It's time once again for the Consumer Electronics Show, the most important industry event to be located within eight miles of legal prostitution. Previous CES events have seen the introduction of the Laserdisc, the Virtual Boy and CD-i, so you know that whatever is introduced this year will dominate the industry in the decade to come.
I, myself, am covering CES from a hot tub in Marin County, so my reporting is somewhat limited. But I'm not going to let that stop me. Here's my look at the best gadgets I'm pretty sure are probably being revealed at CES 2008.
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Check out the gizmos and gadgets on the show floor.
With the color green on everyone's lips, computer makers are competing to create the most ecologically responsible desktop machine. Dell's foot-powered SpinWheel 4300x and Gateway's 100 percent biodegradable MulchMaster 7800x get a lot of attention, but the standout is HP with its USD2000x, which automatically transfers several hundred dollars out of your bank account every month and sends it to some guys who are going to plant some trees somewhere, thereby giving you the carbon footprint of a blind cave fish.
Tired of customer reticence and confusion about Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, the corporations behind the competing formats announce an agreement to cooperate on a single, cross-compatible fight to the death. Each team has six months to build the most destructive, deadly, high-definition player they can. At the end of the six months, the two lethal home entertainment machines will be loaded with copies of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and locked in a steel cage. The last format standing will be declared the winner and all competing machines will be buried in the Southwest, right near all those Atari 2600 E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial game cartridges.
Toyota and Microsoft team up to create the ultimate four-wheeled gadget, the Toyota Subspace GX. Every device in the vehicle, from the MP3 player to the built-in Xbox 360, can be operated by voice commands. Make phone calls, get directions to your destination, pull a double espresso, listen to the director's commentary on Meatballs, retouch your family photos, design a multicore processor and enjoy a relaxing sauna, all without taking your hands off the wheel. And because it's all hands-free, it's perfectly safe! Really!
Sony, tired of taking a beating in the videogame market, announces that "next gen" is over, and that it is releasing the first and only console in the "next next next infinity generation." The company initially promises to support 1080i resolution, backward compatibility with every console ever made, motion sensitivity and a developer's kit so easy to use that a 3-year-old with a squeaky mallet could create Grand Theft Auto V. When finally unveiled, the console turns out to be a Wii with "Sony Rules" spray-painted on it.
Samsung releases the BridgeWork 300x, a device it says "brings the power of the internet to your PVR, or possibly the power of your PVR to your cellphone. Or it might bring the power of your MP3 player to your laptop, or maybe the power of your laptop to your wireless network. We're not actually sure what it does, but it has lots of cool jacks and it supports the 305.23 protocol, whatever that is. Let us know if you figure out what to do with it."
Honda introduces its latest Asimo, a robot designed to imitate human movement. It's pretty much the same as the last Asimo, except now it can do that MC Hammer move where you kind of slide sideways in a hopping sort of way, and it throws the horns whenever anyone mentions Slayer. The jaded audience is largely unimpressed, but somewhat more interested in Honda's other invention, a human being shaped like R2-D2.
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