CrunchGear

---

• Nissan’s “Smiling Vehicle” shows emotions (video)
• CrunchGear Week in Review: Goodbye, CES Edition
• CEA boots small vendors out of Las Vegas hotels
• Tingalin Releases Jersey Shore iPhone App Before MTV’s Official One
• Here’s a 1990 CES photo set for your amusement
• CES postmortem: So long, and thanks for all the press kits
• CES predictions SteelSeries prize-pack giveaway winner!
• Hands-on with Microvision’s pico projector-equipped gun controller
• Hands-on: Psyko Audio Labs 5.1 Headphones
• Best of CES 2010

Nissan’s “Smiling Vehicle” shows emotions (video) Posted: 11 Jan 2010 02:22 AM PST It seems the car industry doesn’t have any problems left that need to be solved. Or what else can explain Nissan’s shot at designing a car that can “show emotions”? The so-called Smiling Vehicle was jointly developed by the Hara Design Institute Nippon Design Center and the automaker. And yes, the mini vehicle, based on the Nissan Cube, does look friendly. The concept car is covered with a substance called ROICA, a polyurethane elastomer fiber from major chemical company Asahi Kasei. ROICA has the ability to deform by up to 900% and is normally used for producing shoes, clothes or car seats. Combine the material with Animatronics, and you get a car grill that can actually “smile”. The idea behind the Smiling Vehicle sounds rather esoteric. Apparently, Nissan sees this technology as an extension of the driver’s character, meaning it can be used to express your current feeling when you sit in the car. This involves being able to share your feeling with other drivers, thereby “communicating” with other people while on the go. This video (courtesy of Diginfonews in Tokyo) shows the Smiling Vehicle in action:

CrunchGear Week in Review: Goodbye, CES Edition Posted: 11 Jan 2010 12:00 AM PST Here are some of the stories from CrunchGear’s CES coverage this week: Best of CES 2010 An open letter to the creator of the pretzel dog Review: WristOffice mobile device holder And now you can fabricate objects in full color The toys of CES Unveiled

CEA boots small vendors out of Las Vegas hotels Posted: 10 Jan 2010 11:10 PM PST In the dog eat dog world of the CE business, margins are low and money – especially in this economy – is tight. That’s why a number of smaller vendors, including some we talked to in Vegas, took rooms in local hotels or ran “peripheral” events in other venues. The Daily Tech reports that some of those vendors have been ousted by the hotels themselves after the CEA, the organization that runs CES, convinced management to force them out. Why? Because the CEA requires payments of $100,000 and up to exhibit at CES and their inability to pay for formal space at the show or in one of the show’s official hotel spaces is apparently an affront to the gadget gods. While the CEA puts on a nice show, it is my opinion that trade shows are dinosaurs and the extortionist tactics used by CEA to convince Las Vegas hotel to do things like this is an affront to capitalism and whatever else is good and wholesome about a massive trade show in a resort city in the middle of the desert. In the end, CES is place where CE companies troll for customers. If the CEA wants to increase barriers to entry to their perceived value-add proposition, more power to them. Just don’t expect vendors to play nice next year in this game of cat and mouse. If you’ve been booted, let us know. We’d love to hear your story.

Tingalin Releases Jersey Shore iPhone App Before MTV’s Official One Posted: 10 Jan 2010 07:19 PM PST Tingalin, the makers of the world-famous Tingalin app, have outdone themselves. Their new app, based on the magic of the Jersey Shore but not directly affiliated with the MTV show in any way features a number of useful tools for the Situation-in-training. While the upcoming "fake tan" system is not yet in place, the app does have a nickname generator, a fist pump challenge that acts like Guitar Hero for bros, as well as a list of useful pick-up lines for meeting and wooing drunk honeys. A full video explanation follows.

Here’s a 1990 CES photo set for your amusement Posted: 10 Jan 2010 06:25 PM PST Another year, another CES. The show this year wasn’t that different then previous years with some new stuff, a lot of old crap, and nerds all over Vegas. Hopefully you followed us around the show floor via our massively-successful Livestream feed. If not, stay tuned. We’re going to cut a lot of the fluff and repost the good stuff like my interview with a panda and Doug walking into a wall. But if you still have the CES bug, let me suggest this Flickr set from the 1990 Winter CES. Yup, Winter. The show was held twice a year from 1978 to 1994 — Winter in Las Vegas and Summer in Chicago. Anyway, enjoy the set. We did. [via gamovr]

CES postmortem: So long, and thanks for all the press kits Posted: 10 Jan 2010 04:37 PM PST To cap off the CES coverage, we’d like to give a shout-out to our partners and also discuss our coverage. We do this for you guys, after all, so feel free to chime in with your opinion on both the show and us. The biggest electronics show in the world is a difficult thing to report as it is with only a handful of timid bloggers, ripped from their natural habitat as it were, and placed in an unfamiliar environment. But to put them in front of a live camera and ask them to provide meaningful commentary for hours on end is to invite calamity. Fortunately, thanks to our great Livestream team and partners like Alienware, who provided our rendering computers, I think we did passably well. Impressions and notes on the show and our coverage follow. The Show We’ve already got our best of put up, and John weighed in on the tone of the show as well. I generally agree with him. The most common announcements and gadgets were either of the 3D TV variety or some sort of e-book reader. The former was tiring to us, since it was hyped ad nauseam and few were offering anything the others weren’t. But despite that, this show convinced me (and a portion of the industry) that these 3D displays were functional, unobtrusive, and will eventually be affordable. That’s important, even if there’s hardly any content available for them yet. The big tech guys have a sort of manifest destiny thing going on, and if they say 3D is the next big thing, it is — because they’re going to make it so whether you like it or not. And the truth is, they’re actually kind of awesome — but the hype was completely out of control. I’d prefer we get AMOLEDs first. The e-book reader thing is more like the proliferation of netbooks after the Eee PC. Many will enter, few will win. Standouts like the Skiff and Que will remain, but the majority will be left behind by the rapid advances in e-ink and miniaturization which have already made Kindles obsolete. Other than that, John was right: things are smaller and more functional, but rarely touted enormous numbers in order to attract eyeballs. Everything is still 1080p, but the focus is on getting the consumer into the 1080p world, not on moving to the next standard (3D excepted, because it coexists with 1080p). That said, there were some pretty awesome UHD and 4K displays and projectors. Kisses go out to MiFi, without which we could not have covered the press day due to shoddy internet in the press room, and EyeFi for the loan of one of their cards. Alienware we mentioned earlier, thanks guys. Livestream, Otto, Deborah, Thomas, and Tommy: very, very well done. And thanks to all the PR and booth staff for being friendly and helpful. We’ll be following up with all of you before long. And lastly, thanks to CEA for accommodating us, and providing lots of coffee and enough donuts to sink a battleship. Our Coverage As you probably know, we attempted a completely different style of coverage this year, with live streaming video going for hours at a time as we demoed the newest products, interviewed famous people, and traversed the show floor. As I noted above, there was a risk of all of us being terribly unvideogenic, freezing up, and that sort of thing. I can’t speak for myself, but I thought the other guys did a pretty great job on camera and everyone brought something different to the videocast. You guys will have to sound off on that, since we probably remember ourselves as being rather funnier than we actually were. So let us know: how’d you like it? Of course, being in front of the camera precluded posting about whatever was there, so traditional post-based coverage was reduced. We got HD video and stills when we could, but we could have done better getting you the most interesting stuff from the stream put up where you could see it, if you missed it during broadcast. We’ll be peppering our normal content over the next couple weeks with the interviews, weird gems, and other stuff that you might not have tuned in for; it takes some time to re-render and snip the video. We also could have scheduled the items in the stream a little better, but there are two considerations: first, wandering the show floor is half the fun, and second, nothing goes as planned either in CES or in Las Vegas generally. If you’ve been there, you know this to be true. Still, we’ll work on that. There’s only so much blogger banter our readers/viewers can handle. We know you guys also had requests, and we neglected to get an official channel for those in place promptly. Fortunately, enough got through that you could pose questions to the creator of Gran Turismo, suggest booths to go to, and make fun of the products we’d seen. That’s pretty much it. We’ll have reviews soon of lots of the stuff we saw, too, so keep your eyes open. This was really fun and as usual, CES was a hectic, insane pleasure to cover. ‘Til next year, CES.

CES predictions SteelSeries prize-pack giveaway winner! Posted: 10 Jan 2010 01:44 PM PST Before CES, we asked you to give us your predictions about what you thought would be at CES. The crazier the better, and whoever had the craziest one that came true would win a sweet prize package from SteelSeries. Well! We have a winner. Here it is, and no arguing now… Pat predicted: I bet there is a helicopter that can be remote controlled with your phone…(hmmm, amazing!) Lo and behold, we got all kinds of hands-on with the AR Drone, which has a robust iPhone control interface. I’d say that’s close enough. Our runners-up were both “robo-wife” predictions, but those were at the porn expo so technically not CES. Congrats to the winner, I’ll be contacting you shortly!

Hands-on with Microvision’s pico projector-equipped gun controller Posted: 10 Jan 2010 12:55 PM PST You remember a few months ago there was a video going around of this thing, and I called it out for being derivative of the Redneck Techie’s Game Gun? Well, that criticism still stands, but after testing this controller out, I have to say that whether it’s the only game gun on the market or not, this thing is awesome. Basically what you’ve got is a gun-shaped controller with a lightweight, laser-based projector (a modified version of their SHOWWX) mounted on top, which uses a mirror vibrating harmonically and a few lasers to create an 848×480 image that’s always in focus. That’s key: there’s no focus at all, no matter what. The unit itself is about iPhone-sized: The gun is equipped with motion detectors that let you go as far as you want left, right, up, or down. Another version has tilt as well, which I found would be very handy in FPSes with lean controls. There’s a d-pad in the front of the gun and a few buttons, one of which locks the viewpoint so you can move the gun without moving the camera in-game. This is for when you reach the edge of your room or screen and need to look further: you hit the button, drag back to the middle of the screen, and again you have space to move around. Basically, it’s all in the video, though of course you can’t see what I’m doing because it was pitch dark and the camera wouldn’t pick up the image in the light. Brightness wasn’t a problem; the image was good, but you will want to be in a dark or semi-dark area to use it. The main thing that impressed me was that there was absolutely no lag between my movements and the display. To be clear: not “very little lag” as even the next-generation motion controllers have, but no lag at all. It really helped with the immersive feel to not feel that the game was “catching up” to my movements. Microvision told me that part of this was the projector, part of it was the way they’d set it up, but at any rate there was another benefit of the laser projection: quick movements won’t blur or separate the colors, since each frame is rendered almost instantaneously. Add that to the always-in-focus aspect and you’ve got a pretty killer setup. Of course, this was all pre-production equipment and so on, so we can actually expect things to be a little better (the wireless version, for instance, still had lag, which they assured me will be mostly eliminated). Oh, and the wireless version uses “clips” as batteries. How cool is that? Ammo! Man, I’ve gone on a bit here. But really, this thing was extremely cool. Having to actually look up with the gun, for instance, and have things above you actually be above you, was awesome. My reservations, of course, remain: not many people have a room well-suited to this kind of controller, but many people do have small rooms that will probably do well enough. I got a great experience on a hastily-erected sheet hung in the corner of a meeting room. But my skepticism has been conquered. This type of controller is going to be a lot of fun to use, and I hope Microvision gets their due, since they seem to have it pretty well together ahead of the others. You can find out more at Microvision’s site. The SHOWWX is the actual projector used, and it’s for real, but the gun and all that are still in prototype form.

Hands-on: Psyko Audio Labs 5.1 Headphones Posted: 10 Jan 2010 11:30 AM PST Everything is always better in surround sound. Most 5.1 or 7.1 headphones are a convoluted mess of speaker drivers, usually resulting in massive ear cups. But these headphones from Psyko Audio Labs have a rather innovative way to trick you into thinking sounds are coming from all directions. First, the science. The primary method your brain places sounds is based on the time discrepancy of the sound arriving to your ears. If you hear a sound off to your right, the sound waves from that source will hit your right ear milliseconds before your left one. Based on the length of time it takes for your brain to register the sound in the “far” ear, you can place where the sound is coming from. The 5 drivers are located on the headband, aimed upwards. They feed the sound into hollow channels, which lead to the ear cups. There are two such sound channels, one for the front and one for the back. It truly is a brilliant, innovative system. A sound that is supposed to be coming from your left, will be emitted from the driver closer to your left ear. It has a shorter path to travel, meaning the sound will reach your left ear first, creating the directional illusion. Since there are no speakers around your ears, the acrylic shield on the cup can fold open, letting your ears breathe. Even though you already have other organs for that. The unit proved its worth in our hands-on demo. A quick run through Crysis showed the technology really does work. These headphones seamlessly deliver surround sound, and with much less hassle / setup of a traditional 5.1 speaker system. Since its completely physics based, there’s no digital processing to slow the signal down. I give these a thumbs-up, and if you have $300 to spend, I highly recommend it. [Psyko Audio Labs]

Best of CES 2010 Posted: 10 Jan 2010 10:12 AM PST CES is over for CrunchGear and we’d like to reflect on the best gear we saw at the show. These few days flew by and even with the glut of 3D TVs and ereaders we were actually impressed by a few small, good things that caught our eye on the show floor. Here are the winners of CrunchGear’s Best of CES 2010 informal editor poll. Nyko Wand+ controllers Nyko’s new Wand+ controller has MotionPlus built into the controller, thereby preventing the dreaded “MotionPlus Elephantism” associated with the official Nintendo add-on. [Product] Razer’s motion controller This new controller uses completely different technology from the other motion controllers out there from the big 3 gaming companies. It’s magnetic, and unlike those other ones, it’s true 1:1 movement with low latency and high precision. I’d much rather be playing Red Steel 2 with something like this than with a Wiimote. It’s still a ways from production though. Sprint Overdrive 4G speed in a package the size of a drink coaster? And it actually works in Vegas during CES? Yes, please. A great new WiMax product and literally the first of its kind. [Release] Plastic Logic Que The first e-book reader I genuinely want. I’d probably only use it to read newspapers and such, not books, but it’s thin, beautiful, and the touchscreen is definitely key. Too bad it costs over $600. Palm Pre Plus It may not have been much of a surprise by the time Palm announced the Pre Plus for Verizon, but we’re still glad it’s here. While the doubled capacity of 16GB is a nice touch, the real deal sealer is the new keyboard; it may look just about identical, but it feels a heck of a lot better than the one found on the Plus-less Pre. [Product] Memorex HD Touch Screen camera I’m glad to see that the pocket camera market is still going strong. I was really impressed by the Memorex Pocket cam. Not just for the touch screen, but for the fact that it supports external microphones as well. [Product] Samsung Moment with Mobile DTV The Samsung Moment is on here not because it’s an amazing phone but because it marks the beginning of free TV transmission to cellphones. If there’s one thing visitors to Asia are amazed by its the proliferation of live TV – in cars, in phones, almost everywhere. Samsung is finally bringing this technology to our shores and will be piggy-backing premium content over the standard, local streams we all know and love.

You are subscribed to email updates from CrunchGear To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610