San Diego Telecom Council Gadgetfest 2005

Tonight I attended my first Gadgetfest in San Diego. An open invitation was extended to companies to compete for the most innovative and desirable new gadget. Many of the companies were showing products that have not been publicly announced, preceding even their announcements at the CES. This stuff is cutting edge!

The event was hosted by “CommNexus” San Diego. As an aside, I think the group just went from a solid name that perhaps was not sexy, but well understood to a very confusing name. I had to look it up 3 times just to make sure that I got it right in this Blog. For that reason, I am going to be a laggard in adopting the new name and continue to call it the San Diego Telecom Council.

Before the main event, there was a mini trade-show with new products and services from leading companies like Nokia and Motorola as well as startups like StreamLoad, Televolution, and Imagination Technologies. It was great to see the latest phones and gadgets from Motorola and Nokia. I was taken aback by the freshness of the Motorola designs. They are really pushing the envelope these days. This is a reversal of positions. 9 years ago I designed test equipment for phone manufacturers including Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Lucent. At that time Nokia was clearly the design innovator and Motorola was lagging. How would this translate to the gadgetfest competition? Stay tuned…

The gadgetfest competition was moderated by the affable Andy Abramson and Ken Rutkowski, hosts of “World Technology RoundUP” on Kenradio. Devices were presented in 2 sections: cell phones and multimedia gadgets.

Mobile Phones

The phone presenters included:
· Qualcomm
· Motorola
· Nokia
· i-Mate
Qualcomm presented phones from all over the world that use Qualcomm chips, including an interesting metallic phone shaped like a Ferrari that includes a breathalizer capability.

Motorola brought the heir apparent to the venerable Blackberry franchise, the “Moto Q”. This sleek specimen of industrial design is as sexy as it is capable. The Moto Q has conveniently located dial and buttons right where you need them for single handed operation. The slim device easily handles pictures, streaming video, and e-mail and with a mini-sd slot and a powerful processor, the Moto Q should handle your most demanding mobile needs. Clearly a strong showing for Motorola.

Nokia showed a couple of devices that are currently on the market in Europe. They were slim, capable phones, but nothing worthy of note and the judges reflected this with the lowest score of the evening.

Up and comer i-Mate is based in Dubai and provides highly capable phones with direct service and support. The catch is that they sell directly, so your costs are not subsidized by carrier contracts. This means that you will shell out quite a few clams for these devices, up to US $1200! If you can get past the price, the devices appear to be quite capable and good looking. However, the most revolutionary thing about the device is the business model and this is gadgetfest, not b-plan fest.

The first round of the competition goes to Motorola.

Multimedia

Next up, the multi-media gadgets from:
· Motorola
· Sony
· Sling Media
· Entropic
· TelEvolution

Motorola showed the i-Radio, a new system that allows you to stream commercial-free radio content from your mobile phone to your car stereo via Bluetooth. You subscribe to a service and select from among 400 radio channels. Each night when you dock your phone in a USB station, content is updated via your internet connection. The phone can hold about 10 hours of content or even more by adding a larger capacity SD card. The Bluetooth adapter for the car stereo can connect to a CD port, satellite port, or other auxiliary port on the stereo and is expected to cost about $79. The service will require a monthly subscription of about $7.

Sony showed the Location Free TV solution, including a content aggregator/gateway that allows you to stream any audio and video source in your entertainment center to computers around the house or over the internet. There is also a mobile device that is like a combination of a video iPod and a TiVo. You can record content on the device, view videos, and stream content from the mobile device via the gateway. The judges liked this solution and gave it an 8 out of 9.

Sling Media showed the Slingbox, which essentially does everything that the Sony system does at approximately 33% less. A slingbox costs about $249 and allows you to watch your DVR, Cable, Satellite, and DVD content from anywhere you can get an internet connection. The judges loved the solution, the price, and the fact that this scrappy company is taking on Sony and others in this nascent market. 9 out of 9.

Entropic makes chips that go inside of set top boxes to allow high-speed networking over your existing coax cabling. The idea is to allow high speed interactive content to all TVs in your house without requiring multiple boxes. Good stuff, but not really a gadget. The moderators and the judges liked the solution but could not get past the fact that the event is not “component fest”.

TelEvolution is a company that was started by one of the founders of Earthlink, David Beckemeyer. David was easily the most enthusiastic presenter and could barely contain himself describing all kinds of techie acronyms like VOIP and SIP. The product is called the Phone Gnome and is the latest addition to the internet calling world. The long and the short of it is that you buy the device, plug in the phone and the network connection and you are ready to place calls for free to any other number that uses a Phone Gnome. The judges loved the device, the simplicity, and David’s enthusiasm, 9 out of 9.

With a tie between the SlingBox and the Phone Gnome, it was left to the audience to judge via the volume of applause. It took 3 rounds of voting and a very enthusiastic whistler to put Phone Gnome over the top.

If you consider yourself an early adopter, you may want to check out the winners and runner’s up at:
www.motorola.com
www.phonegnome.com
www.slingbox.com