ces - Gadgets

CES oddness

You never know what you're going to find at CES. At the Lasonic booth, it's like the 80's never ended! At least they don't seem to be taking themselves too seriously: The Intel booth is bathed in deep blue light and is rather 2001: A Space Odessey looking. But regardless of how funny you might look, these sphere seats are mighty tempting after being on your feet all day... Advertising is on every conceivable surface. Here's a series of postered plastered between the up and down escalators:

Ricavision's Vave 100 melds Windows SideShow and universal remote control

We checked in with Ricavision earlier today and got to see its new Vave 100 Windows SideShow Universal Remote Control in person. As the name suggests, this slick-looking device combines Windows SideShow capability with a universal remote control. Via both Bluetooth and infrared, the Vave 100 is suited to driving both home-theater PCs as well as standard home entertainment hardware. Ricavision speculates the price will come in around $350 (expensive, but cheaper than the Logitech Harmony 1000), and it targets early Q2 of this year for availability.

The remote comes with a basic charging station/receiver, but Zune owners (all … Read more

SlingCatcher gets a release date, sort of

LAS VEGAS--A lot has happened since we first saw Sling Media's SlingCatcher set-top box at CES 2007. Two new Slingboxes have debuted, as well as a handful of product updates from the company. Oh, and of course, the company was purchased by EchoStar for $380 million.

Watch the SlingCatcher video on CNET TV.

But this is the year, the company insists, that the long-awaited product will indeed be on sale. No specific date has been set, but the word is sometime in the second quarter. Though it originally planned to have it out in time for holiday sales, "… Read more

Scoping out the micro world

They're not the highest tech at the show, nor are they the easiest to find--I tripped over a couple in the furthest reaches of the exhibits--but I find myself intrigued by a couple of handheld digital microscopes I encountered while killing time before a meeting. These gadgets connect to your system via USB and allow you to capture megazoomed (albeit not terribly high-resolution) closeups of life's minutiae.

The first, from well-known Celestron, seems like it'd be a great gift for the child prodigies in your life. Reasonably priced at $139.95, the Handheld Digital Microscope can record … Read more

Seagate, Toshiba, Netgear tout consumer storage

Innumerable technology companies are trying to grab their share of consumer gadget spending, and storage makers are no exception. On Monday, Seagate, Toshiba, and Netgear all unveiled new products for the market at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

One of the bolder products, in my opinion, is from Netgear, which moved its ReadyNAS line, acquired from start-up InFrant, more in the consumer direction with the introduction of the ReadyNAS Duo 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

These systems attach to computers over a local network rather than a USB, Firewire, or eSATA port, meaning that multiple … Read more