– greggellman twitter: @greggellman

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas can be considered a toy store for the electronics world, with mile after mile of showrooms of the latest and greatest.

After spending more than six days listening to every pitch, playing with products and eating to no end (complimentary, of course) my highlight for the week was getting my face shaved right there on the trade show floor.

Complete with a barber’s chair and hot towels, Schick showed off the battery powered Hydro 5 razor.

It’s built with three vibration settings (low, medium and high), which gave me a smooth shave in front of dozens of bystanders.

While all three settings were fine, medium felt the best except for the hot towels before and after.

Details: www.schickhydro.com $10

V-MODA CROSSFADE HEADHPONES

V-Moda showed off a new customized feature of the Crossfade LP2 ($199) over-the-ear noise isolating headphones.

Up to now, custom features of the headphones included 13 different color options for the outside shield of each ear cup, in addition to selecting your base and ear pad color.

Now the company has a unique feature to customize the shields.

When ordering the LP2’s, after you choose your shield color you have the choice of sending V-Moda a jpg, logo and a small amount of text to have it permanently lasered into the shields.

I watch in amazement as they demonstrated the feature by engraving the logo of my favorite team with a laser into the shields.

Simply put, the quality of the customized shields are right there with the outstanding comfort and sound you get out of every V-Moda product.

The engraving is also available for the smaller Crossfade M-80’s and other models that are expected to be announced in the future.

Details: http://v-moda.com $199

Here are some tidbits on other items I thought were either cool or useful:

KENSINGTON WORDLOCK

Kensington has added a great feature to help you remember your password and this one is truly a word. Instead of dialing a combination set to numbers, WordLock Portable Combination Laptop Lock lets you choose your combination in a word created from four spinning rows of letters.

The push-button design installs in seconds with T-Bar securing to the security port on your laptop and has a self-coiling cable that stretches to 6-feet to attach to a desk or fixed structure but shrinks to 3-inches for easy packing.

Details: www.kensington.com

ILUV KINDLE DOCK

iLuv showed off a new line of docking systems for the Kindle system. If Amazon really sold as many as they claimed this past holiday season, then iLuv has hit a homerun with these.

Details: www.iLuv.com

SANDISK DATA STORAGE

During meeting with Sandisk at CES they mentioned we are going to produce 2.7 Zettabytes of data in 2012. If that doesn’t make sense to you it’s equal to 2.7 trillion GB.

What this means to you: you are not alone and you better figure out how you’re going to archive your data, because you will have a hard drive crash at some point.

Details: www.SanDisk.com

GREENSMART BAGS

A company called GreenSmart is making eco-friendly computer bags and backpacks out of 100 percent recycled water bottles. A clever marketing tool has a label on each bag indicating how many bottles were used for each bag, which range from 11 to 40 depending on the product.

Details: www.Greensmart.biz

TEKCHICK DESIGNS

Speaking of recycling, a 13-year-old girl from Missouri has started a company called TekChick Designs. She takes old computer parts and turns them into jewelry including earrings made with keys from keyboards and she will soon be making necklaces.

Details: www.tekchickdesigns.com

IHOME AIRPLAY

Airplay is a feature within iOS 5 that many users either don’t know what it is or how to use it on iPads or iPhones. In 2012 iHome is going to increase their line of speakers with incredible sound to make it easy to use, so be on the lookout - especially for the iW3.

Details: www.iHomeaudio.com

POWERBAG

The Powerbag is a collection of backpacks and messenger bags have a smart battery and pre-routed charging cables built into the bag itself for the easiest on the go charging system you will see.

Details: www.mypowerbag.com

– greggellman twitter: @greggellman

The Kanex AirBlue is one of those products you think you don’t need _ but once you have it you’ll find how easily you can tie one gadget to another.

Seamlessly you can listen to any media stored on a portable Bluetooth-enabled device such as an iPhone or iPad on speakers connected to your home entertainment center or even car stereo without docking  your device.

After reading that you might think the setup is complicated but it is one of the simplest devices I have seen to set up.

All you do is make the Bluetooth connection with your device and then plug it into the system you want to output the audio on by connecting it to the system with a 3.5mm analog connection.

One button in the center of the 2-inch rounded device controls everything including power, pairing and playing or pausing the content.

To make the connection to your audio system, it comes with 3.5mm to 3.5mm and 3.5mm to RCA connection cables along with a USB to miniUSB cable for charging the AirBlue.

The battery is rated to last up to 10 hours before a charge is needed but if it’s near an AC outlet, leave it plugged into a USB wall adapter (not included).

www.KanexLive.com $37

You can put a level of security into your portable electronic gadget with the Bluetooth Wireless Leash by Zomm ($75).

After you pair it with devices such as smartphones, it can be used to send an alarm when the devices are separated anywhere from 30 to 120 feet in most cases.

In addition to the alarm, it has many more features including a built-in microphone, which makes an adequate speakerphone for hands-free calling.

A one-touch button can be used as panic alarm and it can also be used to one-touch dial an emergency number on your cell phone.  To set the emergency number you must register it on the company’s website and then input the number.

The round device measures just 1.5-inches in diameter and has a built-in hook for attaching it to a keychain or anything you want for security. A belt clip is also included along with cables for updating the device and charging it.

Zomm also recently announced the Wireless Leash Plus ($79.95), a new version that works with the free myZOMM app designed for the iPhone.

Like the original Zomm, the new one uses Bluetooth for a connection to notify users when the devices are separated by flashing, vibrating and sounding an alarm and also has the noise-canceling microphone for hands-free calls.

www.Zomm.com

Maxell Corporation has released the second generation AirStash A02 wireless flash drive.

The device has Wi-Fi built in, along with an SD card slot for unlimited memory, an internal battery and a USB connection.

For setup, all you do is select the AirStash as your wireless device and assuming you have already loaded the SD card with some type of data (music, photos, video, text), you insert it into the AirStash device.

The A02 enables you to share the data in a secure environment with up to eight people simultaneously.

The battery is good for up to five hours and gives you access to movies and other digital content wirelessly that can now be viewed on iPads and other types of portable electronic players.

Later this month an update of the company’s free AirStash+ app (iTunes) will be available to AirStash owners. This will let photos and videos captured on an iPhone to be stored directly on the AirStash.

www.airstash.com A02 16GB $179.99, A02 8GB $149.99

– greggellman twitter: @greggellman

A little house cleaning and office organizing this week created a pile of great products that I’ve had in my possession for way too long.

This includes the Magellan Wireless Back-Up camera and it’s companion, the Magellan RoadMate 9055-LM 7-inch touch screen GPS unit.

If you don’t have a backup camera built-into your car, the Magellan device is simple to add for assisting with parallel parking or more importantly seeing small children or pets in your way before backing up.

Magellan estimates that the installation takes up to an hour, and if you’re handy, go for it; otherwise a professional installer is recommended.

The camera attaches to the top screws of your rear license plate but does not obstruct any of the plate itself.

Depending on the size of your vehicle, the camera can be adjusted up to 45 degrees vertically for the proper angle to view the picture, which gives you a 120-degree horizontal angle of view and 100-degree vertical view.

The camera is dust and water proof and has a 45-foot transmission range to the receiver attached to the Magellan RoadMate GPS unit. The long range makes it ideal for larger vehicles such as RVs.

A great feature lets you view the camera’s image on your RoadMate LCD when you are in reverse, but automatically switches back to your navigation maps once the car is taken out of reverse and vice versa.

As for the Bluetooth enabled GPS unit, it’s packed with every feature you would want, but the large LCD is what makes it for me.

Navigating the touch screen is smooth and it comes with lifetime map updates and traffic alerts so there is no need for the pricy updates many other GPS companies nail you for.

www.magellangps.com $249 for the GPS and $149 for the camera

The Supernova 8-inch Android-based touchscreen color WiFi tablet by Pandigital is a solid addition to the rapidly growing handheld tablet market.

Unlike many other tablets I’ve had in my hands, this one has a very responsive touch screen with an eye-catching resolution (600 x 800 pixels) measuring just 6.13 x 8.38 x 0.44-inches and weighing about 16 ounces.

It does have my favorite feature for this type of device; a microSD card reader, which gives the tablet unlimited memory past the 4GB of internal memory. Memory cards up to 32GB can be purchased separately.

It comes with many standard features for today’s tablets, including Wifi (b/g/n), Bluetooth (2.1) , headphone jack along with a built-in speaker and microphone.

Right out of the box the tablet needed very little setup to do what most everyone would do with a device like this - surf the web with a browser, which includes Adobe Flash. A one-touch entrance to the Barnes & Noble ebook store is preloaded.

Inside is 512MB RAM allowing apps, apps and more apps to be loaded to run on the Android 2.3 operating system.

I still don’t really understand the need and excitement for cameras on a tablet, but they are included with a rear 3-megapixel camera and a front facing VGA camera for video conferencing.

Connections to outside hardware are done with the USB and HDMI (out only) ports and the battery will last for about 6 hours depending on what features you are using.

http://pandigital.net $229

Urbanears Bagis earbuds come in some eye-catching colors and produce some great ear-catching sound.

The Bagises aren’t going to be confused with a pair of high-end and high-priced headphones but you get great sound, especially for the price.

One thing that impressed me before testing them is how solidly constructed they felt out of the box. Often cheaper earbuds feel just like that - cheap, but it’s not the case with these.

Bagis features a rubber housing, with a combined fabric and TPE cord, which eliminates distortions that can be caused by friction. The pair of earphones can be snapped together to carry around your neck when they are not being used.

Urbanears shows off their creativity when it comes to naming the 10 color options, since they include mustard, tomato and mocha.

www.urbanears.com

– greggellman twitter: @greggellman

The Logitech Mini Boombox has everything I like in a portable gadget; it’s truly portable and Bluetooth equipped.

Besides fitting in the palm of your hand (measuring just 2.3 x 2.8 x 4.6-inches) the portable speaker is compact enough to store in a laptop bag. But don’t let the small size make you think it doesn’t have powerful sound.

In addition, it has a built-in mic to act as a desktop hands-free speaker phone for cell calls.

An audio indicator sounds to alert you of incoming calls and with a top- sided button you answer or end calls, allowing you to go back to the music.

A rechargeable internal battery will last for about 10 hours, but that number can vary depending on your volume levels.

It’s charged up from the backside USB port. Alongside of the USB port is a line-in port for attaching non-Bluetooth devices.

Other buttons control volume, pause, play and selecting music on your device; the power button is on the back.

www.Logitech.com $99

Unless Pelican decides to send me an iPad to test their claims that their 1075 HardBack Case ($40) for Netbooks and tablets is truly crushproof, I’ll somewhat take their word for it.

Pelican says it well on their website: “All it takes is just one drop”.

What I can say is my testing did let me store my iPad inside and allowed me to stand on it for a few seconds, suggesting this must be one of the strongest and best-engineered storage solutions I’ve ever seen.

The inside dimensions are 11.11 x 7.92 x 1.63-inches and it has a gel padding to keep a small computer or tablet in place. What makes it unique is that the construction of the incredible durable polymer shell.

Company testing also had it submerged in a few feet of water to safely test out the watertight and dust-proof gasket construction.

Depending on the device being stored, earbuds, power supplies or other accessories can also be stored.

A shoulder strap is included.

Pelican also sent along a pair of their new ultra compact aluminum LED flashlights.

They are built with the same durable construction and have removable forward-facing pocket clips.

The 1920 model light ($27) measures just over 5-inches long, is powered by a pair of AAA batteries and has an output of 67 lumens good for 2 hours and 45 minutes of use.

It’s baby brother, 1910 model ($23), is 3.5-inches long and works on a single AAA battery to produce 39 lumens of light for 1 hour of continued use.

www.Pelican.com

The PowerSlice universal charger ($49) from Fuse is a dream come true universal charging solution for any family.

Up to four electronic gadgets can be charged simultaneously by simply purchasing individual charging Slices for $9.99 each.

The round Powerslide base is about six inches in diameter and holds up to three Slices, which basically are individual docks designed for specific devices such as those made from Apple, LG and Samsung along with gadgets needing a micro and miniUSB charging connection.

A USB port on the side allows a fourth device to get a charge at the same time. This can include digital cameras or GPS units.

The Powerslice can be purchased Slice-free for $34.99 or with a pair of Apple Slices for $49.99

www.fuseplusyou.com

– greggellman twitter: @greggellman

The ballots are in and my 2011 gadget of the year is the Newer Technology Power2U wall outlet from Other World Computing.

I’ll get to the product in a second, but let me first say this year’s voting took a strange twist: the Power2U was a late entry, arriving on my desk last week and causing the judges to re-vote.

You might wonder who judges and I’m happy to say it starts and ends with me: one vote, no tie-breakers and no appealing the judge’s decision.

As for the winner, every household should have several of these since our lives revolve around charging USB electronic gadgets.

The Power2U outlets have a pair of standard wall outlets but also have a pair of USB ports to plug in USB cables (not included) for directly charging an iPad, MP3 player, digital camera, GPS unit or just about any other iDevice.

This includes USB 3.0, 2.0 and older 1.1 devices needing a charge. All four plugs can be used simultaneously.

The plug is UL approved, meeting the official requirements for home use.

Continue reading this post…

– greggellman twitter: @greggellman

During a recent media event, Pioneer Electronics officials emphasized how music listening has drastically changed over the last 70 years. Most listeners do not listen to a song or album from start to finish, regardless of the type of music.

To address the situation, the company has introduced MIXTRAX, which will create a nonstop mix of any selection of music you choose, basically enabling your music to be played non-stop by a virtual DJ.

The MIXTRAX technology transforms a music library into customizable tracks, which will be processed and then broadcast by select Pioneer products.

Music choices can be taken from an iPod/iPhone or even external storage such as flash drives or SD memory cards containing standard music file formats (MP3, AAC, LPCM and WMA).

Pioneer documents state that MIXTRAX will “play it back with added transitions and effects creating a virtual DJ inside select Pioneer products.”

The products have slots for the external media and each includes 4GB of internal storage and they feature products for DJ’s, automobiles, desktop devices and a handheld device on the horizon.

Continue reading this post…