I tend to be wary of gadgets. True, I skim Engadget and Gizmodo most every day, but when you see the volume of gadgets that they cover, it tends to become a blur of widgets with little to distinguish themselves. Oooh, this cell phone now has a 3 megapixel camera, oh this MP3 player shaved off another half ounce, oh this PDA has a faster processor, blah blah blah. But yesterday two major "hmmm, now this is interesting" gadgets caught my eye.
iPod Photo - Yesterday Apple formally announced the next generation of the iPod. The newest edition adds a vivid color screen and support for putting photos on it. Those photos can be display on its screen or output to a television screen in a slideshow format. Yes, music can play in the background during a slide show. Given my dabbling in amateur digital photography, this could be the critical mass that finally opens my wallet.
Delphi XM MyFi - While I've been taking a closer look at Sirius satellite radio, XM announced this portable unit -- the XM MyFi. Cool! Satellite radio in a handheld! Plus it has five hours of storage so that you can record and time shift audio programs. It's sort of an audio TiVo for satellite radio programs that you can take anywhere. To me, that's a killer feature to put on a handheld! It'll be interesting to see if Sirius will counter. XM's handheld is still vaporware at this point, expected to be available in December.
Gameboy DS - Of course the gadget Abby and I have been waiting for should arrive next month - the dual screen, wireless enabled Nintendo GameBoy DS. Abby and I enjoy the GameCube (esp. MarioKart), but we still get the most enjoyment from the little games on the GameBoy line. I look forward to the upcoming DS.
Isn't it interesting that so much of the cool digital developments of the past year are in the embedded space, not in desktop computers? This is the market that keeps electrical, digital, and computer engineers like me employed. Years ago, it was all about watching what new things you could put in a PC. Faster speeds, new plugin cards, faster video, etc. But at some point, unless you're a hardcore gamer, it gets to be diminishing gains. 3GHz to use a word processor, access email, surf the web!? But those same technologies that give us faster bleeding edge speeds and greater capacities can also be used to enable greater capabilities in handheld gadgets. The shrinking silicon features allow us to put more features in handhelds and let us cut the power costs.
Update (27 Oct) - Apparently Paul Boutin at Slate finds both gadgets lacking in appeal. Evidently he wants a hybrid device that doesn't exist. Something that holds hours of your favorite content, yet can still stream "the latest news" in real time. Again, people like Paul help keep the electrical engineers fed with ever increasing wish lists...