ces 2010

LAS VEGAS--I've not been shy about admitting that I'm a big fan of Callpod's Chargepod. I've taken it on many trips and I love that I can charge my camera, cell phone, and MP3 player simultaneously. But not only that: leaving all those individual chargers at home saves room in my suitcase.

At CES the company raised the bar a bit higher, with the debut of the Chargepod V2. Like the first Chargepod, the V2 can power multiple gadgets at once, but it also includes adapters for powering your laptop (both Macs and PCs) and it … Read more

Ray Zone has been an expert and advocate for 3D since the early 1980s. A pioneer in the field, he is responsible for more than 100 3D comic books, along with plenty of movies and other 3D productions. His interest in 3D began in 1953 when, at age 6, he started reading 3D comics starring Mighty Mouse. He has been converting flat art to 3D for 25 years and has worked on many feature films. He's now involved in the revolution to bring 3D to TV.

I caught up with Zone in the 3D exhibit area of CES where … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The president of the USB Implementers Forum discussed the arrival of USB 3.0 and gave a brief demonstration of transfer speeds on a Hewlett-Packard laptop at the Consumer Electronics Show.

In case anyone was in doubt, USB 3.0 is faster than the current 2.0 version. Below is a photo from CES of an Asus display, showing a comparison of the time it takes to drag a 2.1GB file from a laptop to an external hard disk drive using USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. (Asus was showing laptops with USB 3.0 connectors at CES.) And in the second video segment, Jeff Ravencraft, president of the USB Implementers Forum, provides a taste of the difference in transfer speeds between USB 2.0 and 3.0.

USB is more power efficient than 2.0. "This uses one-third of the power it would take on USB 2.0," Ravencraft said in an interview at CES. It's also backward compatible, he said, meaning it can also handle peripherals that use older USB standards.

Speaking of peripherals, Western Digital has announced a new WD My Book based on the USB 3.0 specification with an adapter card, which will make an existing desktop PC USB 3.0-compatible. … Read more

Sony Ericsson announced its first Android phone, the Xperia X10, in London two months ago, but I had to wait for CES to get my first look at the device on this side of the Atlantic.

As you'd expect, the Sony Ericsson stand at the massive Sony Electronics booth was crowded with people wanting to get a look at the handset. And there's no wonder why--the X10 is a sight to behold. Its slim profile and clean lines hit high on the beauty scale, and I enjoyed how sturdy and comfortable it felt in my hand. Front and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The most buzzed-about device at CES 2010 wasn't even on display here.

A tablet or slate computer from Apple was basically all anyone wanted to talk about, and it's not even a confirmed product yet. As a result, Lady Gaga might be the only thing that was actually at CES 2010 that could even be described as generating large-scale buzz.

We can partly blame both Apple and Google for this. Google sucked all the air out of the Las Vegas Convention Center Tuesday, two days before this whole show even got started, thanks to its introduction of … Read more

After spending 20 minutes playing Wipeout in 3D at Sony's CES 2010 booth, I'm officially a believer in gaming in the third dimension. It was only after I was made aware of the fine print did I become grounded in reality. But before we get into the gory details about what you'll need to get this working, let's discuss how it played.

Sony had a few games playable in 3D including Super Stardust HD, Avatar, and Wipeout. The experience playing Wipeout in 3D is truly immersive, with layered graphics giving you a surreal sensation of being … Read more

LAS VEGAS--An Intel executive gave a surprisingly in-depth demonstration of a future LG GW990 smartphone from LG Electronics here at CES.

Pankaj Kedia, director of Intel's Global Ecosystems Program for Mobile Internet Devices and Smart Phones, walked me through the phone's interface (see above video) on Friday. It runs on Intel's Moblin operating system and was surprisingly functional for a phone that is due, most likely, in the second half of the year. Intel CEO Paul Otellini brandished the LG GW990 during a CES keynote on Thursday but he demonstrated nothing approaching what Kedia showed me.

To … Read more