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The Gizmodo kids pulled a good stunt at CES: they fired TV-B-Gone remotes at walls of shiny new monitors on display and during press conferences, much to the displeasure of booth staffers.

No colors anymore.

(Credit: Gizmodo)

The video is funny. The ramifications of prank will not be. The CES organizers only grudgingly gave bloggers press credentials to the conference, and even then kept them segregated into a working lounge that was a step down in amenity and luxury from the "press" lounge and work area. This prank will not endear the blogging class to either the CEA, which produces CES, or the companies that paid dearly for the right to occupy CES floorspace and show off their products.

I would not be surprised to see Gizmodo banned from the show and possibly sued by either the CEA or the companies its bloggers harassed. For journalists (in my mind, all bloggers are journalists), legal and constitutional protection does not extend to mischief or sabotage. Publishing news reports, opinion, and satire are protected acts. Physical interference is not.

I asked Gizmodo publisher Nick Denton if he was going to fire the Gizmodo crew for their prank. "No," is all he said in an instant message. He did not reply to followup questions.

Gizmodo added this apology after the post first ran, but I don't think it will mollify the victims.

It was too much fun, but watching this video, we realize it probably made some people's jobs harder, and I don't agree with that (Especially Motorola). We're sorry.

There are other likely outcomes of the prank. From now on, no one with an infrared-controlled device at a tradeshow is going to leave it exposed. A few tabs of black electrical tape will thwart TV-B-Gones. Beyond that, as our security expert Robert Vamosi said about this incident, expect TV manufacturers to think seriously about building encryption into their remote controls.

LAS VEGAS--Pioneer's latest plasma prototype: you could even say it glows.

The high-end audio and video company is showing off two new Kuro concept TVs at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that push the barriers of thin and light, the company says. The Extreme Contrast TV gets to absolute black, says Pioneer. No light leaks out from the back of the TV.

That's because there is no backlight. Chemicals embedded in the panel emit the light to illuminate the images. Thus, when there is no signal, no light gets generated and absolute black, created by a complete absence of light, occurs. ("Kuro" in Japanese, by the way means "deep, penetrating black." I love the idea that there's a name for the concept.)

Sony's OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs work in the same way but the two technologies are different. Pioneer's is based around plasma technology. Sony's OLED TV is already out, but it's expensive. Pioneer's may come out in a few years and will no doubt cost a lot. While Extreme Contrast will improve plasma performance, it's a wait-and-see to as to whether it can help boost the format.

Pioneer's thin Kuro TV measures less than an inch thick.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos )

The demonstration was pretty impressive. When the lights go out in the room, any tone difference between the TV panel and the bezel disappear. As a result, images on the TV almost seem 3D. The two giant goldfish in one segment of the demo? It looked like they were floating on air. I thought they were going to rip my throat out.

The company also showed off a Kuro concept with a 9 millimeter-thick panel. The whole TV measures less than an inch thick. It also weighs 41 pounds, although it has a 50-inch diagonal screen.

Pioneer launched the Kuro program last year at CES. The concepts shown off last year actually made it to market later in 2007.

LAS VEGAS--At Lenovo's press dinner the other night there was an unidentified handheld on display, sitting casually next to the three new consumer-friendly IdeaPad laptops the company had come to Las Vegas to push.

(Credit: Lenovo)

(Credit: Lenovo)

No one--not even the PR people for Lenovo--could give me specific details. All they could say was that it is only available in China, the company's home market. This video gives a bit more detail, including that it runs Linux and uses a new 45-nanometer chip from Intel.

From what I saw, it had a lot of nice features, even if it was a bit hefty: GPS, music, Web browsing, a camera, plus several-layer-deep menus I didn't have time to delve into.

No word on whether it's something planned for the North American market any time soon.

The Consumer Electronics Show is on in full force in Las Vegas. Here are just some of Tuesday's highlights from the giant gadget show. For CNET's complete coverage, click here.

Green is in at CES--Lots of companies here are touting green design and environmental thinking, though in some cases it seemed more sloganeering than anything very deep.

Ion introduces LP-to-CD ripper--The LP2CD includes an all-metal platter, an LCD display, a USB connection, a switchable line/phono audio output, and a front-loading CD player and recorder.

FlyTunes makes your iPhone into an Internet radio--Service displays a curated list of Internet radio stations, and, over Wi-Fi, streams and records the stations you listen to.

Yoggie launches firewall on a USB stick--The Gatekeeper products scan for viruses, spam, and other threats, as well as running a bidirectional firewall.

Samsung streams video and music to your HDTV--Samsung's Home Digital Media Adapter connects to select 2008 Samsung HDTVs and allows you to stream music, movies and photos from networked PCs and directly from the Internet.

'Re-Mission' is a video game with a vital purpose--HopeLab is a nonprofit that creates innovative products with a health-improvement target goal, like video game "Re-Mission," which has been shown to improve the attitude and healthy behaviors of teens with cancer.

This cabbie's techier than you--Beyond Binary gets driven around by a gadget hound who would make the folks on the show floor proud. He has 20,000 songs on his iPod, thousands of dollars worth of digital camera gear and a watch that acts as a TV remote control.

(Credit: Shuttle)

LAS VEGAS--Asus' Eee PC and Everex's CloudBook aren't the only ones pushing down the price of affordable, open-source PCs.

Shuttle introduced its $199 KPC Linux PC here on Tuesday. The company didn't have it on display on the actual floor of the convention halls here at the Consumer Electronics Show (too late did I find out you had to zip over to a private suite at the Bellagio for a look-see), but booth representatives were happy to talk details. "It's meant for simple tasks," said sales rep James Wonpu.

It'll have an Intel Celeron processor, a 945GC chipset, 512MB of memory and either a 60GB or 80GB hard drive. What it won't have: an optical drive or a PCI Express slot. Despite that, it's a pretty good-looking box, and comes in red, blue, white, and black, each with a different icon stamped on the front.

(Credit: Shuttle)

Shuttle also says there will be a $99 bare-bones version of the KPC. That version will have the option of upgrading to a Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory. Both will be available for purchase near the end of the first quarter.

At first glance, Re-Mission comes across as a stylishly produced, anime-influenced video game. But the targets in question are cancer cells, which the character Roxxi the nanobot blasts with the Chemoblaster, the Radiation Gun, and the Antibiotic Rocket.

Re-Mission is specifically designed as a health improvement intervention for teens and young adults who have cancer. Game producers at HopeLab start with a desired health outcome, and then reverse engineer a game that encourages positive behaviors, adding motivation and fun into something as scary as a kid's battle against cancer.

Re-Mission helps teens fight cancer

HopeLab Vice President Ellen LaPointe spoke at the Sandbox Summit conference on Tuesday, and I was amazed to learn that the game producers actually test the effectiveness of their games through controlled clinical research studies. HopeLab followed 374 kids with cancer, at 34 hospitals in several countries, playing the game in English, Spanish, and French. The kids who played Re-Mission showed measurable improvements in their attitude (sense of self-efficacy) and healthy behavior (taking medications as prescribed).

It's interesting to see a nonprofit with a health-improvement mission embrace video games in this new way. It is crucial that Re-Mission looks as well-designed as any game out there on the market. Deborah Manchester of the kids' science Web site Zula, another panelist at the Sandbox Summit, said that one pitfall of educational media is that we can get stuck in a rut trying to put the same boring content into a digital format. Re-Mission shows what can be accomplished when designers break out of that box to create a product based on what kids and teens really enjoy playing.

What's next for HopeLab? Ruckus Nation, whose underlying goal is to look for new solutions to childhood obesity. Students from all over the world entered Ruckus Nation's online competition for new product designs that are cool and fun enough to get kids moving.

HopeLabs will support the development and testing of winning products, providing a real opportunity for kids to not only win a contest, but to see their innovative ideas come to life.

LAS VEGAS--After giving what we would describe as a visionary and even entertaining keynote address at CES on Monday, Intel CEO Paul Otellini carved out some time to answer questions from a small group of reporters. When it comes to tech CEOs, Otellini has been somewhere between Steve Ballmer and Michael Dell on the openness scale, though definitely much closer to Ballmer. So it was a little surprising that when we asked a simple question about Vista, Otellini pleaded the Fifth.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini makes a point with reporters at CES in Las Vegas.

(Credit: Corrine Schulze/CNET News.com)

Noting that Bill Gates had said during his Monday keynote speech that there are now 100 million people using Vista, we wanted to know whether Intel considers Vista a success in driving PC upgrades--or was 100 million installs simply a reflection of the market's growth rate? In other words, after five years in development, was Vista having any impact on moving hardware, and by extension Intel processors?

Before the question could even be finished, Otellini shook his head and said, "no," he was not getting into any discussion about Vista.

We considered that not just odd, given Otellini's history of taking on all questions, but a sign that Intel is seriously displeased with Vista. If that weren't true, why couldn't the CEO muster even a lukewarm response like, "We certainly think Vista a superior OS, but after five years in development we would have hoped it had more of an impact on creating a demand for PC upgrades."

We followed up by asking if he preferred Apple's approach to OS development--rolling out an upgrade every 18 months or so--versus Microsoft's multiyear process. Otellini responded that he had heard that Gates said a day earlier that there could be one more monolithic Windows upgrade. "If that's true," Otellini paused before continuing, "I would rather have them move a lot faster and keep up with silicon technology."

On other topics:

Apple: Asked straight up which chip would be in the lightweight laptop Apple is rumored to unveiling next week at Macworld, Otellini said, "I've learned that you don't talk about Apple." Or Vista? we kidded. "Or Vista."

The UMPC: Otellini defended the ultramobile PC, a small form factor PC that has sold in modest amounts. He described the UMPC as "still evolving" and said it's too early to call it a flop. Noting the early days of the cell phone--bulky and expensive devices with limited functionality that are now small, ubiquitous, and powerful--he said, "You would not declare the cell phone a failure in year two."

The medical market: The medical industry "is the least penetrated by IT in the world," which is "why it's so inefficient." He added that that will change when costs reach a "crisis" point.

On Gates stepping aside at Microsoft: "I envy the fact that he doesn't have to do another keynote." He added that Gates "set the standard" for the industry. "Do I miss Bill from a business relationship? Yeah, I've known Bill for years."

The Consumer Electronics Show is on in full force in Las Vegas. Here are just some of Tuesday's highlights from the giant gadget show. For CNET's complete coverage, click here.

Best of CES nominees are in--CNET editors have announced the 30 finalists for Best of CES 2008. Vote your fave for the People's Voice Award.

Blu-ray player for less than $300--The major gripe against Blu-ray has always been that the hardware is just too expensive. Funai is looking to fill this gap.

Nokia goes green with 3110--New handset is made from 50 percent renewable bio-materials, and its charger uses 95 percent less power than required by Energy Star standards.

Build your own gadget--The Bug Labs platform, described as "the Lego of gadgets" by Webware's Rafe Needleman, has CNET editors excited.

The end of the cable set-top box?--Comcast CEO Brian Roberts predicts that by year's end, virtually the entire cable industry will support an "open cable" standard that would render the bulky boxes moot.

Luxury trip for Panasonic's 150-inch plasma--How do you bring giant plasma televisions from Japan to the U.S.? Why, one plane at a time, of course.

Seagate CEO: Blu-ray won battle, lost war--The winner in the Blu-ray and HD DVD war is the hard drive, according to Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate Technology.

CIA technology will map your face--Using technology from a CIA-funded project at the University of California, BigStage creates a model of anyone's head by using just three photos.

Azentek builds a PC for your car--Two car computers use Windows Vista overlaid with a custom automotive interface, which provides easy access to such functions as navigation or audio playback.

LAS VEGAS--This PC is made out of corn. And no, you cannot eat it.

It's actually the third generation of the Biblo PC from Fujitsu, which showed off the laptop at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The inside is a normal PC, but the outside casing is made out of material that's 50 percent plant-based materials, and 50 percent regular plastics. To make it, they take regular ears of corn, process it down to corn starch, and turn that into a polymer alloy. Fujitsu says it cuts down on carbon dioxide emissions during the manufacturing process by 15 percent. Unfortunately, the PCs are only on sale in Japan.

The casing of this Fujitsu PC is made half out of corn-based bio-materials and half out of traditional plastic. Fujitsu says it cuts down on carbon dioxide released during manufacturing by 15 percent.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

Though it's biodegradable on the outside, on the inside, it's a normal PC. Fujitsu sells the corn-based PC for the same price as a regular plastic-encased PC, despite a more expensive manufacturing process.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

What's even more interesting is that Fujitsu sells the corn-based PC for the same price as a regular plastic-encased PC, despite a more expensive manufacturing process. The model pictured here is pretty full-featured, so the equivalent price is about $2,000.

Fujitsu is currently considering whether to release a corn-based PC here in the U.S., according to the senior vice president of marketing for Fujitsu, Ryan McCormack. But it's still up in the air.

Even if it did come here, it wouldn't have to be made out of corn to achieve the same results. According to McCormack, potatoes and castor oil offer the same energy-saving benefits as corn.