CeBIT Australia

Today I took time out of my busy schedule to head down the the Sydney Exhibition and Convention Centre to check out CeBIT Australia 2006. So after pounding the pavement and checking out all the exhibitors, here are some highlights.

Getting in was a quick and painless process, particularly with pre-registration. Most of the stands had barcode scanners so supplying contact information was easy too. With 4 halls chock full of exhibitors that was plenty to see and lots of walking.

I think the best thing I came across was when I ran into an old friend. He's working with a US startup company that is developing voice testing and simulation software. Its primarily a diagnositc tool, but they are developing monitoring and reporting applications to enhance the tool set. Sounds like it warrants some further investigation.

Here's a touch screen handset from Splicecom. A UK outfit who produce an IPT solution. This is their top of the line handset. To me it seemed like a medium to low end fork-lift PBX replacement system. The system is supposed to scale from 8 to 5000 handsets and supports multi-tenanting upto 300 separate businesses (some possibilities?). Based on a Linux appliance, it has voice mail built in and supports call centre functionality like intelligent skills based routing, attendant console and IVR. They wer'nt too forth coming on pricing, but were willing to talk about reseller options.

The folks at Intranet Dashboard have a pretty interesting suite of tools for setting up and maintaining Inranet, Extranet and Portal sites. It looked very promising and really easy to set up. Pricing seems reasonable too since its based on admin accounts, not end users.

Over at the CSIRO stand they had this air hockey table, split in half so you could play against someone on the otherside of the stand. It was to demonstrate realtime video conferencing with the use of sensors. In the game, the puck is fired from 4 slings that shoot at random. Unfortunately the puck had no direct association with the angle and speed of the opponents shot.This is the LCD TV that I'm going to get. Its the 37LP1D, a 37" LCD with built in HD tuner. I'm thinking of pairing it up with an Intel Duo Core Mac mini as my media centre PC, now that bootcamp is out.

I am definetely going to buy this. Its a noise cancelling headset from Jabra. This is the C820, its due to be released here in 2 months and will retail for AUD$179. I tried them on for a while and they a alot more comfortable to wear than my Sony, sound better run on a single AAA battery that is housed within the speaker. There is also a new Limited Edition black JX10 bluetooth headset coming, which looks very swanky (designed by Timothy Jacob Jensen of B&O fame).

FreshTel are offering this little UBS contraption. Its called the Freshtel 4030 Stick Phone and retails for AUD$69.95. It runs the firefly voip software from the USB memory stick so all you need to do is plug it into the USB port of any internet connected computer and so long as you have a firefly account, can make calls. Sounds perfect for travellers who use internet cafes to dial back home. Perhaps I should've taken one to India to try out. The back of the USB stick has an audio plug for mic and headphone.

Here's a seminar of Venture Capitol and entrepreneurial business cases. It was interesting to hear the differences in the US and local Venture Capitol markets. Now I just need that genius idea that'll make me rich.

OK one for the kiddies, a cute Disney USB web cam.

I was surprised to see Huawei were exhibiting at CeBIT as most of the large networking heavyweights don't usually bother exhibiting at CeBIT. They were a major sponsor of the event and had quite a large stand. I was interested in some of the IPTV and enterprise switching solutions, but they weren't particularly helpful or nice. Took me ages to get their attention and when I did, they didn't really answer any of my questions and tried the old answer and question with a question trick. Perhaps it was because I had my Cisco emblazoned shirt and bag, who knows. Maybe I will try again tomorrow and dress down for the occasion.