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(Credit: SpeechGear)

SpeechGear's Compadre suite of translation software brings us one step closer the sci-fi ideal of a universal translator. The full suite of five programs gives you the ability to instantly translate anything you see, hear, or read into a ton of languages, including Spanish, German, Dutch, Iraqi, Chinese, Japanese, and more.

The most exciting portion of the software is Interact, which lets you have a near-real-time conversation with a speaker of a foreign language. You and your conversant simply speak into a microphone that's connected to your computer; the program uses voice recognition, machine translation, and speech synthesis technology to instantly translate your words both onscreen and out loud. CNET TV has video of the product in action.

Other elements of the suite include Interpreter, a PDA-based phrasebook with similar voice recognition and speech synthesis features; Document, which provides straight text-to-text translation of Microsoft Office files, with the advantage of preserving your original formatting; and the soon-to-be-released Camera, which translates anything you see, such as a road sign or menu. The whole suite runs on an engine called Composer, which lets you add your own terms and phrases to the word database, so for example CNET would never be translated as "see net."

As you might have guessed, the SpeechGear Compadre suite was originally designed for the military and is now being marketed to companies that do business internationally. And it's priced accordingly: Interact costs $995, Document costs $595, and Interpreter costs $75, while Camera's pricing has yet to be announced. But I have no doubt the investment will make sense to companies with global aspirations, and I look forward to the day when the technology trickles down to international tourists like me.

LAS VEGAS--The winner in the Blu-ray and HD DVD war is the hard drive, according to Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology.

"People are saying Blu-ray won the war but who cares? The war is over physical distribution versus electrical distribution, and Blu-ray and HD lost that," he said during a breakfast meeting at the Consumer Electronics Show here this week. "In this, flash memory and hard drives are on the same side. The war is over and the physical guys lost."

Bill Watkins

(Credit: Seagate)

Watkins, naturally, speaks from personal interest, but he's got a point. (A former Army grunt and a decades-long Deadhead, Watkins is also one of the more entertaining CEOs in the technology industry to interview.) Consumers haven't been buying Blu-ray or HD DVD players and by the time they do, technology companies will likely be hawking sophisticated on-demand services and Internet Protocol TV. IPTV, in fact, is the dominant theme of the show. Sharp, Samsung, and Panasonic all unfurled content alliances that will let consumers look at headlines or videos from the Net on their TVs.

That's good news for Seagate, because electronic distribution means more hard drive sales. "If (data) is in the cloud I get more storage sales because you have to back up everything," he said.

"Surveillance is a big deal," he added. "You're being filmed right now (we were in a casino) and they've got to store it somewhere."

Hard drive makers are right now living through good times. In the 1990s, excess manufacturing capacity and price cuts led to stagnant revenues and losses for many companies. Since then, many players have dropped out. New markets such as digital video recorders opened up for drive makers. As a result, both Seagate and rival Western Digital are seeing double-digit growth. Seagate has already upped its revenue guidance twice for the quarter that just ended.

And the future continues to look good. Hollywood, Watkins said, will have no choice but to get into home delivery of content in a big way. People are leaving home less and less. And if the movie studios don't deliver their content to their home, people will watch whatever they can find on the Internet. At CES, XStreamHD is showing off a box that gets on-demand movies from a satellite. Actor Michael Douglas is an investor.

"They will watch lousy content if it is easy to do," he said.

Other notes from Watkins:

•  Seagate doesn't have its solid state drive out yet, but it's coming.

•  Flash memory, he added, will never completely take over the hard drive market. The demand for storage is too big. If a flash maker wanted to provide just 15 percent of the world's market for storage in 2012, it would have to invest $50 billion this year alone.

"And right now, no one has made that investment," he said.

He further argued that flash memory gets too much attention from Wall Street. "I'm making 75 cents a quarter, and I get half the valuation of SanDisk or Micron," he added.

•  Consumers still seem buoyant in Europe and Asia, so a lengthy, full-blown global recession may not occur. Admittedly, he adds, that's his own spin.

•  America has got to reform its immigration laws by letting in more immigrants. Nearly 60 percent of the companies in Silicon Valley were founded by people born outside the U.S. Last year, close to 70 percent of the students getting Ph.D.s in engineering were from other countries.

"And none of them got a green card," he said. "Because of this, U.S. companies will have to put R&D overseas."

•  Speaking of foreign lands, the government-to-university-to-private sector triumvirate (the government provides grants, universities invent stuff, and the private sector sells it) that helped build the tech industry in the U.S. no longer works as well as it once did. However, they have copied it pretty well overseas.

"They are following the made us successful and here it's broken," he said. "We used to say that what is good for GM is good for America. Now, what is good for the stockholders is not necessarily good for America. That drives me crazy."

(Credit: 3DV Systems)

My guess is that the ZCam from 3DV Systems was first developed as a training tool for the Israeli army, but you can use this 3D camera to out-Wii the Wiimote. It looks like a large Webcam, but instead of merely capturing video, the ZCam senses depth in real-time. It'll likely show up as a part of a game bundle--3DV Systems was showing off a boxing demo where your phantom punches would land on your opponent's face or a heavy bag on the screen--but it also has potential beyond gaming (though it could make an immersive game like World of Warcraft even more addictive). It could free you of your Media Center remote and let you navigate Windows Media Center with simple movements of your hand, for example, or be used to spruce up your next Web conference. The Israel-based 3DV Systems encourages developers to create their own applications, using the ZCam's software development kit. According to the company, the 1.3-megapixel ZCam captures video at up to 60 frames per second, isn't a drain on CPU resources, and will be priced at less than $100 when it's released sometime toward the end of the year.

For more, see Molly Wood hit the heavy bag with the ZCam on this CES video. Stick and move, Molly, stick and move!

BigStage founder Jonathan Strietzel mugs in front of Steven Harwell's avatar.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

LAS VEGAS-- Intel CEO Paul Otellini's CES keynote was sparkling. In contrast to Bill Gates' pastel portrait of the future, Otellini presented a concrete vision of a personal, reactive Web, and the challenges to creating it (Silicon, Infrastructure, Context, and Interface). For a full rundown, see Dan Farber's writeup on ZDNet.

Intel loves where the Web is going. The more interactive and personal it gets, the more processing power is required and the more new chips Intel sells, for both servers and local workstations. The most interesting (and newest) product that Otellini brought to the stage in his keynote was an automatic avatar builder made by BigStage.

BigStage creates a model of anyone's head by using just three photos--head-on, rotated a little, and rotated a little more. The company processes these pictures on its own servers and ends up with a model that knows which pixels your eyes are (so it can move and blink them), where your mouth is, and so it. In the Intel keynote demo, BigStage found Jonathan Strietzel created an avatar of Smash Mouth singer Steven Harwell. It was eerily good--much better and less creepy than avatars I've seen previously.

The technology comes from a CIA-funded project at the University of California. It was originally intended for scanning surveillance cams, since at its core it measures the three-dimensional geometry of key points on a face, for example between eyes, or the shape of a person's cheekbone. The fact that the algorithm can extract a complete 3D model from only three images, and with what is now reasonably inexpensive computation (this is where Intel comes in) is what makes it commercially viable.

BigStage hosts the avatars and is looking at several ways to get them out onto the Web, to populate the virtual world with facsimiles of real people, instead of the cartoons that live there now. People will likely be able to create widgets of themselves that they can embed on blogs and social networks, and perhaps in existing virtual worlds like Second Life and gaming networks like Xbox Live. The company is also doing deals with brands and music labels. Strietzel told me that a big public product will be available that lets users put their mug in the "most popular music video of all time." (Thriller, right?)

I hope the company delivers on its demo. Look for public examples of BigStage technology in April or May.

See also: Gizmoz, Digimask.

Snap up to four modules onto the BugBase, and you've got your own custom gadget.

(Credit: Bug Labs)

It's the rare product that excites CNET editors across all categories. The Bug Labs platform, which has been the subject of several conversations around the CNET booth, is one such rarity.

Described as "the Lego of gadgets" by Webware's Rafe Needleman, the Bug Labs platform starts with a minicomputer, the Bug Base, onto which you can snap multiple modules, such as a digital camera or an LCD screen. You can then program your own software to run your custom gadget or download software others have written from the Bug Labs site. Need a GPS-enabled digital camera that will automatically upload your images to Flickr? With the Bug Labs platform, you can build one.

Aside from being eager to tinker with the product, we're thrilled to see such an innovative approach to consumer electronics. The Bug Platform is totally open source, highly configurable, and designed to go wherever consumers' imaginations take them. Plus, the company has a unique "early adopter" pricing scheme, in which the price is lower during the first 60 days; this is a great way to encourage people to start developing software to share.

For more information, check out Tom Merritt's video from the CNET Stage.

Creative InPerson

(Credit: Creative Labs)

Video phone, videoconferencing--there's really no good vocabulary for discussing video communication over the Net without rendering your audience glazed and confused. Nor are there any glitzy new technologies to get their geek juices flowing. But Creative's doing its darnedest to spark some new life in a product category that never quite took off. And it seems like a pretty good effort, at that, with a product that strives to liberate videoconferencing from the tether of the PC or the conference room.

The company's portable InPerson conferencing system consists of a device that resembles a 1.6 pound, 10-inch laptop, with a VGA-resolution Webcam with a nice wide-angle view, built into the hinge. The hardware sits in your living room, hotel room, or any other room, running off the two-hour capacity battery or AC. The H.264-compressed video can stream on the 7-inch wide-screen LCD, or you can hook it up to your TV for a more life-size conversation. It connects to the Net via Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet, going through Creative's servers for the video and VoIP audio (it adheres to the SIP telephony standard). Creative claims it has very good low-light performance (which seemed to be true when I took a brief look at it), as well as above-average audio quality. When not in use, you can stick an SD card in the slot and use it as a really expensive photo frame.

That's really the rub: it seems quite pricey to me. The device itself costs $699.95, and there's a $10 per month subscription fee for the Web service. On the plus side, it doesn't require another InPerson on the other end; any old Webcam will do.

Can Creative InPerson save your foundering long-distance relationship? Probably not. But it has the potential to save you some money and time on the extra travel.

At a pre-CES event last night, I looked at two little GPS gizmos that are designed to attach to your dog's collar, so if Spot goes running off you can find him again. Both devices use GPS to locate themselves and cellular networks to transmit their location to a central service, allowing subscribers to view the locations on Web maps.

The Zoombak GPS unit is not quite as tiny as it appears here, since the guy who was holding this device has monster hands.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

First up: the Zoombak Advanced GPS Dog Locator costs $199 plus $15 a month for service. It's got a five-day battery and lets you spot Spot on a full-sized Web map, should you need to find him. Of course, if your dog is missing and you locate him on the Web from your PC at home, he's not likely to still be where the Web said he was when you get there. So Zoombak also has a voice-based service that will direct you to the GPS receiver's location when you need it.

I posited that you could use Zoombak with people, too, but the exec I was talking to looked at me in horror, imagining, I think, me locking a location collar around my wife or child. Silly man. I was just thinking about putting the device in a kid's backpack or something.

Zoombak also makes a car version that taps into the car's power and can be hidden somewhere. You can use the Zoombak site to see where the car is at any time, or you can "geofence" the car, alerting you if it leaves town, for example. Or telling you when the child you've lent it to finally gets home. Or doesn't.

The sealed Pocketfinder unit, resting on its inductive charging cradle.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

The Zoombak's big advantage is that it's shipping now, but an upcoming competitor looks like a better deal. The Pocketfinder is a touch smaller, charges by induction (is sealed and waterproof), and will cost less: $129 and "less than" $15 a month when it ships in March. The company claims a seven-day battery life.

The Pocketfinder spokespeople imagine the device being put on the keychains of kids and senior citizens, and maybe even in luggage. I love that last idea. There is no car version yet.

Pocketfinder will have a mobile Web site instead of a voice service for geolocating registered devices when you're on the run.

The monthly fees on these products need to come down, but the concept of a location tag that you can attach to your most precious assets is pretty cool. It's also terrifying from a privacy perspective. I don't need to spell out why.

So...inviting...

(Credit: Michelle Thatcher/CNET)

In the midst of the CES craziness, I often fantasize about returning home and spending an entire day in bed, recovering. If only I could stage my recovery in the Starry Night Sleep Technology Bed from Leggett & Platt; not only is it oh-so-comfortable, but it's loaded with enough technology to make even a wide-awake geek drool.

First, there are multiple features designed to help you sleep better--which, after all, is the main point. The bed is divided into two independently adjustable sections, and in addition to setting head and foot angle, each occupant can control the bed temperature, thus avoiding night chills and sweats. When the vibration sensors in the head of the bed detect snoring, it will automatically lift your head to a seven-degree angle to open up your air passageways, then return to the original position when the snoring subsides. A diagnostic feature can monitor your body movement and breathing patterns for 30 days, then give tips on sleeping better. And frankly, it's comfortable: During my (all-too-brief) test drive, the bed was both soft and supportive.

I was thinking it couldn't get any better, but then it got ridiculous. The company rep hit a button on a remote and four cylinders ascended from each corner of the bed. It was the surround-sound system, with four eight-inch subwoofers and an audiophile ribbon tweeter. Another button revealed a 1080p headboard projector that lets you project movies onto your bedroom wall. There's even a built-in iPod docking station.

The whole thing runs courtesy of Windows Media Center, a ridiculous 1.5 terabytes of disc storage (handy for the DVR capability), and 4GB of RAM, all embedded in the suede-covered headboard.

With all those great features, you could spend your life almost entirely in bed. And you might have to: the Starry Night Sleep Technology Bed will cost between $20,000 and $50,000, or roughly the down payment on a house. If that sounds dreamy to you, look for it in 2009. Meanwhile, check out CNET TV for video of the bed in action.

MPH In-band Mobile DTV

(Credit: MPH Mobile DTV)

Even though we as a country still haven't quite caught on to the idea of ubiquitous mobile television, it appears that LG is stepping ahead anyway in its introduction of yet another standard for mobile TV. Called MPH, or Mobile Pedestrian Handheld, this standard utilizes bandwidth from the existing ATSC signal to broadcast live television to an MPH-compatible product, be it a cell phone, a laptop, or an in-car navigation system.

This sets it apart from other mobile TV standards right now -- both Qualcomm's MediaFLO (which is behind Verizon's V Cast TV) and DVB-H utilize their own frequencies and thus require their own infrastructure. LG hopes that the MPH standard's usage of the traditional ATSC signal will cost less to implement, with more coverage as a result.

A modified LG VX9400 using MPH mobile DTV

(Credit: MPH Mobile DTV)

The MPH in-band system was developed by LG, Zenith, and Harris, and it works like this: A local broadcaster will broadcast a live TV feed via their existing 6 Mhz, 19.39 megabit per second network through an MPH exciter, which is then received via an MPH-compatible device. LG had a few prototype devices up for display here at CES; a modified LG VX9400 (which is also compatible with Verizon's V Cast TV that uses the aforementioned MediaFLO standard), a handheld 4-inch widescreen display, a USB dongle to be used with a laptop, plus a Kenwood in-car receiver. The MPH standard can also transmit up to 140 miles per hour, which fits right into the in-car entertainment system.

LG handheld television with MPH Mobile DTV

(Credit: MPH Mobile DTV)

Right now, LG says that they're conducting trials of the MPH system in limited markets like Las Vegas, Chicago, and Washington D.C. They're definitely pushing this more for local stations, so that they can broadcast time sensitive content like news, weather, and sports. They're currently in talks with over 800 stations nationwide, and hope to launch a full product by early 2009.