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The Consumer Electronics Association has announced their Excellence in Product Design & Engineering Award Honorees, all of whom will be on display at CES 2009. Today we'll take a look at some of the winners, starting with the category of Personal Electronics.
Altec Lansing's inMotion Orbit is a portable speaker that plugs into your laptop, iPhone, or music player and projects sound in 360 degrees, for 24 hours on 3 AAA batteries. We like that cord management has been designed into it--just wrap the cord around the base for neat stowage--and are puzzled by the anachronistic marketing of the device: it's billed as an "MP3 speaker system" that can be plugged into "portable CD players," among other things, and one of the PR photos shows it plugged into a Titanium Powerbook. Does Altec Lansing also make time machines?
Liquid Image Co's Underwater Digital Camera Mask shoots surprisingly high-quality (up to 5 megapixel) photos, as well as lower-res video, completely underwater; it has already spawned a listing of YouTube videos shot with the device.
IDC Design Corporation's Personal Pocket GPS Locator is more than just a digital compass--the super-simple, key-fob-sized device is designed to be practically idiot-proof. Users can lock in up to three locations for the handy "return to an exact location" feature.
We were thinking this kind of thing could save lives in Fallujah, but IDC marketing pushes the line "Have you ever forgotten where you parked your car at the mall or airport?" Never mind the insurgents, where the hell's the minivan? I could've swore we parked in H-7....
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Comments
Uh, just because a speaker is pointed upwards does not mean it's good for 360 degree sound. I mean, by that rational a normal bookshelf speaker provides 360 degree sound, because you can hear it from any direction. True 360 degree speaker systems have a cone shape reflected to direct the upward firing speakers sounds sideways, around the room. That's just a small, tinny speaker in a little box, pointed straight up. The sound quality would be awful.
As a SCUBA diver, I find the possibility of battery acid and salt water leaking into my eyes to be a little frightening, however remote the manufacturer might claim it to be. Cameras flood. Some batteries will produce hydrogen and explode when exposed to salt water. Do yourself a favor and carry a camera in your hand.