Las Vegas is one of the world's most bizarre cities – rollercoasters on the outside of buildings, half-scale replicas of landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, tourists spending days at a time on dollar-a-go slot machines – and every January it's made even weirder by 150,000 techies rolling into town for CES.
CES is the consumer electronics trade show that likes to believe it shapes the future of technology. To an extent it does, but it's also home to some weird inventions that have to be seen to be believed.
Here are my five bizarre picks. But you may disagree, believing some of the ideas here are indeed the future of technology. Let me know in the comments below.
A hovering speaker
Now, to be fair, I didn't get my hands on this one: it was tucked away behind a glass display. But you get the idea from the picture, for the AIR2 is indeed a floating speaker. To quote the CES blurb: “The floating Bluetooth speaker levitates over its base and punches out very acoustic yet powerful sound”.
Sadly I haven't yet a chance to hear it in action, and there's no price or release date to be found on the official site, but who cares when it looks so darn cool?
A set of connected pedals
Forget connected fridges ordering top-ups of milk: connected pedals, I now realise, are the future. These French-made units replace the pair on your existing bike and then track where you've been, how many hills you've struggled up and your speed. No need for a GPS-enabled smartphone: it just syncs the information when you get back home.
Handily, you can also check exactly where your bike is at any time, via an app. This is one of the big selling points of the pedals, as they could act both as a deterrent and a way for police to work out where your stolen bike has ended up.
These are prototypes, I'm sorry to say, with the French startup behind them suggesting that they'll be released later this year… at some point. And no word yet on price. The disappointing thing for keen cyclists is the flat design shown here is all they currently have planned – there are no toe-clip or clipless versions as yet.
Next: more bizarre products from CES
A smartwatch for keeping track of tennis scores
I'm a pretty keen tennis player, and one who often forgets the score of the game I'm playing in, but even I was taken aback by this product: a watch that keeps track of your scores. You win a point: press the top button on the right-hand side of the watch. Your opponent wins one: press the bottom button. You can even have two people playing and synchronise scores.
The question is, why? The thoroughly nice chap I spoke to on the stand suggested you could follow your children's matches from afar, as the score is synchronised via the cloud, and that it would help you improve your performance because you'd have full records of your games. It's a quirky idea, but difficult to see how many sales it would, um, net.
A 3D-food-printer-combo-oven
“Imagine,” the compelling lady told me, “being able to not only bake biscuits with your children but design them too.” She smiled. I smiled. Then I edged away.
Not that 3D food printers are a new idea – we saw one at CES last year – and it has to be said that the cookies they had on show were quite tasty. And a lovely, swirly shape. Plus you can use chocolate to create cool shapes of your own devising, which I can see the appeal of for kids' parties and the like.
But this has novelty item writ large all over it, and I'm made even more nervous that, when I asked what the price was, she smiled again. “Ask me in a couple of days.”
Next: A set of sleepy-time speakers
A set of sleepy-time speakers
Let me be straight from the start: just because I think a pair of speakers wrapped in a headband is a bit bizarre doesn't mean I don't want them. When I struggle to get to sleep, I often resort to slipping in a pair of earphones and listening to Up All Night on Radio 5, but it's not exactly a comfortable experience.
Unlike many of the products I've seen so far, SleepPhones are available to buy (currently £28.95 (AU$54) from Amazon) and indeed have been around for a couple of years. What's new for CES 2015 is a wireless version designed for runners – don't worry, you can remove the speakers from the band and then wash it.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk
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