By Andrew Liszewski

Ever wondered what it would be like to ride inside a Hot Wheels car as it raced through loops of orange track? Sadly CES is still devoid of any shrink ray technology, so instead Mattel has gone and crammed a video camera inside their 1:64 scale Hot Wheels vehicles giving you a first-person perspective view of what it would be like to ride in one. Its limited on-board memory can only capture about 12 minutes of VGA-quality video which can be offloaded to your PC via a USB connection, or watched on a tiny LCD display located on the underside of each car. Available sometime in the Fall of this year for $59.99.

[ Mattel Hot Wheels ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The easiest way to prevent wrist strain while working at a computer is to keep your hands moving, and varying their position throughout the day. But as a blogger I can attest to the fact that the hours can easily slip away without you realizing you haven’t moved an inch. And before you know it you’re left with sore wrists, that only gets worse over time. And this is what the Engage Keyboard from Smartfish Technologies is designed to address.

The keyboard is split down the middle, and both the right and left sides are able to subtly shift up and down and left to right thanks to a set of whisper-quiet electric motors working inside. The movement is barely noticeable while you’re working away, but it’s apparently enough of a difference in position to prevent your wrists from feeling sore after working all day. By default the keyboard automagically makes its adjustments every hour, but it will also monitor your typing patterns and adjust it more frequently if you’re furiously typing away. Available now for $149.95.

[ Smartfish Technologies Engage Keyboard ]

By Andrew Liszewski

We’ve written about Bluetooth-based personal alarm systems designed to stop you from leaving your smartphone behind, but the Ty system is designed to work the other way. The thin, poker-chip sized discs attach to your personal accessories like briefcases, laptops, jackets and even family members, while a downloadable app on your smartphone will let you know when you’ve become separated from them.

They have a decent range of about 50 feet, though in the Ty app you can specify different ranges for up to 7 different discs at once. So for example you may always prefer to keep your wallet no farther than an arm’s length away, but you don’t want the alarm going off when you’ve gone to the bathroom at a restaurant and left your coat on the back of your chair. The app is also GPS location aware allowing you to setup safe zones, so no alarms will sound when you’re at home or at the office and things get separated. The discs will be available in March of this year for ~$70 each, with accessories like clips selling for between $5 to $30. The only downside, it won’t work with the iPhone because third-party apps apparently can’t constantly run in the background as needed for this to work.

[ Ty Personal Loss Prevention Device ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Getting one of those multi-image matte board photo frames to look as good as the photos of the included sample family do can be difficult if your craft-fu is lacking. So Kodak has introduced their PYNK Smart Print System which takes the cutting, resizing and pasting photos steps out of the equation. You have your choice of one of eight different frames that include a pre-cut matte board, and a unique identifying barcode on the back.

Once you scan the barcode at a PYNK-compatible Kodak printing station you then upload and specify which of your photos will appear in each of the holes. Obviously the number of photos needed, and their size and layout, depends on the frame you selected. But everything can be easily tweaked and adjusted at the kiosk. When you’re happy with the results a single photo of your collage will be printed out which can then be inserted into the frame, creating the illusion you’ve got some excellent crating skills.

[ Kodak PYNK Smart Print System ]

By Caitlyn Muncy

There are tons of iPhone 4 cases out on the market now, boasting functionality, protection, or just looking snazzy. A big question to ask is what are these cases doing for our environment? We received a TRTL BOT Stand case for the iPhone 4 and it not only has functionality, but also was made from recycled plastic bottles. How many other cases can take that claim?

The TRTL STAND for the iPhone 4 comes in a clear plastic clamshell with the case visible via the front, and cardboard inserts with information about the cases are positioned inside the clamshell to keep the case in place. Cardboard and plastic clamshells are made from recycled materials as well if you were wondering.

The case for the phone is made of plastic (duh) and only comes in black. It measures 4.53” x 2.43” x 0.51” and barely weighs more than half an ounce. Looking down on it there is a large open space where the phone would go, and has a lip to keep the phone in place. (A mighty good grip if you ask me) The tops and bottoms of the case are 90% open as to not impede any plug-ins for the phone. On the left side there is an opening for the volume and sound control switch, and a hole has been cut out on the back of the case for the camera. Starting at the bottom right corner of the back of the case is where the stand resides, which is imprinted with TRTL BOT in big letters, and on the bottom left corner is the logo.

It’s a rather plain looking case, but does its purpose nicely. The snugness of the phone in the case, and my inability to get the phone out of it is a bit annoying, but it does its duty as a case with kickstand abilities. The fact that it’s hard plastic makes me nervous, because I not only have to worry about my phone breaking, but the case as well. Not to mention the fact that the face of the phone is completely exposed. It costs about $34.99, but can be found for cheaper elsewhere.

[ TRTL BOT ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Though more capable and flexible than their analog brethren, digital-based instruments (besides keyboards) haven’t really managed to find a solid foothold with musicians. But that hasn’t stopped companies from trying. The Kitara is a digital guitar featuring a touch screen where you’d normally strum the strings, and 6 buttons on every fret along the neck. It’s played exactly like a real electric guitar since it has the same look, feel and weight thanks to the model pictured above being machined from a solid block of aluminum.

Like any digital instrument worth its weight in silicon the Kitara can be used as a midi controller and be upgraded with new sample libraries for producing different sounds when playing. It’s completely open source too, with an SDK, so developer/musicians are encouraged to do whatever they want with the hardware, including uploading and sharing their modifications to a public portal operated by Misa Digital Instruments. The aluminum Kitara pictured above will sell for $2,899 when it becomes available mid-April, but a black plastic version, which is weighted to feel the same as this one does, will be considerably cheaper at $849.

[ Misa Digital's Kitara ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It might have started out as an April Fool’s Day prank, but ThinkGeek’s iCade is now officially coming to the market thanks to a little help from ION Audio and Atari. The retro-riffic cabinet looks almost exactly like the one created by ThinkGeek earlier in the year for their prank, but adds a few more buttons on the control panel in addition to the joystick, which might I say feels just fantastic the few moments I got to play with it.

ION Audio has even got Atari on board so that when available you’ll immediately be able to play the classic title Asteroids, with other iCADE compatible titles being made available later on. And since it connects to the iPad via Bluetooth instead of its proprietary dock connector, the iCADE cabinet can in theory be used with any BT compatible tablet according to the ION Audio reps, but we all know which device it was specifically designed for. $100, coming soon.

[ ION Audio iCADE ]

By Andrew Liszewski

At last year’s CES RCA was showing off a prototype of a revolutionary charger called the Airnergy which in essence harvested wifi energy out of the air to charge a battery, which in turn could be used to top off your gadgets. The story generated quite a few comments, and most of you felt the idea was impossible, and too good to be true. So this year we made a point to follow-up on the Airnergy technology to see how far it had progressed a year later. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly. it was no where to be seen at RCA’s booth, and according to them, the Airnergy concept is as good as dead. What a shocker…

[ [CES 2010] RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Once dot-matrix printers were replaced by inkjets, printer technology hit a long period of stagnation when manufacturers realized they could just sit back and make a killing by selling replacement ink cartridges. But Memjet hopes to shake things up with their new inkjet technology that’s able to print at 12 inches per second, which equates to about 60 full color A4 pages per minute. That speed, which is actually about twice as fast as color laser printers, is made possible by a page wide printhead dotted with 70,000 ink nozzles (about 17 times as many as current inkjet printer heads) dropping 700 million drops of ink per second.

It’s easily the fastest printer I’ve ever seen, and it’s not like it’s spitting out low-quality draft prints either. These are full color, 1600 DPI copies that look as good as what you’d get from the current crop of home inkjet printers. Minus all the waiting. And while they had a functional prototype on display, Memjet actually plans to license their technology to OEMs. One of the first companies to announce a Memjet-based printer was Lenovo oddly enough, and it’s expected to hit the market for around $5-600 later this year. As for actual printing costs, the Memjet technology does it’s thing for about 5 or 6 cents per page.

[ Memjet ]