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CeBIT presents gadgets hot and weird
The world's biggest technology fair has opened in Hanover, allowing thousands of exhibitors to display the hottest and weirdest gadgets. Some of the gadgets on display at the CeBIT IT fair included swimming goggles with an in-built underwater camera, a bamboo laptop and a pink crocodile PC case. The technology fair, with 5,500 exhibitors, runs till March 9, allowing thousands of visitors to check out the hottest and also the weirdest gadgets. A chilly wind was blowing across the vast exhibition centre, but when summer comes Liquid Image thinks its yellow goggles with an in-built digital camera are just the accessory. On the top of the range model, which sells for 129 euros, the 5.0 megapixel camera and 16 megabite memory allows you to take up to 29 photos or 53 seconds of video up to a depth of 30 metres (100 feet), the firm says. Also on show for eyeware was a pair of sunglasses from Chinese firm Xonix not only with an in-built camera but also with an MP3 player, while another from Taiwan's Inter Brands includes music and bluetooth so you can use it as a phone. But forget the glasses -- in the 21st century you can't be seen toting your laptop around in anything other than a pink, fake crocodile skin case, or so French firm Sweetcover would have you believe. Their cases, which also come in other more traditional colours and materials including real leather, retail for around 70 euros (105 dollars) in Paris boutiques and soon elsewhere, the firm's founder and president Raphael Taieb told AFP. Not only will you avoid getting hot knees, he says, but the cover's high-tech design, which incorporates 70 different fabrics, ensures the computer will not overheat -- something which other luxury goods makers have failed to achieve with their prototypes, Taieb claims. The cases will protect your laptop and turn it into a "subtle and seductive" piece of hardware, the company says. It has straps to keep the computer in place, is open at the sides and has holes in the back for cables. Other bling-bling novelties included a Giorgio Armani mobile phone from Samsung and a Lamborghini laptop complete with the Italian sportscar maker's badge and partly made of leather. Its maker Asus was also showing off computers made partly out of bamboo --- to give it an eco-friendly style, a salesman at the Taiwanese firm's stand said. It has not yet decided whether to launch them on the market, however.
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