Check out the video for the full tutorial. If you need to buy RAM for your MacBook Pro, hit up Crucial for a great deal.

A big thank you goes out to HP for sponsoring this episode.

We give you a peek at the rich history behind HP - if you are into tech, this is definitely one to watch. We get the story of how two men took HP from your average startup, to what we see today.

A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode.

During SXSW, we got the opportunity to get an early looks at ExpressionEngine 2.0. If you have a blog, or want to blog in the future, you need to watch this video to see what is coming soon from the crew over at EllisLab. Seriously, we can’t praise these guys enough for what they do. If you’ve never heard of the product and want to give it a shot, you can download the free Core version over at the ExpressionEngine website. If you go for the full version, you have access to all sorts of upgrades.

Of course, ExpressionEngine 2.0 isn’t available just yet, but something tells us we will be seeing it sooner rather than later.

A big thank you goes out to HP and Verizon FiOS for sponsoring this episode.

Anyhow, have at it. We look forward to making fools out of ourselves again come CES 2009. Oh, and next year we will have to try and beat “hot dog guy” in the category of overall buffoonery. You’ll have to watch the video to see what we mean.

The WAVEscape contains a camera that can track the motion of multiple people, distinguishing each person individually. Everyone can use “natural” motion to interact with different things on the screen, including games.

Now, we aren’t sure when, if ever, the WAVEscape technology will be available in the home. It is more designed as a cool diversion that can be used commercially. It’s all about the “engaging advertising experience” - you know, punch the panda and maybe get a coupon?

WAVEscape is the brainchild of Reactriz and TYZX. They plan on having over 100 of these out and about by the end of the year.

As for the rest of the stats, the device also has a 5.0MP CMOS, 2.5” Swivel LTPS LCD, 2X Digital Zoom, USB 2.0, and 46MB Internal Memory. Yeah, for HD recording, we are thinking you might want to pick up an extra SD card or two.

Monster Cable CEO Noel Lee made a slew of announcements at his 2008 CES press conference. Some of the new products on the way include five different speed-rated HDMI cables, also Outlets to Go 3, a power strip that includes a USB port for recharging electronics. iSoniTalk is an adapter for the iPhone that allows any headphone to be used with the ever-popular iPhone, while the iCarPlay Wireless 250 is billed as the “World’s Most Advanced iPod FM Transmitter”.

The big announcement was made in person by renowned rap and music producer Dr. Dre and music impresario Jimmy Iovine, CEO of Interscope Records. Together they introduced “Beats by Dr. Dre”, headphones designed for the iPod generation—and to specifically replace the earbuds that come with the iPod. Dre said he has been asked to put his name on many headphones in the past. But he endorses “Beats” because they have the newest technology, for a listening experience this is low-bass friendly with high-quality clarity. Because as Dre put it, “...music should be heard the way it’s intended”. When asked what he liked most about the headphones, Dre simply replied, “the sound.” ‘Nuff said! Look for the state-of-the-art headphones in June, for $400 USD.

The site is engineering to be a definitive way to get a good look at a given gadget’s feature sets and your value for your dollar. Since they bring in quick access to reviews from all over the net and include product manual searching and archiving, this becomes a pretty useful tool for techphiles.

Take a look at our video to learn a bit more about the service and how it works.

Oh, and even if the product doesn’t look interesting - you have to take a listen to the PR person showing off the product. He may have been drunk. Or he may have simply been hoping to find a way to spice up what otherwise was simply him showing off an iPod touch knockoff. You be the judge. Hit us in the comments with your thoughts.

What’s your opinion on the utility of a watch phone? Would you want something with stripped down functionality like that? (Text messaging would be a nightmare I think, but you could store templates and recall them I suppose.) As a user of the Fossil FX-6001, I absolutely love having my watch integrate with my phone, but it only tells me when I receive a call or text, and who’s calling. And that’s enough for me. I much prefer the phone as a separate device, I think.

Check the video for some close-up shots of the clock on the watch in operation and the nice screen and sleek design.

Etymotic’s HF2 earphones are based on their ER4 model, but feature a microphone with a mic and a send switch plus a 4 barrel plug making it fully compatible with the iPhone.  Retailing at $179, these earphones look to be a great value and will be available soon.

Last on the list from Etymotic is a Bluetooth headset with a detachable boom.  Because the boom extends almost all the way to the wearer’s mouth, it broadcasts 28 to 30 decibels - still within the safe range of volume but a lot easier to hear for the person on the other end of the line.  The headset will be available soon for an MSRP of $129.

Another, newer offering from Jensen is an HD radio enabled iPod speaker.  Along with all of the rest of the cool tricks that HD radio receivers have (FM multicasting, digital sound and station information services, among others), Jensen’s newest HD offering features an iTunes tagging function - when you hear a song on the radio that you know you’re going to want to hear again, repeatedly and whenever you want, with the touch of a button you can send the song information to your iPod.  On your next sync, you’ll get a prompt from iTunes reminding you that you wanted to buy the song.

Available in April, MSRP on the HD radio iPod speaker will be coming in at an estimated $179, but rumor has it that if you head over to Target when the speaker is released, you could save yourself enough to buy a couple of albums worth of songs you tagged on the unit.

Slacker Portable is Slacker’s companion personal media player.  Available in 2, 4 and 8 gig models (translated to 15, 25 and 45 stations), Slacker Portable fills itself from the user’s favorite stations every time it’s synced.  Not only is the music on the player, but anything available from Slacker’s site is available on the Slacker Portable, including artist bios, reviews and album art.  Because Slacker Portable isn’t constantly connected to Slacker’s HQ, there’s no cutout when a listener enters a subway train, goes into a tunnel, or anywhere that a signal would be lost with an FM or a satellite radio.  And if you can’t live without that certain album at your disposal at all times, Slacker Portable allows you to load mp3’s from your own library.

On the plasticky side of things, in addition to the Mr. Personality robot just released, WowWee has three robots on deck: the Tribot, the Rovio, and the Bladestar.  The Tribot is a remote controlled, 3-wheeled robot which features an alarm clock and can move in almost any direction.  Tribot will be available this spring for an estimated $99.  The Rovio is a roving robotic video and audio recorder which can be controlled remotely through its own website.  The website also broadcasts Rovio’s video and audio feeds.  Rovio will be available in the fourth quarter of 2008 for an estimated $299.  The Bladestar is the next generation Dragonfly - a super capacitor powers the wings, and an infrared signal bounces off obstacles (walls, ceilings, exceptionally large headed friends) to make sure Bladestar stays on an unobstructed flight path.  Bladestar will be available in February for an estimated $49.

Both versions of Zoombak offer the ability to set up “safety zones,” via the Zoombak website.  When the auto or dog that is wearing the Zoombak GPS unit leaves the safety zone, Zoombak will send a text message or an email with the location of the unit, and the location can be tracked live on Zoombak’s website.

Dog and Auto units retail for $200 and $250 respectively, and Zoombak’s monthly service starts at $9.99 a month.

Powerbeam has patented a battery powered safety system on the back end of the product that will stop the laser (which creates a warm feeling where it comes into contact with a person, nothing ray gun-esque here) when someone crosses its path.

Powerbeam estimates that their power transfer system is 12 months out to the consumer market.

Luckily, we have a special edition of iBrickr, which will allow you to jailbreak your iPhone very easily, all you need is a little patience. In case you missed it, check out our iPhone 1.1.3 video tour.

By the way, if you are looking for an excellent program to create custom ringtones for your iPhone, check out iPhone RingToneMaker.

In this video, we provide step-by-step instructions that will help anyone upgrade their iPhone to a jailbreaked version of the 1.1.3 firmware. This should keep you tided over until that pesky SDK is released, right?

By the way, if you are looking for an excellent program to create custom ringtones for your iPhone, check out iPhone RingToneMaker, who sponsored this episode.

As easy to use as a flash drive, the Drobo has four slots to accommodate 3.5” SATA I or II hard drives, and automatically makes redundant copies of data in order to protect from single drive failure.  Drobo uses USB 2.0 to make backing up quickly, and is fully operable with OSX and Windows 2000 and up.

Retailing at $499, Drobo comes with everything you need to get started except the hard drives.  It’s available now from online retailers.

In the video we show off the product, and even demonstrate how it handles an iPhone taking a call while in use. Amazingly, there is no GSM interference to be found. Definitely a plus.

The concept has a lot of promise and some great tinkering cred. For the first 60 days, they’re offering an early-adopter special with the base costing just $299 (down from $349) and modules ranging from $49-$119. Pre-orders began on January 21st and will ship by March.

Take a look at our video to see us get our hands on the base and its modules and to talk to Jeremy from Bug Labs about what’s coming down the road and what’s in store for Bug Labs.

It’s an interesting concept, though I think they may run into some attach rate trouble with regards to getting fans to pay to listen to the live performances, no matter the price. Still, the service definitely has its merits with regards to musicians being able to get together with no geographical barriers.

Check the video to see us chat with co-founder Alan Jay Glueckman about his service.

Speaking of price, the software is free with a subscription fee of $10 a month.

Enter Meraki, with their sleek new mesh based indoor/outdoor solution. To enable coverage for a large area, you just need to buy a series of these devices, connect any one of them to a hardline Internet connection, and let the rest of them do the rest. They automatically link up and create a robust network spanning 2-2,000 of the autonomous routers to provide the tubes to everyone within range.

Further, the SlingCatcher will function as a standalone device that will allow you to pull a screen or web video stream from a host computer to your TV. For now, you have to coordinate and control it from the host PC, and it still needs to play on the host PC, but the ability to push the video up to your TV without plugging anything additional in is pretty tempting. The Sling Catcher also features 2 USB ports, to allow it to play from external storage. The SlingCatcher will be available around the same time for $249.99 and can push out over HDMI or component. Check the video out for all the grisly details and some great close ups of the Slingers in action.

If the transcription fails or doesn’t get things quite right, you can log in through your phone or have the voicemail audio emailed to you as a WAV as well. They also offer a 35 cent per message service if you don’t want to subscribe to a plan.

Check the video to see their cheerleader-esque spokesgirl. She’s FUN! Meanwhile, I’ll likely be trying this service out over the next week or two and post my review here.

Our favorite feature is that the 880 also offers real-time traffic info, news, stocks, current events and more via MSN Direct, making it the perfect traveling companion. The service is free the first 3 months, and will then cost $50/year.

The process to install and activate Beryl is a bit involved, though the results are quite worth it. Check out the video for the details - and as promised, here are the two long lines so you can copy and paste them to your console:

To authorize the community Eee PC repository:

curl http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Remember the trailing hyphen (-) IS required. To authorize the Beryl repository:

curl http://debian.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Again, the ending hyphen (-) is required. We have a few more Eee PC hacks on the way, so be sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss any.

We also check out a few cool iPhone and iPod peripherals and the Rockstar--a five way minijack (headphone) splitter, available for $39.95 this summer.

And finally, we take a quick look at the N52te gamer “WASD replacement” pad. With a bunch of programmable macro options, an integrated scroll wheel and just enough buttons to get things done in TF2, it’s going on sale this month for $69.99 with a first look in the video.

We also loved Logitech’s newest Harmony One remote control with touch screen. Just hook it up to your computer via USB, and the accompanying software helps you program all your devices (and more) to the remote. This one will be available at the end of January for $250 USD.

Kodak’s retouching software is also available as a free upgrade for consumers who already own Kodak printers, and complements Kodak’s already existing extremely price-effective ink cartridges (coming in at $.10 per photo printed).  The ESP3 printer will be available in the first half of 2008 and will come in at a price point of $129.

We also got a look at the Samsung Giorgio Armani cell phone. While the Samsung Giorgio Armani phone might be light on high tech features, it is rich in style and does support hepatic feedback. Every time a positive button press is registered the phone vibrates slightly to communicate with the user and confirm the users action. Not yet available in the States, but with new carrier agreements being announced right and left, it wouldn’t surprise us if it lands on Western shores sooner rather than later.

The ideal viewing spot for the television is about 1.5 meters - from further away the picture resembles that of a regular 2D television and from closer the images can be a little harder to view.

The passive 3D technology has been in development for about a year.  The display has been in development for about six months, and the whole shebang was perfected about three months ago.  Westinghouse predicts that their passive 3D display will become available first to the commercial market.

We loved AquosNet, an internet service in which up-to-the-minute, customizable information (weather, stocks, sports, traffic, Hollywood news and more) appears on the side of the TV screen at the push of a button. AquosNet is free with the SC94 and D74 Series.

The inPerson features dual microphone, a speaker and input jack.  The seven inch 640x480 VGA screen can be output to an HDTV or projector for meetings with multiple people on either end.  Video calls can be placed to Internet users who don’t have inPerson devices.  The telephone keypad dials like a regular phone, and the inPerson stores contacts in an internal contact list.

Creative’s inPerson is available now for $699 and a $10 monthly subscription fee.

I’m what you would refer to as a cost-sensitive buyer. I’m obsessive about value propositions with my purchases. And I would buy the $400 Beats by Dr. Dre headphones by Dre & Monster Cable.

We got a private demo with Monster and had the opportunity to listen to what’s amounted to more than two years of obsessive research and attention to detail. All the materials, the drivers, the amplifier and more are clearly thought out and it shows. The response from these is absolutely incredible. Their intent was to allow you to listen to the music as the producer intended and dare I say it’s as faithful reproduction as you’ll find on a $400 set of headphones. It’s enough that I would buy these before buying the nearest-priced Logitech system for my computer. The bass response was impressive to the Nth—low bass held its tonal quality through a great deal of dynamic range, something not usually seen. The midrange was rich and warm and perfectly presented and the high ends came out just as well.

I’m sad because I really want these. I mean, I was upset that I had to go home tomorrow to my sound system, and that it’s nothing close to how these performed. They were comfortable, sexy, and sounded absolutely incredible.

Try these when they come out in June. But only if you’re prepared to buy them.

Very impressive. Pricing and carriers are not yet available.