This year marks my third for attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.  As a few of you might already know, my father is the almighty Yahya Ahdout, the owner and CEO of dreamGEAR, a video game/iPod accessory and speaker producer and distributor, and he is my ticket into this amazing show.  You can find his wonderful products at many places including your local Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Blockbuster.  One of his latest items is the Warbeast Guitar Controller for all Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Rock Revolution games on PS2/PS3. But, enough of that, lets get to the good stuff.  I will be at the show for its entirety, and I will constantly be blogging and posting every interesting thing that I find.  Like Engadget and Gizmodo, we will be posting about the biggest announcements by all the different companies, but I will also use my time to go around the smaller booths and post about the pretty cool things that everyone forgets about.  As I roam from hall to hall and booth to booth, I will be accompanied by a very good friend of mine, Michael York, who is getting his new blog off the floor, and will be working in compliance with us at blargKABOOM.

Finally, the things I will be bringing with myself on my journey:
Canon EOS 30D – To snap pictures of everything for all you guys to see!
Asus eee 901 – For blogging on the go while on the show floor.
Apple iPhone 3G – For constant tethering, and music on the go. As it is also of course my telephone.
MacBook Pro – Yes, mine is in fact the first generation model, but it will be my home-base for posting in the hotel room. 

And also, a little background for those of you who do not know what CES is; ah god im too lazy, just read about it on Wikipedia here!

Unless you’ve been sitting under a rock for the past year, you’ve probably heard of Flip Video. Pure Digital, the company behind the Flip Video lineup, has been selling their budget camcorders like hot cakes to the YouTube crowd and everyone else shooting video on the spot. Earlier this year, they released the Mino, a thinner more compact camcorder to counteract new contenders in the market. However, Kodak and other companies are selling new budget HD camcorders, making it more competitive. Thus we have the MinoHD. Just released yesterday, this new model records 720p HD video, unlike previous model’s VGA quality. Besides this addition, the software included for sharing to YouTube and other places around the web has been vastly improved. The product, along with the original Mino, can be customizable with personal images on the front. Retailing at $230, however, is a tad pricey; though the company’s great repuation allows the price. Early reviews tell us that the product is impressive.

Barack Obama elected President is definitely the main story tonight, but the side store – CNN used hologram technology during their election coverage. What? Hologram do you say? No…. this isn’t Star Wars. Well, it may not be up to the Star Wars bar yet, but it’s getting there. CNN “beamed” (as Wolf Blitzer says) Jessica Yellin into their election central zone via hologram. The technology worked by circling Yellin with cameras and computers than analyzing the data and projecting it onto our TV sets. Unfortunately George Lucas and the Star Wars team take the lead here because it looks as if the TV viewer is the only person seeing Yellin and she is not actually there in the studio projected in front of Blitzer. But still, there was a hologram on TV: the future is here.

CNN video

story via Engadget

UPDATE – To see will.i.am and a behind-the-scenes CNN video, read more.

UPDATE – After doing some digging online, some online retailers like Amazon and Best Buy (backordered) have already started selling the Mino.

Canon has out done itself yet again, this time with the Vixia HF10. Canon’s consumer HD camcorder is a sleek black, has a 12X optical zoom (more than the average consumer camcorder), and has a 16GB flash drive built-in. With great video quality and the ability to shoot ‘Cinema’ style movies, this camcorder is definitely worth it. The HF10 also has an SD card slot (accepts standard or SDHC cards), if you want even more storage space. The image quality is really spectacular, as with all Canon devices, but the autofocus isn’t as fast as it could be. Other than that slight nitpick, the device is overall really great. It’s sleek, small, and has superb image quality. So, if you’re in the market for a great HD camcorder, the Vixia HF10 is what your looking for. It retails for around $1,050, but Amazon has it at just $850.

After being leaked onto the internet early last week, Creative has officially announced the Vado Pocket Video Cam. The camcorder retails at $99 and is meant for the avid Youtubers. Also, it’s pretty good looking considering what it does, so the Vado will probably be a pretty popular device. Going head to head with Pure Digital’s Flip Video and Flip Video Ultra, the Vado trumps them both in price, looks, and specs. The Vado, compared to the equally priced Flip Video, stores 2GB (2 hours good quality, 1 hour best) of footage while the Flip stores only 512MB (about 30 minutes); the Vado, however, can shoot at either good quality or best quality, while the Flip records at around the quality of the Vado’s good. The Vado, compared to the more expensive Flip Video Ultra, is still a better camcorder. The Flip Video Ultra shoots at the same ‘best’ quality the Vado has onto 2GB of storage, but with no option to downgrade the quality. The Vado also has a 2 inch screen compared to the smaller 1.5 inch screen on both Flip models. One major difference between the Vado and the Flip is that the Vado uses a rechargeable battery (that promises around 2 hours) and can be recharged by USB, while the Flip runs on double AA batteries. The Vado, available in either silver or pink, is out now and available from most online retailers.