CES 2008: Palm Talks about their next generation Linux-based OS
We spoke with Palm and they’re hoping to have their Linux-based OS out by the end of 2008. That’s still a long way away, and the exact plan for it is still up in the air. We asked about how much compatibility they plan to build into it so that the thousands of PalmOS apps out there can still be useful and while they don’t have a firm plan in place, they recognize the value in those applications and in not having to recreate the wheel.
We also asked what they planned to do to engage the Linux developer community, and again, no definitive plan but a desire to get them involved. Obviously the more they get that community involved, the more that their Linux OS can take off. We were definitely encouraged by what we heard.
The Geeks did some blogging at 
The Geeks didn’t even realize that Belkin was in the A/V market, but their FlyWire will sure to please plenty of people that mounted their flatscreen to the wall only to realize that they still had to run a cable up the wall from their HDMI components.
Belkin had a few new gadgets out this year including one I had no idea that a market existed for. Apparently Gen-Zers love to share music on their iPods with each other. The problem Belkin solved is how to easily share the music with a playing iPod. Belkin’s octopus-looking gadget called the RockStar has five ports where headphones can be attached and music shared. There is also one hard-wired connection for your MP3 player and an included cable allowing you to add an additional MP3 player allowing teens to mix and control fade-ins using two MP3 players!
The Geeks spent a solid 3 hours @ Digital Experience Sunday night checking out dozens of companies and their products. Digital Experience is actually run by a different organization (Pepcom) than the one (
Wistron NeWeb Corp, a Taiwanese company, was selected as a CES Innovations 2008 Award Honoree for their Wireless Handset technology. Offering a full set of applications for creating and editing documents, email (via pull protocols only), PIM, PC sync and web browsing over GSM as well as WiFi and Bluetooth.
The phone won’t be available anytime soon in the US (they couldn’t give us an estimate). From the demo unit the Geeks played with, we thought the unit was nice but that there could be a little additional work. For instance, even though the device had a touch screen, the Google map application would not allow you to scroll the map. Also, the device seemed a bit unresponsive and slow when pushing the various buttons.
We also spoke w/ Digeo at CES Unveiled who were showing off some new Moxi products that may hit shelves this year. They were guarded about timeframes and pricing. Digeo is well known for their Moxi DVR and program guide products that have been traditionally integrated into cable TV set-top boxes, but now they are trying to make the leap into their own products. Read on for more info and photos.
