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High-tech wish list for 2009

by Angela Hey

The New Year kicks off with new gadgetry from vendors: In Las Vegas next week, the annual Consumer Electronics Show (www.cesweb.org) will feature 2,700 exhibitors showing off digital cameras, HDTV and much more. Also next week is MacWorld in San Francisco, which sadly will be lacking Steve Jobs' keynote. I'd like to congratulate him on the masterful showmanship with which he has launched innovations over the past quarter of a century.

Running around Mountain View, I asked locals what they would like to see from vendors. My first stop was Wal-Mart, which is now selling iPhones. Check www.walmart.com to see if there are any left in Mountain View.

Three Wal-Mart customers told me that they wanted better games. A male teenager wanted more strategy games that make you think. Another teen wanted more RPG, or role playing games. He wasn't so interested in Second Life, where you create your own role and lifestyle, but he loved playing Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts from Square Enix. A young girl loved Nintendo's Wii and wanted more Mario games.

In the GameStop store I met Anand. He wants handheld game players like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP to have built-in mobile phone interfaces like the iPhone. Right now the game players have WiFi, which is fine near an access point, but Anand wants an "always-on" wireless interface. By next Christmas I expect we'll see more mobile gaming phones. Don't forget, Nokia was there first with the N-Gage.

I particularly like fitness games on the Wii, especially tennis. It's too bad my favorite exercise game — featuring responDESIGN's virtual fitness coach "Maya," originally for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and PC — has been distracted by lawsuits. Hopefully, some investor will put decent management and capital behind follow-on games with life-like personal trainers.

In the Red Rock Cafe, I found Teresa Corbo, a Mountain View resident, hunched over her laptop. She thought vendors could do a much better job of making laptops more ergonomic. Teresa suggested that the screen on a laptop be supported on a vertical arm so that it could slide up, allowing the user to avoid stiff shoulders and a bent spine. As I type this on my MacBook, my keyboard doesn't slope at the right angle, making me a candidate for carpal tunnel syndrome. Thankfully, a music teacher taught me to lift my wrists for piano playing when I was six — a lesson for all computer users who want to avoid trapping their wrist nerves.

Driving to the Red Rock, I reflected on how economically Apple packages its cables compared with many competitors. Manufacturers waste precious plastic blister packs as they attempt to defeat shoplifters and protect goods in shipment. Why can't more manufacturers use greener packaging? As it happens, I met at Red Rock a true enthusiast of greener practices for manufacturers, Toby Hammer from Palo Alto.

"There's far more than packaging to worry about," he said. He suggested that packages display the origin of the "ingredients" of products. Toby is concerned that columbite-tantalite, commonly known as coltan, an ingredient of cell phones, is helping finance conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He thought there should be many more resources for upgrading and reusing older computers. For example, where do you dispose of batteries, old electronic devices and TVs? Check out the Computer Recycling Center (www.crc.org) for a start.

What's your New Year's resolution? Whether it's to gain higher game scores, play games less, exercise more or recycle electronics, I hope you have a happy and profitable 2009.

Angela Hey can be reached at amhey@techviser.com.