CES 2008 Picks and Pans

TN Gaming's 3rd Space gaming vest and helmet use little   compressed air chambers to give you a tactile jolt in the chest, stomach,   back, or head when you are shot or punched in avideo game. It's an interesting   concept, but to me the feeling seemed disconnected from the action of the   game. Distracting, even. --Mark Sullivan

My personal award for "most hyped product" probably goes to MyVu, apair of glasses that connects to your iPodand lets you watch a virtual video screen floating in front of your eyes. I tried it at the demo station located right outside the Las Vegas Convention Center's South Hall, and was intrigued even though I had to jam it on over my own eyeglasses. --Harry McCracken

The idea of wearable video monitors has been little more than a novelty for a long time, and judging byMyVu'suncomfortable and too-small Crystal 701 3D glasses, the idea still isn't ready for prime time. Maybe next year. --Mark Sullivan

I'm impressed by the technologyMotorolapacks into its upcoming Z10 camcorder phone, which not only captures 30-frames-per-second video but also gives you tools to edit the footage into a mini-movie. But I'm not sure I want to spend that much time on my handset--or fritter away the battery life to become the next Steven Soderbergh. --Yardena Arar

Belkin's Podcast Studio($100, available in June) is a sleeve for your iPod with internal microphones, inputs for external microphones, and lots of controls for tweaking the sound you're recording. If you want to podcast on the go, this looks like a convenient and inexpensive way to do so. --Edward N. Albro

LG Appliancescombined a refrigerator with a PCfive years ago, and it was a bomb. So why in the world is Whirlpool trying to follow a similar path? Hanging a laptop off the front of an icebox won't work. The company might have better luck with people using its new Centralpark system to hang a digital photo frame on the fridge, but the laptop part of the concept is just silly. --Ramon G. McLeod

Zoombakpitched its GPS and cellular-based car locator ($300 plus $10 a month for the first six months and $15 a month thereafter) as a way for parents to make sure teens aren't driving where they shouldn't be. And eAgency's Radar cell phone technology (available atmymobilewatchdog.com) forwards a copy of every text message and photo sent or received, as well as voice-call logs. Are kids really that untrustworthy nowadays? --Yardena Arar

TheMio C720t($599, available now) is a full-featured GPS navigation system that also includes a digital camera. Take a picture, and it tags the image with the exact geographic coordinates. If you upload the shots to a service such as Picasa, you can then show exactly where you took the shot on Google Earth. You can see the C720t in action in our video. I'm not certain how often I'd pop my navigation system out to take pics, but it's a neat idea. --Edward N. Albro

Everybody's Doing It

The "wirelessly streaming HDTV demo" has become a CES clich é , along with cheesy booth infotainers and glitches in Bill Gates's keynotes. ButBelkin's FlyWiremight actually fly. Plug your Blu-ray player, cable or satellite feed, or other HD video source into the FlyWire box, and it will stream 1.5 gigabits per second of uncompressed 1080p video up to 50 feet away. How does it work? The secret sauce is in how the box prioritizes bits, says Yoav Nissan-Cohen, CEO of Amimon, whose technology Belkin has licensed. We'll have to wait until late summer to see just how well the $599 FlyWire pulls this off. --Dan Tynan

We saw lots of wireless video streaming going on at CES this year. Netgear gets it right with its newHD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit, which brings video from the PC to the TV with no jitter or pixelation. --Mark Sullivan

The best innovation, one that may finally cause consumers to take notice of camcorders,is the move toward flash memory, both built in and taking the form of SD Card media. Most of the major companies are getting involved, and that portends much smaller and lighter camcorders. Expect models based on hard drives and other media to fade over the next couple of years. Flash is the future. --Ramon G. McLeod