CES 2006’s Last Gadget Standing
For the 5th year, I host this zany event with PC Magazine. Here’s the wrap up.
Published: January, 2006
Winners Announced at The 5th Annual Last Gadget Standing Held at CES 2006
Celestron SkyScout Wins the Live Crowds; Pioneer Inno XM2Go Wins Web Vote
Las Vegas, Nevada Jan 7, 2006 At CES in Las Vegas new products flow fast and furious, but which products are really destined to stand the test of time and become long time players in the industry? That’s the question that The Last Gadget Standing, an event held at CES each year, sets out to answer.
This year, in a fast paced, fun filled show, sponsored by PC Magazine’s Michael J. Miller and Robin Raskin, the online audience voted for the Pioneer Inno, a tiny handheld device which merges XM Radio with content you can save and buy; while live from the Sands Convention Center, the vote went to the Celestron SkyScout, which uses GPS technology to help identify any visible object in the sky.
“All of the products featured in The Last Gadget Standing are winners because they represent cutting edge technology breakthroughs,” said Robin Raskin, an industry spokesperson who specializes in consumer technology. “I created this event so that vendors could have an entertaining forum to showcase their products and consumers could feel empowered to speak out about which products hold value for them.”
“This year our readers chose the finalists for the live event in the course of a month of online heats,” said Michael J. Miller, chief content officer of Ziff Davis Media. “The finalists they chose ranged from products that identified stars in the sky to those that mopped the floor of their homes.” The two winners are examples of the huge diversity of consumer electronic products.
Survivor Meets A High Tech Talent Show
The Last Gadget Standing pre-final heats ran for a month on PC Magazine’s website. Readers looked at 32 new products that were handpicked by the editors and grouped into categories: Mobility, Digital Entertainment, PCs and Peripherals and Personal Devices. The online competition narrowed the field to 8 finalists. The editors added two products that were just announced to the public at the opening of the show.
Today, at CES, each of the ten finalists presented a four minute demonstration of their product to a standing room only crowd at the Sands Convention Center while online participants viewed summaries of the product’s capabilities. The final online vote was conducted from Jan 5 - Jan 6 at www.pcmag.com. The final live vote was tallied using Interactive Messaging Unlimited, a new technology from Pangolin SMS . (www.pangolinsms.com)
The ten finalists who presented were:
Nikon Coolpix P1 – one of the first point and shoot wireless cameras
Palm Treo 700w -Palm’s renown mobile Treo phone now on Windows Mobile
Logitech Z-5450 Digital 5.1 stereo system - great sound with wireless rear speakers
XM Satellite Radio, Pioneer Inno and Samsung Helix - satellite radio plus MP3; if you like the tune then make it yours
Netgear Storage Central Model SC101 - a piggy bank of networked storage for home or office
Epson P4000 - a multimedia storage viewer
Celestron SkyScout — a personal planetarium that locates, identifies and teaches about the stars and planets
iRobot Scooba - a floor washing robot
Samsung A940 - a mobile phone that’s an MP3 player and has high speed EVDO access
inFocus PlayBig IN 72 - a front screen projector that’s built for home entertainment
This year’s winners join previous winners that include Dell Axim, CarChip from Davis Instruments, iRobot., and OnStar.
For more on other Last Gadget Standing Contestants visit http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1907940,00.asp