Pepcom Holiday Preview
October 16, 2013, Pepcom Holiday event San Francisco—In a new event and venue, a number of companies showed off their wares for the coming holidays. The 40+ companies offered a wide range of products for all types of interests.
Kwikset displayed a low energy Bluetooth activated deadbolt. Currently, the lock is available for Apple users for $219 MSRP. Future versions will have WAN connectivity to allow remote monitoring and activation. The Kevo lock includes “military strength” encryption and a built-in accelerometer to detect the door closing.
Although they claim that the user does not need to take out the phone to activate the lock, few people will keep the door lock app open on their phones when they are not near the door. Those who have phones without Bluetooth LE will have to wait for a while before the lock is useable with other phones. There are no plans to make a NFC-capable lock, because you would have to take the phone out of your pocket or purse to activate the lock. This level of effort is too much for most users.
Kingston presented more variants of the Hyper-X memories, and some USB accessories. One new release is a small box that can read or write to a USB drive or SD card and send the contents via WiFi to any device that can receive WiFi. This reader is a boon for those tablet owners who need to access a USB flash drive or SD card and don’t have a Surface. The app is available from the appropriate app repository. WiFi functionality includes use as a repeater for another network. The Mobilite can also act as a external battery for the devices, but cannot combine battery functions with memory or repeater functions.
Another memory powerhouse, SanDisk, announced two wireless flash products. The Connect Wireless Flash Drive can hold up to 32 GB of data and connects to up to 4 other platforms through WiFi. Battery life is rated at up to 4-hours. 16 GB costs $49.99 and 32 GB costs $59.99. The Wireless Media Drive holds up to 64 GB and can operate for up to 8-hours while feeding up to 8 external devices. It also has a SD HC or SD XC slot to expand storage capacity even further. A 32 GB unit costs $79.99 and the 64 GB unit costs $99.99. The two products are available from Amazon, Newegg, Micro Center, and Best Buy.
Honeywell presented a voice-activated thermostat. Say “hello thermostat” and the device allows modification of settings and any other functions that formerly needed a manual adjustment. The thermostat accesses functionality through WiFi connectivity to the cloud for the voice recognition and for other capabilities. The thermostat has customizable screens and learning functions to develop schedules and exceptions to those schedules. An app is available to allow remote adjustments for any iOS or Android platform. Suggested retail price is $349 and the thermostat should be available at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Amazon, and Best Buy.
Basis wearable health sensor
Basis showed off another wearable sensor platform. The wristwatch sensor array includes heart rate, motion, perspiration, and skin temperature to measure daily activities and also sleep quality. It also has a digital watch incase you want to see how long you have been working out. It includes Bluetooth 2.1 for connectivity to other platforms and synchronization of the data with the on-line dashboard app for PCs and Macs. Subscription fees for the web apps are free. Other apps are in development to share data, but the personal health nature of the data is a challenge. The watch and sensors are $199 from mybasis.com
For information with less effort, Mobiles Republic offers curated access to various news sources. Mobiles Republic partners with more than 800 top news sources including Associated Press, The Huffington Post, Elle, Sina, Financial Times, The Guardian, Engadget, CNET and more – providing complete news articles, news photographs and videos, and breaking news alerts. Each source can be viewed in a layout optimized for iOS, Android, and Windows 8 mobile devices. The company’s roster of mobile news apps includes News Republic, Appy Geek, Appy Gamer, Sports Republic and GlamLife.
The site is available in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Chinese. http://www.mobilesrepublic.com/
For those needing to convert ink and paper to electronic form, Fujitsu has a new wireless scanner that doesn’t need a host computer to scan documents. The SnapScan iX500 has WiFi to supplement the standard USB interface which enables transfers to iOS or Android devices as well as to other computers. The desktop machine can scan up to 25 double-sided color pages per minute at a resolution of 300 dpi. New app links allow direct scan to cloud-based services. Automatic features include de-skew, orientation, blank detect and deletion, and document feeder. Output formats include PDF, searchable PDF, and JPEG as well as editable Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Scans of business cards can be directly exported to most contact management software.
In another form factor, the SnapScan SV600 is an overhead scanner with automatic corrections for trapezoid distortion and book page curvature, and can handle large documents up to 11 x 17 inches. In addition to book image correction, it offers page turning detection for continuous scanning. The CCD imager and LED lighting minimize unevenness and shadows and ambient light. The scanner software can create graphical e-binders for books and magazines and can scan multiple documents within its field of view while allowing individual crop and rotation of each document. $795 from authorized Fujitsu resellers. Both scanners can include OCR as an in-line or post function.
YesVideo can bring back those memories. It is a media conversion service that turns old family tapes and films into online videos or DVDs. And, you can also share them by email or on Facebook. Their conversion process is about 2-4 weeks long and can handle any film or video format including 8mm, Super 8, 16 mm, VHS, etc. as well as photos and slides. Retailers including Target, Walmart, Sam’s Club, and Costco. The online versions of the videos are safe and secure through various cloud security measures. Online storage is free, forever.
