A Fresh Take On Innovation

The inspired individuals who are creating new technologies for the consumer market are perhaps the most innovative in all of the tech industry. Some of these great minds were on display at Everything Channel's recent RetailVision Fall event in San Diego, which featured the offspring from a bunch of inventors hell-bent on getting their contraptions to market.

	ROBERT C. DEMARZO
Can be reached via e-mail at rdemarzo@everythingchannel.com.

At RetailVision several vendors got together to seek their 15 minutes of fame during a session called "Fresh." One standout was a company called SpeechGear, whose CEO, Robert Palmquist, showed off a handheld device that acts as a language or speech translator you can carry around in your pocket. Truly amazing, it was originally developed for the military and put to use in the Iraqi war to assist military personnel or soldiers. Palmquist is now bringing the technology to the consumer market and it works like this: You speak into the device in English and it repeats your sentence in any of several languages it supports. So basically, if you are in China and want to get directions, order food or conduct business, you could speak into the device and say, "I need to outsource widget production to your company. How much will you charge?" and it will spit out (without the spit) the correct translation in Chinese (or so you hope). SpeechGear's Compadre (as it is called) can do translation, interpret words and entire documents and also take pictures of signs or menus and translate the images in seconds. It was an impressive technology.

While SpeechGear was the most impressive, several other inventors in the Fresh session turned out interesting innovations, including a voice-activated device for your iPod. Christopher Griswold clearly sees the iPod space as a market rife with opportunity. His invention basically allows you to control your iPod via voice command, whether it be to advance to another song, repeat it or return to your playlist. It is a nice product for long-distance runners or someone trapped on a crowded subway or airplane.

Next up was Ming Ho, a born marketer, who invented a tiny battery-powered wireless tracking device that could help you locate anything, from your children to a package to the whereabouts of a New York City messenger bicycling cross town, via a Web application. The battery is said to last up to 72 hours and the device will sell for between $300 and $400 depending upon the configuration. It works across the AT&T and T-Mobile networks. For fun, Ho should have worn the device during the entire event so we could constantly check his whereabouts. Maybe HP's Adrian Jones should secretly plant one of these devices on rival Rich Hume of IBM.

If you were looking for green technology at Fresh, you needed to look no further than Medis' squeezable fuel cell. That's right, when you squeeze the contents of this fuel cell it starts a chemical reaction that produces enough electricity to charge a cell phone or any handheld device several times over. It comes with cables, is lightweight so it's suitable for travel and once squeezed, it will last for a couple of months.

Believe me, there were a number of other impressive demonstrations. Head to Channelweb for some more of the goods.

Robert C. DeMarzo (rdemarzo@everythingchannel.com) is Senior Vice President/Editorial Director of Everything Channel.