Hasta La Gadget!

After an exhausting and exhilarating week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, the Gadget Lab is back with a full report on what was hot at the show.

CES 2011 saw an explosion of tablets from manufacturers big and small, and a multitude of new smartphones that connect to the new 4G cellular network.

Motorola and Research In Motion hogged the media spotlight with their tablet offerings. Due for release in the middle of this year, Motorola’s Xoom will run Honeycomb, a version of Android tailored for tablet devices. The problem was we didn’t get to try it, because Motorola isn’t done making the Xoom yet.

RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, on the other hand, was a real, working product. Dylan got his hands on the tablet and was very impressed.

I personally found the new Android smartphones to be the coolest part of the show, namely the Motorola Atrix 4G (even though I had some trouble dealing with Motorola). It features an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor that makes it very powerful. Even more interesting, it plugs into a dock that turns it into a desktop-like computer that you can control with a mouse and computer.

We close the podcast with a quick peek at Apple’s next operating system upgrade for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: iOS 4.3. We gained access to a developer beta, and the coolest new feature is multitouch gesturing to multitask on the iPad. (Don’t forget to read our close look at iOS 4.3 beta.)

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds

Gadget Lab audio podcast #99

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0099.mp3

Stanford develops Biotic Pinball, POND PONG, and a soccer game called Ciliaball, in which a player’s actions influence the behavior of living microorganisms in real time.

Originally posted at News – Health Tech

Hello, inevitable. It simply had to happen, and now, it is. As Comcast, NBC and the FCC attempt to work out stipulations over Comcast’s proposed 51 percent buyout of NBC Universal, a smattering of major media companies are paying close attention to the play-by-play. Naturally, the precedents that are set from this deal will affect future agreements of this caliber, and lobbyists for both Disney and News Corp. (as well as Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes) aren’t standing over on the sidelines any longer. All three outfits have reportedly been “voicing their concerns this week with the FCC, worried that such conditions could undermine their own efforts to profit from the nascent online video industry.”

We’re told that the media mega-corps are worried that the rules — if hammered down — could interfere with ongoing negotiations with online video providers, and in turn, give them less leverage to monetize and control their content on the world wide web. In other words, if NBC Universal is forced to provide content fluidly to all ISPs (and not just Comcast), what’s to say other content makers and internet providers wouldn’t also be forced into similar deals, regardless of whether or not they’re involved in takeover negotiations? Needless to say, we’re nowhere near the end of this journey, and while the nuts and bolts are pretty dry to think about, the outcomes could have a serious impact on our future viewing habits.

Time Warner, Disney and News Corp. bigwigs speak up against FCC stipulations in Comcast-NBC deal originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Photos: Jonathan Snyder / Wired.com

Key-shaped USB drives are fairly popular lately. LaCie’s iamaKey flash drive looks like something that would fit right in on your keychain next to your house or car key, but the Fredflare Skeleton Key takes a more whimsical approach, and looks a little more fun sticking out of one of your computer’s USB ports.