CES - Gadgets

A new technology from Zyxio allows you to control your PC by breathing. Obviously this is good for accessibility, but it could also mean good and bad news for gamers. We'll discuss. We also rundown the latest news from CES, including the Intel keynote. And we talk with the winner of the Apps for Innovation contest about his Web site that makes it easy for you to find out what the government is about to do to you and gives you a chance to make a comment.

This week can more or less be summed up in three words (or should we say three acronyms?)--CES, CES, CES. It's virtually impossible to keep up with the avalanche of announcements rolling out of the gadget blowout in Vegas, and if your head is spinning as much as ours, you'd be hard-pressed to list your standouts just yet.

But what if your pushy Crave editors told you you absolutely had to cite your pick for the most exciting or noteworthy news out of CES 2010 so far (or else Crave would only post Hello Kitty gadget news … Read more

LAS VEGAS--There were e-readers aplenty at the Consumer Electronics Show, but there's substantial doubt if there are enough interested buyers to go around.

Amazon talks up the Kindle as its best-selling product, but even the market leader won't say how many digital readers it has sold. Sony has long had its own readers and Barnes & Noble has jumped into the fray with the Nook. But it hasn't stopped there.

Plenty of other would-be rivals showed up at CES, each hoping to make a name for themselves. But, that could be tough, analysts say.

"Just being … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Here's a cool idea that was demonstrated at the OLED Association booth at Digital Experience event, a pre-CES event. This Samsung innovation weds the ultraslim property of OLED panels with contactless RFID technology for security applications. The result: a photo card with a screen that's also wafer-thin. In this case, the panel is displaying a rotating image of the person, which is automatically generated once the card is scanned over a sensor, presumably for identification purposes.

According to the OA's spokesperson, this solution is a finished product and all ready to go to market. One of … Read more

LAS VEGAS--DigitTronics demonstrated its RCX4 Star Stryker radio-controlled helicopter to the delight of "Star Wars" fans at CES 2010.

Priced at $399, with a $299 sale price for CES attendees, the Star Stryker includes a quad motor layout with control for lift, cycle, and yaw. The helicopter comes with a custom-fit case, a 2.4GHz spread spectrum radio controller, and is already assembled.

Of course, Lucasfilm's lawyer team is probably drafting their cease-and-desist letter as we speak, so grab one while you can. At least we'll always have the photo gallery, right?

No word on when … Read more

LAS VEGAS--This is the coolest toy I've ever seen: the Parrot AR.Drone, a remote-controlled helicopter with a twist. It's controlled over Wi-Fi from an iPhone or iPod Touch, and it's got a camera in its snout that streams to your iPhone's screen.

The copter itself is computer-stabilized, so controlling it is much easier than the standard $40 toy RC helicopter you may be familiar with. But it should be: it'll cost in the neighborhood of $500, when it ships this year. You'll get about 15 minutes of battery-powered fun on a 1-hour charge. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Microsoft didn't exactly take our breath away with yesterday's CES 2010 keynote, but we're getting word that Zune HD users will soon have some good news to shout about.

Come Spring, the Zune HD should receive a firmware update providing support for MPEG-4 part 2 Advanced Simple Profile videos, including the torrent junkie's format of choice, XviD. When pressed on whether DivX support would also be added, our contact explained it was unlikely, because of proprietary restrictions. Also unclear is what range of resolutions will be supported, although we did confirm that the new format … Read more

LAS VEGAS--2010 indeed many the year of the tablet. Intel Senior Vice President Sean Maloney said his company's customers are working diligently on tablet designs.

And Intel should know. It supplies the core silicon to virtually every PC maker in the world. "We have lots and lots of tablet designs going down with our customers," said Maloney in an interview Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Maloney favors the larger size tablets. "It seems likely to me that you have a large screen. And you want a pure Internet experience," he said about potential tablet … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Ray Kurzweil knows a little something about e-readers.

The computing pioneer, who among other things helped develop modern text recognition software, has been working to use digital technology to improve reading for the past 30 years. After years of work on how computers can help those with learning disabilities, Kurzweil is now taking aim at the masses.

His latest project, Blio, is an effort to improve the emerging electronic book field with software that turns e-books into more than just a digital copy of the print edition. Blio, which is due out next month, is software that combines a … Read more