Pepcom Digital Experience 2009

Last night was the annual Pepcom Digital Experience show held right before CES starts. I went to the show to see what cool gear was on display. One of the coolest products I saw was a new digital photo collage frame from a company called GiiNii. That name won’t be familiar to you; the company is just entering into the US market with its products.

Its digital frame offers dual 5-inch LCDs separated by three spots for still photos. The cool part about the two digital frames is that they can each draw different images from one single SD card thanks to the frames being controlled by one so-called brain. Most other digital collage frames each need their own SD card to be able to display different images on each screen.

Many of the small digital photo frames that I have seen have poor resolution and the images tend to have horizontal lines running across them in a phenomenon known as banding. The GiiNii frame digital screens offer great resolution and clarity in the images displayed. I expected the frame to cost several hundred dollars because of the cool factor and the dual screens and was impressed to find out the frame will retail for under $100 when it goes on sale in the US soon.

I got my first hands on look at the Clickfree Transformer USB cable that automates backups to any external hard drive at the show. The impressive part about the cable is how small it is. The end of the cable with the female connector that you plug your USB drive into is no larger than your typical flash drive and the end that plugs into your computer is a normal USB port. You will lose no room on or behind your desk when using this solution and will never have to worry about starting or configuring a backup on your computer again.

If you have ever played with the plug-and-play games that connect directly to your TV, you have probably used a Jakks Pacific product. At the show the firm was demonstrating a very rough prototype of a new plug-and-play game based on Star Wars the Clone Wars. The game featured a motion sensitive controller that looked like the yoke inside an X-Wing fighter. With the controller you move it up and down to control the location of a set of cross hairs and try to blast Tie fighters out of space in a battle. The graphics on the game were admittedly rough and the controls needed work, but for a very early stage rough prototype the game has great potential.

Those were the three coolest products that were on display at the show. Today marks the start of the real deal with the doors to the massive Las Vegas Convention Center opening to allow hoards of geeks into the show at 9am Vegas time. Check back today for some pictures from the floor of CES 2009.

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