It may just be coincidence that iRobot, developer of the spook-the-dog Roomba robotic vacuum and its floor-washing, gutter-clearing, and pool-cleaning cousins, hasn't introduced a brand-new category of consumer robot since 2008. The Bedford, Mass., company has a new surveillance robot out for the military this year, plus a next-generation Roomba and a reinvented floor-washing Scooba.
But it's clear that since the iPhone arrived in 2007, app development has exerted a gravitational pull on consumers, creators, and investors. Even iRobot is getting involved, with a beta version of a robotic platform, called Ava, that can be married with - what else? - a tablet. Thanks to Ava, some apps will eventually enjoy a new kind of mobility.
Still, it can be reassuring to shift the spotlight and find plenty of fascinating inventions beyond the world of smartphones and tablets. Here are a few I found while exploring electronics aisles, online and off. They may not be the newest new things, but they are worthy of attention:
The Livescribe smartpen. Livescribe Pulse and Echo "smartpens" marry the most prosaic of products, the ballpoint pen, with built-in microprocessors and audio technology. The result is a pen, first introduced three years ago, that records what you write, mapping every squiggle, curlicue, and drawing, while recording what you hear.
The pitch is "never miss a word." Take notes in a special Livescribe notebook, and you can re-create or share them via what Livescribe calls a "pencast," or return instantly to the right place in the audio recording. With a third-party app, you can even convert your handwritten notes into searchable text files.
