CES 2008's Most Notable Innovations

The Consumer Electronics Show is going on right now in Las Vegas and cell phone companies and gizmo makers struggle to impress you, the consumer, with new features. Here are some of the most notable ones I've spotted so far:

Receive A Text Message From Your Dog... If You Can Afford It!
The economics of fear are ever-evolving. Now even dogs can have a cell phone: The bone-shaped Zoombak device attaches to your dog's collar and sends you a text message when she goes out of a certain zone, with her GPS position. But as always with pet-related gizmos, they know you love your dog so the price is hefty: $199 for the device and $14.99 per month for the service plan. Crazy, isn't it? But rejoice, since for that much, you will have the jaw-dropping excitement of tracking your dog in real time as she scours the streets.

In-phone Video Editing
The Motorola Z10 features in-phone video editing: Add a soundtrack and text to your videos right on your cell phone or go as far as cutting and inserting videos or images, just like a professional video editor. You can even send the final cut directly to Youtube.

Shake Control
The Sony Ericsson W760 has an accelerometer (just like the iPhone) but it doesn't limit itself to switching the display from landscape to portrait. Moving it up and down will adjust the volume accordingly and shaking it sideways while pressing the Walkman key will skip to the next song. You can even control games by shaking it but at the Sony Ericsson booth at the CES, the demo's battery died just as they were about to show me that feature.

Gesture Control: Wave At Your Phone
The Sony Ericsson Z555 lets you mute ringtones or snooze the wake up alarm (among other things) by waving your hand two times in front of the camera.

Morphing keypad:
The Motorola ROKR E8 is the latest Motorola music phone. It features 2GB of built-in memory but also a "morphing keypad", which is in
fact a touch-sensitive flat keypad that only shows the keys you need for what you are doing. Music playback brings up music controls and camera
use, zoom in and out controls among others.

via about