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CES 2008 Roundup: Tuesday
It's the end of Day Two proper at CES, and Team Shiny has fanned out across the various halls to ferret out the most important products (and a fair few fun ones too). The pick of today's posts follow, with all the others after the jump. Right, we're off for some indie-dancing at the Mirage's Revolution bar, if anyone fancies it... read »
CES 2008: Daisy by Intempo - the first portable low-power internet/FM radio
Intempo has launched Daisy, claimed to be the world’s first portable low-power internet /FM radio. read »
CES 2008: The 25 coolest cars at CES
There's an entire hall devoted to in-car stuff at CES, complete with many cars showcasing the exhibitors' kit. If you want detailed specs and information, you'll have to go to a proper motorblog - it's all about the CarPorn photos here. See below for my pick of the coolest 25 motors at the show.
1. (above) For some reason this makes me think of Star Wars. read »
CES 2008: VIDEO OF BILL GATES DANCING AT ROCKAOKE!
Ok, so it's not really Bill Gates. We're not privileged enough to be allowed in on his and Melinda's Guitar Hero sessions, sadly, but last night we wound up in a bar holding a rockaoke night, and this chap looked so much like a younger Bill Gates... read »CES 2008: Jwin/iLuv's JP-141 Starbucks digital photo frame keyrings
I have lived off nothing else but Starbucks for most of CES, due to having no time to eat, and their amazing hot apple and caramel cider drink. This has obviously addled my brain slightly, as when I looked at these JP-141 keyrings from Jwin/iLuv, I was strongly.... read »
CES 2008: 10-in1 Wii sports family pack
From the makers of the Wii boxing gloves comes the 10-in1 sports family pack, containing pretty much all the cheap knock-off Wii accessories you could possibly wish for. Sure, they may not be of particularly stunning quality – as the crazy angle of the official photos makes seems to imply – but just look how many you get in there!
read »CES 2008: Dell debuts monster 30” WQXGA display with DisplayPort
Oh gawd. Just when you think that everyone’s agreed on a set of connectors, you find they’ve been off agreeing something new behind your back. I’ve only just noticed that most PC monitors are connected using DVI now and sort of expected that might shift to HDMI once Blu-ray and HD DVD started appearing on more PCs. Not so apparently. DisplayPort is the future now and has been endorsed by Video Electronics Standards Association as the next standard of digital display interface for broad adoption in PCs, monitors, and projectors.
CES 2008: New DivX and Sony Pictures Television agreement could see Walker, Texas Ranger heading to PS3 and Xbox 360
DivX and Sony Pictures Inc have announced a new agreement that will enable online distribution of Sony Pictures content to DivX certified devices.
CES 2008: The ugliest Bluetooth headset ever, now with noise cancelling technology
I’m on board as far as the noise cancelling technology goes – with the system rapidly commandeering most traditional forms of earphones and headphones, it must only be a matter of time before stereo Bluetooth headsets get the same treatment. We should applaud MOTOR TREND for getting in there first.
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CES 2008: Designer Sleeves shows classy laptop sleeves
Forget boring old black or red laptop sleeves. They're for corporate drones. What you want is a full-colour laptop sleeve with a frog on it. Trust me, you do. Or a tiger. read »
CES 2008: IceRage reveals its pair of “magnificent” mice
IceRage is a company that isn’t shy with its adjectives. Their press kits use word like ‘Fashioneering’, and ‘Magnificent’ – really not bad for a company that makes mice. And the first of these has been christened ‘The Ultimate Pocket Mouse’. What could possibly have earned it this accolade? Well, it certainly tries to pile in as many conceivable mouse functions on to a single object as humanly possible.
CES 2008: Logisys shows off ace neon PC mod
Logisys has a vision. That vision is to turn PCs into spangly neon boxes of joy, through the use of CCFL and LED lighting, as well as transparent casing. read »
CES 2008: Panasonic's two world's largest Plasmas, side by side
We've shown you a video of the 150" Panasonic TV, but how exactly does that compare to last year's 103-incher? Just take a look at what 47" difference makes.
Does anyone else... read »
CES 2008: Trust makes tiny Bluetooth 2.0 USB adapter
And I mean tiny: check it out. No, I don't have giant freakthumbs. Trust International is showing it off at CES. And, er, there isn't much more I can say about it until they release pricing and availability details. But still, innit small, eh? read »
CES 2008: Lachiya's touchable piggy iPod dock wins our hearts
There are too many iPod docks and not enough hours in the day at CES to cover them all, so we'd rather focus on the cool ones. Especially if they're shaped like pigs and come in bright colours. Tech manufacturers, there's a lesson there for next time. read »
CES 2008: Huge thanks to the following companies...
There are a couple of companies out there in this plugged-in world which Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny would just like to raise their foot-long margaritas to, who’ve helped with kitting us out to the max, ensuring our laptops are as light as the free beer served at CES parties, and we won’t turn an embarrassing shade of red when a Gizmodo buy walks past and spies us using a digital camera held together by duct tape. It was an emergency internal operation gone wrong after a seaside accident, I swear!
A huge thanks goes out to these... read »
CES 2008: Punch with some proper Wii boxing gloves
While wandering around the Sands hall at CES today, I bumped into a Chinese company called Shenzhen Koonhome Technology, who were showing off some Wii accessories. The most quirky was the Wii Boxing Gloves. read »
CES 2008: Samsung launches a slew of digital cameras – here's a quick roundup
Along with hundreds of high def tellies, it’s traditional for electronics manufacturers to flood their CES stands with digital cameras in all shapes and sizes. Some of them may not have the most wild and quirky set of features, but these are the cameras you’ll actually be buying next year when Currys works out that no-one’s stupid enough to buy consumer electronics before Xmas and has to flog ‘em off cheap in the new year. Here’s the run down:
Samsung i8
The latest in the multifaceted PMP range of Samsung cameras, the i8 offers MP3, WAV and video files as well as the more normal act of taking photos. It takes 8 megapixel shots and measures in at 3.5” x 2.3” x 0.8”. Compared to its CES award winning predecessor, the i85, the design is a lot less angular than before, although I can’t quite decide if that’s really been a good thing.
CES 2008: All your singing Mr Clock Radio robots are belong to us
Meet Mr Clock Radio. Made by Geewiz Entertainment, he claims to be the world's first "animated robotic alarm clock radio". And that just about describes all you need to know. He has 30 different ways of waking you up, some of which involve singing. Watch the video above for a taster. read »CES 2008: Jwin/iLuv shows just what to do with those blasted digital photo frames
Guess they had to be good for something, eh? HOW TO COVER UP BAD WALLPAPER FROM THE '70s, Jwin/iLuv-style.
Mind you, they had some nice digital photo frames on display actually, like their mother of pearl and crystal-encrusted model, which would... read »
CES 2008: Motorola Z10 to get you 'content creating'
Dave told us about the Motorola Z10 mobile phone yesterday, but Susi managed to have a play around with it, with a video below the jump. Here's what she had to say about the actual phone itself...
Content Creating. Sounds painful, but is actually pretty fun. Motorola have decided they want to 'own' the YouTube generation, by bringing us... read »
CES 2008: DOSS Wireless iPod Speakers
Some of the best stuff we've seen at CES so far has been far from the madness of the main halls and the major players with their new phones, digital bloody photo frames and iPod docks. And yet, as you might reasonably point out, this is also an iPod... read »CES 2008: Toshiba's thin bezel on Cinema series gets the hands-test
Just how thin are the bezels on Toshiba's new Cinema series TVs?
Well, we know the specs, that the bezel is the world's thinnest... read »
CES 2008: Samsung Infolink television with USA today RSS feeds on screen
Susi's lethargy is obviously setting in as she looks at the Samsung Infolink television. Our quote of the trip so far has to be "anyway, there's stuff," which actually sums up this television pretty well. It's got an ethernet connection built in which allows the telly to connect to the internet...but don't get too excited, it doesn't allow you to surf the web, but pulls in RSS feeds on stocks, news and weather and displays them on screen. In the US the service is provided by USA Today, and a UK partnership should be revealed very soon... read »CES 2008: Samsung’s giant French Door fridge – a breakthrough in late-night snacking technology
Samsung has proudly unveiled its latest French Door refrigerator here at CES. This behemoth easily outstrips all other French Door style units to offer the largest storage capacity of its kind in the market, at a whopping 29 CUBIC FEET. You could probably lose a whole child in that.
CES 2008: The Philips Streamium, now with internet radio
An updated Philips Streamium has been revealed at CES, with the added extra of internet radio. So now not only can you rip music and stream it around your house, you can also pick up obscure radio channels and play them to your neighbours too. Susi shows off the kit below... read »CES 2008: Toshiba's arty 'world's highest capacity 2.5" external hard drive', the 320GB-er
Toshiba's been kicking around the mobile storage industry for a good few years now, so it's refreshing to see them update their line with something visually appealing, and also with a worthy claim. Yep, it's another 'World's most...' product.
Take a deep breath - these 320GB HDDs are the world's highest-capacity 2.5" storage device. Not as impressive... read »
CES 2008: Samsung's 3D-ready Plasma television
It's not CES without someone looking like an idiot in gaming glasses or riding horse simulators. This year, Susi tested out the first 3D-ready plasma... read »CES 2008: Samsung unveils more Bluetooth-enabled Home Theatre goodies
I am loving Samsung’s decision to slap Bluetooth into absolutely everything this year. The HT-X710 is another compact 2.1 virtual surround system, designed to match Samsung’s latest sexy looking HDTVs with A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth included. The built-in DVD player will also upscale your movies to 1080p resolution.
CES 2008: Panasonic Link to Cell
Panasonic Link to Cell is one of those 'I can't believe nobody's done this before' products, leading me to think someone probably has done it before. The $99 gadget will redirect calls to a cellphone through to its landline phone, meaning you no longer need to keep your mobile in your pocket when you're at home. This is probably most useful if you live in an area with bad network coverage in certain parts of your house, or if (like my entire family) you never seem to hear your mobile when you're at home... read »Rumours abound that Paramount is the latest studio to drop HD DVD in favour of Blu-ray
Further hammering the nail into HD DVD's coffin, it appears Paramount is the latest film studio to drop the high-def format, after reports today from the Financial Times suggested they're following Warner Brothers' decision on Friday to back Blu-ray.
Paramount, DreamWorks Animation and Universal are the only real feathers to the format's cap, and to lose another... read »
CES 2008: Sony's OLED 3mm thin televisions
They might be small, but Sony's OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) televisions are definitely perfectly formed. With a ridiculously tiny 3mm thickness, it's a bit like putting your telly on a piece of paper. The 11 inch screens are available to consumers already, and Susi shows them off in the video under the cut. There was also a prototype model with a slightly larger screen on show at CES, but considering these babies come it at almost $2,500, it may be a while before we see that one on sale in the US, let alone the UK... read »
CES 2008: Hands on with the Sony Rolly dancing music player
We showed you a bit of Sony Rolly action earlier in our CES coverage, but here's a much more in-depth look at the gimmicky music... read »CES 2008: Samsung SyncMaster 2263DX USB with 7" Mini-Me monitor
Isn’t it annoying when you try to hook up a monitor to your PC, only to discover that – gosh darn it – you haven’t got any video outputs? Well Samsung has you covered; the SyncMaster 2263DX is capable of connecting via USB “without the need for any additional video hardware”. Admittedly, we’ve struggled to think of a single occasion when this has actually happened to us, but after a bit of brain storming we realised that this could be brilliant for laptop users who don’t have a VGA output on their machines.
read »CES 2008: Samsung YA-BS900 Hyper 3-Channel Bluetooth speaker system
What with the YP-P2 Bluetooth MP3 player apparently kicking up a storm in the non-iPod realms of MP3 players, Samsung is following up its success with a range of compatible speaker systems. The YA-BS900 is the flagship model, sporting a 30watt, 3-channel system. The ‘Hyper’ 3-Channel Surround Sound system with Euphony Technology lets the listener hear the centre of the sound regardless of what position they are in or where they are in the room.
read »Apple intros new Mac Pro: eight processor cores, twice the performance of before
Nothing's really going to eclipse Apple's iPhone announcement at Macworld last year, which clashed delightfully with CES 2007. Yet Apple has chosen, a week ahead of Macworld, to push out a new, high-performance Mac Pro.
Using two of Intel's 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon 5400 processors running at up to 3.2 GHz, the newly designed system boasts up to twice the performance of the previous Mac Pro — and that was no sluggard.
Other notable inclusions are up to 4TB of internal storage, ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB as standard, up to 32GB of memory, PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot, support for the latest generation of graphics cards from NVIDIA, and the power to drive up to eight 30-inch displays at once.
read »
NOT CES 2008: Mobile music revenues to hit a staggering $18 billion by 2012
And it's all to the hottest and coolest new "thing" in the music world - paid for subscriptions, says telecoms analysts Juniper Research.
Mobile-friendly services like Universal's Total Music, where you pay a set fee every month and get to listen to EVERY record it's produced/churned out, will fuel this cash-mad boom, with iTunes obviously mopping up the rest of everyone's money... read »
NOT CES 2008: Exclusive video of what WON'T be in Las Vegas this year
Hey everyone. What with all the talk of this "CES" thing that's going on at the moment, I thought I'd give you an EXCLUSIVE look at a few of the products that won't be on the show floor this year. I'll be revealing a two-year-old TV with NO HDMI sockets on it whatsoever, a six-year-old games console and a literally ancient digital cable box that's definitely NOT rocking the crowds at the Vegas Convention Centre right now. You won't see these anywhere else! (apart from maybe at a dump or really poor friend's house).CES 2008 Roundup: Monday
Oh. My. God. I'm slightly disbelievingly putting this post together and realising that we've published more than SIXTY posts on Tech Digest today. And we're still sitting here with bags of other stuff ready to go. So this is an attempt to sort through it all. read »
CES 2008: WOLFKING reveals MVP series Gamepad and mouse
You can’t argue with a company called WOLFKING. And if you did, your arguments would be rendered utterly pathetic by the overpowering strength of all those caps. WOLFKING is touting its latest mouse / gamepad combo at CES this year. It features updated versions of its TROOPER gaming mouse and WARRIOR pad, which is aimed at PC gamers who don’t want to fill their normal keyboard with dead skin and stale sweat.
CES 2008: ZyXEL debuts first digital media adapter with built-in HomePlug AV
While WiFi is great for a lot of things, but there are instances where it isn’t the best solution for home networking. Perhaps you live in a palatial mansion that outstrips the range of ordinary WiFi technology, or maybe you live in a drafty Scottish castle with five foot thick walls that completely blocks all your signals. Or maybe every other sod in the near vicinity already has a WiFi router clogging up the airwaves. Whatever. There’s a way around it that works really well called HomePlug AV, which uses your mains sockets to carry your network. The trouble so far has been that you always have to buy a costly set of HomePlug AV adapters – one for each of the devices you want to plug in and one to plug into your router / hub.
CES 2008: LaCie boosts capacity on its designer Rugged All-Terrain and Little Disk drives
LaCie don't just make technology, they design it. Or rather, they get someone in to design it - like the Rugged All-Terrain and 2.5-inch Little Disk drives, designed by Neil Poulton and Sam Hecht respectively. read »
CES 2008: SlingCatcher makes a late arrival, brings new features
Last year we were promised that Sling Media would be touting its SlingCatcher accessory by Xmas. That time came and went and there was nothing. This year, it’s back at CES again, but amidst Sling’s busy year, the Sling Catcher has been through a couple of changes. It was originally – and to a large extent still is – a kind of reverse Slingbox; it takes web content and shows it on your TV (instead of taking content from your TV and transmitting it to your PC).
read »CES 2008 Creative promises big sounds from a small footprint with the GigaWorks HD50 speakers
Creative has a new range of desktop speakers on the market - the GigaWorks HD50. read »
CES 2008: Samsung announces its first high definition digital camera - the NV24HD
Samsung has a number of new cameras on show at the CES, the pick of the bunch being the NV24HD. read »
CES 2008: Sandio 3D mouse demonstrates why mice need even more buttons now
You know what’s wrong with control pads and mouse and keyboard control styles? They need two hands. That’s just wasteful. Especially if you can get full 3D controls with just one device. That’s what Sandio believes and they have come up with the mouse to prove it: the Sandio 3D game O2
read »CES 2008: ViewSonic launches Pro8100 Full HD/1080p home projector
ViewSonic has entered what it describes as the “luxury home theatre lifestyle” category with the Pro8100 home theatre projector. read »
CES 2008: Disney launches character-themed digital camera range
You are never too young to get into technology - at least, that's what Disney thinks as it continues to release gadgets based around its characters and movies, the latest being these themed digital cameras. read »
CES 2008: Halo 3 weapons turned into real-world laser-tag guns
Wouldn't you like to own a Halo 3 plasma rifle or plasma pistol in real life? Well, you can! A US company called Jasman Toys is selling replica versions with Laser Pursuit technology built in. read »
CES 2008: The Motorola E8 phone with changing button touch screen
Apparently Motorola's E8 phone is created for music lovers, with a high-gloss black touch screen that changes from phone to music to camera controls at... read »CES 2008: Panasonic's 150 inch plasma television
Every year at CES someone attempts to top the previous year's biggest ever telly. Last year the top contender was 108 inches. This year? Panasonic wiped the floor with everyone by showcasing the ultimate in excess with this 150 inch plasma tv. Susi shows us more... read »CES 2008: Blu-ray studios claim 85% share of HD hardware market, predict two million player sales in 2008
This evening's Blu-ray press conference at CES was a predictably cheery affair, although thankfully without too many digs at HD DVD, and more focus on the state of the market, and plans for 2008. read »
CES 2008: KDDI's Sanyo W53SA waterproof digital TV mobile phone
Remember when Stuart went to Tokyo a couple of months ago, and shot a video of KDDI Communications' W53SA mobile phone being dunked in a bowl of water? Better quickly add the waterproof W53SA. Here's a couple of photos I... read »