CeBIT Australia 2013 report

Our Senior Technology Correspondent Ian D. filed this report on his visit to CeBIT Australia 2013 this week.

I think it might have been a bit larger than last time I visited. There were lots of booths touting fairly nebulous services. Perhaps less lycra in than in previous years. Things that caught my eye:

There were three booths selling 3D printers (the groundswell is definitely building).

www.totaldatarecall.com.au offers a no-recover-no-pay data recovery service. They can open your drive in a clean room and recover data from failed heads, failed bearings, dead controllers, etc. They can also recover from flash drives by opening it up and pulling the flash chip off. It’s the sort of service you hope you’ll never need, but good to know it exists locally.

This booth selling a compression product that not only saves the planet but also whitens your teeth (why is it that compression tends to bring out people who over-promise?)

CSIRO was displaying some interesting little nicknacks, including this expression recogniser/replicator software which they have made available open source (http://www.csiro.au/en/Outcomes/ICT-and-Services/People-and-businesses/Smart-Vision-System.aspx). It’s pretty cool and works surprisingly well no matter how you screw your face into different contortions. They reckon it could be used for pain recognition in hospitals, but its cool even without a use. The big animation studios use this sort of motion capture but use multiple cameras and reflective spots, etc. This was just running from a laptop webcam. It’s available as open source and they’re encouraging developers to do stuff with it.

Liquipel has been in the press for a while, but it was impressive to see it in the flesh. They reckon $49.95 to treat a mobile phone, and warranty is not affected because they don’t open the case.

The biggest buzz however, and the longest queue, was for free T shirts. At least, I think it was the T shirts they were interested in.

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