As for what the Tegra 2 is, nobody really knows, because the closest Nvdia execs will get to a spec rundown is to offer vague promises of MORE: evidently it will be at least twice as powerful as its predecessor, which was was impressive in its own right. We'll get a sense of how powerful it is at CES, but the major point Nvidia would like to make is that unlike last time, the Tegra 2 will actually get used:

At CES we are going to make a major announcement about Tegra family. It is highly possible that we will see some very interesting form-factors coming out at the same time. [There will be products] shown by our partners using the next-generation Tegra device. You are going to see roll-outs and deployments of tablet PCs, smartbooks, netbooks, MIDs throughout the first half [of the year]; and then you will see major roll-outs of smartphones in the second half

This jibes with chatter from the last few months that companies like Samsung, Nintendo and even Nvidia themselves have suddenly started working on Tegra hardware; we just didn't know until now that it'd be next gen. What we still don't know is what that means: If the original Tegra could decode 1080p video, what can the new one do? Decode 1080p video more enthusiastically? [XbitLabs]

The last 3M pico experiment, the MPro110, was a mixed bag: Passable image quality was tainted by poor build quality and low battery life, and the overall experience, while promising, just wasn't quite there yet.

The MPro120 is a replacement for the MPro110, and on top of the verifiably awesome image quality from its liquid crystal on silicon imager, it multiplies battery life by a factor of six to four hours, pushes the life of its 12 lumen lamp to 20,000 hours, and adds stereo speakers, while hanging onto the prior product's 640x480 resolution and $350 price tag. Another difference: Assuming 3M's tightened up their hardware quality, people might actually buy one this time around. The MPro120 is due to land on September 1st. [3M]

COMING SOON TO A POCKET NEAR YOU: THE MPRO120

3M's New Handheld Projector Set for September Launch

ST. PAUL, MINN. (August 26, 2009) – This fall, Hollywood's biggest blockbusters are coming to a pocket near you! Less than a year after launching the MPro110 - the handheld digital projector that won the "Grand Award" in the gadget category of the Popular Science 2008 Best of What's New Awards – 3M announced today the September debut of the MPro120, the newest member of the MPro family. The MPro120 provides improved functionality, increased portability and an expanded feature set.

The MPro120 is the first projector to incorporate 3M's MM200 projection engine, the next generation of the MPro family. As announced at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, the MM200 engine uses an advanced liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) electronic imager and boasts enhanced image quality with a full color gamut. The MPro120 provides users with a robust battery life of two to four hours (depending on brightness setting) - enough to watch a full-length film – and, in full brightness mode, achieves a brightness of 12 lumens. Featuring an integrated flip stand, tripod, stereo speakers and a variety of input cables, the MPro120 is ready to use "out-of-the-box" with a wide range of today's most popular video output gadgets. And, as with its predecessor - the MPro110 - the MPro120 will be the ideal projection solution for laptops and netbooks. Available optional accessories include an adapter cable for Apple® products, component video cable and car charger.

"Following the success of the MPro110, the MPro120 will further reinforce 3M's leadership position in the development and implementation of advanced projection technologies," said Mark Colin, general manager, 3M Projection Systems Department. "The functionality of the MPro120 represents technical achievements that were manageable only by the long-term commitment to research and development that is 3M's hallmark."

The MPro120 will be on-sale September 1 with an estimated price of $349. Optional accessories are sold separately.

Like TiVo and other DVR products, the dilemma for the Moxi box was whether to encode re-digitize analog video or to get in bed with satellite and cable providers. They chose the latter, but found that the relationship was a little like a twentysomething aspiring actress "dating" a bigtime Hollywood producer who happened to be married. Comcast, Echostar and others may have promised a lot of good things—and Digeo backer Paul Allen certainly had some reason for keeping the company afloat so long—but we, the eager consumers, got nothin'.

I had over time grown so jaded about Moxi that CES 2009 came and went without me writing up this important bit of news: That the Digeo Moxi HD DVR was going on sale, direct to consumers.

What's great about Moxi? Even at the beginning, the interface was ahead of TiVo and everyone else, replacing layers with directional paths, kinda like kinda like Sony's Xross Media Bar (XMB), seen on the PS3 and newer electronics. Other Moxi boxes were more ambitious: One prototype had a built-in DVD player for single-box awesomeness. Another prototype featured unprecedented home video networking, bringing alive the dream of the DVR hub-and-spoke model for the home. These were mostly too good to be true, but the promise of a bold new DVR experience remained, echoing.

The Moxi HD DVR requires CableCard installation, but nothing else from your cable company. The $400 $800 box—priced just over TiVo HD XL in spite of a smaller drive—requires no monthly fees, can record 75 hours of HD content on its 500GB hard drive, has fluid navigation and a filter that automatically puts all HD content where you can find it easily.

Though most of the technical attributes line up with TiVo's—like the eSATA port for adding extra drives—there's no mention of the premium internet apps we have come to expect in everything devices like this one. Where is Amazon's VOD? Where's Netflix? Rhapsody? Napster? What they do offer now is Flickr for photos and Finetune for music, plus Digeo's own Moxi-branded delivery mechanism for "news, sports scores, entertainment and financial information, weather and more."

Am I sold? Far from it, but if the review unit arrives and works as billed, it'll be a huge-ass step in the right direction for this little company. And I welcome it. [Moxi at Amazon]

Update: A note attached to a press release sent to me today stated: "Moxi HD DVR’s total cost compared to TiVo HD XL is $200 less." The price itself wasn't mentioned anywhere. In my haste, I interpreted that convoluted sentence to mean that the price was $200 less than the XL's $600. Some of you have pointed out that it's not. I appreciate you catching the mistake, and once again I feel like Digeo Moxi has suckered me with its too-good-to-be-true sweet talk. I still welcome the product, but for $800 it better be good at foot massages and baking cookies, too.

Here's the CES press release:

Digeo Introduces Moxi® High Definition Digital Video Recorder

Flagship Moxi® HD DVR Sets New Standard for Integrated Digital Cable and Internet Entertainment

LAS VEGAS, January 8, 2009 - CES 2009 - Digeo, Inc., a Paul Allen-backed leader and innovator in cable set-top boxes, today announced the consumer availability of the Moxi® High Definition Digital Video Recorder (HD DVR), a premium home entertainment product that makes it easy for consumers to discover, experience and share high definition media from their digital cable provider, PCs on the home network and the Internet. The Moxi HD DVR is the first Digeo DVR available directly to consumers and is designed to appeal to the most demanding entertainment enthusiasts.

The Moxi HD DVR offers consumers a distinct experience among digital video recorders, unifying high definition cable, PC and Internet content throughout the home. Moxi's Emmy® award-winning menu is ingeniously uncomplicated, making it effortless for users to find TV programs and movies as well as photos, music, games and other Internet services. The Moxi HD DVR also offers a native HD experience. The Moxi system was designed from the outset to take full advantage of widescreen HDTVs and its 500 gigabyte hard-drive can hold up to 75 hours of recordings at full 1080 resolution. Finally, the Moxi HD DVR is a savvy investment for at-home entertainment. There are no monthly fees and no embedded advertising as with typical DVRs, and new features and services are automatically upgraded over the network at no charge.

"With the Moxi HD DVR, we built upon our experience deploying nearly half a million DVRs throughout the U.S. to understand what consumers are going to need long-term, and then we created a premium DVR that delivers the ultimate HD experience," said Greg Gudorf, CEO, Digeo, Inc. "Simply put, Moxi blows away other DVRs."

Digeo also today announced that it has selected Amazon.com as the exclusive launch retailer for the Moxi HD DVR, which is available for purchase now from Amazon.com's Electronics Store at www.amazon.com/electronics. Amazon will work closely with Digeo to promote and merchandise a "best in class" online experience which underscores the Moxi HD DVR concept to consumers. (Please see related Digeo press release for more detail.)

Further underscoring the Moxi platform's momentum, Monster Cable Products Inc. yesterday announced plans to introduce two Monster iTV® PowerCenters™, developed in alliance with Digeo, in June 2009. The iTV PowerCenters' MyOS control system is powered by the Moxi platform, enabling users to access a host of digital media content such as pictures, movies, games and music, as well as operate network security cameras and Monster's IlluminEssence Advanced Lighting Control module. Moxi software works in conjunction with Monster MyOS to seamlessly integrate digital media and home automation within the TV experience, unlike other solutions which require a myriad of separate devices and control interfaces to accomplish this. (Please see related Monster press release for more detail.)

The Moxi HD DVR's many advanced features and consumer benefits include:

* Dual-tuner HD DVR - users can record two shows and watch a third pre-recorded show all in HD; users can play, pause and rewind live TV
* Emmy® award-winning single-screen interface enables users to find content quickly and avoid getting lost in a maze of navigation levels as with other DVRs
* Content and services are always presented in the same consistent format regardless of source
* 500 GB storage means 75 hours of 1080 HD recording or 300 hours of standard definition recording - and Moxi is expandable with up to two terabytes of external eSATA drive storage
* Brings web-based services such as Flickr, Finetune and more to the HDTV
* Access to a wide variety of Internet content including news, sports scores, entertainment and financial information, weather and more through MoxiNet and the Moxi SuperTicker™
* Remote web and mobile browser scheduling
* Connection to PCs through home network to play music and display photos
* Dolby Digital certified for high-fidelity surround sound
* CableCARD™-equipped Broadcom BCM7400-based set-top box with twice the processing power of competitors to render HD graphics

To celebrate Moxi HD DVR's unveiling, Digeo will be giving away three units during the International Consumer Electronics Show. Consumers can register for the drawing at moxi.com/CES.

To learn more about the Moxi HD DVR's features and pricing, please visit www.moxi.com

About Digeo
Digeo, Inc., a Paul Allen-backed company, provides premium home entertainment products including digital video recorders (DVR). The company's mission is to enable the best consumer experience in high-definition entertainment for the connected home. The company's flagship product - the Moxi® HD DVR with Emmy® award-winning menu and features - serves as the hub for whole-home distribution of digital entertainment. The Moxi platform empowers consumers to discover, experience and share high definition media, including TV, movies, music, games, photographs and video. The Moxi HD DVR is available directly to consumers at moxi.com or via Amazon at www.amazon.com/electronics. Moxi products are also available through cable providers, with nearly a half million units deployed to U.S. households to date. Digeo continues to innovate and provide Moxi solutions to the cable and IPTV industry, including the licensing of the Moxi platform and services to consumer electronics manufacturers and service providers. To learn more, please visit www.digeo.com.

# # #

Digeo, Moxi, and their respective logos are the trademarks of Digeo, Inc. Use of the trademarks and service marks of the National Television Academy ("NTA"), including the mark EMMY®, requires the prior express written permission of National Television Academy. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Recording capacity times can vary depending on content type and bit rates utilized by the provider. Stated recording capacities are calculated in typical usage scenarios. Certain future services may be offered at additional cost.

Really though, somehow Hoffman manages to capture the tone of the event, the absurdity of so many of these products and the people selling them. If only the clip included 200 pans of identical digital cameras, flat screen TVs and journalists proudly toting official CES 2009 backpacks, you'd be missing nothing other than the smell and complimentary after hours booze.

[via bbGadgets]

Revealed at CES, this Coke vending machine from Sapient has a completely interactive touchscreen front panel that lets you view the product before you purchase it—just like how you would in the grocery store. Simply select which bottle of pop you want, give it a spin to peruse its ingredients, marvel the barcode, and check out whatever else you need to know about it before purchasing it (with either cash or a credit card).

Sapient's Coke machines are set to be available sometime soon in the 190+ malls owned by the Simon Property Group. However, the rest of the world may have to wait until 2010 until they could touch one of these babies. View the very first hands-on first impressions below. [Engadget Thanks Peter!]

This would be fair, considering his company was about to announce a sudden 90% plunge in profits. So it's understandable that, when I asked him about Nvidia's recent coup, getting Apple to swap out Intel product for GeForce 9400M chipset, he said with more than a hint of disdain, "You're obviously a Mac user." Here's a guy who is used to making judgments, and doing it quickly.

But when I told him I also built my desktop with an Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale chip, he reversed his decision. Laughing, he said, "You're alright for a kid that wears black Keds." This wasn't his first reference to my sneakers—they were Adidas, actually—and it wasn't his last either.

At 69, he is definitely one of the oldest guys running a powerhouse innovation company like Intel, and when he's sitting there in front of you, he conveys an attitude that he's seen it all. He hung up his labcoat for a tailored suit long ago, but talking to him, you can still tell that his degree from Stanford isn't some MBA, but a PhD in materials science. Nerdspeak flows easily out of his mouth, and he closes his eyes while calmly making a point, like a college professor. At the same, you get a sense of the agitation within. After all, he'll be the first to tell you that in business, he still lives by the mantra of his Intel CEO predecessor Andy Grove: "Only the paranoid survive."

In the end, I really liked the guy. He's tough but fair, like an Old Testament king. Here are excerpts from our conversation, chip guru to chip fanboy, about vanquishing your competition, the limitations of clock speed, the continuing rage of the multi-core race and how to keep paranoid in your golden years.

What's the endgame of the multi-core arms race? Is there one?
If everything works well, they continue to get Moore's Law from a compute power standpoint. [But] you need software solutions to go hand-in-hand with software solutions...There's a whole software paradigm shift that has to be happen.

How involved is Intel in the software side of making that happen?
Probably the best measure is that if look at the people we hire each year, we still hire more software engineers than hardware engineers.

Where do you see Larrabee, Intel's in-development, dedicated high-end GPU, taking you?
The fundamental issue is that performance has to come from something other than gigahertz... We've gotten to the limit we can, so you've got to do something else, which is multiple cores, and then it's either just partitioning solutions between cores of the same type or partitioning solutions between heterogeneous cores on the same chip.

You see, everybody's kind of looking at the same thing, which is, 'How do I mix and match a CPU- and a GPU-type core, or six of these and two of those, and how do you have the software solution to go hand-in-hand?'

So what do you think of the competition coming from Nvidia lately?
At least someone is making very verbal comments about the competition anyway.

Do you see Nvidia as more of a competitor than AMD? How do you see the competitive landscape now?
We still operate under the Andy Grove scenario that only the paranoid survive, so we tend to be paranoid about where competition comes from any direction. If you look at the Intel history, our major competitor over the years has been everybody from IBM to NEC to Sun to AMD to you-name-it. So the competition continually changes, just as the flavor of technology changes.

As visualization becomes more important—and visualization is key to what you and consumers want—then is it the CPU that's important, or the GPU, or what combination of the two and how do you get the best visualization? The competitive landscape changes daily. Nvidia is obviously more of a competitor today than they were five years ago. AMD is still a competitor.

Would you say the same competitive philosophy applies to the mobile space?
Two different areas, obviously. The netbook is really kind of a slimmed down laptop. The Atom processor takes us in that space nicely from a power/performance standpoint. Atom allows you to go down farther in this kind of fuzzy area in between netbooks, MIDs [mobile internet devices] and smartphones. The question there is, 'What does the consumer want?'

The issue is, 'What is the ultimate device in that space?' ...Is it gonna be an extension of the internet coming down, or there gonna be an upgrowth of the cellphone coming up?

Are you planning on playing more directly in phones, then?
Those MIDs look more and more like smartphones to me...All they need to do is shrink down a little bit and they're a damn good smartphone. They have the capability of being a full-internet-functionality smartphone as opposed to an ARM-based one—maybe it looks like the internet you're used to or, maybe it doesn't.

Intel and Microsoft "won" the PC Revolution. There's a computer on basically every office desk in the country. What's beyond that? Mobile, developing countries?
Well, it's a combination. There's an overriding trend toward mobility for convenience. We can shrink the capability down to put it in a mobile form factor, and the cost is not that much more than a desktop, point one. Point two, if you go to the emerging economies where you think that mobile might be lacking, really the only way to get good broadband connectivity in most of the emerging markets is not with wired connectivity or fixed point connectivity, it's gonna be broadband wireless and that facilitates mobile in emerging markets as well.

So where does that take Intel going in the next five years?
It's pushing things like broadband wireless, WiMax...It's broadband wireless capability, that's the connectivity part. It's mobility with more compute power and lower energy consumption to facilitate battery life and all that good stuff. And it's better graphics. That's kind of Larrabee and that whole push.

You've passed AMD on every CPU innovation that it had before you did, such as on-die memory controllers, focus on performance per watt, etc. How do you plan to stay ahead?
The basic way you stay ahead is that you have to set yourself with aggressive expectations. There's nothing in life that comes free. You're successful when you set your expectations high enough to beat the competition. And I think the best thing that we have going for us is...the Moore's Law deal.

As long as we basically don't lose sight of that, and continue to push all of our roadmaps, all of our product plans and such to follow along Gordon's law, then we have the opportunity to stay ahead. That doubling every 18 months or so is the sort of expectation level you have to set for yourself to be successful.

Would you consider that the guiding philosophy, the banner on the wall?
That's the roadmap! That is the roadmap we have. If you dissect a bit, you tend to find that the older you get, the more conservative you get typically and you kinda start to worry about Moore's Law not happening. But if you bring the bright young talent and say, 'Hey, bright young talent, we old guys made Moore's Law happen for 40 years, don't screw it up,' they're smart enough to figure it out.

Using the iPod-esque controls and the screen, the user can display and record measurements, adjust case lengths and convert measurements between standard and metric. Definitely a smart design, but when DIYers might be able to get their hands on it is unknown. [Gearlog via Newlaunches via Coolest Gadgets]

First Place — Umadsarah Unicornsaintreel (??)
Second Place — Burrito Tech
Third Place — Derrick Villalpando

Japan's Nikkei and Reuters are both reporting that losses for the fiscal year ending in March could hit $1.1 billion, with Nikkei saying they may even drift closer to $2 billion. This is, as they say, the exact opposite of the $2.2 billion profit forecast Sony previously cited.

At fault are, well, the financiapocalypse of course, which has resulted in subdued demand for HDTVs in the American market and elsewhere, as well as a booming yen that has driven up the price of exports. Stocks for all of the Japanese tech companies plunged today from the news, with Toshiba, Canon and Panasonic all down in the neighborhood of 7%.

So the idea of Sony shuttering a major division by the end of next month rings a bit more true now, doesn't it? Who will get the axe?

[NYT, Variety]

The bad news is that it's a Korea-only phone (shipping next month) and according to Gearlog's Sascha Segan no one seems to know much about it.

But on the good side, the phone runs on Samsung's TouchWiz UI, can project any of the visual media stored on the phone, animated Korean kids stories and DMB-T mobile TV signals, or functions as a de facto flashlight.

Segan says Samsung reps promised more details soon. For now check out more pics on Gearlog, or take a peek at CrunchGear's video below. [Gearlog and CrunchGear]

Of course, it's a further sign that the economy being in trouble, and goes along with the generally more subdued feel of CES 2009; but no one scrapped any plans to show a 200-incher within the last six months, so there's more to it than that.

The current kings of ridiculous TV extremes—Panasonic's 150-inch plasma and Sharp's 108-inch LCD—represent the biggest physical pieces of glass that the factory can produce without imperfections. Usually, these massive pieces of "mother glass" are carved into a number of smaller panels, and they obviously don't build them bigger only to get bigger showpiece TVs for CES—the more smaller sets you can produce from a single run of glass means more efficient manufacturing and more money saved per panel.

So the short answer is: in the last 12 months, no one has had a bigger and better factory go online that can produce any bigger pieces of mother glass.

But here's an interesting tidbit: Sharp is currently building a new plant in Japan that's capable of producing a piece of mother glass that's 120 inches by 112 inches. If we know our Pythagorean theorem, that's just under 165 inches diagonal, which would take the crown from Panny's 150-incher.

But it's not going to happen. Sharp's Senior Product Manager for LCD TVs, Tony Favia, says that right now there are no plans to build a 165-inch TV from the new mother glass when the plant goes online in the spring of next year. When we asked why, Tony and several other execs basically just laughed at the idea of building a 165-inch set today.

Here's why—the logistics make it too ridiculous in any economy, especially the one we've got right now. Panasonic's 150-inch set still isn't even on sale. They've sold a few thousand of their 103-inch plasma (2007's plasma size king) and have announced intentions to sell the 150, but right now they're just intentions. A 150-inch TV requires a chartered 747 to ship—and they can only fit two in each 747. And on top of that, no one's there to buy these things. Sharp unveiled an 82-inch LCD prototype this year because 108 inches is simply too big and expensive at $129k, and they needed a middle step between that and their 65-inchers.

So where will the next size race come into play? OLED. Even though we didn't see much of that technology at CES this year either, the shipping logistics of a massive display that can effectively be rolled up into a shipping tube is where we'll see the next big size wars. Once manufacturers figure out how to seal the OLED filling into naturally more porous plastic, that's the war we'll have.

It better be soon, because without the HDTV size match, CES is a snooze.

If we learned one thing this last week, it's that neither one had enough news to live up to its previous reputations as king of the gadget shows, which is especially clear when you take it all in at once. Click each image for the full post, and for all the coverage from each, see our tag pages: Macworld 2009, CES 2009

Macworld 2009:

iLife 2009: Everything got touched, from facial recognition in iPhoto to piano lessons from Sting in Garage Band.

17-inch MacBook Pro: It got its expected Unibody makeover, complete with a long-lasting and non-removeable battery; here's how it works.

iTunes dropped DRM for good (but with a revamped pricing structure), and now allows iPhones to download tracks over 3G and EDGE. which we immediately tested.

The final Macworld keynote was without Steve Jobs; We were there to liveblog the hell out of it, of course, and you can watch Apple's broadcast of it here.

CES 2009 Day One Top Ten:
If we told you three months ago that Palm would own CES, would you have believed us? Find out how Palm did it in our full hands-on.

Samsung BD-4600 Blu-ray Player: Wall-mountable, networked, 1.5-inches thick, and really, really nice looking.

Samsung Luxia LED TV Lineup: Samsung loosed a whole series of ultra-thin, LED-backlit, network-connected LCDs, winning the Battle of the TV Announcements hands down. We got a close look in photos.

Vizio Connected HDTVs: These Vizios stream just about everything possible over wireless-N: Amazon, Blockbuster and Netflix VOD, Pandora and more.

Sony Vaio P: Sony's Vaio P is something we haven't seen before: a 2.08:1 aspect ratio (1600x768) on a 1-inch thick portable. Something different in the very, very generic netbook field.

Casio 1,000fps Point and Shoot Cameras: Both the EX-FC100 and the EX-FS10 bring the EX-F1's slo-mo capture goodness to a point and shoot. Casio's still the only folks in the super slo-mo field, and they're continuing to kill.

LG's GD910 Watch Phone: It was a non-working, behind-the-glass prototype last year, but one of every gadget head's boyish dreams will come true later this year: A watch that's a phone.

Eee Keyboard: Asus took the crazy cake with their still-shadowy home theater keyboard. With an onboard processor (of some kind), a touchscreen and keyboard and wireless HDMI, it makes perfect sense as a unique home-theater machine.

Sony Cyber-shot G3: We're all about putting web browsers on as many things as possible, and Sony's found another way to get one into our pants: A super-slim wi-fi-equipped Cyber-shot G3 that's the world's first to surf the web.

Panasonic Portable Blu-ray Player: Panasonic's DMP-B15 is the world's first portable Blu-ray deck. Your laptop probably doesn't have a BD drive, but this will ensure you can watch hi-def 1080p on a tiny, tiny screen on your next flight.

And there you have it. Good stuff you may or may not be able to afford in '09? Disappointment of disappointments? Discuss.

CES 2009 Day Two: The Best Of The Rest

FyreTV Porn Streamer: A quick jump over to AVN yielded juicy fruit: Jason "Roku What?" Chen's favorite porno streamer now does it without wires. Discerning adult cinema fans need their AV center CLEAN and CLUTTER FREE.

HDi Dune Blu-ray Players With BitTorrent : Toss your torrents into this Blu-ray deck's client over the network, then play back your pirated catch with its crazy extensive codec support. Brilliant.

The Hunter Concert Breeze Ceiling Fan Experience: Speakers + ceiling fan. Sometimes, a headline says it all.

Dell Mini 10: A 720p screen and a TV tuner is a nice bump for one of our favorite netbook series.

Cell Mate Hands-Free Cellphone Holder: Bluetooth is for the moneyed d-bag elite; real mobile gangstas clamp their iPhones to their heads.

For our full coverage of each event, see our CES 2009 and Macworld 2009 tagpages.

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?

The claim is as follows: With Sprint, Palm is considering two different price points to be decided based on the competitive landscape at the time of the Pre's summer '09 release—a part of the original report that has been revealed as true, pretty much—and will settle on either a $399/$149 or $499/$199 unsubsidized/subsidized pricing.

Another little interesting nugget? The initial production run will sit at around 200,000, a low number necessitated by the limited manufacturing capacity for the Pre's screen hardware.

The $149/$199 figure is obviously the story here, as the on-contract price the most important, referenced one for any handset. But don't ignore the $399 price either—that's less than many no-contract BlackBerrys and WinMo phones, and the same price as the G1 developer model. All this sounds like it could conceivably be true, and if Palm wants their new handset to make any waves (or more urgently, save their entire company) then they should make it true. [Mobile Review via Unwired View—Thanks, Stasys!]

Their tent, sponsored by LG, had connectors for a variety of handsets (good on LG for that), and I've read scattered reports today that said you'd get about a 30% charge in 30 minutes.

Now, if they could only find a way to recharge our exhausted CES 2009 staff, who are no doubt spent after their extensive conference coverage and a few innocent pranks. Those CES massages were a start, but only a start. I imagine they need something more.

TreeHugger has some video of a GotWind rep explaining the system and making a charge:

[Treehugger]

At CES 2009, Microsoft Mediaroom PR reps, while doing their little spin dance, did manage to let slip that "multiple carrier field trials" were, in fact, in progress. When questioned specifically about the U.S. market, PR did their thing and asked the questioner to go bug someone else. In this case, AT&T, presumably because the carrier was considering the platform or it is in the running to support it in the U.S. with U-verse.

As for the U.K., IPTV on an Xbox 360 looks a little more certain in 2009 than for other markets. BT was confirmed as the carrier for the service in that region, with deployment possibly this year, possibly not—no details were given on timing. If trials are indeed ongoing at this very moment, however, it could bode well for a 2009 rollout (E3 fodder? Perhaps!). Just find some British friends fast if you happen to live Stateside or elsewhere.

As noted by the source, that pic from he CES show floor is Mediaroom running on a Motorola set-top box. The service will look very similar when running on an Xbox 360. [Zatz Not Funny]

Despite the SDK only going out to a few select partners, Palm has launched its Developer Blog to help prospective developers stay informed about the state of the handset. The SDK won't be released to more developers until nearer release, but Palm seems very aware that a strong collection of apps will be essential to the Pre's success. Palm never asked me for any app store name suggestions, but I'll just throw a few out there that I really think might've taken off.

• Palm Apparama
• Palm Bodega
• Palm App Dépanneur
• The App Bazaar
• Palm's App Emporium

But the App Catalog is good too, I guess. [Palm via Engadget]