Future Perfect
Words | Asif Hashmi The world’s biggest technology expo, CeBIT 09, comes to Hanover this month, with the latest gadgets, driverless cars and the internet of tomorrow THE POPULATION OF HANOVER in northern Germany pretty much doubles once a year when around 500,000 computer and IT industry movers and shakers from all over the world [...]
Words | Asif Hashmi
The world’s biggest technology expo, CeBIT 09, comes to Hanover this month, with the latest gadgets, driverless cars and the internet of tomorrow
THE POPULATION OF HANOVER in northern Germany pretty much doubles once a year when around 500,000 computer and IT industry movers and shakers from all over the world click over to CeBIT, the world’s biggest technology expo.
With thousands of exhibitors and hundreds of product launches and demonstrations, CeBIT 09 (3-8 March) is about trying out new technologies and thinking around new trends. It’s also about networking and getting the face-to-face contact which the stutter of video conferencing just can’t match. Most excitingly, though, it’s the place to spot the tech future rushing towards us. There’s a lot to sift through so Voyager has done the groundwork for you.
WALL TO WALL
With halls dedicated to personal mobile players and interactive entertainment, CeBIT is stacked high with shiny gizmos. One likely to make a splash is a smart phone which doubles as a pocket-sized big screen TV. Launching at CeBIT 09, the Logic Bolt looks like a chunky mobile phone. But tap the 2.4-inch touchscreen and a built-in projector turns any wall into a giant screen – from 34 to 64 inches. As well as movies, the Logic Bolt can project video from your XBox or Nintendo Wii. With Bluetooth, a threemegapixel camera and the ability to read MS Office documents, the Windows Mobile GSM phone is expected to retail for around £70.
GHOST RIDER
Get behind the wheel of one of CeBIT’s energy-saving electric cars, press down the accelerator and take a snooze. Scanning the road with stereo cameras, radar sensors and a GPS sat-nav, the car’s computer analyses data so that the chauffeur bots doing the driving can avoid any black ice, traffic snarl-ups or Jeremy Clarksons ahead. For more extreme va-va-vroom still, visit the track outside the CeBIT conference centre where high-speed heavy trucks slalom past obstacles and roar around bends – again, minus human drivers. To get the robo car specs, quiz the boffins in the CeBIT cars, transport and navigation hall.
WEB+SOCIETY=?
Come to CeBIT to see the future and you get handed a mirror. Tagging your digital data? Posting it online to friends, family, business colleagues, to the entire internet? You’re living in Society 2.0: the ‘Webciety’. As well as an area devoted to cracking the jargon – Enterprise 2.0, open source, blogs, wikis, web TV, social networks, user-generated content and so on – CeBIT 09 brings together top industry speakers to explore what’s going to happe to everyone else. Elite geeks taking part include: Werner Vogels, chief technology officer, Amazon.com; Marco Boerries, executive VP connected life division, Yahoo!; Reid Hoffman, founder, LinkedIn; and Stewart Butterfield, co-founder, Flickr.
SILICON DRAGON
While their near economic future may seem grim, help may be at hand for new tech start-ups. True, bank credit is crunched. But venture capitalists are flush with funds gathered from institutional investors and major private investors. They remember the tech innovations which followed the end of the dotcom boom. Emerging from his CeBIT den, Frank Böhnke, general partner at Wellington Partners, which specialises in investing in young European tech, internet and digital media companies, says that he’s looking for good ideas. The current climate couldn’t be better for start-ups, he says: “A new company can develop in peace and quiet during an economic downturn.”
THEFT BYTES
You’ve probably been robbed at clickpoint and you didn’t even know it. Here is some of the jargon and what it actually means:
Phishing: in 2007, the number of people who unwittingly gave passwords details to online con-artists went up by 25%, according to CeBIT research.
Pharming: a cunning recent hacker technique is to guide the unwary user to a counterfeit website.
Zombies: marshalled into ‘botnets’ to carry out computer attacks, millions of home and office computers work for criminal gangs without their owners’ knowledge.
Worried? Visit CeBIT 09’s Security World hall to see the latest anti-hacker technology as well as alarm, video surveillance and biometric systems.
HOTTING UP
CeBIT 08’s Green Village blossoms into a Green IT World this year, spreading its shoots into a new hall full of environmentally friendly tech products. According to CeBIT research, half of German shoppers would happily pay extra for energy-efficient high-tech devices. Some 10% wouldn’t mind paying up to 20% more. At CeBIT 08, Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer launched an energy management system designed for domestic users. This year, the German minister of the environment, Sigmar Gabriel, explains how the interest in energy efficiency is likely to develop into one of the IT industry’s most important new markets.
CeBIT 09 takes place 3- 8 March 2009 at the Hannover Messe Exhibition Grounds, Hanover, Germany. A full ticket booked in advance is £71 (£64); a day ticket, £33 (£30). www.cebit.de
