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LAS VEGAS--It's not just inside the CES hotels and convention center that you find technology and tech enthusiasts here in Sin City.

One of the most passionate techies I met all week was Daniel Habtewold, the cab driver who took AJ and me back to our hotel after visiting with the Pleo robot dinosaur on Monday night.

Habtewold was playing an eclectic mix of reggae and other music, and AJ asked whether it was a CD or the radio. He said the tunes were streaming from his iPod, noting that it was Apple's beefiest model, the 160GB iPod … Read more

Ion Audio had a slew of new USB turntables on display at CES this year. Of all the new models, the turntable I'm the most interested to get my hands on is the LP2CD, a direct-to-CDR vinyl archiving solution.

The LP2CD includes an all-metal platter, an LCD display, a USB connection, a switchable line/phono audio output, and a front-loading CD player and recorder. At $449, the LP2CD turntable doesn't come cheap. There's something to be said, however, for paying a little extra to take a computer out of the vinyl archiving equation (although the LP2CD can … Read more

Joining Yoggie's cool Gatekeeper Pico, a security suite on a USB stick, is the new Firestick Pico, a firewall-only version of the same thing.

As covered previously on Crave, Yoggie's products are essentially security coprocessors. Computers unto themselves, they intercept all Internet traffic going in and out of your computer and scan it for threats. The Gatekeeper products scan for viruses, spam, and other threats, as well as running a bidirectional firewall. The new Firestick is a firewall only.

The benefit to these products is that they free up your computer's processor from running the security processes … Read more

Haier's booth was way in the back of one of the halls at CES, but we wanted to swing by to see if (and when) the company would be bringing its cell phones to the United States. The PR rep wasn't exactly forthcoming, but we did get a brief tour of the models the company is hoping to bring here. The most interesting of the bunch was the HG-N99, and we can only hope that it actually arrives on our shores (Haier says it is in talks with U.S. carriers).

The Windows Mobile handset may look like … Read more

As if reality were too mundane for you, many of the vendors at this year's CES would like to sell you a chair that vibrates in synch with your home theater system, a ultra-thin Hi-Def TVs that defies reality in terms of fidelity, clarity and color and now, televisions that attempt to be 3-D. Not satisfied? How about high-definition cameras? While I can't show you a picture of what 3-D TV image looks like, it's nowhere as cool as you may think.

We're always interested to see what's coming up for ultramobile PCs, the handheld platform better known as UMPC. We've seen previous iterations from the Sony UX to the OQO model 02, to the Vulcan Flipstart, but none have totally scratched our ultramobile itch, because of awkward interfaces, poor battery life, or underpowered processors.

Toshiba is showing off a new UMPC at CES, and while it doesn't yet have a name or release date, it incorporates a number of new features that move the category forward--but it's clearly still not "the one."

The Toshiba … Read more

Aside from the U.S. phones at the CES booth, Sanyo also had an additional display showing off phones that are only available in Japan. And as with all things that are Japan-only, we really wish we had them here. One phone that particularly stood out was the Sanyo W53SA, a waterproof digital TV phone, so you can "enjoy watching TV while taking a bath," according to the Sanyo representative. There isn't too much we know about it, except that it uses Japan's CDMA 1X WIN network, and that it has a 2.0-megapixel camera. We … Read more

One of our predictions for CES 2008 was that DVD recorders with ATSC tuners would get a couple of key features upgrades that take full advantage of the built-in digital tuner. Well, if Panasonic's new line of DVD recorders is any indication, we were wrong.

Despite some significant clamoring for a DVD recorder with a hard drive, the new Panasonic Diga line of DVD recorders includes only two standard DVD recorders, plus two DVD/VHS recorder combo units. There's also no mention of a few features we were hoping for: true HD output for ATSC programming, an EPG … Read more

DisplayLink makes video chips that let you connect an LCD to your PC via USB, which is highly convenient for adding a second display. Even more convenient? Going wireless. Iogear introduced its Wireless USB-to-VGA Video Card that uses DisplayLink's technology to output a video signal via WUSB to multiple monitors, TVs, and projectors at up to 1,680x1,050 resolution and 16.7 million colors. Iogear expects the WUSB external graphics adapter to become commercially available in mid-2008 from monitor, PC, and peripheral manufacturers.

To learn more about DisplayLink, read our reviews of DisplayLink LCDs from LG and Samsung. … Read more