January 4, 2006
From digital parlour games to night-vision nanny spy cams, Canadian products are aiming to make their mark this week at North America's largest trade show for home and personal gadgetry, the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
A record-setting 2,500 exhibitors and 130,000 industry executives, analysts and journalists will be attending the show, where heavy hitters from Microsoft to Google, HP and Intel, are pitching their vision for an industry worth $126 billion U.S. in annual global sales.
For Canadian companies, it's both a launch pad for new products and an opportunity to keep an eye on the competition.
"This is a huge opportunity for us to go and say, ‘we have something that's different and unique to the gaming business,’ " said Jeff Hurst, vice-president of sales and marketing for ZAP It Games, a two-year-old game company based in Mississauga, Ont.
ZAP It's Game Wave (www.zapitgames.com) is a digital reinvention of the 20th century-style parlour game. Instead of the traditional board with game pieces and dice, players each grab one of four handheld video remote controls and answer a series of trivia questions from a digital console hooked up to a standard DVD player. Trivia clues are displayed on the screen, with music and video clips. Test-marketed in the Toronto area during the Christmas and Hannukah rush, Game Wave has sold a respectable 600 copies so far. At CES, it'll be launched in the U.S. with a suite of new trivia games, including blackjack, a Scrabble-style word game called Letter Zap, and a new Bible Trivia game. Canadians can expect to buy Game Wave in stores here by spring.
SVAT Electronics (www. svat.com), of Niagara Falls, Ont., is previewing several home video surveillance cameras at the show, including its 5150 Baby Monitor featuring a tiltable 3.8-centimetre screen and night vision. Eight infrared LED lights illuminate baby in the darkness. A voice activation function switches the camera on whenever she coos, and sounds an alarm when her cries reach a pre-set level.
A similar device, the GX5400 system, doesn't just monitor babies -- it's there to watch over their nanny as well. The system holds a flash memory card and connects up to four cameras at a time. Anxious parents can log in to the cameras via their individual Internet IP addresses, and record images appearing onscreen remotely to make sure the baby is safe while they're away.
Both surveillance devices will be launched sometime this year across North America. The company sells through a factory outlet in Niagara Falls, which opened last October, and online through various e-tailers.
From Splitfish Gameware Inc. (www.splitfish.com), a two-year-old Edmonton company, come two intriguing video game accessories. The first is the Dual FX, an L-type, laser-guided joystick to be launched North America-wide at the end of January, which uses a built-in laser pointer on screen to shoot at characters or move them around the game.
It's described as "a much cooler (video gaming) experience for the kids, but every mother's nightmare, I hate to say," said Splitfish CEO Cisco Schipperheijn. And in December, the company launched a Stereoscopic 3D adapter for the Sony Playstation 2, which converts any two-dimensional game into 3D.
For home office workers tired of making cell phone calls that cut out in the middle of a conversation, there's the ZEN, from Ottawa-based Spotwave Wireless Inc. (www.spotwave.com). Zen is a "repeater" – a device that amplifies the strength and reliability of a cellular signal coming into the home or office, in a range of up to 2,500 square feet.
The system, a micro-cable and antenna affair that will retail for $399 U.S. when it launches in North American stores this spring, monitors the indoor signal, and quickens the pace that emails can be sent or received by PDA.
