The doors to the show floors have officially opened here in Las Vegas and we’ve been running around checking out the latest gadgets we could get our hands (or at least eyes) on.
ICYMI
PCs are getting smaller every year, but this is one of the tiniest computers we’ve seen yet. Intel today announced the Compute Stick, an HDMI dongle that connects to your monitor to deliver a fully-functional PC with quad-core Baytrail Atom processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for just $149.
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At its keynote, Intel also introduced Intel Curie, a wearables module to help hardware developers get their foot in the market. The company also unveiled plans for a Diversity in Technology Initiative to promote gender and racial diversity in the industry. Woot!
Drones are all the rage this year at CES, and while Intel did show off one that helps you take your photos, Robbie managed to find another that truly serves a larger purpose. The Parrot eXom by SenseFLY is designed to help inspect construction sites to detect even the slightest defect. It can also help produce 3D landscape maps.
Productivity’s in full swing
Las Vegas is a heck of a place for fun and games, so it can be difficult to focus your attention on work when you’re touring Sin City. To keep our minds on track, we met up with the team from Livescribe, the smart pen maker, to check out the beta version of the company’s Android app. The Livescribe 3 pen has been iOS-only since late 2013, so news of forthcoming Android support is music to our ears.
We also came across this gesture-control ring that essentially turns you into a Jedi. You can preset Logbar’s aptly-named Ring with various finger drawing motions and match them with intended actions. At the moment, it can perform simple tasks like turning lights on or off, sending a tweet or snapping photos from the camera app.
The Japanese company hopes to let developers play around with the functionality to make it work with a variety of apps like writing in Evernote or air-drawing a U to hail an Uber (this is, of course, assuming that Uber opens up any kind of functionality for developers in the near future).
Snapshots
I’m not one to take selfies everywhere I go, but when the offer came up to take a 3D one, well, that seemed like something I might as well do while at CES thanks to the guys at Fuel3D. Is your world ready for 3D selfies?
Napier spent the afternoon checking out Bang & Olufsen’s new BeoSound Moment music player, which learns your music listening habits and plays your favorite tunes depending on when you normally like to jam. The color-based MoodWheel also lets you select genre of songs depending on how you’re currently feeling (Blue gives you easy-listening songs, while Red plays something more upbeat, for example).
However, you’ll have to fork over a pretty penny to own it – $2,795 dollars, to be exact.
Lastly, while roaming Sands Expo, we found the guys from the Yo app and picked up one of these babies. The pun is unbearable.
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