I spent today at the CES 2009 convention center, checking out hot new products and meeting with a bunch of companies that want to know more about what Obsessable and Crowd Fusion are doing. It has been a fantastic trip so far on both fronts.
After a couple of morning meetings, Steve Friedman and walked across the street to the massive Engadget trailer. I wanted to pretend I was either a fanboy who needed to get his iPhone charged or a reader who had problems with a product he’d bought off of Engadget, but everyone was heads down and blogging away.
(We used to get people writing to complain about a product they had bought from us every now and then. Of course, Engadget doesn’t sell any products. These people had just bought something online via one of our ads and assumed that meant Engadget was a store. Wonderful.)
I had a really short list of products to seek out. One was Powermat. It sounded cool in their press email and was even cooler in person. They have these little mats that recharge your gadgets by magnetic induction — not using power cords. So you set your (adapted for Powermat) iPhone on the mat and it just charges. You can even spill water on the surfaces and no one is going to get shocked because there’s no electricity running through them. Powermats won’t be in retail stores until the fall, but I plan to get them ASAP.
The Palm Pre recharges using a similar wireless charging pad. I’ll say more about the Pre later.
Now I’m back in the hotel room, catching up on email, hungry out of my mind and wondering how I’m going to stay awake for a 9pm party. I’m sure this CES trip is way easier for people from California who don’t have to deal with a time change. I’m just thankful I didn’t fly into Vegas from Europe.
Brian Alvey 