Latest tech gadgets demonstrated in New York
Vendors were on hand tonight at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City for Pepcom’s fall event. I walked the floor to uncover some of the most innovative products which range from ultra secure USB drives and pens that sync your handwriting with tablets to Wi-Fi sharing devices and a new way to buy cars.
Absolute Software’s LoJack for Laptops was on display. It installs on Android devices and PCs (Macs too) for remote location, locking, and recovery, and wipes. It cannot install on iOS devices due to Apple’s restrictions on root system access.
Carvana is an online car dealership located in Atlanta, Georgia. Customers select and finance their vehicles online; test drives and local deliveries are also scheduled through the site. The company has also built a car “vending machine” for pickups.
Fon was demonstrating its Wi-Fi sharing device that enables people to create wireless hotspots by authenticating users through their Facebook accounts.
Fluendo maintains a free and open source software framework for media playback. I’ve includes\d it on this list, because it, like Fon, is based out of Madrid, Spain. That goes against the assumption (and some data) that the Spanish aren’t entrepreneurs.
iRobot had a gutter cleaning robot on display that it released about a year ago. The robot is an expansion of the company’s portfolio of home cleaning products. Its new brushless Roomba vacuum cleaner is built to handle hair and other debris that would otherwise jam up a conventional machine’s brushes.
Livescribe’s smartpen system now syncs notes across multiple devices.
myIDkey was a standout. Its Kickstarter-funded secure thumb drive is a few weeks away from shipping. A fingerprint scanner, encryption and an on/off switch protect the drives from prying eyes. It integrates with PCs via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or a USB cable, populating browsers with users’ credentials. The drives store up to 16GB of files and passwords for those who aren’t inclined to trust cloud services.
Nest was demonstrating its “learning” thermostat and smoke detector. The company has now opened its programming APIs for developers to create apps to interact with its home automation system, a spokesperson said.
Vivino has an app that’s like a Yelp for wine. You can review other diners' ratings of bottles at restaurants and can identify bottles from pictures of their labels.
(image credit: my IDkey/Kickstarter)
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com