Ces2009 -- Engadget

Ces2009 posts

Emo Labs concocts its own invisible speaker technology

by Darren Murph posted Jan 27th 2009 at 2:43AM

Emo Labs didn't stir up too much commotion while CES was going on, but apparently it did have a tiny presence in Vegas. The crew at Technologizer was able to listen to a sneak preview of the startup's Edge Motion technology, and if the demo is indicative of the end result, we could be onto something special. Much like NXT's SoundVu tech that seemed to fizzle out about as quickly as it hit the scene in 2005, this system creates a so-called invisible speaker by "using arrays of motors to wiggle the edges of a clear membrane." Gurus at the company are hoping to have it integrated into panels of TVs by the end of this year, though it'll be a bit longer before the same can happen on space-constrained laptops.

Reminder: win a bag of CES swag!

by Darren Murph posted Jan 25th 2009 at 11:42PM

Look, we fully understand how easy it is to forget all about last week after a hard fought weekend, so we're just letting you know that there's around 24 hours left to cast your name into the hat. What hat, you ask? The hat from which three winners will be chosen to take home a single bag* of CES miscellany and paraphernalia. Head on over and leave a comment!

*Pictured bag is not to scale, nor is it representative of what the winning bag will actually look like.

Plastic Logic e-reader not coming until early 2010

by Darren Murph posted Jan 25th 2009 at 7:57PM

If you've been waiting (and waiting) for Plastic Logic's ultra-durable e-reader, you'll have to stick with recycled paper for another dozen months or so. According to a company representative at the outfit's CES kiosk, the device is now scheduled for an "early 2010" release, and as expected, final pricing has yet to be determined. Though, Mr. Joe (seriously, that's his first name) did admit that it would be "competitively priced for rapid adoption" and that the company would be pushing hard to get this into corporations / enterprises. Don't believe us? The full five minute interview is there in the read link.

[Thanks, credo]

nuvi 885T reviewed - speech recognition 'great,' detour function 'not so much'

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Jan 23rd 2009 at 10:06AM

Sure, when we first caught wind of Garmin's nüvi 885T a while back it seemed like the hotness (if your measure of hotness begins and ends with a GPS), but how does it really stack up? GPS Magazine just got their hands on one of these bad boys, and they've been kind enough to share their thoughts with us. "Great," they say, "if speech recognition is your number one priority." Besides voice recognition, the reviewer was really into the Enhanced MSN Direct (traffic, fuel prices, flight statues and more), the ever-useful Where Am I? feature, MP3 playlist support, lane assist, and well behaved Bluetooth. Problems? For starters, MSN Direct for this model costs $50/year (or $130 for life), while many cheaper nüvis get it gratis. Additionally, a few oversights -- there is no way to exclude a specific road from a route, for instance, and a very limited detour function -- and this reviewer thinks that some users would be better served by another Garmin, such as the nüvi 7x5. But don't take our word for it -- for the exhaustive review hit the read link.

Update: Then again, maybe it is too much to ask for users to get free, unlimited MSN Direct. According to Garmin tech. support: "No Garmin unit receives MSN information gratis. Some do have a free trial period, but Microsoft does not give the information out for free." Thanks for the heads up, guys!

Dell Adamo to hit the streets in the second half of 2009?

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Jan 21st 2009 at 11:19AM

If the "reliable source" that spoke to Digitimes is, well, reliable, it looks like Foxconn has landed the Dell Adamo gig. According to the article, the sleek and stylish device is in sample production as we speak, but won't enter volume production until the second half of 2009 -- to the tune of about 400,000 units. Of course, this flies in the face of Dell's statement at the CES unveil, where a company spokesperson said that the thing would be out in the first half of this year -- and that's not the only contradiction here, as Foxconn's Edmund Ding has stated that "he has no idea what the hell anybody is talking about." (OK, so we paraphrased that last bit).

[Via Electronista]

CES 2009 HDTV mega-guide

by Darren Murph posted Jan 20th 2009 at 2:00PM

CES 2009 may be over and done with, but we'll be feeling the ramifications of it for months to come. For those not watching for every last announcement from the show, you may be surprised to find that dozens upon dozens of new HDTVs were introduced, with many of them slated to start shipping this Spring / Summer. Engadget HD has hosted up a thorough mega-guide to showcase what sets made their debut in Vegas this month, complete with links to more information as well as release windows and pricing where available. If you're even remotely considering a new set this year, you owe it to yourself to give this one a look. Head on over, won't you?

Win a bag of CES swag!

by Joshua Topolsky posted Jan 19th 2009 at 6:02PM

CES may be fading into memory, but the bags of swag we somehow magnetized at the show are still quite present in our lives. Want a little piece of the proceedings to be delivered to your doorstep? Well here's your chance. Every year we get bombarded with various pieces of gear that we can't really hang on to for moral, ethical, and religious reasons. But while our Herculean ability to resist free junk is notable, we don't just let this sweet honeywine go to waste... we send it out to you, our lovable readers. Just follow the instructions below, and win one of the three (3) satchels of joy we have to give. Good luck!

Note: Three separate winners will be chosen from comments. Just think of how good your odds are!

The rules:

Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but shameless flattery or embarrassing childhood memories are cool too.
You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you'll be fine.
Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
Winner will be chosen randomly. The winners will receive one (1) of three (3) bags filled with totally awesome CES swag. Approximate value is incalculable.
Entries can be submitted until Monday, January 26th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Full rules can be found here.

Sapient's touchscreen Coke machine brings pop into the 21st century

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Jan 16th 2009 at 7:04PM

Man, it just isn't fair -- we keep seeing all these kick-ass new vending machines, but when we want a can of Mr. Pibb or RC Cola we're stuck feeding quarters into something that looks like it was last serviced whenever Pac-Man Fever went storming up the charts. Then again, that's probably what we get for spending all our time in pool halls and bowling alleys. If you're lucky enough to head to one of the 190-plus (and growing!) malls owned by the Simon Property Group sometime in the not too distant future, you just might have the pleasure of getting your cold, satisfying beverage from one of the new-fashioned touch screen Coke machines from Sapient. The screen is pretty much the entire front of the machine, and the interface is simple (as you'd expect), but pretty cool nonetheless -- select your pop bottle, spin it around, take a look at the ingredients, and vend -- quasi-Minority Report-style. "Futuretistic," no? This thing takes cash and plastic, and it should be out in the US soon enough -- readers in Europe and the UK will have to wait until sometime in 2010 to get in on the action. Video after the break.

Gallery: Touchscreen Coke Machine

[Thanks, Trent]

Continue reading Sapient's touchscreen Coke machine brings pop into the 21st century

Future Arcam Blu-ray player spotted at CES

by Darren Murph posted Jan 14th 2009 at 11:12AM

Arcam may not be at the top of your list of must-have brands, but it's about to join the flourishing Blu-ray player market in the near future, regardless. Sadly, the only details about the deck you see above -- which was seen sporting a high-end-signifying FMJ-xxx logo at CES -- are that it's likely to be staggeringly expensive and it should ship next month. 'Til then, it looks like you'll be testing your patience.

Aiptek PocketCinema V10 hands-on

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Jan 14th 2009 at 9:58AM

This is it! We just received video of the only pico projector endorsed by Russell Crowe (if by "endorsed" you mean "absolutely not endorsed," and by "Russell Crowe" you mean "the poor target of our Photoshoppery"). For a handheld VGA projector, the thing seems to handle itself pretty well. It's small and simple to use, but then again it doesn't really seem all that bright (something you might notice if you ever need it to, we don't know, "project" something). This bad boy has 1GB internal memory, an SD slot, and miniUSB, which should handle most of your I/O needs. Be sure to check out the explosive videos -- generously provided by Engadget Spanish -- after the break.

Continue reading Aiptek PocketCinema V10 hands-on

Sony shows off flexible OLED Walkman concepts on video

by Nilay Patel posted Jan 13th 2009 at 9:02PM

Looks like Sony Insider caught some footage of those flexible OLED Walkmans in action during a CES promo video hidden away in the booth. Looks like a pretty sweet riff on the Cover Flow-esque interface that's due to arrive on the NWZ-X1000, but there's not much else to go on -- let's hope Sony's spending more time getting the X1000 ready to leave that impenetrable glass housing than it is mocking up videos of fantasy tech. Video after the break!

Continue reading Sony shows off flexible OLED Walkman concepts on video

Blaupunkt shows off miRoamer-powered internet car radios

by Nilay Patel posted Jan 13th 2009 at 4:32PM

We'll be honest: apart from the ridiculous custom cars and the Viliv S7, we pretty much avoided the car audio-oriented North Hall at CES this year -- which means we sadly didn't get any facetime with Blaupunkt's miRoamer-powered TravelPilot New Jersey 600i internet car stereo. (Apparently double-DIN is big in the Jerz.) The prototype head unit connects to a cellphone over Bluetooth to access the internet, and uses the miRoamer service to stream "tens of thousands" of stations on the service -- which the company estimates will consume about 2GB of data a month, so you'd better hope your data plan doesn't cap you off or charge you for overages. The radio is expected to arrive in the second half of the year for $399, which isn't bad, but doesn't do much good for the squares like us who never swap out their car stereos -- which is probably why miRoamer is targeting 2010 for placement in OEM head units. One more pic of the single-DIN sized "Hamburg" model after the break.

Continue reading Blaupunkt shows off miRoamer-powered internet car radios

More details on D-Link's upcoming 7-inch SideStage USB monitor

by Tim Stevens posted Jan 13th 2009 at 2:34PM

We swung by D-Link's booth at CES to check out its upcoming SideStage USB-powered monitor, hoping to see the thing in action and get some more details ahead of its release. What we found was quite familiar looking, to say the least. D-Link was disappointingly just demoing a Nanovision, but was quick to point out this would not be the product destined for a full US release sometime this summer. That new display will still be produced by Nanovision, but will be modified to better suit our market, graced with a different logo, and cheaper, too. No firm price yet, but the company is targeting sub-$100, which sounds good to us.

Compulab unveils the exeda Android / WinMo handheld

by Nilay Patel posted Jan 13th 2009 at 1:28PM

We were really hoping to see some wild Android devices at CES, and while we did see one or two interesting applications, we sadly missed Compulab's crazy exeda. Ostensibly designed for the enterprise market, the squared-off handheld features a 3.5-inch sun-readable VGA touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, and a capacitive touchpad that acts as a mouse. Like other recent Asian Android handsets we've seen, the exeda can also boot Windows Mobile 6.1 on its 520MHz Marvell CPU and 128MB of RAM, and the radio setup is similarly flexible -- resellers can pick from quadband GSM / GPRS, CDMA, and 3G UMTS. Craziest of all? The exeda has a 10/100Base-T Ethernet port in addition to WiFi. Yeah, we want one. No details on pricing, but hopefully we'll find out more when it hits in March.

[Thanks, James R.]

Shuttle's X50 all-in-one desktop pulls up alongside the Eee Top

by Joshua Topolsky posted Jan 13th 2009 at 8:09AM

While the Eee Top may get a lot of zombie-hand loving, it's not the only game in town when it comes to cheapo all-in-one PCs. Shuttle announced its X50 desktop at CES as well, a system with more than just a few similarities to the competition, namely its CPU, base RAM, display size and resolution, chipset, GPU, and OS. In case you don't know those by heart: 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330, 1GB of RAM, 15.6-inch,1366 x 768 resistive touchscreen display, 945GC mainboard, GMA 950 graphics, and Windows XP. The real difference is the hard drive -- the Eee Top sports a 160GB, the X50 just 80GB -- and the price point, with the Shuttle clocking in at $499 ($100 cheaper). Our take? We're starting to see the emergence of what amounts to the netbook desktop -- a one piece, low power system meant for the kids' room, the kitchen, or grandma's rest home suite. The Shuttle wins in the looks department, but don't make any fast decisions -- come its March launch, you'll be seeing plenty of these.

[Via Fudzilla]