can use them to:map out a trip, tag pictures taken with your phone with GPS coordinates, share trip data online,a compass and even geo-caching adventures.

This suite and the other solutions they’ve created make your phone do more than you ever thought it could (ok, so

some of your surf the web for who knows what on them, but this is really cool too!) Now you can even track your workouts and play them back over google earth! Not too shabby!

The best thing about this is that it likely uses a phone you probably already have. It’s very simple software to activate.

I was lucky enough to be able to see this in action a few weeks ago with a simple Java applet running on a regular handheld phone. While a buddy and I streaked across the farmlands of central California we could see a little dot (that was us) moving along a scrolling google map. It was really something! Read the rest of this entry »

China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the world with more than 250 million mobile subscribers, announced a partnership with Google to develop a search engine to mobile terminals. According to GigaOM: “In Korea and Japan, typically hard markets to break into, the carrier deals are key — It’s the same with China. The China Mobile deal is also important because mobile subscribers in China seem to be more accepting of mobile advertisement (…) and the mobile is often a better way to reach audiences than PCs. Thanks to China Mobile Google’s mobile search just got in front of a lot more eyeballs.”

The deal should also help Google to strength its position as the search engine of choice for the Chinese users, since right now it is still behind the Baidu portal. Another move trying to revert this second position was Google’s acquisition of Xunlei Network Technologies, a file exchange network over the Internet that counts more than 80 million Chinese registered users. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the third part of the “red dot design award” series (you can read part 1 here and part 2 here). In this part we will cover two winners of the Interaction & Communication category of the award.

ROEM: this electronic book reader was created using a rollable electronic paper to ensure portability when closed and a comfortable reading when opened. The device was developed by Ben Lai Kin Mun and it uses wireless connections (Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) to download text documents, photos or other documents. Another very innovative feature is the power backup: “ROEM also offers an on the move back-up power charging feature. The screen’s flexibility allows piezoelectric material to be integrated with a variety of polymer, synthetic adhesive, advanced microprocessor, flat size battery, silicon-based integrated circuits and flex circuits, all within the device. This enables it with self-charging capability by converting mechanical stress to electrical power – simply by fanning the screen.” Read the rest of this entry »

Many of us have experienced the indignity of being rudely cut off whilst in the middle of a conversation, only to realize that our cellphone batteries have run out of juice in the most inopportune of moments. Some of these moments are even more crucial as we were on the verge of closing a business deal. Unfortunately, fuel cell batteries are still quite a distance away in the future from making a mainstream appearance, while cellphone manufacturers seem to be offering brighter and better displays along with a slew of functions that do nothing but guzzle up even more power. ModeLabs has seen to this problem by developing a trio of concept cellphones that are self-sufficient via normal, everyday use. You can kiss goodbye to chargers forever should the YoYo, U-Turn, and Runaway concepts take off and materialize.

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The HSBC bank launched in Brazil a service called M-cash, which enables its clients to purchase products on retail stores with the mobile phone or through the Internet. The bank commented that as much as 15 million clients could start using the new technology, and there is a potential for growth if you consider that Brazil counts more than 90 million mobile subscribers.

The process is pretty simple and secure (the bank said that $4 million was invested on the authentication system), once the payment for a certain product is required a central network will call the mobile of the client asking for the password, and the purchase should be completed in less than 30 seconds. The technology is compatible with a wide range of standards including GSM, CDMA and TDMA for mobile telecommunications and SMS, WAP, USSD and IP/XML for data applications. Read the rest of this entry »

We all know that cellphones these days come with a pretty decent digital camera embedded inside, but these cameras are good for only shots under bright light conditions, faltering badly when it comes to scenes with very little light. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the limitations of a cellphone camera. The other major weakness would be the inability to capture shots that are far off in the distance, as the lens is just not capable of zooming in that much. This could potentially be a problem as some tourists rely on just a camera equipped cellphone to capture their memories in a digital format. Brando of Hong Kong has a solution in the form of the Zoom Telescope.

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