Well I’d really intended to blog as the day went along, but as you can tell it got a bit crazy and I never had a chance.

So, here’s some of the day in recap.

With every year, as you walk around you get a sense of a what the main trends for a year - what the focus is on by a number of companies, and what they’re feeling is going to be the next directions in the various tech industries. It’s often not unlike the french high fashion weeks, and similar to there, often times there’s really no real humans that’ll ever wear the stuff, but it’s cut/lines/colors do set in motion a cascading effect across all price points.

for a starter, let’s chat about a great little R2 unit - actually it comes in two sizes, a large and a small version. Both are fullly operational, move, and make all the expected sound effects. The coolness factor is that the smaller model carries a built-in wireless webcam, and the larger unit is a high definition projection tv unit.

The larger model

The remote for that one

And R2 doing it’s projection routine

Here’s the smaller model and it’s remote (the sabre)

So here’s something fun, this model is wearing a fetching pink force feedback vest (it also comes with a matching helmet) for use when playing first-person shooter games. Whenever you take a hit, you feel a pressure response in the outfit in the proper are of the body. Granted it’s not as severe as the one in the game, but it does add to the experience.

Yes, the alienware wraparound monitor is cool, but it should be noticed that it’s not a flat panel, it’s a smallish tube design, so while you get the cool, it’ll also take up some desk real estate. Theres an interesting shading at edging around the screen at the wrap points, but when you’re right in front of it, you don’t notice them at all. Note to self however, you need the best dual graphics cards to really run it without chop.

What doesn’t warm one’s heart like watching three girls hand some smack talking guys their asses at Unreal Tournament?

These are some of UbiSoft’s FragDolls all-girl pro gaming squad. While they didn’t blank the guys fully, it was pretty much a knockout in the 1st round with blood on the carpet. The girls didn’t even break a sweat. It was great.

Now this little number I just thought was cool, and it was one of a series of digital paintings..

What makes this spiffy is that the frame is emitting a bose sound field of your regular japanese spa sounds of wind and water in the distance very softly, and the brushstrokes of the plants on the image move gently along with it. It’s a simple gizmo, but rather effective.

Microsoft has been pushing their at home servers this CES in a big way. That’s fine, more power to them, but this little baby I found a stack of next to the microsoft booth, and somehow it just seems so wrong…

Capturing the hugeness and awe-inspiring beauty that’s the Pioneer 150″ plasma tv is just something I wasn’t ready for. It’s not just big, it’s elegant, and sexy as hell. Looking over the faces of the audience, you could see the Menfolk all twitching at their inner caveman wanting the bigger stick.
To get an idea of scale, the presenter fellow in the shot is right at 6′ tall. Price? Why worry about such trivial things when in the presense of such majesty. You wouldn’t haggle over the price of a picasso would you? (Note: the picasso would probably be cheaper)

It’s late, and I’m tuckered, but I’ve got to end this off with the most positively bitching (and positivly inspired) piece of tech I saw all day. Yea, there’s all kinds of things out there, but this.. this was just fuck’n awsome: That would be the DLP splitter technology being shown off by Texas Instruments. Unfortunately the pic I’ve got of it will just be a blur, but that’s the glory of it. Remember the polarized lenses that you can use for getting 3d effects on monitors? one eye sees one frame, then the other sees the other interlaced? Well this is such simplicity but sooo effective. They set up the tv/plasma/monitor/whatever (they were demonstrating it on a stock plasma screen), and interlace the signal from a game, with one player seeing one thing, and the other player seeing something else. They both see a perfectly clear, no distortion image, but of the game from their own point of view. The example here is of a car racing game, both players seeing their point of view alone. Think of the end of split screens, where players shouldn’t know what the other is doing. That can finally be accomplished on one screen. As an added kick, the presenter ended one of the players games and switched to watching a dvd movie. The other player was still playing along, but both people still seeing their own thing - the movie looked great, the car game also looked perfect. Think of no more fighting for who gets to watch what show, when you could both be watchin different things at the same time on the same screen. Sorry, but I think it’s just the best thing of the show.

I think that’s about it for now, and I didn’t even get into talking about the trending of the show yet. I’ll get to that tomorrow, or maybe the next day. I fly home tomorrow (wednesday) evening, but wednesday day will be filled with AVN. Yes, I’ll get pics. But they rather all look alike after a while.