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If swimming goggles with an in-built underwater
camera, a bamboo laptop or a pink crocodile PC case is your thing
then Germany's CeBIT IT fair is for you.
The technology fair, with 5,500
exhibitors the world's biggest, opened its doors to the public in
Hanover on Tuesday and runs to March 9, allowing thousands of
visitors to check out the hottest and also the weirdest gadgets.
A chilly wind was blowing across
the vast exhibition centre, but when summer comes Liquid Image
thinks its yellow goggles with an in-built digital camera are just
the accessory.
On the top of the range model,
which sells for 129 euros, the 5.0-megapixel camera and 16=megabyte
memory allows you to take up to 29 photos or 53 seconds of video up
to a depth of 30 metres (100 feet), the firm says.
Also on show for eyeware was a
pair of sunglasses from Chinese firm Xonix not only with an in-built
camera but also with an MP3 player, while another from Taiwan's
Inter Brands includes music and Bluetooth so you can use it as a
phone.
But forget the glasses -- in the
21st century you can't be seen toting your laptop around in anything
other than a pink, fake crocodile skin case, or so French firm
Sweetcover would have you believe.
Their cases, which also come in
other more traditional colours and materials including real leather,
retail for around 70 euros (105 dollars) in Paris boutiques and soon
elsewhere, the firm's founder and president Raphael Taieb told AFP.
Not only will you avoid getting
hot knees, he says, but the cover's high-tech design, which
incorporates 70 different fabrics, ensures the computer will not
overheat -- something which other luxury goods makers have failed to
achieve with their prototypes, Taieb claims.
The cases will protect your
laptop and turn it into a "subtle and seductive" piece of
hardware, the company says. It has straps to keep the computer in
place, is open at the sides and has holes in the back for cables.
Other bling-bling novelties
included a Giorgio Armani mobile phone from Samsung and a
Lamborghini laptop complete with the Italian sportscar maker's badge
and partly made of leather -- yours to take home for 2,999 euros
(4,561 dollars) with an aerodynamic mouse with yellow go-faster
stripes.
Its maker Asus was also showing
off computers made partly out of bamboo --- to give it an
eco-friendly style, a salesman at the Taiwanese firm's stand said.
It has not yet decided whether to launch them on the market,
however.
On the sillier side, Californian
firm Ugobe presented a small, robotic dinosaur dubbed Pleo similar
to Sony's AIBO robotic dog that has to be looked after and nurtured
like a Tamagotchi.
Pleo can be programmed via a USB
cable connected to your computer or with a memory card slotted into
its underbelly so it can learn new tricks like barking at intruders
or performing a leaf tug-of-war with another Pleo or its owner.
The green and brown pet, which
retails for around 300 euros in Europe, is babylike when young and
coos and purrs with pleasure when tickled under the chin. But it
also gets hungry and can have mood swings, just like humans.
It is based on the Camarasaurus,
a late-Jurassic North American herbivore, 20 metres (66 feet) long
in adulthood. Members of the online Pleo community can even create
their own tricks to upload.
And if you want to keep an eye on
your sleeping baby -- or to make sure Pleo isn't bothering the cat
downstairs -- China's RDI was presenting a teddy bear with a hidden
camera in its left eye.
 --AFP
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