GadgetReview

31 years ago CES was, well, VHS cassettes and cable boxes.  And don’t forget about the TV that printed recipes and the portable camcorder with the massive shoulder mounted recorder.  Ah, nostalgia.  Course, I wasn’t even born yet.

Coming soon, or so the current word goes, is one of the most frighteningly preposterous gadget chargers I’ve seen in some time–it’s no solar power device.  No wind generator, no magnet, nor even Tesla coil.  It isn’t even a lightning rod.

No, today I’m talking about the Airnergy, a device that will recharge your gadgets with–get this–AMBIENT WI-FI SIGNALS.

It actually turns Wi-Fi energy, found at any Wi-Fi hotspot, into electrical energy.  As long as this is in range of a Wi-Fi signal, it’s making juice, plain and simple.  RCA, the folks behind the Airnergy, ran a demonstration at CES in which they charged a Blackberry with a third of its battery left to full charge in just an hour and a half.

But this isn’t the end–oh no.  RCA wants to make a version that’s small enough to fit INSIDE a cell phone battery, meaning that the device would continually recharge whereever it was near enough to receive a Wi-Fi signal.

Amazing, and yet kind of scary, the Airnergy isn’t on shelves yet, but is set to cost just $40 bucks whne it is released.

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As products that you jam an iPhone into continue to grow and mutate, the iTamTam from French designers Branex is quite the beastly monstrosity.  Weighing in at just under 11.5 pounds, each iTamTam has four 1.5-inch tweeters with 10W of maximum power handling and a 5.25-inch subwoofer rated at 80W max.  …Continue reading: iTamTam iPhone Speaker Dock Stool By Branex

For those of you that just love iPhone dock news, iLuv had its new App Station on display at CES and it was mildly refreshing amongst the sea of competitors.  The App Station works directly with the iLuv compatible app that turns the display into a giant alarm clock.  The device itself rotates so you can view media either horizontally or vertically and was relatively lightweight.

The App Station also charges your iPhone and runs off either AC power or 6 AA batteries.  All in all, I like the form factor and it would look pretty nice bedside.  I don’t know about the $130 price tag, but the App Station is slated for release in February. …Continue reading: CES 2010: iLuv App Station iMM190

Day 3 of CES we finally wondered into the hall of TVs.  There we got a hands on with LG’s newest remote system, Magic Motion.  As you can see in the below video it is largely an air mouse slimmed down into a neat little black package.

The remote itself has your standard buttons – channel, volume, mute and power – but the rest of the TV is controlled via an on screen menu.  We’re still not convinced that it was a game changer but the system was surprisingly responsive and accurate.

Last year we saw the Soundclip, a small piece of plastic that clipped on to the end of the iPhone to increase and improve its speaker.  Chances are, though, is that it would either fall off or break during the daily shuffle.

The Bandshell on the other hand is a full on plastic case that slides open at the speaker end and locks into place at a 25 degree angle to channel the iPhone’s sound towards you.  Additionaly, it doubles as a stand.

The Bandshell case is a bit on the bulky side, which for me, who is an iPhone purest, is too much of a deterent to out weigh the speaker benefits.  It also costs more than twice as much as the Soundclip, $20.

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There’s more than enough speakers to choose from at CES this year, but none are doing it like X Rocker’s foot subwoofer.  Okay, so it’s a totally novel idea, but if you’re looking for an extra level of immersion vibration look no further.  We’re big fans of the oversized, glowing power button.

Unfortunately, there is no word on price, release date or an actual product name.  But one thing is for sure: you’re sure to piss off your down stairs neighbors.

We stopped by the Elan and Sandio booth and they gave us a quick rundown of a new touchpad mouse they’re working on.  The “Mouse 2.0″ is touchpad enabled that helps prevent arm and wrist fatigue while giving you access to a myriad of control schemes.

The mouse gives you 6DOF (6 degrees of functionality) control over 2D, 2.5D, and 3D applications such as Google Earth and Microsoft Bing 3D that use X,Y,Z transition and rotation.  The mouse is ready for application developers and the demo we saw performed with ease and accuracy.

Seems cool to us, but no word on production or expected cost.

Eton has made a name for themselves by producing robust and utilitarian emergency radios.  New to the scene is the Eton Scorpion.  Incorporating features found in previous models, the Scorpion improves upon portability through a more rugged and slim design while still packing a assembly of cool features such as solar and handcrank charging and a bright LED flashlight

Between the NOAA weather band radio and the bottle opener, the Scorpion is a must but for the traveler looking to pack light but have all their emergency precautions intact.  No word on exact release date but the price is set at $50.

More pics “After The Leap” …Continue reading: CES 2010: The Scorpion Joins The Eton Family

Just in time for CES, Lenovo is readying a new smartbook called the Skylight, a refination on the netbook concept.  It weighs less than two pounds and features its own specialized interface to make getting online faster and easier than ever before.

This little dynamo offers up ten solid hours of battery life, along with a host of sweet tech specs including a 1 GHz ARM CPU, a graphics processor, integrated GPS, Bluetooth connectivity and, not surprisingly, wi-fi and mobile broadband.

Skylights will be available starting at $499, which already makes me look at it askance.  I can buy a pretty sweet laptop for that kind of money–do they really think extended battery life is going to make that big a difference?  And as for the “custom interface”, my current laptop connects to the internet pretty smoothly, and it’s just a old Dell Latitude.  Sure, we’re all sort of looking to the streaming media concept to be the new form of movie delivery, too, but I don’t see any provision to play your old DVDs on the Skylight.

Excuse me if I find myself unconvinced that this smartbook is going to be the next big thing when it lacks the versatility of other options.  All it looks like from here is a neutered laptop.

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