CES2012

LAS VEGAS--Having hauled my record collection from state to state, I know that vinyl is pretty much the antithesis of portability. Ion Audio's LP 2 GO is making me think differently about my stash of Dylan and Stones records.

Ion has been spinning around in the digital turntable market for a while. The LP 2 GO takes that same tech and shrinks it down to something you can toss into a backpack. You'll still have to pack those big record platters around, though.

LP 2 GO has a built-in speaker and headphone output. You can blast your tunes or convert them to MP3 format via USB with the bundled software. It plays both 33s and 45s.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--If it's January, it must be CES.

The Consumer Electronics Show (or CES, as it's affectionately known) is the technology industry's annual megaconvention, bringing together more than 140,000 attendees to see the latest and greatest products, services, and apps--the building blocks of our increasingly tech-centric, hyper-connected 21st century culture.

For 2012, the tech experts at CNET have once again had the privilege of managing the official Best of CES awards. This year, our team of editors has identified the most promising products in 10 categories--and named one of them as the best overall product of … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Remember Pleo, the friendly robotic dinosaur whose personality depended on how you took care of it?

Do you recall how the company that made it, Ugobe, went bankrupt?

Or how it got resurrected by its original manufacturer, Jetta? If you don't, feel free to check out the Wikipedia entry on this ill-fated dinosaur's history.

Well, while touring the booths of CES here, we chanced upon Innvo Labs, a division of Jetta, which had three Pleos on display. The dinosaur robots have gotten improvements to battery life, sport other features such as voice recognition, and have been renamed as Pleo RB (reborn). … Read more

LAS VEGAS--A considerable line of CES attendees who must have just imbibed their morning coffee is forming at the Toddy Gear booth. They're clutching what look to be colorful washcloths and feverishly wiping their various touch screens.

The Consumer Electronics Show is only halfway through, but in the right light these screens have obviously been stuck in some sort of fingerprint purgatory, perhaps not thoroughly scrubbed since long before being used voraciously in Vegas for directions, schedules, gossip, and who knows what else.

The fuss is over a product almost laughably simple, the 5x7-inch antimicrobial Toddy Smart Cloth, one … Read more

LAS VEGAS--It's a big day for The 404 as we welcome two big Hollywood names to the CES stage--Eliza Dushku and Wayne Brady drop by for a chat about video games, robots, gadgets, and more!

It's not every day that The 404 is lucky enough to have one big name celebrity guest on the show, much less two in one episode! We've been waiting all week to chat with Eliza Dushku about her official duties as the official Entertainment Matters Ambassador for CES 2012, which sounds like a fun job!

She's been here hosting parties and covering the show all week, so we'll talk to her about the next wave of 3D televisions and her voice acting work in games like Fight Night Champion and WET, but we'd be doing our listeners and nerds everywhere a disservice if we didn't ask her about her involvement in role in Ghostbusters 3!… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Quality audio speakers aren't usually about fashion. But that's exactly what PerSuede Audio is trying to change.

A couple of Southern Californian audio freaks with years of experience in the industry have spent more than three years and $250,000 in savings to develop this speaker system.

They're showing them off at the startup area of CES and working the rooms with representatives from Apple and elsewhere with hopes of bringing them to market.

The speaker market is obviously competitive--CES, for one, is packed with speakers that play music from iPhones and other devices--but the team … Read more

LAS VEGAS--IoSafe has finally learned that silence is golden.

In addition to the new Rugged Portable Thunderbolt that was announced with a bang, the maker of disaster-proof storage devices also unveiled today at CES 2012 the brand-new Solo G3 external hard drive.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Moscow-based game developer ZeptoLab has today announced Cut the Rope HD for BlackBerry PlayBook.

Om Nom came out swinging here at CES with a demo of the new HTML5 version of the game for IE, followed by the announcement of a licensing division to bring Cut the Rope plush toys to the consumer market. And now, at the tail end of the week, fans of the popular physics-based puzzler get yet another juicy bit of news.

Cut the Rope HD is now available for download in BlackBerry App World for $2.99.

LAS VEGAS--If you don't know what a Thunderbolt drive is, and most importantly, how vulnerable your data can be, IoSafe wants to sear that in your mind.

Following its tradition of the last three CES shows, (and as I predicted prior to CES 2012), the maker of disaster-proof hard drives pulled off a spectacular show this year to unveil its Rugged Portable Thunderbolt drive. This time the demo came with a little twist.

The new drive itself is very similar to the previous USB 3.0 Rugged Portable that was introduced at last year's demo--and shot with shotguns. … Read more