Walking the floor Wednesday afternoon was like playing a game of “I Spy” — acrobats, a macro Zen Micro, air guitar players. But what caught my eye tech-wise? Screens, for one. The 108-inch Sharp Aquos was drawing crowds like it was the Eighth Wonder. The 4-inch wide screens on portable video devices from Sansa and Creative.
— A download kiosk in the making from SanDisk — very raw usability-wise but the general idea worked: pop a memory card in a slot, touch the screen to pick music to download and then put the card back in the device. (I downloaded tracks from Bob Weir and the Gin Blossoms.) The idea is to make it a commercial kiosk for downloading music, video and games complete with credit-card swiper. For SanDisk, which has experimented with selling albums loaded on cards, it’s another step toward transactional storage. It’s also an example of a lot of what I was seeing this week — incremental changes to familiar forms.
— I wound up at an event sponsored by Seagate this evening but I already planned to write about another storage item. Again, nothing startlingly new but another example with transformation potential: the smaller-than-palm sized (other sizes, too) Free Agent that becomes a portable desktop with enough storage to be a serious alternative to carrying around your own computer. More important, this and the other options being shown are affordable and either on the market or on route.
— Glistening phones, multifaceted mp3 players, cameras galore. GPS devices for every occasion. HD Radio; HD everything. Vista very high profile but plenty of Apple, too. Audio at every level. Touch screens.
Did I see anything that blew me away? Nothing really. As I thought might be the case before I left home, there’s no one big thing. But I see a lot of improvements and, perhaps most important, a lot of potential finally being realized.
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