Hasta La Gadget!

Whether you’re attending CES in Vegas this week or are just curious about what to expect from our coverage, you need to be prepared. Here’s our guide to everything from press conferences to strip clubs.

For the Readers at Home:
CES is taking place now through the weekend in Las Vegas. We’re rolling in with a large crew, as usual, ready to attack the press conferences and booths like locusts on crops. If you’re watching from home:

Press Conferences
These are the times that you can expect big news to drop. We have loads of embargoed news releases that we’re allowed to post right when these start, so even in the cases when we aren’t doing liveblogs, check in for all the news from each particular company.

Wednesday
8am PST/11am EST – LG
9am PST/12pm EST – Monster Cable
9am PST/12pm EST – Netgear
10am PST/1pm EST – Toshiba
11am PST/2pm EST – Audiovox
12pm PST/3pm EST – Sharp
1pm PST/4pm EST – Cisco
2pm PST/5pm EST – Samsung
3pm PST/6pm EST – Panasonic
4:15pm PST/7:15pm EST – Sony
5pm PST/8pm EST – Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer keynote speech

Thursday
8:30am PST/11:30 EST – Sony’s Howard Stringer keynote
11am PST/2pm EST – Palm
1pm PST/4pm EST – SanDisk
2pm PST/5pm EST – WirelessHD
4pm PST/7pm EST – Blu-ray Disc Association

We have all sorts of other interviews and meetings schedule as well, so news will be dropping all throughout the week in addition to these times. But really, you should be setting your alarm for all of these so you don’t miss a single iPod dock or digital picture frame. (Actually, if you stick to Giz, you’ll miss ALL the boring ones.)

Volume of Posts
CES causes us to go into severe posting overload, doubling the number of posts we do each day. If you’re the type of person who refreshes the site every 5 minutes while you try to avoid the soul-crushing dullness that is your job, this is good news for you. If you’re the type of person who logs on once each day to catch up, well, you might want to check twice per day.

Luckily, our new design allows for more posts on the front page than before, but you may need to go back to page 2 in the morning to stay caught up. Because you seriously don’t want to miss when Chen inevitably posts that infernal video of me dancing again, that bastard.

For those going to be at CES:
You poor bastards. Well, we’ve been going for a few years now, so we’ll humbly offer up advice on surviving the show and the city based on our experiences.

Hotels
The Gizmodo crew has stayed in the Imperial Palace in years past due to the fact that it costs about $15 dollars a night and is about to fall down. It’s worked out fine since the location is great, right on the strip with a monorail stop that will get you right to the conference center. This year, however, we’ve upgraded to the Wynn, which is somehow cheaper than the IP (seems like a bad sign for both of them, doesn’t it?). But really, most of these casino hotels are the same unless you’re some kind of high roller, which I’m assuming you definitely aren’t. As long as you’re near a monorail stop, getting to the LVCC is a piece of cake.

Buffets
Every casino has a buffet, and it’s usually an awesome way to eat an unhealthy amount of food without breaking the bank. The standouts are definitely the Bellagio’s and the MGM Grand’s, both of which offer up super high quality food (the MGM had a mashed potato bar last year, but I think they’ve since removed it for some bullshit reason).

If you’re stuck in Vegas until Sunday, hit up the buffet at Harrah’s, which offers an all-you-can-drink champagne brunch. It’s only right to fly out of Vegas completely hammered, isn’t it?

Restaurants
In addition to buffets, nearly every casino has a restaurant helmed by a celebrity chef. They run the gamut price-wise, but if you choose carefully you can spend way less for a great meal than you would at these chef’s NYC or other locations. For example, Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in the Venetian has entrée’s in the $25 range, which meals at his NYC and SF restaurants run $250+ per person. Wolfgang Puck also has like half a dozen restaurants at various hotels, with prices all along the scale.

If you’re looking to go all out, Joel Robuchon has two restaurants in the MGM right next to each other. L’atelier De Joel Robuchon will run you $125 per person, if you’re a cheapskate, while the even fancier Joel Robuchon can run you upwards of $385 per person before tax, tip and booze. It’s the best and most expensive place in the city, and is where we will be eating on Friday night. Brian just doesn’t know it yet.

Gambling
All the casino floors are basically the same, and it’s about choosing if you’d rather lose money in an Epcot-like approximation of New York, Paris, Venice, Rome or just in a general tacky room with no windows.

If you’re looking for cheap tables, hit up O’Shea’s. They have beer pong tables and the food court features Taco Bell rather than Thomas Keller, so you know what you’re getting into here.

Gizmodo’s favorite blackjack pit is the Dealertainers pit at the Imperial Palace, as it’s the only place on the strip that you can play with the worst celebrity impersonators ever as your dealers. If you haven’t played blackjack with a Filipino J. Lo impersonator, you haven’t truly experienced Vegas.

Hanging Out
We’re planning a Gizmodo reader meetup in Vegas on Thursday night. The details are still being ironed out—and we will likely be dead tired by then—but prepare yourself for a great opportunity to get hammered with us. It’s more fun than it sounds, I promise! But a word of warning: No matter what Mark Wilson claims, he’s not an accredited masseuse. Don’t believe his lies.

Weather
Vegas is in the desert, so look for the days to be warm and the nights to be pretty cold. It should be in the low 50s in the daytime, but temperatures will drop at night, so bring some warm clothes in addition to your party guy floral print shirts and short shorts.

Pranks
They might seem like a good idea at the time, but you’ll really want to make sure they are before going through with any pranks. Just trust us on this one.

AVN
AVN, the porn convention, takes place at the Venetian over the weekend at the end of CES. It’s insane. The date for registration has passed, but there is on-site press registration (as well as a day open to the public, full of all the creeps that you can imagine would go to a porn convention). What to expect? Well, there are booths for various porn production companies featuring porn stars hanging out in skimpy outfits. (No nudity allowed, however—see the next section for that.) On the fringes, there are loads of booths for various products, from terrifying sex toys to Egyptian cotton sheets.

It’s worth experiencing at least once, although it will fill your soul with an infinite sadness, so be warned.

Strip Clubs
Just get in a cab and ask to be taken to Treasures. They’ll know where to go.

Depression
This year’s CES promises to be one of the most sad CESes in recent memory thanks to the current recession. I mean, all of these companies are going to be reeking of desperation, as they’re perfectly aware of how few people are interested in spending $2,500 on a non-essential TV when they can barely afford to feed their families.

Luckily, you’re in Vegas, so you’ll be able to drink the sadness away out on the street. Just try to prepare yourself emotionally for what promises to be a downer of a week. But hey, at least there will be some open bars, right? We’ll make the most of it together. [CES 2009 Full Coverage]

With the holidays behind us, it is time to buckle down and get some work done in 2009. With these chairs, you might actually enjoy sitting in front of the computer all day.

[Background image via Flickr]

FIRST!!!

In 2008, some media outlets started publishing their “best of” lists by June. For 2009, we didn’t want to come in second. So here are our predictions for the best gadgets of 2009.

Premium Netbooks
We’ve seen the first wave of unusable netbooks with tiny screens. Then they got an upgrade to 8.9, 10 and even 12-inch screens. Now it’s time for netbooks to get WiMax and HSDPA connections as a standard. Hopefully they can still stay half-way affordable…

Wii MotionPlus
When I tested the Wii MotionPlus attachment at E3, I felt that Nintendo had fulfilled the promise of the Wii, finally offering a motion controller as accurate and responsive as we’d all hoped the Wiimote to be originally. If Nintendo can coax developers to support Wii Motion Plus, we can expect some killer Wii titles in ’09 (on top of Wii Sports Resort in spring), but it might be 2010 before we see all that many compatible games.

Windows 7
Microsoft can do better than Windows Vista. And with Windows 7—expected sometime before the year is up—they will. Whether it’s the new features or the less taxing system requirements, Windows 7 promises to be a vast improvement on Vista, and hopefully enough to coax most of us still clutching XP for dear life to finally upgrade.

$99 Blu-ray Player…That Does More Than Play Blu-ray
The $99 part is only slightly wishful thinking, but if LG’s recent announcements are any indication, we can expect more players with expanded services like Netflix, YouTube, CinemaNow…and who knows, maybe even Amazon VOD, Hulu and Rhapsody. Let’s watch as these companies compete for our digital download dollar.

A New iPhone
Whether it’s the iPhone 3G Part II or the rumored iPhone nano, it’s not hard to imagine Apple releasing another new iPhone this year, maintaining their trend of releasing an iPhone per year to stay competitive in the everchanging post-RAZR cellphone market. It’s no secret that most of Gizmodo loves the iPhone, so we’re pretty excited to see what’s next. (Juicy rumors of a new Mac mini and iPod Touch XL are going strong, too.)

4G Networks
3G is alright but we’re looking forward to even faster 4G wireless networks soon. Intel-backed WiMax launched in a few locales by carriers Sprint and ClearWire. The wide-area network currently promises peaks of 10 megabits per second but on paper it’s capable of over 70. We will likely see slow but steady expansion of the service through 2009. Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon (and eventually T-Mobile) are gearing up LTE technology. The Nokia-driven GSM-based “Long Term Evolution” may actually whomp WiMax with download speeds of over 300Mbps—though its presence probably won’t be felt in the US before 2010.

A Decent-Sized OLED TV
The Sony XEL-1 OLED television rocked our world when it was released this year, but there was a catch. Its screen size was a measly 11 inches. And while we can’t expect 50-inch Kuro killers just yet, we do anticipate a very expensive mid-sized set—27 to 32 inches—to hit the market in some form this year. (Sony actually showed off a prototype that was 27 inches at CES 2008. Stay tuned for what we see at CES this year.)

Wireless HDMI
A multitude of companies have various wireless HDMI technologies, but there’s no set standard (two warring factions need to settle the fight before we can have interoperable products). The technology is there, now it’s just a matter of logistics and handshaking. With luck, by next Christmas, you’ll be able to add it to a sub-$2000 1080p projector for the ultimate no-mess home theater.

USB 3.0 Devices
Wireless HDMI may not be quite cooked yet, but the eSATA-crushing USB 3.0 standard is ready to roll. Look for a multitude of products announced within the next week with blazing transfer speeds of 4.8Gbps (moving a 25GB file in under a minute). They’ll also benefit from USB 3.0’s higher electrical power output. [Image]

A Great Android Phone
The T-Mobile G1 was the necessary first step, but with Google amping up their Android development staff and interest coming from other major phone makers like Motorola, we assume we’ll see a truly great Android phone soon. Motorola promises that their own offering will be better and cheaper than the G1, but it’s not hitting before next Christmas, so we assume HTC’s own follow-ups will come first.

And Your Best Guesses
These picks for 2009 are pretty sure things, but what wilder guesses do you have for best of 2009 products? A new PSP? A BlackBerry with a touchscreen that isn’t crap? Real light sabers? Ketchup and mustard in one container?? Dogs and cats living in harmony??? If you don’t offer up some kind of prognostication in the comments, you can never tell everyone, “I told you so.”

Here’s a list of the very best gear we’ve seen this year. It’s more bragger’s guide than buyer’s guide—if you have any of this, you can officially tell your friends to suck on it.

The year winds to an end and every product worth a damn has already hit store shelves—there’s not going to be any new shiny coolness until next month’s CES. We were lucky enough to have a look at most of the best gear out there, and we’ve passed judgment on all that we saw. Here’s a complete list of great products, yanked from our first looks, reviews, and epic Battlemodos:

TV & HOME THEATER
TVs:
Panasonic 65VX100U Plasma
Pioneer Kuro Elite PRO-111FD Plasma
Sony Bravia XBR8 LCD
Panasonic PZ850 Series Plasma
Samsung 650 and 750 Series LCD
Honorable mention for value: Toshiba Regza RV535 Series LCD

Surround Bar:
Yamaha YSP-3050 Sound Bar

Blu-ray Player:
Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD
Samsung Netflix BD-P2500
Sony PlayStation 3

Blu-ray Movies (with iTunes/WMV Digital Copy):
The Dark Knight
Wall-E

CAMERAS & CAMCORDERS
DSLR Cameras:
Nikon D300 and D700
Canon EOS 5D Mark II with HD video
Nikon D90 with HD video
Canon Rebel XSi and Rebel XS
Honorable mention for value: Sony Alpha A900 and Alpha A300

Point and Shoot Camera:
Canon SD790

Crazy Hybrid Camera/Camcorder:
Casio Exilim EX-F1

Mini Camcorders:
Kodak Zi6 HD
Pure Digital Flip Ultra

COMPUTERS & ACCESSORIES
Laptops:
MacBook/MacBook Pro
Lenovo X300
MSI Wind

All-In-One PC:
Vaio LV

Routers:
Linksys WRT610N Dual N-Band Wireless Router

Router/NAS:
Apple Time Capsule

NAS:
HP MediaVault mv2120

Mouse:
Logitech MX 1100 Mouse

Keyboard:
SteelSeries 7G Pro Gaming Keyboard

iPod/iPhone USB Dock:
Griffin Simplifi iPod-iPhone Dock/Card Reader/USB Hub

PHONES & PORTABLE DEVICES
Phones:
Apple iPhone 3G @ AT&T
Sidekick 2008 @ T-Mobile
Samsung Instinct @ Sprint (after firmware update, it’s officially better than Verizon’s LG Dare)
LG Decoy with docking Bluetooth earpiece @ Verizon
Sony Ericsson W890i @ Europe only; unlocked may be available

Phone Stereo Headsets:
Maximo iMetal iP-HS2 Isolators
Shure Music Phone Adapter to use with your current earphones

In-Ear Headphones:
Etymotics hf5
Shure SE110
Ultimate Ears metro.fi 2

Pico Projector:
Aiptek PocketCinema V10

GPS:
Garmin Nuvi 785T with lane guidance
Garmin Nuvi 880 with speech recognition

ASSORTED CRAZY STUFF
Flashlights:
Wicked Lasers Torch Flashlight
Duracell Daylite CR123

Toy Robot:
U-Command Wall-E

Cheap Night Vision Goggles:
Jakks Pacific EyeClops

Unmanned Vehicle:
Draganfly X6 UAV

Spy Gadget Book:
Spycraft by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton

Water Guns:
Super Soaker Sneak Attack 4-Way

—With reporting by Erica Ho

It’s Christmas, and we’re betting that at least some of you received new digital cameras (be they point-and-shoots or DSLRs). And if you’re a photography n00b, we’ve got a few tips to help.

Turn On Burst Mode
It’s harder to capture candid shots on point-and-shoots (let’s call em PASs) than DSLRs, but in either format you should turn on “burst mode” or “continuous shooting.” This allows you to keep the camera taking shots as fast as it can by holding down the shutter button. Even the greatest photographers don’t predict magical moments down to the millisecond—they let their camera do it for them. And with today’s cheap and gigantic SD cards, you can afford to waste plenty of shots to get the best.

Control the Color Temperature Yourself
Auto White Balance (AWB) does a good job on most cameras. But you know who can do a better job? You. Backing up for a moment, since every color has its own relative “temperature” that’s measured in degrees Kelvin, even the orangey glow of an incandescent bulb or the relatively bluish hue of the sun’s light can screw with your photos. Your brain factors it out when you’re looking around, but it’s important to notice whether the light falling on your scene is more yellow or blue, and to compensate.
Your camera uses auto white balance to get around this cacophony of color, but it’s not always right. On some cameras, you can actually use “manual white balance” (MWB), shooting a white patch, such as a piece of paper, in order to say “THIS IS WHITE.” That’s the most accurate way, though the simpler way found on most cameras is to manually select the best white balance by choosing the tiny icon that identifies your light source: a sun for direct sunlight, a cloud for cloudy, a round bulb for incandescent, a rectangular bulb for fluorescent, etc.

Keep ISO to 400 on PASs, 800-1600 on Low-End dSLRs
ISO, a carryover term from the days of film, essentially signals the sensitivity of the imaging sensor to light. A higher number means grainier (noisier) but better defined shots in low light; a lower number means smoother shots in decent light. Most cameras will crank this number in medium to low light situations so that it can capture a shot without blurring, but you will get a grainy image. This may just be a rule of thumb based on the cameras I’ve used, but for optimally crisp shots, don’t let the ISO exceed 400 on your PAS or 1600 on your DSLR. (In some older DSLR models, you probably shouldn’t exceed 800.)
Use Diffuse Flash, Or Just Turn it Off
Any way you cut it, flash is a problem. When used instead of ambient light, it pulls the color and texture from skin, turns eyes red (a phenomenon caused when the flash is too close to your lens, which it is in most cameras) and often erases the background ambiance from your shot. A few things you can do will help tame flash:
1. Check your manual for minimum and maximum flash distances—probably around 6 to 12 feet away—and stay in those constraints.
2. Diffuse the flash. A classic trick for DSLR owners is to put a cigarette carton on large flash attachments, but in the absence of a large flash—and a cigarette carton—try taping some kind of translucent paper over your flash.
3. Turn it off. Even a grainier high-ISO shot is better than a washed-out flash explosion. If you use a tripod, you can get nice low light shots without resorting to flash or upping the ISO. Most cameras now have a flashless “night mode” to automate this process.

Carry a Pocket Tripod
Ultimately, if you want to take good shots in dark environments, you need to allow light to hit your camera’s imaging sensor for a longer period of time. And the only way to keep your shots sharp in this scenarios is to stabilize your camera. Though even cheap cameras boast image stabilizers of all kinds, a $7 pocket tripod trumps all that marketing speak, allowing you to use a solid surface to set up the camera and then angle it to your liking. If you don’t have a tripod, try resting your camera on the side of a table, or up on a (preferably empty) water glass.

Protect Your Images From Lens Flare
In any situation where sunlight or some other bright light source is hitting your lens indirectly (not associated with your subject), you may lose part of your image to stray light. Sometimes this looks cool, of course, but not always. The best and most common solution is a lens hood. The second best solution (and the one that works for PASs) is your hand, a piece of paper, anything, between that light source and your lens.

Exhale, Then Shoot
ISOs and tripods aside, maybe the best tip I’ve ever gotten to taking great shots was to exhale, then take the picture. Right after you exhale, the tension is released from your body, and you’ll find yourself, for a brief moment, at your stillest and most relaxed. In low light especially, it could be the difference between getting a clear shot and getting a blurry one.

Use Sepia Filter Whenever Humanly Possible
Sepia is well known for making your lousy photography “deep.” Helllllooo precious moments! (OK, I sort of despise sepia because it’s been so overused, but that’s just me. It can be beautiful, of course.)
For DSLR Owners…Shoot in RAW, Shoot in RAW, Shoot in RAW
There are many advantages to the average DSLR camera, but the best, by far, unequivocally, is RAW shooting. If you save your pictures as JPEGs, they can be beautiful, but they’ve been compressed and packaged into a product. If you save in RAW, you have a picture, but you also have the cold clay that shaped it.
RAW is the data pulled right off the imaging sensor of your camera, before it gets run through a bunch of optimizer and compression algorithms. This data allows for a complete do-over on many aspects of the picture, like color temperature. In other cases, it allows a lot of room for fudging, as with exposure. You’ll need software that can handle RAW images—most cameras come with something proprietary, but Photoshop can also manage RAW from the major camera brands. Just don’t be scared by it. It’s why you’re holding that shiny new DSLR you have no idea how to use.

And Your Own…
I realize this list will seem too obvious to some, but the goal is to help those who didn’t know much to start with. Since we have more than our share of incredible photographers among our readership, I’d encourage any of you with pro tips to please offer them up in comments.

[Example images 1, 2, 3, 4]