It’s a 19″, 720p, $299 polar bear TV that you can buy in March from Hannspree. It’s designed to “raise awareness” about polar bears, and is just the first in a series of other (unspecified) threatened animal TVs, but it does not in fact help the polar bears in any way if you buy one. Except with karma, maybe, but karma isn’t an unmeltable iceberg or a tasty seal.
Professional gamers know: optimizing control inputs means maximizing damage, and maximizing damage is the most important thing that there is in life. The Peregrine gaming glove contains an array of touch sensors on the thumb, fingers, and palm, and lets you control your game with simple touches instead of using the keyboard. The point? It’s faster, more intuitive, and more convenient, and pro gamers say (or at least this one told us) that it makes a huge difference:
The glove is attached to your computer by a break-away cable, and as far as your computer is concerned, the glove is just a keyboard. So, you basically just have to bind motions to keys or combinations of keys using the included software, which makes the glove potentially useful for anything you want, not just gaming. It only comes in left handed at the moment, and is thankfully washable.
Obviously, the Peregrine isn’t going to work that well if you’re playing a lot of FPS games, in which case those left-handed WASD keys are in use just about all the time. But for games where precise and continuous movement is less important than being able to execute different tasks quickly, the Peregrine glove could give you the edge you need to be awesome. Or to just not totally suck.
You can preorder the Peregrine for $130 on their website, and you should get it sometime early this year.
So here we are in North America’s largest convention, and we’re getting ready to die, one footstep at a time to bring you news on the hottest tech for 2010. CES proper doesn’t start until Thursday, but there’s plenty of previews and other pre-show events to keep us busy until then. One of the first of these is CES Unveiled.
So what are some of the early trends we’re seeing this year?
3D TVs
It’s sadly looking like manufacturers are still trying to jumpstart this technology. Several manufacturers, like Panasonic and LG were showing off their early prototypes in the hopes of impressing us. To be honest, we’re not. Maybe time will prove us wrong but the market isn’t ready for 3D, Avatar be damned. We’ve barely managed to get people to switch to HD, it’ll be a while before they can be convinced to upgrade to a set that requires viewers to don special glasses and for which there is barely any content. Maybe one day, but not yet.
Media Players
Plenty of set top boxes that promise to send your digital media files right to your TV. Be it pictures, music, or video of varying formats. The most notable of these is the Boxee Box, but there’s also PopBox (we weren’t impressed) and Seagate’s FreeAgent Theater (clunky interface).
eBook Readers
We’re thinking the Kindle’s got this part of the industry rollin’, because there were a bunch of eBook readers at Unveiled. There was the Irex and the Alex, though we suspect there will be plenty more on the actual show floor.
Of course there were plenty of other things, and we’ll get to the most interesting bits in the coming hours. For now, we’re jetlagged and hitting the sack to recharge for the week ahead.
I’m not entirely sure that more equals better when it comes to touchpads, but Asus seems to think so, and at their CES press conference today they were showing off their NX90, a gigantic 18.4″ quad core laptop sporting two touchpads, one on each side of the keyboard. The touchpads aren’t specifically designed to be used simultaneously, and I guess in some cases their placement might be a little bit more convenient than the standard low-center placement, but that would take a lot of getting used to. Plus, the rest of the laptop just looks naked.
You might also notice those huge Bang & Olufsen speakers that look like they were stuck to the sides of the laptop as an afterthought. Their size ensures that you’re going to get better than the average laptoppy sound out of the computer, but from what I managed to hear through the crowd of screaming journalists, it’s not as great as you might expect from components of their size. And for $2500ish, you’re probably expecting greatness. This is just a demo unit, though, so the production version (expected in February) could incorporate some improvements.
And once again, I can’t believe it’s actually pronounced “ay-SOOS.”
Apple has managed to significantly shrink the size of the AC to USB power adapter it ships with the iPhone, but I think these Flipower devices edge them out just slightly when it comes to their compact size. And the simple secret to slimming them down was to just remove their prongs. Instead, you’ll find a flip out panel that almost looks like a wall socket, and in a way it is. You see the Flipower is designed to sit between a wall socket and a power plug as you can see it doing with the power bar in the upper corner of that photo, and thanks to a set of thin metal wires, it’s able to draw power from the outlet and pass it onto a connected USB device.
The obvious downside of course is that you need to have something plugged into a wall or power bar before the Flipower is actually usable, but in reality finding someplace to do so isn’t really that hard. But it doesn’t really matter since pricing and availability info for the US, or anywhere, are currently unknown.
We didn’t get a whole lot of time to play with it tonight at the Marvell mini-booth (CES: Unveiled can be a bit of a madhouse) but our first real hands-on opportunity with Spring Design’s surprising compact and slim e-ink/LCD reader left us rather impressed. While we should have more coverage of the Alex later this week when it has its first official showing, let’s just say it shouldn’t worry too much about the Nook’s head start.
The entire OhGizmo team is here in Las Vegas to bring you the coolest (and weirdest) gadgets from the largest consumer electronics show in the US. That [CES2010] you see in front of our posts this week means that you’re getting the first look at something awesome. We’ll be covering press conferences, prowling the show floor, and suffering through special events until Sunday, so check back often this week for the latest news. And if there’s something specific you want us to check out in person for you, let us know!
Instead of using spinning blades which can generate a lot of noise, the i:wing features a set of large wings which gently oscillate back and forth (or flap) like a bird or insect to create air movement in a room. While it’s not the type of fan you can just stand in front of to quickly cool down, it makes up for it with lots of style points and the fact that it’s nearly silent when running. And while I’m sure it started life as just a concept design, the bionic motion website does include a sales section which promises to one day provide a list of dealers where you can actually buy one.
I’m not quite sure how they do it, but Eye-Fi manages to keep on cramming feature after useful into their wireless memory cards. This time around, they’re introducing a new tier of card (above Pro), the Pro X2. It costs $150, but at least read about what it does before you scoff at the price… The X2 is an 8 gig SDHC card with a built-in 802.11n antenna. N! N means faster uploads at greater distances, so that’s definitely good. And more storage is good too. But the most useful feature of the X2 is the option to have the card delete pictures after it uploads them, giving you an infinite amount of memory (provided you’re near some source of WiFi) while sharing and backing up your pictures real time. The card won’t delete anything until it’s confirmed that the upload was successful, but hypothetically, you can just stop worrying about whether or not you’re running out of space when taking pictures (or videos).
The X2 also comes with all the rest of the awesome Eye-Fi features, like RAW support, geotagging, ad-hoc WiFi connections, and Wayport WiFi access. Unfortunately, from what I can tell from the press release, the infinite memory option will be available on the new X2 cards only. This is a bit of a disappointment, since previous useful firmware upgrades were made available to all of the cards. But, I guess it’s probably somewhat unrealistic to expect to keep getting free goodies, and for you heavy shooters, the additional SDHC space and the potential for never having to worry about space again may make the X2 a worthwhile upgrade.
Look for the Eye-Fi X2 on Amazon and the Eye-Fi website.
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