Friday, January 9, 2009 4:30PM - By Mike Payne
When it comes to gadget blogging, there’s not a bigger period than the week during the CES show in Las Vegas. While our embedded blogger Emily Price will be weighing in on her CES experiences this weekend, here’s our own list of the top stories at CES 2009. In case you missed any of the big news this week, here’s an exhaustive list of the stories we found most exciting from CES:
- Televisions, Displays and Otherwise
- Gaming Gear
- Laptops, Desktops and More
- Miscellaneous Gear
Friday, January 9, 2009 2:00PM - By Jared Newman
No matter how nicely the name rolls off your tongue, a ZunePhone is looking less like a reality. In fact, an article in the Financial Times suggests that Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer has practically given up on the Zune altogether. “In digital music… Mr Ballmer seemed all but ready to throw in the towel on the Zune mobile device, which has failed to gain ground on Apple’s iPod,” the article says. Balmer believes that the market is shifting towards “general purpose” devices such as the iPhone and iTouch, a statement that left the door open to a question about the Zune phone’s chances. “You should not anticipate that,” Balmer replied. MS wants to focus instead on making software for the mobile devices that are already successful. [Financial Times via Silicon Alley Insider]
Friday, January 9, 2009 12:30PM - By Jared Newman
Less than a year after Polaroid wound down its iconic instant film operations, the company is back with a digital camera that spits out prints on the go. The aptly-named PoGo is a 5-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and a 3-inch LCD screen. Photos can be viewed, cropped, date stamped and given a variety of borders before printing in color to a 2-inch by 3-inch sheet of sticky-back paper. If you want to print the photos elsewhere, they can be downloaded from the camera or stored on an SD card. Polaroid claims “No Ink, No Hassles,” meaning there are no ink cartridges or ribbons to replace. Photos take about 40 seconds to print, and you can churn out about 20 of them before the battery runs out, but no word on whether you can shake the camera to speed up the process. Look for it in March for $199. [Polaroid]
Friday, January 9, 2009 12:00PM - By Alex Ion
At this year’s CES in Las Vegas, Kinesis unveiled a 2-in-1 handheld recharger aimed to solve the sweet irony of seeing gadgets run out of battery. Reminiscent of the HyMini, the K2 uses both solar power and wind energy, ensuring you never have to see that ‘battery low’ sign again. The Kinesis K2 packs a battery that is large enough to charge your mobile 5 times over; something no one else has on offer. You can either leave it in the sun or hang it from your vehicle to plug into both solar and wind power. At $100, K2 look s like a real hit. [via Dvice]
Friday, January 9, 2009 11:30AM - By Jared Newman
We’ve already got word from CES of an impressive 3D gaming headset, and now Panasonic is announcing a 3D Plasma Home Theater system for the US market after debuting it in Japan last year. The 3D FHD system uses active shutter glasses, like the ones NVidia uses in its new gaming setup, combined with a 103-inch plasma TV and Blu-Ray player. While passive 3D glasses simply block unintended images in each lens (as with the red and blue lenses that filter out the opposite color), active shutter lenses rapidly alternate the display between each eye in sync with the image on the screen. The result, as you can expect, is better 3D. For now, Panasonic is keeping mum on the 3D FHD’s price. [via PC Magazine]
Thursday, January 8, 2009 1:00PM - By Jared Newman
A trio of new devices from iriver use Wi-Fi networking to stay connected. Pictured here is the P35 Portable Media Player, which features a motion sensor in addition to its 4.3-inch LCD touch screen. iriver says the device can be shaken to change music tracks, so be careful if you’re holding it while rocking out. The P35 also supports video, FM radio, flash games, picture viewing, voice recording and even drawing.
Next up, the W10 WAVE Wi-Fi phone makes and takes calls, sends text messages and plays music “at a higher quality than in the PC environment,” iriver says. When no Wi-Fi is available, the phone can be used as a call forwarding service. Standard multimedia offering are enjoyed on the 3-inch LCD touch screen, such as video, gaming and photo viewing.
Finally, the D50N Multimedia Networking Device is a cute way to send text messages and browse the Internet. A 4.8-inch LCD touchscreen, with 800×480 resolution, is paired with a full keyboard and 16 GB of Nand Flash. There’s also a multimedia player, voice recorder, photo and office viewer, and — sure to come in handy here — a dictionary. Pricing and availability info is still pending.
Thursday, January 8, 2009 12:15PM - By Jared Newman
Not to be outdone by LG and Samsung, Panasonic stepped into the slim HDTV arms race with an offering that’s just one third of an inch thick. There are basically no details on this aside from its skinniness and the fact that it’s a plasma as opposed to the LCD TVs boasted by Panasonic’s competitors. At some point, you’ve got to wonder how many of these are for real and how many were just drawn up on the fly once the oneupmanship began. They make for great photos, though. [via DVICE]
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 10:00AM - By Emily
Editor’s Note– Its a big news day for HP– here’s part one of three of the releases revealed by HP late last night. HP is expected to announce the HP Pavilion D2 laptop at CES this week. The laptop is meant to be a competitor for the traditional netbook, by providing things that netbooks do not like high-definition movies and basic gaming, while keeping the price low enough that the computers are affordable. The Pavilion D2 will be built on the new AMD Athlon Neo CRU and integrated ATI Radeon X1250 graphics or—for 1080p HD video and HDMI output—a discrete HD 3410 video chipset. Pricing for the device is expected to hit around $500, no word yet on a release date. [via BoingBoing]
Monday, January 5, 2009 8:00AM - By Mike Payne
Intel is apparently bringing out the big guns to show its strength in the face of its competitors at AMD and otherwise. They’ve hired spokesmodel Brooke Burke, famous for her work in, uh, we’re not really sure, to host their red carpet at CES 2009. We’re long-time fans of Brooke Burke here at GearCrave, but we’re having a tough time remembering what she did that made her such a big name. But hey, looking like that, do you really have to accomplish anything? Now is Brooke’s chance. Maybe her curvy dark locks and smooth skin can help revive a receeding chip industry… Good luck, Brooke. Call us if you need any help (really, call us!). Oh yeah, Counting Crows and some guy named Mr. Jones will be there too.
