One of the premiere events at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is Digital Experience. Taking place the night before CES officially opens, Digital Experience gives interested parties the opportunity to preview what they’ll see on the trade show floor in the days that follow.
Just as I went gadget hunting at last year’s event, I moseyed my way over to Mirage Grand Ballroom to check out the shiny new toys the companies had to offer. Here are a few of the highlights.
Poynt Local Search for BlackBerry
Instead of fumbling your way through random Google results, you can download the free Poynt application for your BlackBerry smartphone. This is meant to be an all-in-one tool that will help you find just about anything you’d need locally.
Looking for a good sushi restaurant in the area? Load Poynt on your phone, search for sushi, and it’ll bring up the ones closest to you, including reviews and the ability to make reservations through OpenTable.
In addition to restaurants, Poynt can be used to search for other things too, like movie showtimes, ratings, and theatres. From there, you can hop over to driving directions or even watch the movie trailer without leaving Poynt.
GoPro Hero HD Mountable Sports Cam
Wanna go extreme? Love nothing more than ripping down a race track or trying to catch the wave on your surfboard? Then you may be interested in the GoPro Hero HD, available as a helmet cam, motorsports cam, or even a surfboard mount. Yes, it has a waterproof case.
The camera itself doesn’t look terribly exciting, but it is capable of shooting in full 720p at 30 frames per second. If you prefer, there is also a mode for 1280 x 960, which is the 4:3 take on high-definition. The downside is that there is no preview LCD, so it could be a little hard to frame things properly.
Here’s a guy wearing no fewer than four of these cameras on various locations on his body. Want different angles, you got it. The helmet cam can offer a fun first-person perspective, but the surfboard mount (which can then face the surfer) is pretty gnarly too, even if it’s basically some 3M sticky tape. Memory comes by way of SDHC cards.
And the quality? Well, see for yourself. It’s arguably even better than the Flip Video UltraHD, wouldn’t you say?