While there is an “offcial” CES Flickr stream, I think a slide show with all pics tagged “ces09″ is far more interesting so here goes:

The guys are back from CES and looking only moderately worse for wear today. I grabbed the FlipCam and did a little debrief with them. I ran out of space on the Flip before I got to Brian, which I guess is okay with him…

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My arm is still a little gimpy, so Jason and I are doing a video post…

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Bradley zapped a TwitPic today of a fuel cell-powered cell phone charger and my interest was peaked.

M2O is big on green solutions to problems in our world. Beyond our need for fuel to run vehicles, we need power to run our myriad devices (like my laptop, Blackberry, iPod…). Sure a lot of these devices run on batteries, so that’s not too bad, right?

Well, sorta, because the electricity still has to be generated somehow. Here in BC we’re pretty lucky that a lot of our power is generated by hydroelectric dams, which is pretty green (there is some debate about it), but elsewhere coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power (another tech that is debated as green) is used to generate power.

Fine, so, we know to unplug things, to recycle things, but how can we recharge our devices without the grid? We can’t really help how our power is generated, can we?

Personally I have a Solio recharger, which is essentially a giant battery. I can recharge it via the power outlet or the Sun. What about something else?

Fuel cells.

Hydrogen fuel cells generate power using reactions between good old H₂ and other materials. Typically research on fuel cells has been for cars, buses, and other large fossil fuel consuming machines, but since fuel cells can be very safe and old give off water and heat (that’s because hydrogen releases energy then combines with oxygen to go back to water) making small fuel cells for consumer electronics seems like a great idea. Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies makes the above device. Not much on their site about it, but the science is good. Imagine taking tap water and charging your devices?

Could really free laptops from needing outlets to power up as much.

Yes, I know hydrogen has this nasty tendency to blow up, but these fuel cells are very safe.

I think more exciting than this device is their fuel cell powered bike. No, not because you can cruise at a spiffy 25 KMH, but because the engine can also be deployed to power other things like computers and lights. The surplus heat can be used as, well, heat.

Loving this stuff. I think I’m going to hit up Bradley to get one of the H2 racer sets for the office.

Here are some of the pics Bradley has been taking with his phone and posting …

My dog has ... wiis?

Predator Gaming system from Acer. Wonder if it fights back.

At $900 Sony's entry in the Netbook arena isn't for goofing around

Netbook after the drier or a cool phone?

8 megapixel camera, available in Canada soon.

From the Sony launch party.

Looks like cool stuff. I wish I were there to catch it in person, and in focus! .

You can keep up with Bradley’s pics on the go through his TwitPic stream

While the guys are having tons of fun in Vegas (I don’t want to know, just bring back cool stuff, k?), I’m watching the CES news from above.

Okay we have lots of new HD TVs. Check, that was a given. More Bluray players are coming out, even portable ones. Not totally unexpected, but since Blu-Ray isn’t doing that great, I’m a bit surprised. Netbooks galore. We’ve been waiting for CES for the cool stuff to hit so, again expected.

Yeah, Palm has a new phone thingy. I’ve heard both yawns and hoorays on that one, so I’m going to just set that aside. What I’m seeing those are some unifying trends that are pretty exciting, even if they aren’t terribly geeky.

Netbooks are becoming that second computer we all like to have around. Face it, most of us geeks keep old under-powered laptops around just to strip down and check email and such. This is when we haven’t fried the buggers totally, but that’s different.

Sure I have a netbook. Do I use it every day? No. Actually I want to wipe it out and play around with some things again. It’s like a disposable machine for me. Why? Because I only want to rely on it to get me online and do basic stuff.

That’s it. If I save anything to the HD, it’s just temporary.

What I’m seeing now is that we have TVs that are more Internet-aware than ever (I’d hope so) and easier connect to the rest of the stuff in your house; and that’s the key here.

We have gotten to a point where people don’t just have a computer and a printer. No, we have a few computers. We have routers. We have game consoles connected to the Net. More and more folks have devices like AppleTV to stream programs from the net to the boob tube (more than a little irony there in that old moniker, eh?). A family with high speed Internet is the rule, not exception. I doubt that many folks would give it up. I bet cable TV would go first.

Lots of homes are already “One Laptop per Child” homes.

What does this mean for manufacturers?

It means people are going to want to connect “stuff” together. Oh and it has to be dead, freakin’ simple. “Normal” humans don’t have time to tweak routers and stuff.

From where I sit, I’m seeing that come together.

HD radio had an impressively packed house at their booth.  Their success seems to be from increased brand recognition over last year.  Was nice seeing the video we did for them last year proudly playing on the big screen tv .

Our friends at Kodak were king enough to lend us an HD flip camera and we will film coverage with it all week .  It’s an impressive device and we’re happy to have it.

Their OLED picture frame was really cool, but it’s the Kodak theatre HD player that really turned our head.  Connect to your hd tv and watch YouTube (impressively upconverted) or easily share your video and pictures with family members.

As alyways, their products are easy to use, and work together to increase performance.

Video by Bradley to follow.

As you know by now, I’m stuck in Vancouver instead of going to CES. Since it’s my shoulder’s fault and I can’t really punish it, I’m making the best of it.

During CES my job is to keep up with all of the CES news and give a larger view than folks on the ground might be able to see. I’ve been at great conferences like CES and no matter how hard I try, I miss stuff. It isn’t until I get home from the conference do I get to catch up and find out what the big take away was.

Okay, but I’m here in Vancouver how am I going to get the scoop?

I’m not.

The guys are getting the scoops. They are getting the cool demos and cool schwag.

What I am able to get and do is sort through the myriad of posts about CES and see what’s floating to the top. Sure there are going to be lots of product announcements, but is there a unifying theme?

That’s a lot of info. How, pray tell, am I going to be able to sort through it all?

Yahoo Pipes.

I’ve taken general searches for CES (for the moment) plus some CES specific feed and passed them through some sorting and filters to get a single CES feed. I’m going to tweak the source I’m sure, but there are the results for you. Enjoy, share, etc. Now off to read all this stuff…

I’m kicking off M2O’s CES2009 coverage with this post from CrunchGear on what gear they’ll be carrying:

CES can be a lot of fun, but it’s a whole friggin’ lot of work, too. Meetings, press announcements, booth tours, darting back and forth from hall to hall, show floor to hotel, and a whole lot of trekking around the show floor in search of diamonds in the rough. Media attendees probably walk more in the four days of CES than most people walk in a month – all while wearing a backpack stuffed to the brim with every single tool we might need.

If you were to take a peek into one of these mystical blogging tool chests, what might you find? Lets take a look at the bag I’ll be carrying this week, which is a fairly standard example of a blogger’s road gear.

[From CES 2009 Prep: The Things We’ll Carry]

Those who know me, know that I’m pretty (in)famous for carrying a ton of gear at conferences. While I have pared down to just one bag now, people know that I still am the go to guy if you need a cable, flash drive, extra battery, even a powerstrip. I’m not going to get to show off my uber-geek prowess this year because of my shoulder. Disappointed? Big time. I finally have a gear bag that let’s me carry a crap load of photo and computer gear without killing my back (Crumpler bags FTW).

The CrunchGear folks are hauling less photography gear than I would plus an Eee PC 1000. Me I’d have my scads of glass with me, probably including my bazooka 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and a lot more on the go storage. Would I have my own Eee PC 901? Totally. Might be back at the hotel or my MBP would be left at the hotel (chained to something big and heavy) and I’d tote the netbook. I totally agree with having a primary and backup machine with you. I’ve done that at conferences and it can be a real boon.

So as the guys are getting ready to fly out in the morning to Vegas, I’m getting ready to do a bird’s eye view of CES.

Stay tuned.