The Gadgets Page

• Very cool found footage of VHS tapes that were sent to Apple dealers. http://tinyurl.com/ybmqrwn #

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Optical image stabilization (O.I.S.) has come a long way over the last few years and the best showcase of that is this exhibit at the Sony booth this year at CES. They had two cameras sitting on a moving platform, one with Optical SteadyShot and the other without.

Even though both cameras were on the same jiggling platform, the picture on the left is jumping all over the place, while the one on the right is smooth as silk.

This feature of their video cameras was of special interest to me because I film and sell Walking DVDs at Starling Fitness. I’m actually in the market for a new video camera and the Sony HDR-CX550V is looking really appealing to me.

Too bad it’s retailing at almost $1300. I’ll have to wait until the price drops a bit.

Polaroid did an excellent job of playing off its rich photographic past in its booth at CES this year.

They had a display honoring the great Dr. Edwin Land, inventor of polarization.

They showed some artwork made with Polaroids.

They even brought some favorite retro gadgets out of the Polaroid Museum for some nostalgic appeal.

You can see all the photos here:

It’s amazing how ingrained certain habits can be in all of us. Take the action of shaking a Polaroid picture. I saw my parents do it. I did it. Outkast even wrote a song about it. Sadly, Polaroid and their iconic film were destined to be relegated to a footnote in our gadget history when they stopped making the film.

Fortunately, they came out with the Poloroid PoGo Instant Camera to replace it. They actually showcased the PoGo camera last year at CES, but this year, they had them out and available for people to play with.

They come equipped with ink on the paper, so all you have to do is load the paper and start clicking. They even come with cute frames for your photos. Here is the Polaroid of Mike and I that they took of us at the show.

With a little more centering, it would have been perfect. You can do that sort of editing on the camera, so when you know it’s ready, then you print.

The photos are substantially smaller than the Polaroids of yesteryear (2″ X 3″), but they are a good enough size for sharing with friends.

Here is a video from last year’s CES showing how the PoGo works.

In the end, you get a cute little photograph and with the new technology, no shaking is required. Outkast will be so disappointed…

When I owned a Palm, there were literally dozens of keyboards that I could purchase for use with it. It’s surprising to me that the iPhone doesn’t have that option. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can use it with any Bluetooth keyboard, but if you don’t want to break your user license agreement, then you are kind of out of luck.

It looks like ION is trying to rectify that problem. At CES this year, they were showing a prototype of a new keyboard called iType, which works with your iPhone.

The iPhone docks into the keyboard for typing.

It’s a pretty nice sized keyboard that is light and easy to type on.

Unfortunately, you need to use their app to type with it. It doesn’t take the place of the onscreen keyboard in all applications. You have to type in their application and then you can copy and paste to email or any other writing intensive app you use.

Here is a video showing how the keyboard acts with their application.

I would love a full-sized keyboard that works with my iPhone, but the iType won’t work for me. Unless I can type with the keyboard in any app, it’s useless.

The creators of tough phones, Sonim Technologies, challenged Dan Simmons of the BBC to see if he could break their phone.

I love the look of shock on their faces when the LCD screen actually breaks. Unbreakable is a mighty big claim, so it’s no surprise that Dan was able to prove them wrong. In the end, Sonim phones are tougher than normal phones, but the moniker of unbreakable is a little bit of a stretch.

Here is a quick clip from the CES 2010 keynote where Steve Ballmer of Microsoft shows off three “Slate PC” gadgets.

With all the rumors of an Apple device coming out soon, it looks like Microsoft is trying to get the jump on that market. One of the rumors suggested that this supposed Apple device might be called an iSlate, so it’s no coincidence that Steve rushed to claim the Slate PC name.

Wouldn’t it be funny if all of those rumors were just a misinformation feed from Apple to distract everyone from their upcoming secret? What if they were only trying to negotiate a publishing contract with magazines and book publishers and were merely announcing that this January instead of a slate/tablet/ebook reader/giant iPod Touch?

All I know is that those Slate PCs that Ballmer was so proud of look an awful lot like the Photoshopped mock ups that have been floating around with Apple logos on them.

Microsoft might think they have a jump on Apple, but I suspect Steve Jobs has far more in the hopper than they realize.

The most brilliant way to make me to stop for a moment and actually WATCH a Samsung television was to show off video art.

It was easy to miss, but along the side wall of Samsung’s booth at CES this year, they displayed gorgeous video art. My favorite was “Desire Has No History,” which is a quote by the famous photographer, Susan Sontag. You can see it here:

The vision of three beautiful and active gadgets being ground down to nothing is striking, but the reversal of the video is brilliant. It’s as if the gadgets were being made before my eyes instead of torn down.

Here is a clip from Mike and Matt’s favorite video, “Life as a flower to be near you.”

The description of the video was interesting:

The woman making the cake represents the expression of love. The man eating the cake represents the act of receiving love. The spinning cake (which was filmed over a 4-week time span) represents the progression of love.

That was an interesting concept, but the look on the face of the man haunts me even now. He looked so incredibly SAD to receive that cake.

Samsung did a brilliant job of getting me to stop and look at their televisions. I usually don’t write about the myriad of TV choices, so I would usually just rush past their booth on the way to something a little more interesting to me. These art installations were enough to attract my attention.

It was so loud on the show floor that the actual audio for both of these videos was unusable, so I added some music that was similar to what was playing. The music credit is Altean Twilight from Royalty Free Music.

Sharper Image isn’t really a company that I think of when someone mentions a beautiful clock, but this year, they did an excellent job of creating an iPhone dock that grabbed my attention.

I didn’t get a chance to play with the dock much, but it does have speakers.

It looks like there are controls at the top to control your music.

This dock isn’t available on the Sharper Image website yet and they didn’t have an estimate on the price yet. The people at the booth weren’t able to tell me what app the iPhone was running, either. I’m a clock app junkie and it looked completely new to me, so maybe Sharper Image has an app that they will make available as well.

I’m looking forward to seeing this in the real world soon!

It had been a long day and the thought of a massage sounded so relaxing. At CES Unveiled I walked past the Inada Massage Chairs table. They had two chairs lying prone. There was a bit of a line to try one out, but I thought it might be fun to try it myself.

I walked up to the guy in the chair nearest to me.

“You don’t look very relaxed,” I said to him jokingly.

“I’m not,” he replied.

I decided I didn’t need to give them a try after all.