Hasta La Gadget!

Good news for people who love bad good news. According to IDG News, this year’s Consumer Electronics Show saw around 140,000 people descend upon it, which pretty much destroys the estimate of 126,000 attendees. We’re told that around 126,000 humans showed up last year to see Palm introduce webOS 1.4 (and for everyone else to introduce an e-reader), while just 113,000 booked a ticket to Las Vegas for CES 2009. The last time this quantity of Earthlings arrived in the desert to get their geek on was CES 2008, or in other terms, the last year that life as we knew it was halfway normal. There’s no question that we felt as if the floor was teeming with people, and the show in general just felt more alive than usual.

Furthermore, we’re being hit with even more amazing news from the show floor: the official show dates for 2012. Rather than pushing CES up against a pair of holidays in Christmas and New Year’s Day, the Consumer Electronics Association has finally seen fit to bump things forward a week. CES 2012 will officially be held January 10th through 13th, and we’re guessing that most of the press events will start on the 8th or 9th. Sadly, we weren’t able to go three for three with outstanding news today — the show is still slated to be held in Las Vegas, so we’re apologizing in advance to the internationals who will once again wonder how a place overran with neon, grotesque paper cards at every street corner and a public transportation system that only stops once every five minutes could be so highly touted.

CES 2011 sees big boost in attendance, CES 2012 scheduled way more sensibly originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LAS VEGAS — This weekend, tech journalist Evan Ackerman took a step into science-fiction, literally. At CES 2011, Evan became the first person in the US to try on a pair of cyber-trousers from the Japanese company Cyberdyne. Cyberdyne, I don’t need to remind you, shares a name with the fictional company that built the Terminators.

The Sci-Fi references continue: The exoskeleton is named HAL, or Hybrid Assistive Limb, and is controlled by thought. The suit is strapped to the waist and legs and sensors monitor electrical signals sent to the legs from the brain. Just as we don’t have to consciously think about taking a step, Evan didn’t have to consciously control the HAL. It just works. “Once I figured out how to stop trying to walk in the suit and just let the suit walk for me, the experience was almost transparent,” he said.

HAL is powered by small motors that assist the user. The military is, of course, interested, but medicine is another important use. Evan was using the suit on its lowest power-level (level one), and even then felt that it did all the work in taking him up a small flight of stairs. The suit goes up to level four, which could carry the weak and lame, or let people with injuries get around on their own feet.

Cyberdine also has a full body version, like the power-lifter in the movie Aliens, and the suits are in daily use in Japanese hospitals, leased for around $1700 per month. They are also finding their way into medical institutions around the world.

Cyberdine plans a rugged, weather-resistant version to allow injured or disabled people to do outdoor activities, and a new version coming later this year will have smaller and lighter batteries – the current model weighs around 10kg.

Robot Suit HAL Demo at CES 2011 [IEEE Spectrum. Thanks, Erico!]

See Also:

• Lightweight Exoskeleton Gives Paraplegics New Legs
• MIT Exoskeleton: A Partial Success
• Real Life Iron-Man Suit for Soldiers

Looks like that tease was more than just a tease. It’s a truism. Back at Computex, Bigfoot Networks’ CEO told us that his next major target was motherboards. The company already infused its Killer E2100 gaming network card into a GPU, and here at CES, it’s formally announcing three partnerships with major mainboard makers. MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte are all onboard, with the latter to offer a new line of G1-Killer mobos later in the year. ASUS will be dishing out a ROG Rampage III Black Edition (shown above) which will feature the E2100 on a combined LAN / audio called dubbed ThunderBolt, but your guess is as good as ours when it comes to specifications and CPU compatibility. Pricing and release information remain a mystery across the range, but it’s practically a guarantee that we’ll see more of these tie-ups in the coming months.

Bigfoot Networks intros Killer E2100-powered motherboards from ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 04:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been seeing demo units of in-car Blu-ray players at CES for years, but Audiovox is apparently finally ready to offer one for sale with its AVDBR1, seen here skulking about the halls of CES. Due in the spring with an MSRP of $349.99, it can be installed under the seat or in a storage compartment and is even BD-Live compatible with optional WiFi upgrade, available after a firmware update arrives later this year. Of course, even if you like video in the car — usually for the kids in the backseat — there’s plenty of other ways to get it including digital copies that can be activated on your phone, tablet or laptop, or DVDs included in the combo packs most major releases have. Add to this the fact that mobile screens are generally too small to make a big difference with HD and there’s plenty of reasons to be skeptical, but if you are on a long road trip with only the Blu-ray copy of Black Dynamite to keep you company, you’ll be glad you opted for the AVDBR1. Want more details? Check the press release after the break.

Continue reading Audiovox shows off the industry’s first in-car Blu-ray player, the AVDBR1

Audiovox shows off the industry’s first in-car Blu-ray player, the AVDBR1 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Motorola Xoom is a huge product this year for two reasons: it’s a major first tablet from a major Android manufacturer, and it’s the flagship device for Honeycomb, an OS that’s been announced for dozens of other tablets here at the show, but not actually shown running on any of them. The only problem is that Motorola isn’t really showing Honeycomb on the Xoom, either. Instead they’re showing a demo video of the UI, which is actually running on top of real Honeycomb. For a glimpse under the covers, Jacob snagged a quick illicit peek at a totally unpopulated home screen, the gallery app, and even the task switcher the other day. We’ll just keep that between us, however, and until we get a full-on official look at the UI, we thought we’d walk you through that demo UI video Moto is running on the actual tablet and pretend like we’re actually using the thing, which should clear up some of the confusion on this brand new tablet OS while simultaneously stoking our egos. Check it out after the break.

Update: Here’s the gallery of the non-pretend and very real UI shots we peeked in the first hands-on post (including a shot of the task switcher in its current form).

Continue reading Motorola Xoom: pretend UI hands-on walkthrough (video)

Motorola Xoom: pretend UI hands-on walkthrough (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 22:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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