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BBC Click: The opening months of every year are a good time for technology conferences. CES takes place in January, the Mobile World Congress is in February and if it is March then it is time for Cebit.

Held in the German city of Hanover, the giant trade fair is typically has more than 400,000 attendees who come to see, try and buy the latest in hardware and software.

The difficult economic conditions means that some of the larger players, such as Samsumg, are not attending. But their absence has given smaller companies a chance to show off their innovations.

Pocket-sized 3D laser scanner
One such firm is David Vision Systems which is fighting for a place in the 3D scanning market. “Others are expensive because they require complicated and precise mechanics, our scanning systems consists of standard components that are available at a low price,” said Sven Molkenstruck from David Vision Systems. The company has come up with a pocket-sized 3D laser scanner.

Internet car radio
Another innovation on display at Cebit was the world’s first internet car radio by Blaupunkt. The device has come out of a collaboration between Blaupunkt and Australian internet radio platform miRoamer.

Drivers need a 3G mobile phone that is Bluetooth-enabled to listen to 35,000 radio stations from across the world. This encryption device can can be connected to mobile phones

Voice encryption
Feeding off the trend for handset gadgets at Cebit, those conscious of phone eavesdropping can turn to voice encryption devices. Rohde & Schwarz has developed a small device that can be connected to mobile phones and encrypts a user’s voice.

“To protect your transmission, your speech, you have to do it end to end,” said Henning Krieghoff from the crypto tech firm. “On the other end we have a decrypter mobile as well, or we have some boxes which can be connected to normal telephones, be it analogue or digital telephones.”

Full article at BBC Click.

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NaviGadget: Falk’s new addition to their F series, F8, was shown at CeBIT in Germany last week. This touch screen navigation device comes with a 4.3″ touch screen, Navigator 6 software which supports split screen views, and TMC traffic reports. It does provide a text-to-speech feature but we’re not sure which languages are supported. Falk F8 also provide lane guidance, making sure you’re not lost at highway interchanges and also a CityGuide feature that includes 42 major European cities such as Berlin, Paris, London, Wien, Zürich, and Madrid.Expect to see it available at their own online store at save at least 300 € until then.

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idealo: Samsung promises a home cinema system without burdensome cables with their HT-X810 model, which they presented at the CeBIT 2008 German electronics conference. A wide, black and nobly formed bar, that should be placed under a flat screen television and also includes an integrated DVD player, as well as integrated speakers.

Despite missing satellite speakers, the chic device should still be able to provide the now mandatory surround sound cinema experience, available with Samsung’s other wire filled models, like the HT-TX35R or the HT-TXQ 120R. Only the subwoofer is separate, though it is also set up wirelessly. This is likely the case because the subwoofer would shake the whole system too much if it was included. The acoustics can be adjusted to different living conditions through internal calibration and the surround sound is achieved without any laborious cables.

Because flat screen televisions have long been operating with higher resolutions than standard TVs, the player can display DVDs in 1080p on demand. The DVD player is also perfectly suited for playing DivX films, JPEGs, DVD audio, CDs, MP3s and WMA. Four standard HDMI 1.3 ports allow for connections with additional devices. So the HT-X810 actually doesn’t completely get away without any cables.

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NaviGadget: At CeBIT in Germany Asus announced a GPS enabled PDAphone called M536 which has full qwerty keyboard in the front just like a Blackberry.Asus M536 is the successor to Asus M530W but adds new features such as the touch screen, a biometric finger print reader and a GPS receiver. Kind of different with M536 is the square screen resolution at 320×320 instead of the usual 320×240 pixels.

Main features:

• A-GPS compatible SiRF III GPS receiver
• 2.4″ TFT LCD
• TI Omap 2430 processor
• Triband GSM, GPRS, EDGE, dual band 3G and HSDPA with 3.6 Mbps
• 256 MB of ROM
• 128 MB of RAM
• 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• 3.2MP digital camera
• VGA camera (0.3MP) in front for video conference
• Biometric reader
• HC MicroSD port
• Lithium-Ion of 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

Asus M536 will be marketed in June or July 2008 with an approximate price of 550 €.

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Reuters: German shoppers seeking bargain Blu-ray video players now the format has won out over HD-DVD should not expect significant price cuts before the Christmas shopping season at the end of the year.“We don’t see big price drops in the next four to five months. Around Christmas, we can expect more dramatic price decreases,” Michael Langbehn, spokesman for the German Blu-ray group and Panasonic Germany said on Tuesday.

Panasonic will start selling its DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player in Germany at the end of this month for 499 euros, half the price of its first Blu-ray player selling in this market.

But Langbehn said it would take two to five years for a mass market to develop, leading to further big price cuts.

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Electronista: Meizu has been removed from the show floor at the CeBIT technology expo over copyright issues for its MiniOne smartphone, according to a new report by Germany’s Heise. Local police on Wednesday morning declared the booth closed and insisted on the removal of virtually every item on display, including marketing pamphlets as well as demonstration models. Meizu has not commented on the action, which brings a premature end to its presence at the Hanover show.Officials additionally confirmed that other companies are being pulled from the show today as part of a wider initiative, though full details are not likely to be revealed until a press conference on Thursday.

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NaviGadget: Garmin Nuvi 900T is one the latest GPS navigation systems from Garmin announced at CeBIT yesterday. It is unique because it is the only the nuvi that comes with an DVB-H (digital TV receiver) antenna. It looks like Garmin only made a deal with the Italian La3 TV offering their content for free for the first 6 months.

Other features on the nuvi 900T include a wide 4.3″ screen display, turn-by-turn directions, preloaded maps of Europe, hands-free calling, life-time traffic services, and more. However don’t expect MSN Direct (U.S. only feature anyways), speech recognition, FM transmitter, or dead-reckoning like the highest end models (Nuvi 880).

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Engadget: Navigon is hitting CeBIT with some new and fairly expected hotness: the 8110. With a 4.8-inch WQVGA screen, full 3D maps and some sexy brushed metal looks, this one’s going to turn some heads — just promise you’ll try and keep your eyes on the road, will you?

There’s a 533MHz processor under the hood, along with a independent graphics accelerator to handle the 3D. 512MB of ROM and 128MB of RAM round out the specs, which won’t exactly make this your second computer, but should handle media from SD cards just fine. TMC Pro is also included for higher quality traffic info. The 8110 should hit Europe at the end of April for €449.

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Camera Core: T-Mobile International is to be the exclusive carrier for Nokia’s new 6650 smartphone. The phone will be available in the third quarter, it was announced at the CeBIT tradeshow in Hanover, Germany.T-Mobile is expected to offer the Nokia 6650 for 1 euro to customers in Germany who sign up for its Relax 100 rate.

The Nokia 6650 clamshell phone features assisted GPS (A-GPS), which provides more reliable location information than conventional GPS when the signal is weak.

Multimedia player functions are included, allowing access to T-Mobile services including Web’n’walk, MyFaves, Mobile Jukebox, and NaviGate.

The 6650 also features an interface for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which offers 1.4-Mbps downloads, with a theoretical upper limit of 7.2 Mbps.

The phone also has a 2.2-inch TFT QVGA colour display, a 2-megapixel camera with flash, 30 MB of internal memory, a MicroSD card slot, FM radio, and Bluetooth connectivity.

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NaviGadget: TomTom just announced TomTom GO 930 at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany today. The new model will feature two new innovations from TomTom.One of these new features is the IQ routes which makes use of the historical speed data of more than 6.2 billion miles of roads to estimate your arrival rather than just relying on posted speed limits.

The other new feature is the lane guidance (just like Navigon’s Reality View) which provides realistic views of complex freeway intersections and help you stay on the correct lane.

Here are the specs for GO 930:

• maps of US, Canada and Western and Central Europe pre-installed
• 4.3″ widescreen 16:9 format LCD (WQVGA: 480*272 pixels)
• CPU 400 MHz
• 4 GB internal flash memory
• SD card slot
• High sensitivity GPS receiver
• Bluetooth
• Lithium-polymer battery (up to 5 hours operation)

and more features:

• Voice address input
• Text-to-speech enables street names, places, traffic alerts and SMS messages to be read aloud as part of the spoken instructions
• Enhanced Positioning Technology (EPT) for uninterrupted navigation even in tunnels or highly-built areas
• make updates and corrections to your own maps instantly and to benefit from improvements made by other users
• hands-free calling with high-quality sound system via Bluetooth
• Built-in FM Transmitter to play music and navigation instructions seamlessly over the car stereo
• ability to record your own driving instructions, view documents, exchange positions via SMS and Bluetooth

In addition to GO 930, GO 930T was also announced yesterday which adds live traffic updates to the mix.

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Camera Core: LG is expected to announce three new ‘Fashion’ phones at CeBIT 2008, Europe’s largest IT trade show which will be held in the German city of Hanover March 4-9.Pics and details of the three new phones – the KF750, KF240 and KF300 – are starting to appear on the web.

The high end LG KF750, codenamed Libra, is expected to be a touchscreen slider phone, with an innovative new navigation touchpad which combines features of the LG KF510 and LG KF600 handsets. It looks like it displays different symbols depending on which mode is in use.

It is also expected to feature a 5 megapixel camera, VGA camera for video calls, 160MB of internal memory and microSD card slot.

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