CES 2010: Panasonic Boasts 152″ 3D Plasma TV – World’s Largest

| Posted Jan 7th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

In a recurring theme at CES over the past few years, some large TV vendor is sure to outdo the previous year’s record of largest television set. This year it’s Panasonic who have announced a 152″ Full HD 3D Plasma display. Yes, 152 diagonal inches!

This is a 4096 x 2160 pixel panel that uses something called a “HD x 2 frame sequential method” for displaying discrete HD images for the left and right eyes. This is the same method uses in 3D theaters.

[press release]

CES 2010: Sprint’s Overdrive Mobile Hotspot Gives you 3G/4G Internet Connectivity in a Palm-Sized Device

| Posted Jan 7th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

sprint overdrive mifiSprint just announced the Overdrive – a 3G/4G mobile hotspot gadget. It connects to SPrint’s WiMax network, and allows up to 5 WiFi devices to connect. If the 4G conn (available right now in 27 cities [coverage]) drops, it switches to the nationwide 3G (EVDO) network.

Overdrive will be available in 2 days at Best Buy and Sprint for $100 (with a $50 MIR) and a 2-yr agreement at $60/mo.

At those prices, if you have 4G in your area, it could be well worth it to ditch your cable modem/DSL line. It’ll also mean having Internet connectivity wherever you go.

[press release]

CES 2010: Parrot Demos AR.Drone, RC Flying WiFi

| Posted Jan 7th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

parrot ar.drone rc flyerIn eye-catching demos reminiscent of WowWee’s Dragonfly in 2007, Parrot is showing off its AR.Drone which is a 4-propeller remote controlled flying ‘thing’. The AR.Drone features 2 cameras that you can view in real-time via WiFi, and also includes its own brain in the way of a Linux-based computer.

The AR.Drone will also ship with an augmented reality game, so you fly it as a virtual joystick of sorts. Parrot plans to offer up an iPhone app, but better yet, the source code as well so that hackers can develop even more interesting things for it. This may lead to a bright future for the AR.Drone.

Availability is tentatively March 5, but no word on pricing yet.

Video:
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CES 2010: Toshiba Shows Off multi-Cell CPU 3D TVs

| Posted Jan 7th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

3-D is shaping up to be the hot theme of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and amongst the players, Toshiba has just shown off quite a star – it’s Internet-connected Cell TV. And by Cell, we’re referring to the multiple 3.2GHz 8-core Cell processors that power its 3-D TV.

toshiba cell tv

In case you’re wondering, yes, that’s a lot of power, lots more than you would find in a normal desktop, but needed for rendering 3D TV.

Toshiba has said there will be 2 models – 55″ and 65″ and should debut sometime this year. No prices have been given.

[press release]

CES 2010: Boxee and D-Link Announce Boxee Box Media Center

| Posted Jan 7th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

boxee box by d-linkBoxee has teamed up with D-Link to produce the Boxee Box, a hardware version of their popular software. The Boxee Box brings TV shows, movies and other Internet content to your TV without a PC a la many other media center boxes.

One of the main ideas behind Boxee is to eliminate the pain of finding and sourcing content; Boxee chooses much of the content and organizes it for you.
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CES 2010: Powermat Announces Powerpack – Replacement Batteries for Cell Phones

| Posted Jan 7th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

Cordless charger vendor, Powermat, just launched an update to their product line – the Powerpack which is a replacement battery for your cell phone, so that you won’t need to wrap your cell phone in a Powermat-compatible sleeve or tack on an adapter.

powermat charger

Powerpacks will be available for devices from Nokia, HTC, BlackBerry, Samsung, LG, Sony, Motorola and more and cost about $40 each. Notice there’s no Apple on that list?!

Available in May 2010

CES 2010: Iomega’s v.Clone Uses VMWare Under the Hood

| Posted Jan 6th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

Once famous for their Zip drives, Iomega has now turned to software as well and has teamed up with storage giant EMC to create v.Clone.

iomega v.clone software

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CES 2010: Kodak Launches the SLICE, Touchscreen 14MP Digital Camera

| Posted Jan 6th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

kodak slice touchscreen digital cameraKodak has a new digital camera – the KODAK SLICE Touchscreen [press release]. With a 3.5″ 16:9 touchscreen, the SLICE is a 14 Megapixel camera with a 5x SCHNEIDER-KREUZNACH Lens, optical image stabilization, 720p HD video capture at 30fps, and easy sharing to sites like YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook as well Kodak’s Gallery.

Available in April 2010 for $350.

CES 2010: AT&T Launching 5 Android Smartphones in 1st Half of 2010

| Posted Jan 6th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

androidat&t logoAT&T announced that it plans to launch 5 new Android smartphones in the 1st half of this year (2010) [press release]. The phones will be from HTC, Motorola and Dell. Yes, Dell.

What does this say about AT&T relationship with Apple and its iPhone? Perhaps nothing, but perhaps that the honeymoon is over and Apple may really be taking its iPhone to other networks as well.

CES 2010: Sling Media Announces 4 New Products

| Posted Jan 6th, 2010 by Chief Gadgeteer [e-mail, website]

Sling Media (which was purchased by EchoStar (Dish) last year) has announced not 1, but 4 new products [press release].

First is the Sling Touch Control 100 which is a touch-screen remote control with a 4.3″ touchscreen and a rechargeable battery that gets changed in an accompanying cradle. The Sling Touch can control most IR-based devices, as well as communicate with other devices via IP over a 802.11 WiFi home network.

sling touch control 100

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