Awards, trends and CeBIT highlights

CeBIT is not just the biggest marketplace for solutions from the digital world. It is also - once again - the world's biggest marketplace for innovations. Exhibiting companies are coming to Hannover with a vast array of new products to show. The 'CeBIT PreView', staged to highlight some of these innovations for the benefit of journalists, gives a foretaste of what to expect at this year's show.

(Omikron Data Quality GmbH, Pforzheim, H4 Stand G58)

Omikron Data Quality GmbH is already well known as a search engine specialist. Its error-tolerant product search engine 'FACT Finder' is a market leader in its field, and is used by companies such as Quelle, Douglas, Neckermann and more than 200 other online shops.

At this year's CeBIT the small company based in Pforzheim will be presenting a technology that significantly simplifies and speeds up the search process. The system is designed to search across all data fields. Even if the customer doesn't know exactly how a name or term is spelt, a phonetic approximation will suffice for the search engine to find the item in a matter of seconds.

The new software can also compare data entries in Arabic and Chinese, for example - thus opening up the possibility of collating all data worldwide. This intelligent search engine could also be available for Outlook applications in time for CeBIT.

(Panasonic, H1 Stand C61)

The Japanese electronics giant Panasonic, which last year achieved the strongest growth in the German market for digital cameras, is launching a whole series of new cameras and camcorders at CeBIT 2007. Coming to Hannover is the new Lumix DMC-FX30, for example, which is said to be 'the world's slimmest digital camera with a 28 mm wide-angle lens'.

Equipped with a 7.2 megapixel CCD sensor, 27 MB of onboard memory, OIS image stabilizer and the Venus Engine III image processor, the camera's Intelligent ISO Control (IIC) technology offers additional safeguards against blurred images caused by movement of the subject. The elegant slimline model is also compatible with the new generation of SD cards (SDHC).

To enable amateur film makers to shoot their own HD film material worthy of their HD-ready televisions and home cinema components, Panasonic has launched into the high-definition age with its new camcorder models HDC-SD1 and HDC-DX1, which support the new AVCHD standard.

The high-resolution images are saved directly onto 8 cm DVDs. And both models deliver cinema-quality sound to match the high-definition picture quality. During filming, five built-in microphones record ambient sounds in 5.1-Channel Surround Sound. So now viewers can watch a family holiday video and feel that they are really there - at the heart of the action.

At the 'CeBIT PreView' some 300 journalists from Germany and other European countries were asked to nominate the key high-tech trends for the year ahead. 14.6 per cent (last year: 22.6 per cent) chose high-definition or HD image technology and the trend towards ever-larger flatscreen displays (LCD and plasma).

This was closely followed in the voting by 'convergence and home networking', with 13.3 per cent of the vote (up from 5th place last year/9 per cent). Internet television (IPTV) with its many new possibilities ranked in third place, with 11.9 per cent of the vote (up from 8th place last year/4.7 per cent).

In 2006 the subject of 'mobile broadband solutions' was not even in the Top Ten. This year it made fourth place, with 9.9 per cent of the vote. If one combines the votes for all themes with a mobile component - mobile computing, network convergence, the merging of fixed-line and mobile networks, plus mobile services of various kinds - the resulting figure adds up to a third of all the votes cast. This shows how important for the economy and for society our journalists consider 'mobility' in the broadest sense to be.

In an exciting head-to-head race a group of 300 journalists at the 'CeBIT PreView' chose the money-saving software from the Hamburg mobile phone start-up 'Cellity' as the winner of the first-ever 'PreView Award'.

The second place in the 'Innovations of CeBIT 2007' went to the portable hotspot solution from another Hamburg-based company, 4G Systems.

Voted into third place was 'Ameo', a high-specification mobile PDA from T-Mobile, which had its world premiere at the 2007 CeBIT PreView.

More than 20 product innovations due to be rolled out at CeBIT 2007 by global brands such as Intel, Samsung, Toshiba and Vodafone were nominated for the 'PreView Award 2007'. From all these products the journalists picked out those 'which exemplify cutting-edge technology, are genuine innovations, will have a lasting influence on the ICT market, are much sought-after by consumers, and are notable for their outstanding practical utility and ease of use' - as the criteria for the 'PreView Award' put it.

The Award trophy, conceived by the Hamburg designer Nils Martens, represents the 'nerve fibres' of the ICT world in the form of a bundle of data packets of varying lengths

1. Cellity - 'the cellphone cost-cutter' - 14.1 per cent
Cellity AG, Hamburg

2. XS BOX R4v - 'the portable hotspot solution' - 11.8 per cent
4G Systems GmbH, Hamburg

3. Ameo - high-specification mobile PDA - 8.6 per cent
T-Mobile Germany, Bonn

4. Mobile office solution, notebook with integrated UMTS & ConfCam - 8.4 per cent - Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Düsseldorf

5. Notebook PC 'Portege R400' - 8.1 per cent
Toshiba Europe GmbH, Neuss



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