October's Coolest Gadgets

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service October began, as it always does, with Japan's biggest electronics show: Ceatec. The show attracted a little over 196,000 visitors who got a chance to see the best of the Japanese electronics industry, including some exciting new prototypes of devices that are still some way from hitting the market. One of the biggest draws was Murata Manufacturing's unicycling robot, but robots from Nissan also made headlines. There were lots of thin TVs too, but it seems like I've spent so much time looking at ever- slimmer TVs recently I'm going to leave those out of this month's column! Something interesting was the Au Box, a sort-of set-top box that brings together broadband content and funnels it to a cell phone or TV. Away from Ceatec there were a couple of interesting digital still cameras to add to... [read full story]