Hasta La Gadget!

Today I’m off to the Consumer Electronics Show kick-off event in New York City. Designed to offer up a sneak peek at some of the years most innovative products in the technology arena. A full 2 months before the CES main event to be held in Las Vegas, CES Unveiled will shine the spotlight on some of the latest and greatest tech products, and award winning innovations that might just be making their way to a store near you.

From products designed to simply help you take better social media pictures, and cases set up to conveniently store your ear buds, to high tech keyboards, amazing games and an awesome sounding new portable, wireless speaker system from Korus, that DOESN’T use bluetooth or wireless, has amazing range, and is literally plug and play. Watch for a review coming later this week!

CES has a long history of introducing the world to some of our most exciting technologies. In 1970, CES was the first to showcase the video cassette recorder, and 1981 gave us the first CD player, with a myriad of innovations before and after,  I’m more than excited to see what the future has in store for us now.

Rest assured I’ll be checking out some of the “Coolest-Gadgets” I can find, and tell you everything you need to know, including purchasing and real time availability information. So check back soon, for some high tech stuff you could only dream about…until now.
[ CES Unveiled – a Preview of Things to Come copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

For as many cool gadgets there are in the world there are plenty of gadget failures. We all probably invested in Betamax, Laserdisc or some other technology that didn’t take off. Sounded like a great idea at the time, right? The famous UK TV program The Gadget Show recently polled 1000 viewers to determine the biggest gadget disaster of all time. Some were good technology, but were executed poorly and competitors pounced. Some were ridiculous technology that customers never adopted. But they all have one thing in common – they failed.

The winner of this not-so-prestigious title? The Sinclair C5 battery and pedal powered three-wheeler, launched in the mid 80s. Yep, you don’t see many of those on the roads. Nor did you ever as they only sold 20,000 units. Other gadget fails to make the list include Betamax, Sega Game Gear, Pizza Scissors and Rabbit mobile phones. OK, so maybe requiring a sort of receiver box in proximity to the phone wasn’t the greatest idea. But the company went on to become Orange – so they have seen their fair share of success. View the top 10 list of gadget on the Daily Mirror’s site and think about these fails the next time you ante up for new gadgets.
[ The Un-Coolest Gadget Is… copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

On average I am sure most of us get some Internet product delivered on a regular basis. Some may come from around the corner. Many end up coming from many miles away. Who knows what happens from the moment you place the order until it ends up in your hot hands. There’s the warehouse picking and packing process. Then tagging and delivery to a distro point. Then the shipping via truck or plane or both. And the driver on the receiving end of course. Your ‘new’ product undergoes quite an experience before even getting opened.  Returns of broken products due to the delivery products cost retailers billions of dollars a year and cost buyers plenty of time and hassle.   

Cambridge Consultants in the UK just announced creation of a device that might help us understand the extent of our parcel abuse and perhaps help online retailers realize the source of broken product problems. DropTag is designed to record the severe bumps that happen along the way and enable trackers to evaluate the progress along the way. The device communicates to an app via Bluetooth within a 50m reach and can be integrated anywhere along the delivery process. So at a receiving warehouse personnel could check the mid-delivery status of a parcel and ensure that severe – break-worthy bumps – have not occurred. DropTag can track activity for a couple weeks on one small battery. And units could be reused after battery replacement. Cost is anticipated to be less than $2. If you talk to online retailers, I am sure that the ability to find the source of drops and breaks and potentially prevent damaged goods from being delivered quickly lowers costs. And theoretically it could be used to track luggage abuse on airlines too. Stay tuned for progress on DropTag and who knows, maybe a future delivery of yours will show up with this tracking innovation.

We gadget folks of the world we always look forward to the holidays. Not so much because of Christmas but because that means CES is just around the corner! The 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas at 10am local time on Tuesday. With over 3,000 exhibitor booths in 1.87 million square feet of exhibition space and over 150,000 attendees – gadget lovers are bound to be overwhelmed with the latest and greatest in technology. Booths have been in progress for a month and The Verge followed along during the process if you’d like to see what it takes to build CES.

Some of the hottest anticipated topics include advancements in OLED displays both big and small, more Google devices, hoards of Bluetooth speakers and even a big automaker presence.  CES is always full of surprises too. So stay in the loop! If you are unable to attend – or are in Vegas and want to stay up-to-date, tap into some of CEA’s special interactivity:

• Interactive floor map of all official CES space to find where everyone is exhibiting
• “Explore the Floor”: if you are on site play the game! This CES social media check-in game enables you to earn points as you visit booths and check in on Foursquare or Facebook. Highest daily and overall scores will win themselves gift cards.
• Get breaking news and even win prizes via social media and their official hashtag #2013ces. The show has separate accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Linkedin, Instagram and Foursquare which will all be updated with the latest news.
• Download the official CES Mobile app on Google Play or the Apple App Store to learn of news, plan your visit and more.

Wired will also run a live blog. And of course we here at Coolest Gadgets will keep you posted on the best of the best through the week. If you see something online, on TV or in Vegas that you think fellow CG readers would enjoy let us know! And let the fun begin.
[ Are You Ready for CES? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Medical devices seem to get smaller every year. Think of something as simple as a pacemaker or hearing aid. Like their bretheren PCs, these gadgets that help enhance and extend our lives continue to shrink. Yet the size of a power source to drive the device cannot decrease in size at the same rate.

Like with solar power, what if power for medical devices could be generated by natural means – our bodies? There would truly be no limit as to how small an electronic medical device could get. And therefore replacement surgeries could be a thing of the past. Did you know our bodies maintain fluids in the ear that contain an electrochemical gradient? A report in Nature Biotechology featured Boston scientists who harnessed power from this liquid in the inner ear of a guinea pig. Using a tiny circuit board implanted into the furry friend’s ear they measured electricity via radio waves. Though only a nano watt every 5 hours, it is a start. It certainly won’t power the world, but the important thing to know is the guinea pigs hearing was not harmed in the entire process – making the experiment a minimally invasive process with no damage. So yes, perhaps a day will come when our bodies can be used as a power source and decrease the need for replacement surgeries on life saving devices.

Thanks: Technology Review
[ People-Powered Medical Devices? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]