Filed under: CES, Gaming, Home Entertainment, Transportation

Let’s be honest, gaming chairs in all flavors of “enhancement” from vibration to sound to cup holders and beyond are quickly becoming a dime a dozen — but the ButtKicker not only takes a different approach to vibration enhancement than other options but also wins the “most notable name” award in the arena. For one thing, it’s not a chair — it’s a device you can install on any office chair to add vibration experience to not just gaming but anything producing sound on your computer including music and other media players. There are also two other versions of the device for use in home theater and auto installations (you can retrofit pretty much any old Lazy-boy in your living room). At $99 the gaming-focused version of the ButtKicker is cheaper than a lot of all-in-one gaming chair solutions as well. Oh, and how does the thing feel? Let’s just say it tickled us in many nuanced ways.

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Filed under: Gaming

Sony’s been quite liberal with its color options for the PSP over in Japan so far, and it doesn’t look like things are switching up much with the PSP-2000 “slim.” This time Sony’s busting out a rather appetizing “Mint Green” PSP to the expectant hordes that haven’t already gone broke buying the endless iterations already answered by the company. Of course, there’s no word or expectation of an US release, so we’re off to the art supplies shop for another set of acrylics.

[Via Joystiq]

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Filed under: Features, Gaming, Podcasts

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Located outside the main conventions halls, in the “Gold Lot”, is BMW’s Pit Lane Park. This venue consisted of a variety of activities, including: a virtual F1 simulator, trivia kiosks, pit crew challenge (participants were asked to change the wheels on an actual F1 car), reflex challenge (upright structure had flashing numbers you had to press), and last but not least, watching a BMW driver do donuts in an F1 car (Daniel Morad for this showing). Videos after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.

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Filed under: Cellphones, CES, Features

We’ve just gotten out of a meeting with Thomas Eriksson, co-founder and CTO of Neonode, and we’ve learned some very exciting information about the company’s newest, as-yet-unannounced phones. We were shown designs of the mobile-maker’s next lineup of devices, including an iPhone-esque model called “Earth” which has been confirmed for production (though Thomas insisted that some features and design would change, of course). The phone will feature a 2.9-inch, true 16:9 ratio infrared touchscreen (an updated version of the Neonode N2’s touch surface), HSPA connectivity, and will operate on five separate frequency bands (a first as far as we can tell), allowing 3G use in both Europe and the US. However, the most interesting thing that we were shown was a live prototype of the company’s latest OS, which blows the doors off of previous iterations. The new interface is a much more robust platform, featuring a homescreen made up of a number of small widget-like icons, all updating live with things like RSS feeds, phone logs, weather, and mail. The UI is still meant to be operated via one hand, though Thomas confirmed that the device would sport a virtual QWERTY keyboard, and would deliver more PIM / smartphone features than we’ve seen from them in the past. The design of the interface is still being tweaked, but it looks very contemporary to current and future phone OSs we’ve been seeing, with lots of nice shading and alpha layers. From the little we peeped, this platform could be a contender if handled correctly — Thomas told us that Neonode had plans underway to partner with carriers in the US, so stay tuned to this space for more info.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Yeah, there it is, a shiny white Palm Centro in a booth for all to see, I’m sure Palm will be ever so delighted about this. Apparently an accessory vendor put it out to display some of its wares on the show floor and the gents at TreoCentral were there to catch it live. Adding insult to this slip up is that fact that the handset is a GSM model that you see there my friends, and interestingly it is different then the AT&T branded Centro we saw a while back. More on this as soon as we can get our grubby mitts on it.

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Filed under: Cellphones, CES, Features

We’ve just gotten out of a meeting with Thomas Eriksson, co-founder and CTO of Neonode, and we’ve learned some very exciting information about the company’s newest, as-yet-unannounced phones. We were shown designs of the mobile-maker’s next lineup of devices, including an iPhone-esque model called “Earth” which has been confirmed for production (though Thomas insisted that some features and design would change, of course). The phone will feature a 2.9-inch, true 16:9 ratio infrared touchscreen (an updated version of the Neonode N2’s touch surface), HSPA connectivity, and will operate on five separate frequency bands (a first as far as we can tell), allowing 3G use in both Europe and the US. However, the most interesting thing that we were shown was a live prototype of the company’s latest OS, which blows the doors off of previous iterations. The new interface is a much more robust platform, featuring a homescreen made up of a number of small widget-like icons, all updating live with things like RSS feeds, phone logs, weather, and mail. The UI is still meant to be operated via one hand, though Thomas confirmed that the device would sport a virtual QWERTY keyboard, and would deliver more PIM / smartphone features than we’ve seen from them in the past. The design of the interface is still being tweaked, but it looks very contemporary to current and future phone OSs we’ve been seeing, with lots of nice shading and alpha layers. From the little we peeped, this platform could be a contender if handled correctly — Thomas told us that Neonode had plans underway to partner with carriers in the US, so stay tuned to this space for more info.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Yeah, there it is, a shiny white Palm Centro in a booth for all to see, I’m sure Palm will be ever so delighted about this. Apparently an accessory vendor put it out to display some of its wares on the show floor and the gents at TreoCentral were there to catch it live. Adding insult to this slip up is that fact that the handset is a GSM model that you see there my friends, and interestingly it is different then the AT&T branded Centro we saw a while back. More on this as soon as we can get our grubby mitts on it.

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Filed under: Cellphones, GPS

Taiwanese Supa had a pretty swish gadget out on display on the floor today, a handset with GPS and GPS data logging capabilities. Featuring quad-band GSM / GPRS, a SiRFstarIII chipset, storage for up to 1440 way points, Geo Fence — with alarms sent via SMS whenever the fence is breached — a dedicated SOS button, and upgradable storage via T-Flash. The pic seems to show it running Windows Mobile, though we’re not seeing anything in the specs. Hopefully we’ll get a better look at it and get back with some more info.

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The Gadget: Orbitsound were showing off their speaker sets that incorporate “air sound” technology. The idea is simple; single point stereo sound is directed at a target area, meaning you only hear stereo music in one particular zone created by the device. Other models by Orbitsound include the T6 set (valve and speaker system), and the T12 soundbar iPod dock. They all boast the great technology described before, but pricing and shipping details were not available at present. However, what’s the catch?

The Catch: No matter how many questions Eric asked, he could not get an answer to how this wizardry works. No matter how much I listened to the musical output, I just could not believe this just didn’t work. Sure, it is an OK speaker, but it does not deliver on the promises it makes. Air sound, Orbitsound—meh. [Orbitsound]

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