Hey look someone left their giant golfball here
on the side walk. Today, we’re young, fresh, willing to take on
the world and we’re happy to be in Vegas. Check with us in a few
days to see how we’re holding up.
Here we are in beautiful Las Vegas. After the rough weather we’ve
had the past weeks, we’ve cut back on the usual caterwauling we do about
how hard it is to travel to trade shows—especially Vegas trade
shows. Nope, we’re looking at blue skies, swimmin’ pools, and movie
stars and it’s just fine with us.
But, if we were going to whine one of the first things we’d start complaining
about would be the way CES has lengthened, requiring us to come a couple
of days before the exhibits actually open, and then we’d throw in a
few choice words about the utterly miserable experience one can have
at the LV airport from standing in line for taxis to standing in line
to get the hell out. We have been promised, however, that high flyin’
frequent flyers like us will have an easier time leaving the city this
year. If you could hear us, you’d hear us muttering darkly, We’ll see
. . .
The reason we came early was to sneak a peak at CES Unveiled. Taking
a page from the companies that throw their own little mini-shows for
the press such as Digital Focus, Show Stoppers, and Lunch at Piero’s,
CES gathered the winners of its Innovations awards for a mini-exhibition
complete with good food and good drinks. When you can’t beat ’em, etc.
etc.
The stuff that CES found worthy was an eclectic collection of technologies
and products and we probably missed as many good things as we found.
But some of the obvious trends at CES his year include music player
accessories, exercise equipment, and television technologies, especially
IPTV and HDMI.
Wait, exercise equipment? Yes, indeedy. Now, not to indulge in stereotypes
but you have perhaps noticed a trend among American game players toward
the overweight? Powergrid Fitness has introduced the Powergrid Fitness
device for use with any game machine including a Playstation, Xbox,
or Gamecube. The device lets users become the game controller leaning,
pushing, and pulling against the machine to make their moves. Powergrid
calls their technology ISOCOR technology and it includes adjustments
to make the resistance easy or “Olympic weight lifter hard,”
suggesting the company has a lot of faith in their machine or that we
have way too little faith in the average overweight American game player.
The Powergrid Ever-Station is available in stores including Best Buy
with a price tag of $199.
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The Ever-station from Powergrid Fitness. We’re
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Silicon Image is increasingly identifying itself with HDMI, the digital
connector for TVs and TV peripherals that provides an all-digital clean
connection. The connector was developed by Silicon Image in conjunction
with HDMI partners Sony, Hitachi, Thomson (RCA), Philips, Matsushita
(Panasonic), and Toshiba. The
CE companies love HDMI because it adds a level of security and also
combines video and audio for easy connections with a single cable. The
Silicon Image HDMI team is building in additional functionality too
including lip-synching and deep color support (30-bit and 36-bit RGB).
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The desert table at CES Unveiled—there could
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Logitech has been doing very well with the Harmony universal remote
control. Members of the press and analyst corps surrounded the booth
to tell the Logictech people how much they like the Harmony remote control.
Logictech told us that, according to NPD, the Harmony outsells all other
universal remotes and that includes low-cost drug store devices that
don’t work and high-end products that do—just not as well as the
Harmony. That’s pretty good for a $399 remote control.
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Hey Gandalf, you’ll look a lot better thanks to
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Jon gets a lesson on the latest Harmony remote
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We don’t know what exactly Fender did to get an award from the CES
people (and we kind of wonder if a willingness to exhibit at the Unveiled
event doesn’t help in the voting) but the company is very happy about
its co-branding deals with Jeep, Hello Kitty, and Miller Brewing.
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Fender has a co-branding deal with Hello Kitty,
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Our favorite product at the Unveiled event was probably the Micro Mosquito
from Interactive Toy Concepts. This little helicopter goes up, down,
and sideways just like the real thing but its inventors tell us that
it’s the most stable helicopter in existence. The people at Interactive
Toy Concepts are at CES looking for new opportunities for the device
beyond the obvious—making a great toy. 
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It flies! The Micro Mosquito was a crowd pleaser
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