talkingdigital.org

photo credit: wili_hybrid

We head off to Las Vegas a week from today – attending our first press event later that same day. We look forward to all of the great new tech.

Here are a few things that we hope we don’t see at CES:

Digital Picture frames – They were great five years ago, they were getting old two years ago. If they show up this year, we are going to ask very pointed questions to the exhibitor as to why they wasted the money for booth space.

Bluetooth headsets – Unless it’s the size of a grain of sand, it’s not worth showing us. We don’t care about what kind of noise reduction it has or how stylish it is. We will only talk to you about it if you give us a free one.

Netbooks – We love netbooks but they are all 50 different brands of the same device. 10.1″ screen, the latest Intel Atom (or whatever the netbook processor will be), 1-2GB RAM, 160-320GB hard drive, 4-8hrs battery… If you surprise us with one that has a projector built in, that might be cool, but probably not.

Any iPhone app – Save it for CeBIT or Macworld (if there is still such a thing), we love the iPhone, but don’t want to listen to a 15 minute pitch for a product we need to speed at least a week with before we decide how we feel about it.

Cell phones that will never be released in the US – The Koreans always dazzle us with their booths full of fancy phones, but all they do is waste our precious time that we need to spend looking for gadgets and gear that our listeners and readers have no hope of ever getting their hands on.

The world’s largest flat panel TV – Even if it’s 500 inches, there is no way of communicating how massive a massive TV is via photos. We are no longer impressed by bigger, faster or prettier.

A new $300 ebook reader – Before we can get excited about ebook readers they will have to fall well below $100 and  view PDFs, doc and every other ebook format natively. We might consider paying $150 if it offers Kindle-like EVDO downloads for free.

Essentially, we want to see something new. It is time for something that will revolutionize the way we all live. This will take something affordable that fulfills a need that everyone has.

Push the little triangle to make it play...

On the third Wednesday of every month we join forces with HelpMeRick.com to do a little public affairs show on KAFM 88.1 in Grand Junction, CO. We always discuss tech and pretend to have a topic.

photo credit: Flyinace2000

I have written articles and talked about Radio Shack in a number of arenas. I have pointed out the slogan, “You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers” really means, “If you ask a question, we can come up with an answer that sounds pretty good.”

Consumerist.com posted this interesting account about trying to find a standard and common cable at Radio Shack.

Sadly, I have had similar experiences with Best Buy and Office Depot. Cables are very inexpensive. Before you head out and buy a cable from one of the usual places, check you local Big Lots, dollar store or even Ross. Recharging cables, USB cables, mice and keyboards are staples now. This means that you will find them at extremely low prices in places that sell closeout items of all kinds.

If you’re not in a hurry and don’t mind ordering from the web, you can find cables and accessories of all sorts online. I once had a prong break in a $50 – 25′ Monster cable. I headed over to eBay and found a replacement for $12. I am sure audio and video geeks will try to convince me that the Monster cables were superior in some way, but I am not using $20,000 speakers or a $72″ plasma TV.

I used the Monster cable for about a year. I am going on seven years with that $12 cable and I bought a second one as backup.

Sales Pitches: Radio Shack Sales Staff Unfazed By 2,400% Markup.