Liberal Studies This Week

Last week, the Consumer Electronics Show took place in Las Vegas. This is the mega trade show which previews all of the things we’ll waste our money on in the coming year (or at least dream about wasting our money on.) Here are the three things that I might consider wasting my money on.

Boxee Box is a software package that hardcore nerds use to watch and interact with Internet content on their television. In the past, you had to create a media server if you wanted to use Boxee on your living room television but now you can buy the Boxee Box. Not only does it stream Internet video to your television, it also can pull your audio and video from your computer through your wireless network. If you have the nerd gene, check out the cool design and look at the backside of that cool remote control.

I sent this link to my wife and her response was just ‘COOL’. The ORB ring is a simple band with a high-resolution display screen. When your cell-phone rings, your ORB ring will vibrate. Look down, and you’ll see the caller ID on the screen. (This is where we get our nerd on.) If you want to talk to that person, take off the ORB ring, twist it and it becomes a Bluetooth headset. It also displays text messages and calendar reminders if you use a smart phone to sync to your calendar.

Do you own a hybrid vehicle? Ever wish you had that technology in a bicycle. If so, Sanyo has the eneloop for you. Okay, I’ll admit, when I was a kid, television promised me a hover car by 2010 so I’m a little disappointed that we ended up with the eneloop but that’s only in comparison to me Jetson-inspired fantasy. You have to admit, this is a pretty neat idea.

Do you take pictures and share them online? You might try the Eye-fi It looks like a traditional media card, because it is with storage up to 8 GB, but it’s also a wi-fi device that allows you to use wireless networks to send your photos to the Internet directly from your camera. Sure, you can buy a digital camera that is wi-fi enabled but what if you already have a digital camera. Just slide the Eye-fi in your media port and you’re ready to go.

And, if you’ve ever wanted to spend a full-year’s salary on a television CES had a lot of options most of which were 3-D enabled. For me, I like the Toshiba Cell TV. No, it’s not a cell phone but a cell computer microprocessor which (if I understand correctly) is capable of as many a trillions FLOPS (calculations) per second. To give you an idea of the computing power here, this television is yet another 3-D enabled television but it is also capable of converting a traditional 2-D broadcast to 3-D on the fly. It also has 512 dimmable zones. (If you’re a nerd you know dimmable zones create deep blacks on a television image and that 512 is 4 to 5 times what you’d expect.)

It’ll cost a fortune but it comes with a terabyte media server, a Ble-Ray player, video phone built in, WiFI and interaction with Netflix, Vudu, Pandora etc AND it has wireless HDMI. Look at the picture and you’ll see a screen and a box. The screen hangs on the wall but the box is the actual television. Its wireless beams its muscle to the screen.


If you want to see more tech from this year's show visit their site