The Last Gadget Standing

By Bonnie Optekman, NBC News

Ok - I'm crawling to the finish line!  Last day for me!
 
I went to The Last Gadget Standing - always a crowd pleaser - this morning.  After 150 submissions, 25 semi-finalists and 10 finalists, winners were chosen. The winner from on-line voters was the emWave PSR (personal stress reliever - a bio-feedback device).  After demos from the 10 finalists in the room, the winner from applause metering was, for the second year in a row, Eye-Fi Video which is a wireless memory card that has Wi-Fi in it allowing you to upload video as well as photos to your computer or the web.  They partnered with YouTube.  They gave a great presentation and I loved the phrase they used.  They said it was meant to free videos and photos from "photo prison."
 
I talked about Panasonic's 3D show yesterday.  Well - today I went to the one at Intel as well as Sony.  And it looks like I've got some time to build my dream home theater.  The folks at Intel, who are partnering with Dreamworks for 3D which explains why they were showing their coming movie "Monsters vs Aliens," told me there are roughly eight or nine different 3D formats out there for different TVs.  So it's Blu-ray vs HD-DVD all over again. This could take years..  And as far as I can discern, all three were amazing.
 
There were lots of other amazing things at SONY.  In fact it was the second busiest booth I've been to.  (Next to NBC Universal of course. Listen, I know who issues my paycheck.)  People were gathered around the Sony Flexible OLED.


It is literally made of a material that folds and rolls.  They're still thinking of applications in addition to a folding laptop and a bracelet mpeg3 player.  And people gathered around the 11" Sony OLED TV - the only OLED currently on the market - as much as they did last year.This year they also have one that's one third the depth - 3mm - called the XEL-1.  Displayed is a 27" prototype and they said they're committed to going larger but that they didn't have any announcements yet as to when that would be.  I got a little lesson in OLED (the O stands for organic, not the Cirque du Soleil show).  The headlines for me were that they use 40% less power because they have no backlight - you're looking right at the pixels - and because they're so thin.  They look so darn great - one million to one contrast - brighter brights and darker darks (I just felt like I typed a slogan for detergent).  Samsung, by the way, is showing "Full HD" which is what is referred to as 1080p as well as something they call Ultra HD which has even higher resolution (3840 x 2160) but what content is out there that would take advantage of it?

Back to Sony, I held their latest camcorder in my hand - HDR XR 520V - which does geotagging, but I have to say I really liked the Canon AVCHD.  It feels really good in the hand and is nice and light and they have some great features like a quick video snap and the ability to do photo capture from a video.
 
I also stopped by Microsoft and confirmed for myself that I'll wait for Windows 7 and skip Vista.
 
BTW,  according to my very unoffcial, anecdotal experiences and questions of the locals like the wonderful Vegas taxi drivers, this year was definitely less well attended.  One driver told me that on Thursday he did 21 trips and during the same time frame last year, he did 30.

Finally, I must show you something I saw called the Crayola Digital Camcorder from Sakar International.  My niece and nephew Ben and Abby will love it.  Then again, they may just want to use the new Canon.