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Hanover, Germany. The world’s biggest high-tech fair kicked off on Tuesday with a focus on “smart” gadgets as well as “Avatar”-inspired 3-D products to make consumers’ lives easier — and more fun.

Germany’s CeBIT, traditionally a showcase for computing and software companies to unveil their latest designs, is evolving into more of a consumer-driven event, organizers said, as crisis-hit information technology companies stay away.

Exhibitor numbers dropped by 3 percent this year, with 4,157 companies from 68 countries having stands at the vast center in northern Germany. At the height of the dot-com boom, more than 8,000 companies set up at the CeBIT.

Google and online bookseller Amazon are attending for the first time along with regulars such as IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Vodafone, Fujitsu and Ericsson.

“Connected Worlds” is the theme of this year’s fair, with companies aiming to exhibit energy- and labor-saving devices that use wireless technology.

Microsoft will unveil the so-called “smart” classroom, where real schoolchildren will take classes with multi-touch whiteboards.

But the CeBIT is not all work and no play. Inspired by the success of James Cameron’s 3-D sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar,” this year’s fair is being seen very much through 3-D glasses, with a host of new technologies exhibited.

The fair will also have a musical bent, with “CeBIT Sounds” presenting new products that use cutting-edge technology for the music industry, currently grappling with the influence of the Internet on the trade.

Among the mind-blowing gadgets at the CeBIT’s “future park” is a “silent sound” device that measures the movements of the lips and transforms them into sound.

The technology could help people who have lost their voices due to a larynx disorder, allow people to make silent phone calls without disturbing others in the office — or the train — and speak without risk of being overheard.



Agence France-Presse