Vegas, Celebs, Tech Toys, and the Porn Awards
To be clear, I still hate Vegas. However, the city of alcholics and broken dreams did get a bit of a boost in my eyes this past week. Maybe it was hanging with Star Trek: TNG’s Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton – @levarburton on Twitter – to you and me) on the Lovesac bus. Maybe it was also meeting James D. Kirk – his real name – on the same bus. Maybe it was dinner next to Alice Cooper at Osetria del Circo, but the very surreal mix of celebs on Firday night made me think a bit better of Sin City.
CES was also better this year.
Don’t get me wrong. The number of booths pimping flash drives still outweighed the number of decent tech offerings about 3 to 1. That ratio is, however, significantly better than the 10 to 1 of last year.
And just in case you think I was joking about the wide variety of shapes and sizes of flash drives on display, the pic to the left is just one booth’s offering. This particular company has a 47 page catalog of options (my favorite is the goofy little sheik on page 13).
If you don’t see what you want (say a banana shaped flash drive to promote a fruit company), just call them, and they’ll crank one out for you. Personally, I think they should do more work with the porn awards that were also going on in Vegas. They could give away little donger shaped drives pre-loaded with clips of the nominees for best threesome and best oral.
As for the rest of the technology, I did find some cool stuff. I’ve shared a couple of the items related to broadband networks and TV via CableTechTalk.com. I really dig the PC Ride (video below). It’s a car shaped CPU that retails at $2,495. I’m not a big fan of the desktop case, so I was pleased to see someone making a different shape. I guess it’s only a matter of time before someone has a 47 page catalog of PC designs, though.
[youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk9VjwvkS7o]
I also really dug the ultra-thin TVs that most of the manufacturers unveiled. Just in case you haven’t heard “Oh my god! It’s so small!” enough in your life, bring one of these home.
Some of the really cool finds I didn’t put up on the cable blog because they aren’t really broadband/connected home specific. For instance, I love little more than the ocean. Any time Mrs. Quip and I vacation, we generally head for a tropic island. While there, I like to snorkel, and often wish I had an underwater camera.
The dive mask to the right has a 5.0 MP digital camera built into the mask (I know, it’s a grainy picture). Push a red button on the top right (your left) to snap a picture.
I’d love to take this with me on my next trip to the Caribbean.
Another cool find (especially for parents with aspiring social media monsters for kids) is Crayola’s kid friendly video camera.
Now your toddlers can film themselves dropping mentos in diet coke and destroying your living room. When they’re done, you can use it to film them washing Diet Coke off the walls.
When the little critters grow up, and tire of tedious housecleaning, they’ll no doubt move on to killing copious amounts of brain cells by vegging out in front of the TV playing video games. By the staggering amount of controllers and promos for it, there’s a good chance Guitar Hero 12 or Rock Band 9 will be the game of the day.
If, however, they decide they’d like to learn to play an actual guitar, you should check out JamVox. JamVox is a software application and a mini-amp. Connect the amp to your PC and an actual guitar, and the software will strip out the guitar track of any song – allowing you to play along with your favorite music. Think of it as Guitar Hero on the extra, extra hard setting. The difference, however, is after your done some chicks will actually be impressed because you can play a real instrument.
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