Design

CES: The guys who decide what gets on the shelves, and yes, they're guys.

So what do the other fellow geeks at CES look like? Predominantly youngish to middle-aged male (white or Asian), blazer and jeans, and almost certainly on a cell phone. Vendors at the CES have certainly kept that in mind. Whether its attractive women wandering the floor (I still have no idea what the cheerleaders were selling), sports stars opining on this year's Superbowl at Samsung (Randall Cunningham), or cars galore (everywhere you look), vendors know their market, but in what sense? Of course there are women attendees here, and of course these decision-makers will sift through market data and … Read more

Couture your phone: If you can't win them over with functionality, use glamour

Cell phone/PDAs or other iterations of what you want to call the convergence of handheld devices are featured prominently at the Consumer Electronics Show, no doubt. Whether these devices from Motorola or Samsung overtly claim to be iPhone killers is beside the point. The point is that most devices feature cleaner user interfaces and better bundles of applications that access more and more content. Nearly all of these gadgets are touch-based. Nearly all the devices, though, still don't come close in terms of usability and elegance to the iPhone's user interface. You can check out all the … Read more

Casio's amazing 60fps digicam

I checked out Casio's new $1,000 Exilim Pro EX-F1 that can shoot bursts of up to an amazing 60 frames per second. That's at it's full 6 megapixel resolution. You'll never miss little Johnny's first steps again.

They've done a really nice job with the interface. The bursts are shown as stacks of photos so you're not trying to scroll through 60 almost identical images when in thumbnail mode. Once looking at a burst, you can use the big thumbwheel on the back to job back and forth. It's great. It … Read more

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:

2008 CES: R2-D2's Reincarnation as a projector or webcam

Hardly a Geek could help but smile at the R2-D2 digital projector from Nikko. The latest incarnation of the licensed R2 franchise is functional: The large version of R2 hooks up with any standard media, but doesn't do High-Def nor does it really save you from the evil galactic empire as its made of shiny plastic and the Millennium Falcon that comes with it only doubles as a remote control. A lightsaber you want, it is, then your option is to get the smaller version of R2 that is actually a webcam and the lightsaber is a remote for … Read more

The desk lamp of the moment: Koncept

The Koncept folks, who've already won design-of-the-year accolades, launched further designs of the LED-based desk and floor lamps at 8 to 9 watts. Banks and rows of LEDs provide light instead of compact fluorescent, incandescent, or halogen bulbs.

I'm not sure how they look away from the convention hall, but the fact that you can grab onto them without burning yourself, and the fact that they were right near the entrance got my attention.

Not burning yourself may be a key thing if you've happened to fall asleep at your desk and wake up, for example. It'… Read more

Found at CES: ... a sewing machine?

Sure there are flashy tvs, phones that vie for the iPhone's status, more flat screens than you can shake a stick at, but at today's CES sneak-peak, I noticed some of the more random things at CES 2008 that caught my attention:

Juice This!

Duracell, battery manufacturer galore, is making plugging in easier with these plug-in-able packs. Maybe it's me, but with brown-outs, black-outs and white-outs lately, it may be worthwhile to think about.

Sew This!

Maybe it's Project Runway's fault, but I even saw Brother sewing machines at CES. Maybe they're Wi-Fi enabled … Read more

Shenzhen Shazam!!!

As a fellow CNET blogger found, security at the CES shooed us looky-loos away before we had time to poke around too much. There are, however, some observations to be gleaned from today's teasers. We'll all be treated with gadget after gadget starting tomorrow: I've seen devices like HDTV's that massage your back while it makes you a sandwich (no, not really), phones deaf people (yes, really), toys galore (lead-free let's hope) to name a few. But for now, out of the 700+ exhibitors, about 80+ are from, or list Shenzhen in their company's … Read more

Pre-CES: Virgin America - where else can your seat be rebooted?

On the way to the CES I took Virgin America, the new airline venture from Virgin, and had the bizarre experience of having my seat re-booted, no, not rebooked, but re-booted because the remote control unit for my seat wasn't working.

How apt, I thought, that on the way to the geekiest, techiest place on Earth (at least for the next few days), that the plane carrying me there featured touchscreen entertainment center controls for on-demand food, music videos, tv, and mp3s.

The whole experience was, like most products these days getting our attention, was slick. The plane's … Read more