There are a few personal navigation items that were on display at this week’s CES show. Following are details on a few that will be of interest to a geospatial crowd.
- Bill Gates displayed a compelling personal navigation experience during a main stage demonstration. The handheld device incorporated recognition technology to pick up faces or buildings. When recognizing a building, it was able to pick up interactive details and display advertisements. I found the seamless integration of advertising to be interesting, and the use of Virtual Earth as an interesting look forward on how Microsoft plans to leverage its considerable data gathering investment. The demo video can be seen here on ZDNet.
- Photo Finder by ATP is an easy means to add location to your photos. The small device is equipped with a GPS chip and you simply insert your photo card to add location to your photos. It’s designed for use with Google Earth and Google Maps.
- Lumus Optical – Has see-through eyeglasses that display computer or video monitor detail. They demo a GPS-based application that’s really intriguing. As an eyeglass wearer, I’ve been dreaming about this sci-fi mainstay for years.
- Garmin Nuvi with voice control adds considerable functionality. The CNBC demo by David Pogue shows a compelling interface that greatly eliminates the need to take your hands off the wheel to touch a screen.
I’m sure there are other items that I missed when trolling through several reports from the field. Certainly none of these are entirely earth shattering, but there is innovation here that extends geospatial capabilities further than they are right now.
On a side note, I posted an earlier message about CES adding a sustainable technologies sector. Looks like that angle proved newsworthy for several media outlets. Of note is Fujitsu’s use of corn-based plastics to craft the outer housing of a laptop. I’ve heard of forks and spoons, but that’s a stretch to me.
