CES Update: January 6th, 2010

It’s just about time for CES (as we’ve mentioned once or twice), so we thought we would update you on our latest goals and ideas for the show.

This year [Caleb Kraft], [Nick Caiello], [James Munns], [Devlin Thyne], and [Brett Haddock] will be covering CES. We are currently looking for some good places to go if we get a chance to break away from the show, and while we won’t make any guarantees, we’d love to meet some of our readers! Please direct all ideas for your favorite eatery to our Contact Page. Keep an eye on our Twitter page (@hackaday) for CES updates and what your favorite writers are up to, where we are eating, and other possible chances to meet up with us.

We are also still looking for Las Vegas Hackerspaces to visit, so let us know and we would love to cover it!

Be sure to check out our updated interest list after the break, and keep sending in what you want to see!

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CES Update: January 5, 2010

As you already know, we’ll be attending CES this year. We’re still looking for ideas on what you, our loyal readers, want to see. We’ve gotten some good feedback, and came up with some ideas of our own. Keep sending in your ideas. Remember, it doesn’t even have to do with CES. Are there any hacker groups in Vegas that we could meet with? Any locations of interest? Let us know.

So far, we have the following requests:

  • Google Nexus
  • Notion Ink tablet w/Pixel-Qi display
  • Instinct Engineering – Suitcase XBOX 360, Fold out gaming couch
  • Car that can drive itself (most likely Toyota or Honda)
  • PSP 4000
  • Transparent OLED display from Samsung
  • Neuro/EEG Devices; Neurosky Booth

Hackaday At CES

Hackaday is going to the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This year’s show runs January 7-10 and we’re going to use every minute to scout out hacking’s past and future. We’re looking for hacks from the past that have made it into new, commercially available electronics. We also want to get a look at the products that we’ll all be cracking open at some point in the future.

Do you know of something being exhibited that we shouldn’t miss? Tell us what to look out for in the comments.

Hackit: Boxee Now On Windows

Boxee, the free media center management and streaming application, is now available for Windows platforms. We’ve been following the developments of Boxee since we first announced its alpha this time last year. At that time, it was only available for OSX with promised Ubuntu support. We were a bit skeptical about the interface noting, “Unfortunately all the dynamic resizing, animated, sliding, floating info boxes make it behave like the zooming user interface’s retarded cousin”. Our interest in Boxee was almost entirely based on it being a fork of XBMC, the media center project developed for initially for hacked Xboxes. It was interesting to see Boxee become the interface of choice for hacked Apple TVs and then go mainstream with a big push at CES.

Have you been using Boxee as your media center? What do you love/hate? What about alternatives like XBMC, Plex, or MythTV?

Boxee And Apple TV

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We’ve been following Boxee (not Boxxy) since its public alpha debut last Summer. We were captivated by it. Who expected a project built off of code originally intended for hacked Xboxes would be shown on NBC’s Today Show? We’ve been promised internet connected set top boxes for years, but it seems like Boxee is here to stay for two solid reasons: 1. It’s free. 2. Major content providers have finally figured out how to publish online and Boxee supports them. You can replace your network television with on demand content from Hulu, ABC, and the like.

One of the most affordable platforms currently supported by Boxee is the Apple TV. Lifehacker has a guide for installing Boxee on an Apple TV. You prepare a USB flash drive that is then used to patch the stock firmware. Once installed you can take advantage fun features like downloading torrents directly to the box.

Chumby Digital Picture Frame Teardown

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At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Chumby unveiled their latest prototype. It’s a network connected digital picture frame that runs Flash widgets. Just like the current Chumby model, they’re publishing the software and hardware under a license designed to let you hack it. They let us borrow one of their open chassis evaluation kits to teardown and photograph. We’ve got more pictures, full specs, and the schematics below.

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