Gadgets for niches of the future

The flow of news out of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas seems greater than ever before, but rather than finding overarching themes, I'm seeing individual products, some of them evolving into niches whose future shape is not clear. Let's look at a few of these and speculate about how they might develop.

* Driverless cars? Having my fill of close calls thanks to drivers yakking on their cell phones, I sometimes hope it will happen. In fact, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner predicted cars with total autonomy within 10 years. Excuse me, but I think that's a pipe dream. Nonetheless, Wagoner pointed to upcoming OnStar technology that will allow police to make a stolen car inoperable and that will flag drivers about vehicles ahead of them that have made a sudden stop.

* Speaking of cars, the rise of automotive GPS is astounding, riding a wave that saw GPS sales of all kinds rise 41 percent last year. Couple this with new radar technology from Delphi, and we should all know not only where we are at any given time but also what obstacles are ahead. All of which is fine, but what bothers me about the rise of high-tech in cars is the distraction element. Giving already busy drivers the idea that their on-board alarm systems will bail them out of any difficulty may lead to worse rather than better road habits.

* One GPS device to watch this year is the Dash Express, which melds GPS services with the Internet to offer intriguing options. Highlight an address on your PC and send it to your car, no vehicle programming required. Or receive driving instructions from your hosts as you travel toward them. The Net connection also updates your maps and makes search options available for finding restaurants or gas stations, while the ability to receive RSS feeds lets you track local places of interest. More on this $600 product at www.dash.net.

* The art of projection should be big in 2008. Now that we've seen video on tiny screens such as the iPod's, the reality factor sets in. Because I don't want to put on my reading glasses to watch a video, I'll opt for the PicoP, a laser display module for cell phones that lets you project video imagery or still photos on a flat surface. This one is only a prototype from Microvision (www.microvision.com), but mark my words, projection from cell phones and PDAs makes so much sense that it's going to become big business in short order.

* Wireless is infiltrating rapidly into our daily habits, boosted by the iPhone and even Amazon's Kindle, the e-book reader that downloads books directly from the Amazon site. SanDisk Sansa Connect is a flash-based MP3 player that lets you download Net-based music with no PC connection as long as you're in range of Wi-Fi. Connect also shares music through a social networking system built into the device. Equipped for Internet radio as well, the just-announced $150 Connect offers a 2.2-inch color screen and 4 GB of storage.

* Travel elsewhere in the world, and you realize how slow U.S. Internet access can be. But Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said at CES that his company will roll out higher bandwidth by the end of this year. Roberts is talking about going from 12 to 16 megabits per second up to 100 megabits, a boost long overdue not only for on-demand movie viewing in the home but improved access to content-heavy Web sites. Apparently movies into the home will drive U.S. upgrades and promote PC interactivity with our televisions. Comcast's Project Infinity looks to offer 6,000 movies per month by 2009, while the PC/TV convergence is on display at the company's Fancast site (www.fancast.com).