Number Who Went to the Spa after Their Flights to NYC were Canceled: Three

The Cameras: Nikon D700 and D300, Canon 5D Mark II and 40D and some XT Rebels, Olympus e510, various point and shoots
The Camcorders: Flips, Kodak Zi6, Flip, Panasonic HDC-SD1
iPhone Chargers and Batteries: All by FastMac
Alcohol Induced Sickness: One
Writers Who Pulled All Night Benders: Four
Writers Who Are Too Old for This Shit: Two
The Net Connection: EVDO by Sprint via Evdoinfo.com Rentals, and the surprisingly capable press room ethernet.
Device of the Show: Palm Pre (And more on our Best Picks Here)
Number of Unexpected Gizmodo Shoutouts: One (at the Palm Pre announce for our 3G data test)
Cookie Ladies in the Press Room Making the Time Go By With Less Hunger: Zero
Zicam Bottles Consumed: One
Number of Terrible Gadgets Not Worth Posting On: Thousands and Thousands
Thinnest TVs that Aren't as Thin as OLED TVs: Two, Plasma and LCD
TVs Bigger than Last Year's 150 Inch Plasma: Zero
The Boost In Morale and State of Mind Resulting From Sleeping in Discounted Luxury Hotel Rooms: 30% to 40%
Lifetime obsessions with Steve Wynn developed: One
Wedgies Endured: One
Tech Getting Jammed in the Cracks Of Every Device Possible: Blu-ray
Number of PR Collisions Claiming "First": Two, Projector Cellphone and Blu-ray TVs (1,2)
Booths Making Rows of TVs Attractive: Two (Samsung, Panasonic)
Set Top Boxes that Seduced Us: Three (Samsung's Thin Blu, HDi's Streaming and Bittorrenting Blu, and Dish's Sling enabled DVR.)
Nosebleeds: Zero
Number of Pico Projectors: Countless
Number of Pico Projectors I Think are Worth Buying: Zero
Headaches: Three
PR People Wilson Rothman Knows: 99.95%
Nipples Spotted at AVN: Just Jason's
Number of People Who Mixed Up Jason and Blam's Identities: Four

We're all home. This CES was a little different from years past.

Little things. Like lunch in the press room. Although the sandwiches were good, the lunches weren't hot this year. There were some empty booths on the show floor, too. So some cost cutting is happening. But it was still very much a crowded show floor. The usual choke point between Panasonic and Motorola was less gridlock-y, but was also redesigned, so its probably the new layout more than anything.

We also left a day earlier than usual, because the show has one less weekday in its schedule. But given the lack of big news, we didn't miss much. I mean, we could have done 150 posts a day, but that would include a lot of garbage and noise. What we saw that was great, we wrote about, and left the rest of the cutting room floor.

The best thing about this year's show — speaking meta — was that the lack of great gadgets made coverage manageable, and so we had time to see our favorite friends from across the internet. I had a great time meeting folks at casino royale and caught up with rob and joel from BoingBoing Gadgets after what seemed like ages. The night before, we got to see our friends from T3. (Thanks for the shirt and beer, Kat, and congrats on the engagement!) This is the kind of thing we wouldn't have been able to do at a busier show and in some ways, I am grateful for the slower pace.

So, after all these years of despising this show, I have to say that I've finally found something to appreciate it for: It gives me the perfect excuse to see almost all the Giz writers and fellow editors I know in one place, at one time. And how can that not turn into a good time, if work isn't getting in the way?

You see, while I thought that I'd arrived at the right spot for the 3DHD demo, I'd really been waiting in a sort of backstage area, where engineers, CEOs and Titanic producer Jon Landau were gearing up to pitch me and 30 other members of the press about their low power 3D plasmas.

I thought it was strange enough to see Panasonic corporate types posing with Landau's Oscar that he'd brought out for the occasion, handing off their cellphones to grab proud shots with the statue. Then a man in a gray suit and glasses walked up to one of the engineers standing to the side. He had an aura of overconfidence.

"Do you handle demonstrations of the 3DHD display technology," he asked the Panasonic engineer.
"Yes," the engineer responded after a moment.
"And you have prototypes in the US?"
"Yes, why?" asked the engineer, growing a bit uncomfortable at the man's forward nature.

The suited man paused for an intentional beat.

"I'm with the CIA, and we'd like to include your product in a presentation at the White House for the President." This was said nonchalantly, in that way people present grand pieces of information in a euphemistic tone meant to draw the listener in.

But it backfired when applied to the Japanese engineer whose English wasn't so fluent. So the engineer's following "what?" wasn't one of "holy cow, how is this possible?" but more just an earnest "what are you talking about?"

"The President of the United States," the CIA guy repeated, this time using full ceremonial emphasis.

"Uhhh..." the engineer responded nervously, completely confused now as to what was going on.

"I'm with the CIA. We're giving a presentation in two months to the President on eco technologies that will reduce our nation's dependence on oil. You know, oil?"

"...OK."

We'd like to include your display if you have one available in the States."

"...OK."

"Can I take a look?" Mr. CIA asked, motioning to the demo room.

"...OK."

And with that, another international technological concordance was made. [Image]

Everyone feels bad for the people who didn't bother to recheck rates after the economy crashed, and are paying $400 for rooms at the Hilton.

That's one of the side stories at CES that the press and attendees won't stop chattering about, and a silver lining to the economic challenges of the day. CES looks healthy in attendance, but the city's tourism must be hurting to have rates like these. There are rumors of rooms going for less than $10 on the outskirts of the city. I'm just glad we have hotel rooms that aren't damp, don't smell like feet, and aren't positioned within ear shot of nightclubs.

The show is never easy for anyone, but with a good night's rest it is a little less painful.

But when the economy recovers and I'm back at the Imperial Palace, I'll probably be worse off for having slept in luxury one year and then having had it taken away.

For now, I'm just going to enjoy it.

Palm dropped their new smartphone and their new operating system on us, and it is maybe the most interesting phone I have seen this decade. Maybe even more interesting, in many ways. The shit part is that the presentation was so good, the demo so fact dense and full of wonderful revolutionary things, that it was basically me shooting camcorder in the left hand for 30 minutes and shooting dslr with a 200mm zoom on the right hand, and typing with one hand and adjusting my zoom only when I could put the camera down. It was annoying, and I ended up getting pissed at pretty much everyone and everything. Wasn't pretty. What was nice is that Sprint ended up mentioning Gizmodo's 3G Broadband test results on stage, by name, citing their data network as the fastest in the country. A very nice surprise.

Today, Chris Mascari shot the video interview Wilson had with Robbie Bach, the exec at Microsoft who has a division of the best products (most of them) in the company, including Zune, Xbox and Windows Media Center. The guy has a magic touch, and I'm looking forward to more posts from the interview.

While the Blu ray devices at the show are pretty interesting, integrated into TVs and Speaker systems and receivers, the Blu-ray conference was pretty boring, said Mark. The same for Adam. But there wasn't really any sense of urgency on the floor — But I wouldn't know because I was across town working on Palm stories with Adrian all day.

I kind of wish we ditched some of the meetings and just roamed free and wild. The best things about CES are generally not scheduled, or rehearsed, but discovered in the corners of the show. I certainly wish I made it, for all the general angst I have for the giant sized cup of pain juice that is CES.

Some of you are also wondering how we got back here in the first place after being banned. Well, I apologied to CEA for turning off all their TVs. I meant it, and they knew it, and they let us back in. I cannot lie, there's something extremely satisfying about being unofficial, a foil to the official-ness title that Engadget has this year. To me, it means that we are totally untouchable in terms of a reputation for independence from the industry. But hey, it was also a screwy thing to do.

Everyone on staff looks tired. But tomorrow is another day. I'm going to go eat some show stoppers shrimp cocktail, which is the official shrimp cocktail of CES, and very delicious. Then I'm going to our meetup at Casino Royale, which you are all invited to.

Talk to you later.

I needed extra space to carry stuff, but his all season tires are really beat up and its not doing so well in the snow. Bad gadgets are annoying, bad tires are terrifying. Two friends are here with us, and we've been spending some time on the slopes and some time playing Xbox, including Lego Indiana Jones — pretty fun to watch!

The last time you wrote, you'd mentioned that it was cold in SF. Funny, but I agree that Tahoe cold is not nearly as bad, mainly because of my Goretex and fleece addiction.

I've been losing stuff in all the different pockets, though. Found an iPod shuffle in one of my jackets from last year I thought I had lost. And I lost the key for the car twice, and the house keys once and my gloves twice. I also can't find an orange Verizon Casio Boulder phone I was testing for its waterproof, ruggedness and push to talk function. Was very useful til I ended up not being able to locate it. The snow eats everything it touches!

What are you doing for new years? I haven't lined up plans yet. A bit worried about the site being manned during holidays, as usual, but maybe its time we just throw in the towel and relax like normal people on Christmas and New Years. I dunno.

Here are my favorite posts from Monday!

• How To Hack a Nerf Vulcan to Fire 500 Rounds a Minute
• How to Use Speed Cameras to Bury Your Enemies in Speeding Tickets
• Google Earth Leads Scientists to Undiscovered Forest, Brand New Species
• 8 Gadgets For Last Minute Shopper Horde Fighting

And CNN also did this piece on Palin's Blackberry. (Thanks Veronica!)

The WSJ also did something on holiday shopping — note that I gave them an old photo I took one week into this job. Before it ruined my health. (Paywall, you can't get in.)

Here are my favorite posts from Monday:
•Top 10 Desks For Gadget Lovers
• Ten Inventions That Freed Themselves By Killing Their Masters
• Last Minute Gadget Gift Deals
• Warbot Pinup Calendar: 12 Months of Gun-Wielding Robot Porn
• Ogle Cable Guys Between the Hours of Whenever and Anytime
• I Love Katamari for iPhone/iPod Touch Lightning Review
• Millennium Falcon Sled is as Close as You'll Ever Get to the Real Thing
• What a Wiimote to the TV Actually Looks Like

If you didn't see the photos from Funde Razor, here they are.

Also, we've just got a new front page layout yesterday. I gave a rundown here. I think it's good since it keeps a lot of our posts on the front for longer, so people can get to it quicker without having to page over. Like all rollouts, there will be some bugs, but that'll be fixed soon.

Here are some of the posts I liked from the past day or so.

• Cheap TV Battlemodo shows me which set I should buy for the boudoir
• Mark's guide to PlayStation Home, which I'm still having a hard time logging into or finding people to chat with on
• Strider's ridiculous Xmas tree. I'm glad it has a lot of Star Trek toys, and isn't just Star Wars stuff
• NSFW apps are coming back to the iPhone App Store
• I review this aluminum mousepad, which I think is great
• Wilson reviews this iRex ebook reader

I'm a bit road weary and drinking-weary but tomorrow I'm going off to this conference called EG, or Entertainment Gathering. It's about a 2 hour drive south to Monterey, but I think it'll be worth it. I generally avoid these things at all cost, but everyone I've talked to says the combo of tech and entertainment types makes for an unforgettable mix.

Snow will fall in Tahoe this next week! While NYC was butt cold, somehow, when there's material to snowboard on, it's not so bad. I'm going to be reviewing some snowboarding gear (with tech in it) this winter, in anticipation of the Gizmodo Snow Fun Meetup. Or whatever the hell we're calling it this year. Oh yea, it'll be April 4th. I hope you can make it this year. (Someone has to work the bunny slopes with Adrian.)

Here are my favorite posts from today:
• Dealzmodo Hacks: 8 Ways To Get More Miles Out Of Your Old PC
• Windows Mobile Browser Battlemodo: Can You Get the Real Internet?
• The Slimmest Houses On Earth Are Made In Japan

Here are the details. It's going on Wednesday, December 10, and readers'll get the chance to hang out with the WC Giz crew. There's no cover charge, but people should bring some cash for a donation and booze. Booze! Prizes! And good company! That says fun to me.

Oh, and I also finish Ashcraft's Arcade Mania book, and it was a good read all the way through. Lots of pictures and lots of great details about Japanese arcades. Hey, you can even see him appear on Japanese TV over at Kotaku.

Here are some of my favorite posts recently:
• Frucci blends an iPhone and squirts you in the face
• The Japanese make one more device I want
• I love gadget cakes
• The complete archive of RadioShack ads
• Dean Kamen and his crazy island. I met him again last CES, which was the first time I saw him in person since he spoke at my graduation. Nice guy, brilliant inventor, but lousy dresser.

I'm more than halfway through the book already and it's pretty fantastic, giving a non-textbook history of stuff like the sticker pictures (Purikura), shooting games, music games and more. And Ashcraft wrote it, so you know it's good. There's lots of pictures, because I know you like pictures, and some shots of Japanese schoolgirls showing a little bit of leg in their skirts, because I know you know I know you like Japanese schoolgirls. In any case, you can get a copy here.

Here are some of my favorite posts from the last day or so.

• Nintendo DSi piracy is here again
• My review of the Callpod Fueltank charger, because I wrote it
• False alarm on that Apple antivirus thing that everyone everywhere's been talking about
• Nokia's got a new N97 phone

Dogs are freaking out a bit after some bad owner in Corona Heights park with a white/black spotted dog with one blue eye attacked one and then the other. Bit of hair off the nape of their neck and a limp, but they're ok. I wasn't there, Lisa was. But that owner is going to get yelled at when I see him again. Dog control is important!

Oh my Fable ii game got corrupt. Somehow, my dude is always running in slow motion and I can't draw a weapon.

Other than that, my family is in town for the holidays. I hope I get all the Gizmodo Gallery planning done soon or there won't be much break to speak of, even though Denton gave us Friday off in full. I mean, I JUST FOUND OUT that I need an electrician to wire up the place before this huge 103 inch TV is going to turn on. I mean, I knew it was 220 volt all along, but until last week, we didn't even know it was going to fit in the door. Meatspace events = hard. What are your plans?

Here are my favorite links of the day:
• Brutally Honest Black Friday Ads Showcase Retailers on the Brink
• The Ultimate Black Friday Survival Guide
• At Gizmodo Gallery: Free DIY Laser Etching
• At Giz Gallery: 103-Inch Plasma, IF We Can Get an Electrician's Help
• ZzzPhone Is Second Google Android Cellphone Ever

Speaking of stuff you'd enjoy:

• I reviewed this Powergorilla portable charger. It'll be super useful for us when we're liveblogging
• Mark talked about why in-flight Wi-Fi is a bad thing. I, for one, welcome it
• Rothface has a Sony Reader review. In short, it sucks because the glare is ridiculous
• That brass knuckle umbrella is now for sale, in case you want to punch those neighbors of yours that always block your driveway
• The Samsung Behold review is done

Inside, I don't usually get star struck, but how can a geek not get excited seeing both Harold from Harold and Kumar and Sylar in the same theater sitting in the same row watching themselves on the screen. And it was Trek! Not the old Trek, and Not even Next Generation, but a new kind of Trek with the origins of the old characters and how they met up. Shields up, spoilers ahead.

They first showed the new trailer, previewed in theaters playing Bond, which you can see here.

Then they went through the scene were we see a trouble Kirk getting into a bar fight with cadets until a man stationed on his father's ship realizes who he is, stops the fight and asks him if he wants to do something better with his life. Kirk takes him up and joins. The next scene involves Kirk working with Bones to smuggle him aboard the Enterprise and he saves them from walking into a trap. The next scene involves a fight scene with John Cho (HAROLD and Sulu) and Chris Pine (Kirk) vs some filthy Romulans, skydiving (yes, skydiving) and a saber fight. And the final scene involves Spock and Kirk meeting Scotty.

The Trek Dorks are currently a bit polarized, a few upset over rewriting canon and a few worried about the stylistic updates. But I really like the New Trek, and I think it could break out of the category of Films Only for Nerds. You've got more action, humor, and heat than you did in the old ones. Even if its a bit less intellectual than previous movies at times, if the preview was any indication, it doesn't seem to ever slow down. And most importantly, it's impossible to not resonate with the young cast playing the classic characters as they express the old mannerisms; Kirk runs like Kirk, Bones complains like bones, and Scotty, well Scotty is 100x more funny than the old Scotty. Come to think of it, everyone with an accent is extremely funny, but maybe because I'm a bit racist. (In a loving way.) Someone should have done an origins movie long ago, but within a year, we'll have a modern telling of the heroes many of us grew up with. If you're like me, you'll probably find the story of how they all got together as cadets and juniors as important as the actual adventure they go on. Maybe we can do an io9/Gizmodo reader meetup movie night.

Here are my favoritest Giz stories today:
• BlackBerry Storm Review (Verdict: Not Quite a Perfect Storm)
• Future iPhones May Have Always-On Display
• Giz Explains: Every Video Format You Need to Know
• 10 Takes on the Blackberry Storm
• Dealzmodo Hack: Accessorize Your iPod/iPhone Like MacGyver
• At Gizmodo Gallery: The Red One Camera
• A Look at the Nokia Damage Test Labs

In other news, how are you enjoying the LA Auto Show with Jalopnik? Is it all hybrid-this and electric-that? That's what I'm seeing based on Jalop's coverage. Good times. I wonder if the car show crowd is more or less smelly than the consumer electronics crowd.

Here are some of the posts I liked today:

• Our Dell Inspiron Mini 12 Review
• This Media Center touch control thing
• Our Mobile web browser Battlemodo (spoiler alert, they're all poopy)

Noah is going to work for Fast Company, Lisa went to Tokyo for NPR work and left me to watch the new puppy, go to puppy school and get him neutered and pick up poo and pee at all hours of the day/night. In the middle of the night, he was trying to take his cone thing off to lick his stitches and realized I had to go get a bigger one from the vet at 2am. (I call him captain radar when he wears it.) Doesn't sound that bad a few days later, but then the Mac fried its HDD with no warning or clicking. Probably the logic board. One HDD swap and Time Machine/Capsule restore later and I've got zero data loss. (I set mine to back up at 1am every night, using Time Machine Editor.) I consider that my lucky break of the week. Lisa's RAM fried too, when she got back, the symptom being repeat kernel panics. Maybe it was the full moon.

Here are my favorite posts from this week so far:

• 10 Gadgets That Have No Business Using a Jet Engine
• What it Feels Like to Drive a Tesla Roadster
• At Gizmodo Gallery: Ancient Apple Phone Prototypes From Frog Design
• Google's iPhone Voice Search Mobile App Now Available
• 30 Mars Phoenix Discoveries NASA Will Never Show the World

Here are three of my favorite posts in the last 24 hours:

• The new Watchmen trailer! Sadly, without Dr. Manhattan genitalia
• Our James Bond review. Need to see that this weekend
• RED's crazy ass DSLR/camera

It's basically about a Stanford educated doctor who quits the rat race and gets in a camper and surfs all around the continent with his 8 kids. You'd think kids like that, without school, would end up homeless but they all did well and got to surf every day of their youth. My friend Brendan works for the company that produced it, Mekanism, strangely enough the same guys who did the Spore viral creature creator campaign. Here's a NY Times review of the movie. Oh I forgot, if you have netflix streaming, they have it, too! What about you, what have you been watching lately, and on what? Also, here are my favorite links from today.

• Homemade Wasp Sucking Machine Creates a Wasp Holocaust
• HUD Photoshop contest!
• 3M Pico projector review
• We're putting on an artMega Gadget Gallery in NYC this December!

But people have been reading us! I was looking over some old traffic reports from Gizmodo a year ago and realized that a core group of readers have really stayed true to us over the last year, while quite a few more have joined us. I know we don't talk about it often, but I get that warm tingly feeling in my belly when I think about it.

Last month was our biggest ever. We had 86 million pages, and on one day alone, we had 13 million pageviews from 2 million viewers on the day Apple launched their new Macbooks. I don't think we run the biggest liveblog of the Apple events, but I am pretty happy with how many people are watching the efforts these days. Especially if you consider 2 years ago, we didn't do them regularly. And the first time I did a liveblog, I forgot a camera cable. Also, I think we've jumped up in Technorati to #2, behind Huffington Post. I suppose all the features everyone is working on after doing their news posts are paying off.

I don't really have a point here. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that I'm just thankful, since Thanksgiving is practically on top of us in internet-future-news time, that the Gizmodo family of people-who-waste-time-at-work is so healthy. OK, I am getting emotional, so I will stop now to tell you which stories were my FAVORITES of the day.

• MacBook Air With Nvidia-Powered H.264 Video Playback Runs Less Toasty
• New Net Radio Royalty Compromise Sorta Finished, Sorta Sucks
• Design Your Own Heads-Up Display of the Future
• Confirmed: 3G Tethering Coming to iPhone
• Inside Consumer Reports' Electronics Testing Lab
• Datamore Porté Adds Lambo Doors to Your Hard Drive
• It's Official: The Canon 5D Mk II Will Turn Us All Into Professional Cinematographers

So what else went on today? Well,

• Elaine documented her trip to the top of the world's tallest observatory
• Matt showed us why 64-bit processor are cool (as if being able to use more RAM in your machine needed any explanation)
• And we had a pair of good election coverage stories. I dissected how CNN's "hologram" system worked and Erica spotted Family Guy being watched with the help of a commenter

Good show. I also just finished Dead Space, which is scary and awesome and fun. You should pick it up. After you're done seducing towns-ladies in Fable 2.

When I met Lisa, she had a miniature pincher named Ruby. We felt like she needed a friend so we picked up another one last week in Tucson after my cousin's wedding in Phoenix. His breeder was nice, although we suffered a touch of culture shock out there. They had a gun shop built into their house, I kid you not. The dog's name was Malcolm, which we intended to change. If you say, "Malcolm, COME!" it sounds silly. So we came up with a long list on vacation last month in anticipation. The top three included Esteban (From the Life Aquatic), Battlecat and Martin (named after a cool chateau we stayed in in France, not Martin Lawrence). But he seemed to know his name, so we didn't change it...too much. Now his name is Malky, which is Short for Malcolm Little. He's a little bastard, who I have to walk every 3 hours or he pees in the house. He also pees after walking for an hour outside, inside the house. We're going to puppy school soon. And he's going to get his balls chopped off at the vet, which should help with the marking of everything.

That's a photo of him in a sweater, because its freezing in SF compared to Arizona, and I think I'm yelling "CRAZY YARN FACE CRAZY YARN FACE" at him because he's really crazy when he plays with yarn on his face. And yes, I feel self conscious walking a 10 pound dog, but that's the price you pay for having a dog you can carry-on to Tokyo.

Here are my three favorite posts today, aside from Matt's post endorsing Tech:
• Herman Miller Embody Review: The Best Chair We've Ever Sat On
• New MacBooks Disable Pwnage Tool, Open Second Front in War on Jailbreaking
• AndroidBoy Gives the G1 Some Overdue Emulation Fun