The weird side of CES 2012: Justin Bieber, Solowheels, a Kinect-powered skateboard, and more
Because CES is more than just Android phones and tablets. It's more than just Windows laptops, HDTVs with various levels of 3D interaction and 12K resolution. It's more than just virtual storage and refrigerators. This is the CES we really and truly love. This is Sony CEO Howard Stringer awkwardly hugging Will Smith on stage. This is a closet that will shake, steam, dry, and freshen your clothes up for you with a variety of selectable aromas. This is more than one instance of dancing robots and more than one celebrity cameo — and one time where both those groups intersected to make Joanna's heart skip a beat. This is our love letter to you, the Consumer Eccentric Show.
A special thanks to Borrow Lenses, who provided us with cameras and lenses for the week!
CES 2012
4moms Origami is the highest tech stroller yet (hands-on video)
Conversations between newborn parents meeting serendipitously on the city sidewalk tend to splinter along two threads: mothers commiserating over the tribulations of day-to-day care; fathers quietly judging one another's stroller selection. Really, a MacLaren? Yes, that's stereotypical but it's also true more often than not.
The 4moms Origami is a power-folding stroller guaranteed to win those sidewalk battles every time. It features two built-in generators in the rear wheels that recharge...
The Verge logo gets Cubified
On Thursday's podcast, we chose Cubify as one of our favorite things at this year's CES: a 3D printing service that can turn almost any design into a plastic model 5 inches squared. The company has a bunch of its Cube printers here at the show — as shown in our hands-on a few days ago — and its team has been producing everything from shoes to chess pieces throughout the week. We thought we'd put it to the test, and gave them a challenge — could they print our Penrose-like impossible...
Chaotic Moon Labs Board of Awesomeness: your hand is the throttle on this Kinect-controlled skateboard
Chaotic Moon's Board of Awesomeness is one of the craziest things we've seen here at CES 2012. And by crazy, we mean awesome. The frankenstein creation was built in just two weeks and is composed of a longboard with a set of gigantic rugged wheels, electric motor, batteries, Kinect, and Windows 8 tablet.
The Board of Awesomeness is single-wheel drive and powered by an 800 watt motor and 36 volt battery, which give the board a top speed of 32 MPH. Although these specs might be interesting to...
CES 2012
LG Styler 'New Concept Clothes Manager' hands-on (video)
Continuing our voyage into the world of extravagant Korean home appliances, we went to check out the LG Styler. Billed as a "New Concept Clothes Manager", it is essentially a $2,000 closet that will shake, steam, dry, and freshen your clothes up for you with a variety of selectable aromas. The monochrome screen is pretty great, appearing to shine through the surface of the door and offering a litany of programs, including bedding and soft toys. It'll also sanitize non-washables for you. We...
Culture
Riding the Solowheel of death at CES
The North Hall is the dark underbelly of CES, where earphones and iPhone cases go to die. It's also a pretty good place to check out some bizarre products with zero chance of making it to the mainstream, and that's certainly the case with the Inventist Solowheel — a crazy take on a Segway crossed with a unicycle. You ride the thing by squeezing the central pillar between your calves and leaning in your desired direction. What could go wrong?
CES 2012
ioSafe puts Thunderbolt drive to lightning test (hands-on and video)
External storage company ioSafe likes to put on a show at CES. Last year, it demonstrated its ultratough Rugged Portable hard drives by unleashing journalists with shotguns and assault rifles on them. This year, it decided to test its Thunderbolt-compatible prototype's shockproofing instead — by bringing in Tesla coil enthusiast Austin Richards, also known as Dr. MegaVolt.
After shocking the drive multiple times with Richards' million-volt coil, ioSafe plugged it in. A snap-on metal cover...
Totally random, end-of-CES meetup at The Verge trailer, 3PM Friday... and we're bringing the iNuke Boom
Guys. This is happening.
Friday at 3PM, we're having a one-hour, full-on jam session outside of our trailer, just across from central hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center (you know, where CES takes place).
We've convinced Behringer to drag the iNuke Boom out of its booth and over to our space so everyone can experience the sheer CESness of a $30,000, 8-foot long iPod dock. We'll be hand-picking a playlist and just hanging out from 3-4PM PST, so if you're looking for something fun and weird...
CES 2012
CTX MIseeTX is a computer, keyboard, mouse, and monitor in one tiny box (hands-on video)
Laptops are so 2011. That's why CTX built the MIseeTX desktop computer, which is smaller than a laptop but considerably more complicated: the Windows 7 machine has a projector for showing its picture on a wall, another for projecting a virtual keyboard and trackpad onto a flat surface, and just about every port you can think of. There's a 4.3-inch touchscreen on the computer, along with a 1.2GHz processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, two USB ports, SD and mIcroSD slots, a webcam, and more. The whole...
CES 2012
Kyocera's prototype Speaker-less Smartphone (hands-on video)
We stopped by KDDI's booth at CES and got some hands-on time with a prototype Kyocera "Speaker-less Smartphone." Instead of using a speaker, the device vibrates inaudibly, but when you press any part of the screen against your ear the vibrations get sent up your ear canal so you can hear what's playing. There are a lot of advantages to the technology — it allows you to hear clearly in noisy environments, while wearing ear mufflers, or even while listening to music on headphones — and...
Gaming
Hyperkin's $19.99 Game Genie for Nintendo 3DS (hands-on video)
We stopped by Hyperkin's booth at CES to take a look at their Game Genie cheat device for Nintendo's DSes — the same device works with the original DS, DS Lite, DSi, DSi XL, and even the 3DS. In case you don't remember the original Game Genie, game cards plug in to one end, the other end goes into the console, and when you turn on to play you can choose from a list of cheats like unlimited lives or never-ending tanooki suit. The DS Game Genie is available now, and a PSP version is coming at...
CES 2012
Dancing with flying robots: the Parrot AR.Drone booth after hours
On our way off the CES floor tonight, we happened upon a gleeful scene: representatives from Parrot, maker of the AR.Drone 2.0, decided to have a little impromptu dance alongside their flying quadrocopters. Who says CES can't be fun?
Justin Bieber. A dancing robot. CES 2012.
If Justin Bieber can take the time to unveil a robot, it's got to be totally amazing and beautiful just like him, right? Well, sort of. The TOSY mRobo is a speaker dock that snaps up into a dancing robot when it begins to hear music. However, right now it seems mRobo, which is in a serious prototype phase at the moment, can only go through a set of automatic functions. Understandably, the mRobo seemed a bit nervous during his unveil with Bieber, but he had a bit of trouble showing his moves...
CES 2012
TOSY Robotics mRobo Ultra Bass: 2 gigabytes of dancing robot (update: pics)
Remember Sony's Rolly, the auto-rolling MP3 player? The mRobo Ultra Bass from TOSY Robotics looks to be along those lines, though it manages the considerably more complicated feat of bipedal motion. It has 2GB of onboard memory that can be filled up with tunes over USB, and will morph from a speaker into a 18-inch-tall dancing human form with a speaker once you press "play". The mRobo dances with pre-programmed routines, but is apparently capable of analyzing beats and rhythms so that it can...
CES 2012
Kopin and Motorola's Golden-i head-mounted PC (hands-on video)
The Golden-i is a futuristic wearable computer that you need to see to believe. The technology behind comes from the Kopin Corporation, but Motorola Solutions — the arm that makes enterprise solutions, not consumer products — has licensed the technology and plans to bring it to market by the end of the year (though the form factor may change). The Golden-i unit is a head-mounted PC running Windows CE embedded, controlled completely by gestures and voice. An internal accelerometer controls...
Behringer's iNuke Boom is the essence of Vegas
There are ducks, and there are decorated sheds.
Most booths at CES are decorated sheds, boxes adorned with color and light, structures with signs to entice you to look at the gadgets within. They call to you with thumping music, colored kliegs, and shouting carnival workers hawking their wares with boy-band boom mics floating an inch from their mouths like buzzing flies at the end of thin electronic wires. Sweeping yet taut reams of fabric are buttressed by steel and mesh create faux tents...
Cooler Master demos heatsink with a computer built in
Strange gadgets aren't a rarity at CES, but this processor heatsink is quite an interesting device. It's called the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ CPU heatsink, and it has a computer built into it. Behind a large fan and lots of aluminum fins for cooling down that processor in your gaming rig, there's an AMD E-350 Brazos APU on a micro motherboard. According to PC Perspective, the built-in computer has Wi-Fi, ethernet, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports. We're not completely sure why you'd want a...
CES 2012
SpnKiX motorized skate shoes (hands-on pictures and video)
We just caught up with Peter Treadway, the creator of SpnKiX motorized skate shoes, at his booth at CES — he was gracious enough to strap them on and wheel himself around for us. SpnKiX is sort of like those rollerskates that strap over your shoes, except way more high tech: the skates are controlled by a handheld remote and can propel riders along at up to 10 miles per hour. There's no final price or release date yet, but we'll let you know when they surface.
Web & Social
Cubify.com builds your digital designs in five inches cubed of ABS
3D Systems has unveiled Cubify.com, a service which creates single-color 3D models up to five inches square using quick-setting liquid ABS. Similarly to Shapeways, it allows you to turn your virtual 3D objects into something you can hold in your hand, and both the level of detail and physical strength of the products is astonishing. It's possible to create almost anything using the printer, from iPhone cases to chess pieces, or a tiny sneaker which encases a USB drive. The service also offers...
CES 2012
Vuzix transparent 'smart glasses' prototype hands-on
Looks like the Vuzix heads-up display glasses we wrote about earlier are still very much a work in progress. At the CES Vuzix booth, we were able to see a proof of concept of the ultrathin lenses, which displayed a semi-transparent hologram that we were able to capture (quite imperfectly) in the gallery below. The looped video was small but very vivid, partly because the colors have a bit of a neon gleam to them. Besides the prototype, we also got a look at the military and industrial...
Android
Recon Instruments announces MOD Live SDK, lets developers build apps for ski goggles
Recon Instruments released the SDK for its MOD and MOD Live displays today, allowing developers to code apps for the Android-based ski goggles. Back in November, we got to play with the MOD Live, which slides into any compatible pair of ski goggles and add a telemetry display that shows your altitude, speed, coordinates, and more. Thanks to its Android operating system, it can also connect to your phone and display incoming text messages or phone calls — now, with developer help, there are...
Chaotic Moon's 'Board of Awesomeness' is a Kinect-controlled electric skateboard
Chaotic Moons Labs is showing a motorized longboard controlled by a combination of Kinect and a Samsung Windows 8 tablet at CES 2012. Affectionately called the "Board of Awesomeness," the off-road skateboard uses video, voice, gestures, accelerometers, and localization data to ascertain the rider's intentions and accelerate or slow down, as shown in the video. The tablet does all the data processing and is used to turn the board on and off and adjust the top speed which can reach 32mph. It's...
CES 2012
Sensics Smart Goggles put your head in the game (hands-on pictures and video)
Pepcom's the perfect place to find things you might not hear about otherwise — like Sensics' Smart Goggles, which we got a chance to play with tonight. The Smart Goggles are basically an insanely heavy helmet containing a heads-up display that runs Android (Android 4.0, to be exact, though we're not sure if that really matters) — it's kind of like the virtual reality helmets many of us played with as a kid at science museums, with a few 21st-century upgrades. You can run regular Android...
Victorinox Swiss Army launches ‘world’s smallest high-capacity SSD drive’
Victorinox Swiss Army is Swiss, so every good stereotype means the company must be obsessed with Swiss Bank-level security. The company's showing off its aptitude at CES, launching two new storage products that are designed to be super secure — the new Victorinox SSD and the Victorinox Slim 3.0 USB drive. (The it couldn't keep the new products a secret, which might not bode well.) The thumb drive-sized SSD is full of superlatives: according to the company, it's the smallest high-storage SSD...
HD & Home
Thermador Freedom auto-sensing induction cooktop hands-on (video)
Perhaps you're familiar with how an induction stove uses electromagnets to heat cookware, reducing the risk of burning your hands? Thermador's high-tech Freedom Induction cooktop kicks it up a notch by detecting the actual position of your pans, up to four at a time. Rather than put a single inductor under each burner and limit you to pre-determined locations to fry and simmer, 48 auto-sensing inductors under this stove light up (metaphorically) to match the size and location of your...
Disposable body metric patch from BodyMedia coming later this year
Devices to monitor your health and exercise are nothing new, and neither are devices that communicate with apps on your computer or smartphone. BodyMedia has been offering all of the above for some time (its latest product is a USB-only body monitors that saves $20 off the retail price of the Bluetooth version), but it's planning on trying a few new things in 2012 and 2013. First is the Body Monitory Patch, a disposable body patch designed to track calorie burn, steps, and more — BodyMedia...
HD & Home
The Pill iPod nano speaker dock offers the healing power of music
There's something about the traditional, two-tone capsule that seems to really get designers going. Guess we really do like our medicine... Anyways, Gavio's The Pill is a speaker dock for the newest (6th generation) iPod nano that looks, well, just like a pill. Other than its aesthetics, it holds your iPod, has two speakers, and has hardware volume and track controls. There's no information on pricing, and it doesn't look like there's any way to pre-order it, but we'll likely see more of this...
