This year, there were some really cool gadgets revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year. The new products ranged from sunglasses that are actually television monitors (ala Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation) to 150-inch plasma screen televison sets. Some cool new computer-related gadgets were unveiled, including the first 16-inch laptop that allows an actual 16:9 ratio, as opposed to the standard 16:10 ratio found on most widescreen monitors and a new massive curved monitor for hardcore gamers allowing a 2,800×900 pixel display.

In addition, some cool new peripherals for the Nintendo Wii were unveiled by Nyko and CTA Digital.

You can find complete coverage of CES 2008 over at CNET.com.

Microsoft is offering a neat spin on its second-generation Zune digital media players. If you pop on over to zuneoriginals.net, you can order your very own customized Zune.

You can choose from over 100 different designs to have them etch onto the back of your player and you can add up to five lines of text.

On top of that, the customization is completely free. I’m not sure how long Zune Originals will be offering that deal; I’m not even sure if it’s a limited-time offer or not. All I know is, when you design your custom Zune, all of the customization options say “waived” where the price should be, and the total price of the player is the same as it would be without any customization.

The image to the right is the one I worked up quickly for this post. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on one of my own, soon.

It’s probably still a little bit premature to say this, but it looks like the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is on its last legs. Now, in addition to Disney and obviously Sony, Warner Bros. has decided to back the Blu-Ray format.

The real question is, though, will the general public catch on any time soon? With Blu-Ray players going for $400 and up, and the advent of Web-broadcast movies, will we continue to collect movies in physical formats? Or will the DVD go the way of the audio CD and become simply a back-up method of collecting videos?

What do you think?

Regrettably, I am posting about a yet unresolved situation with Polaroid. A few weeks before Christmas last year, my mother-in-law purchased a Polaroid A500 digital camera. It’s a fairly nice, compact little digital camera and was rather inexpensive at the time. For about six months, it held up pretty well.

However, recently, the camera seems to have lost its mind. Every single time you turn on the camera, the date and time have reset themselves to 10/01/2003 12:00:00 a.m., and the camera prompts you to fix it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the camera won’t actually let you change it from that screen. You have to exit that screen, then go back to the main menu, then choose to change the date and time.

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On Black Friday, I finally had the opportunity to purchase some “LightScribe” discs to use with the burner that came in my new computer. Being that I only had a handful of the discs, I wanted to save them for something special.

Every Christmas, I make a compilation of most of the photographs I’ve taken over the year. I decided that a DVD slideshow of those photographs would be a perfect opportunity to try out my new LightScribe discs.

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I was viewing my My Yahoo! homepage this morning and came across a very interesting news story. Apparently, a Canadian man came home from work early and found his 15-year old son smoking marijuana in the backyard.

How did the dad decide to punish his delinquent offspring? He sold the Christmas present he was planning to bestow upon his son next week.

That’s right, he put it up on ebay and sold it. This wasn’t just any Christmas present, though. It was the sought-after Guitar Hero 3 for the Nintendo Wii. All-in-all, the dad ended up making a cool $8,700 profit from his kid’s poor decision.

Maybe I should put my kids’ Christmas gifts up on ebay :).

Just a quick post to say how silly I am, and what a ripoff Sony’s Memory Sticks can be. On Black Friday, I purchased what I thought was a great deal. I got a 2 gigabyte Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo for my Sony Cybershot camera for less than $20.

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Well, another Black Friday is upon us. For those of you that work in retail, I offer you my condolences for having to deal with all the crazies out there. For those of you in parts of the world other than the U.S., I apologize for making such a localized post. For those of you crazy enough to run out and brave the crowds to find some insane deals, I salute you.

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I caught an article on Yahoo! yesterday talking about a new innovation in technology. The Eye-Fi memory card is an amazing new gadget that enables you to connect your digital camera to your computer without any wires and without removing your card from your camera. What’s more, the Eye-Fi card will even allow you to automatically upload your pictures from your camera to your favorite social networking or photo gallery Web site.

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Well, it’s halftime of the “biggest regular season game in history”. Unless the Patriots come out of the locker room in the second half as a completely different team, I don’t see things going their way tonight. They have been playing poorly, given up a huge interception and been penalized for over 100 yards in the first half. In the last 30 seconds of the first half, they gave up a huge play, allowing the Colts to score a touchdown and take the lead.

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