The Latest Things.

This article provides an account of the latest technology and products that were featured at the Cellular Telephone and Internet Association's fall show in San Francisco, California, in 2004. The show was held in San Francisco's Moscone West Convention center. Moscone West is a big glass building, and the California sun was high and bright and shining into the press room. Laptops could barely keep up with the illumination, and one could see journalists squinting into their machines everywhere. Hewlett-Packard rolled out some nice Bluetooth devices, including the first pair of headphones and a nice little keyboard for use with Bluetoothed iPaqs. It is a simple layout which folds over, but has one of the best feels that can be seen in a portable keyboard. Parrot Inc., a European Bluetooth developer, announced the launch of their hands-free and installation-free car kit. The DriveBlue could not be simpler to install, since one just plugs it into a cigarette lighter outlet and it is ready to go, or to go with to another car. The other trend that is clearly taking off is the convergence of cell phone and personal digital assistants. The maturing of both mini-keyboard devices and post Generation Y users means that the time is right for the converged devices to take off.