The Verge - The weird side of CES 2012: Justin Bieber, Solowheels, a Kinect-powered skateboard, and more

4moms Origami is the highest tech stroller yet (hands-on video)

2012-01-16T11:22:02Z

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 its batteries while you walk. Those stored electrons are then used to power a monochrome LCD, running lights, and even a USB jack for charging your portable electronics. A twist and push of the button on the stroller handle causes the buggy to...

The Verge logo gets Cubified

2012-01-15T02:44:04Z

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 logo?

Chaotic Moon Labs Board of Awesomeness: your hand is the throttle on this Kinect-controlled skateboard

2012-01-14T01:52:54Z

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 some, we think the wildest thing here is how the Board of Awesomeness works. Unlike traditionally riding a skateboard by pumping with one foot, this board uses your hand as a virtual gas pedal. Using the standard Kinect SDK and custom software running...

LG Styler 'New Concept Clothes Manager' hands-on (video)

2012-01-13T21:29:37Z

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 suppose there are worse ways to spend $2,000.

Our man Nilay Patel will walk you through the ins and outs.

Riding the Solowheel of death at CES

2012-01-13T17:00:12Z

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?

ioSafe puts Thunderbolt drive to lightning test (hands-on and video)

2012-01-13T15:23:01Z

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 is supposed to protect the drive's inputs, but the Tesla coil has apparently still overloaded it in about a third of the demos; unfortunately, this was one of those times. The controller board had been fried, so we got a view of the dual RAID 1...

Totally random, end-of-CES meetup at The Verge trailer, 3PM Friday... and we're bringing the iNuke Boom

2012-01-13T02:44:56Z

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 to end the show with... this is it.

Seriously — come over and say hello! Also, it'll get loud.

CTX MIseeTX is a computer, keyboard, mouse, and monitor in one tiny box (hands-on video)

2012-01-13T00:31:24Z

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 thing would fit easily into a backpack, and you'll never forget your mouse again. The computer isn't especially new (though it hasn't been released yet), but when we stumbled upon it at CTX's CES booth, how could we resist?

Leaving aside the fact that...