Every few months we get a press release about some great device from a no-name manufacturer who promises to change the world. One example was the TXTR reader from Germany last January. Another is zzzPhone, a company selling dual-SIM Android powered smartphones from China. Neither company produced much of anything.

Era of the Silicon Valley success story – two guys making something cool in a garage and selling it – is over, at least in hardware. The costs of making consumer electronics, including cellphones and computers, on a small scale have risen so much as to be prohibitive and then the marketing costs of that same hardware is even more prohibitive. Whereas, once, two nerds in a basement could build a computer company I worry that it takes more resources than any one man or woman can muster these days to even approach something like success.

DOA

The first sad truth is that most consumer electronics cannot be made in “expensive” countries like the US or the Euro zone. During a visit to the Suunto watch factory in Finland, for example, I learned that while many of the watches are made near Helsinki a large percentage of them are made overseas and drop shipped from Asia. The company just couldn’t make anything in bulk without resorting to off-shoring. This means you either invest in an expensive small run of hardware overseas, something the Asian manufacturers do not do particularly well, or invest in a massive run of inexpensive hardware in Asia that you risk having to recycle if your company goes belly-up.

This doesn’t mean you can’t make it big anymore. Take TiVo, for example. It sprung out of obscurity a decade ago and filled a niche in the living room that has yet to be challenged by any manufacturer. Unfortunately, when someone – probably Samsung, LG, or Apple – figures out how to take over the DVR market, TiVo is toast. The same is true of Palm who, to all intents and purposes, is now a small company. The big guys are eating their lunch thanks to Android and it will take some fancy footwork to survive. The small guys are, sadly, always at the precipice of failure.

Other companies like Neuros and Slingbox simply sell a wrapper for their software. Sometimes this works but sadly it also leads to retrenchment when companies like Slacker pull out of the hardware business due to lack of interest and cost. Then there are success stories like like FyreTV [NSFW] which will do well because they focus on porn. Not everyone can focus on porn.

When in doubt, do this.

The second problem facing small CE companies is marketing. Micro-companies like Zeo and FitBit get a huge initial boost thanks to online media but then disappear once the news cycle has moved on, leaving the companies with amazing technology in the dark. This is an era of constant marketing, a situation that forces companies like Apple and Sony to put their message in front of consomers almost constantly in multiple media.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen companies receiving 8,000-10,000 pageviews with one good launch, more if its an interesting product. That initial boost translates into a percentage of good sales – those are good eyeballs, not just random traffic – but it rarely turns into repeat or continuing business.

That said, here are some of the best practices I’ve seen from small to medium CE companies who know how to do it right. This may not apply to you and yours, but it’s something to think about when you get excited about a product (Gizmondo anyone?) only to find it has crashed and burned.

1. Tell multiple stories. When you start out you have one story: Why your product is good. Prepare multiple stories for the next few years including ideas tagged to pressing issues of the month or year. Do you have a fitness gadget? Work on a story about post-holiday stress and weight gain. Have a DVR? Put yourself in the Super Bowl frenzy with blogger outreach and giveaways. That first boost is nice but if you’re a small company it’s the next four boosts that will push you through the rest of the year.

2. Price yourself competitively if not suicidally. Even if it’s suicidal, price yourself at just above the average price in your market. Aiming at rich, cosseted professionals is nice but the sharper Image model of doing business is over. Consumers want more for their money (even if they often get considerably less) so while $999 might seem like a nice number for a NAS or a piece of audio gear the consumer is more accustomed to $499.

3. Be quiet. Hide your light under a bushel. Patent your idea and don’t launch until the product is completely ready. I’ve seen too many companies splattered with the vaporware monicker because they failed to deliver on time or at all. Once you’re done, support your product forcefully and quietly. If someone has a problem, address it quickly. Send out new hardware before putting someone through tech support hell.

4. Change your trade dress regularly. This fickle market thinks anything that looks the same as it did last year is old. Why do iPods change every few months? People want to think they’re buying the new hotness, not the old and busted. If you can’t change your trade dress, change your website.

5. Slow and steady wins the race. None of the greats made it overnight and it’s harder than ever to truly make it. If you’re a small CE manufacturer, Godspeed. It’s a tough race so don’t sprint it.

For a great look at this topic, read The Song of the Powersquid, our 6-part story on the creation of a CE product.

Streaming and rentable video from the Bravia Internet Video platform means YouTube, Slacker, and Netflix shortly. It does 7.1 out, upscaling, and “Deep color,” although I don’t see whether it supports the latest HDMI standard. Anyway, at $250 it’s a pretty solid deal, although Sony wants to you pay extra for storage space and a Linksys ethernet bridge that “helps ease the connection between the Ethernet–enabled player and a wireless router.” Good, it was chafing me.

More details here; it should be available in October.

At $4500 for the 46-inch and $5000 for the 52-inch, they are in the upper-end of consumer LED LCDs. Both do rock standard features of this price-point too: DLNA media streaming, YouTube, Amazon on Demand, Netflix, Slacker Internet Radio, and Yahoo! Gadgets. But even those don’t make up for the high price. Sorry, Sony, wireless is great, but most would rather opt for a cheaper, but also more reliable wired, LCD. I would.

SONY ADDS SUPER SLIM EDGE-LIT LED MODELS TO BRAVIA HDTV LINE
New XBR10 LCDs Feature 1080p Wireless High Definition Leaving the Cables Behind

ATLANTA (CEDIA Booth # 1409), Sept. 9, 2009 – Sony today introduced a new line of ultra-thin BRAVIA™ LCD HDTVs featuring an advanced edge-lit LED backlight and exceptional contrast ratio of over 1,000,000:1.

The XBR10-series models also deliver full 1080p wireless transmission of high definition signals from a separate media box to a receiver embedded in the TV, allowing source components to be placed out of sight.

“BRAVIA is on the cutting edge of television technology and the XBR10 series pushes the limits of industry-leading, innovative features,” said Jeff Goldstein, vice president of the television business for Sony Electronics. “Not only will this TV look striking when hanging on a wall, the wireless feature clears the clutter of components and messy tangles of unsightly wires, allowing you to hide components away across the room.”

The XBR10 models also feature an Ethernet connection allowing them to directly access Sony BRAVIA Internet Video content using an existing broadband network. The platform offers one of the largest selections of free and premium movies, TV shows, sports, music and more from an array of partners like, Amazon Video on Demand, YouTube®, Slacker Internet Radio, and, later this fall, Netflix.

Bravia Internet Widgets, powered by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, also expand and personalize the TV experience by adding on-screen applications that provide such information as weather reports, stock information, financial news, Twitter, and additional content.

The full HD 1920 x 1080 progressive (1080p) models also feature Sony’s Motionflow™ 240Hz technology, which delivers exceptionally crisp and detailed images with natural motion. The Motionflow algorithm goes beyond traditional 120Hz technology by quadrupling the frame rate of conventional LCD TVs and interpolating three new frames.

The models are Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA®) compliant, enabling easy access to digital photos, music, and video stored on a PC or other DLNA server using the XMB® interface and the TV’s remote control. They also offer a USB input for displaying digital photos or playing digital video and music files from a USB storage device.

Other notable features include:

BRAVIA Engine™ 3
24p True Cinema™
xross media bar™ (XMB)with enhanced 3D favorites Menu
Internet powered TV Guide Onscreen

BRAVIA Sync™
4 HDMI inputs
RS232C
Single PC, component, composite and component/composite selectable inputs

The XBR10 models exceed Energy Star® 3.0 guidelines for energy efficiency and use Sony’s Light Sensor® technology to adjust backlight intensity based on ambient room light helping to save energy and reduce the user’s overall carbon footprint.

The KDL-52XBR10 and KDL-46XBR10 models will be available this October at Sony Style retail stores, www.sonystyle.com and at and at similar authorized Sony retail outlets across the country, for about $5,000 and $4,500, respectively.

Can Microsoft’s latest Zune, the Zune HD, take down the king? It depends on which king you’re talking about. As it stands, the iPod Touch is a whole different beast because of the App Store. What Microsoft has done with the Zune HD is nothing short of spectacular, but who is it really competing with? My BlackBerry can play videos and show me pictures taken on a recent trip. The HTC Hero and/or myTouch 3G can stream music from the likes of last.fm or Slacker. I can download MP3s from my iPhone. Everything the Zune HD does, I’ve been able to do with a slew of different devices that I already own.

You see, the features that the Zune team has been touting don’t interest me much. I don’t really care to see an artist’s bio, their pictures or anything of that nature. Sure, the modified IE browser is nice and works great, but I want to know how deeply integrated the Zune HD is going to be with other Microsoft devices like the Xbox 360. I don’t need to fork over extra cash for an HD dock to stream 720p content onto my TV. I can already do that through my Xbox 360, FiOS and whatever content is stored on my NAS. Tell me what the plans are for the next six months. Tell me when the damn thing is actually going to launch.

With that being said, please enjoy the short video that I took of the Zune HD in action. One thing I failed to capture was the on-screen keyboard. MS has taken a different twist, which may or may not be unique to the Zune HD, but it’s different than most other on-screen keyboards that I’ve seen. Unlike the iPhone (or any other device that lacks a physical keyboard) when you’re tapping away at the Zune HD’s on-screen keyboard; characters don’t pop up by themselves. Tap a character and its neighboring chums to the right and left will create a small arch with the center character popping up just a little more than the rest. It seemed to work well, but the firmware isn’t final so I’m unable to fully comment.

Image courtesy of Ben Patterson

“Intro” by The xx

The only other misstep I noticed was with the home button and Internet browser. When you’re navigating through every other feature of the Zune HD, a single tap of the home button brings you back to the main page, but when tapping the home button from within the browser it chorks hard. It takes two or three taps to get back to the home screen. But, again, the Zune HD I took a look at was definitely not final in any way. Also, the Wi-Fi at our meeting location was spotty.

Things are looking good for Microsoft and the Zune team with the HD, but I’m still waiting to hear what they have in store for the device because everything else is old hat.

Penguin-powered bootable USB drive looks like actual penguin
VZW now pushing Slacker Radio to the BlackBerry Tour
80s trifecta wallpaper: Nerf, Zapper, Super Soaker
Video: Geek creates dancing humanoid with iPhone head
Video Review: ThinkGeek Mimo Mini USB Monitor

If for some reason Slacker hasn’t been uploaded to your Tour, pull the battery and restart. You should see a icon on the home screen when it powers back on that prompts you to download the app.

I am blind with fury. Fox is about to fuck up again. I can’t believe this is happening. Casting calls have been put out for everyone on Futurama! E-mail the casting director and tell him how much of an asshole he is, FUTURAMA@SCOTTMULLERCASTING.COM.

As excited as I was about the return of Futurama, FOX has once again ruined that experience by their callous actions. According to no less than cast members John DiMaggio, Phil LaMarr, and Maurice LaMarche on their Facebook pages, a casting notice has gone out to replace actors DiMaggio, LaMarche, Billy West and Katy Sagal.

Hit the jump for the entire casting sheet.

Thursday, Jul. 16, 2009, 5:54 PM Pacific

FUTURAMA
Voice Over
Episodic
1/2 hour animated comedy for Twentieth Century Fox Television
SAG

Creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen
Casting Director: Scott Muller
Shoot/Start Date: August
Pay Rate: TBD
Location: Los Angeles

SUBMIT ELECTRONICALLY
OR
FOR SUBMISSION OF AUDIO ONLY (MP3S ON CD PLEASE) KING OF THE HILL
ATTN: SCOTT MULLER
15821 VENTURA BLVD.
ENCINO, CA
91436

VOICE AUDITIONS MAY BE SENT IN THE FOLLOWING WAYS:

1. MP3 AUDIO AUDITIONS ONLINE IN WHATEVER MEANS IS CONVENIENT FOR YOU.

2. MP3 AUDIO AUDITIONS ON CD.

3.EMAILED AS ATTACHMENTS TO: FUTURAMA@SCOTTMULLERCASTING.COM (NOTE: PLEASE USE THIS METHOD SPARINGLY, ATTACHMENTS NOT TO EXCEED 5 MB) AUDITIONS SHOULD BE SENT ASAP AS WE WILL BE MOVING QUICKLY. PRODUCER SESSIONS WILL BE HELD AT A DATE TBD.

We are starting casting immediately for Futurama, a half-hour animated comedy created by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. Descriptions of these established characters follow, along with links to clips of previous episodes for reference.

SERIES REGULAR ROLES:

[ PHILIP J. FRY (FRY) ]
Fry, a 20th century slacker, works as a pizza delivery boy. On December 21st, 1999, he is cryogenically frozen and wakes up 1000 years in the future in the city of New New York. Through a series of events, Fry tracks down his great (x30) nephew Professor Hubert Farnsworth and lands a job at the Professors Planet Express delivery company as a delivery boy. Fry bunks with Planet Expresss beer-swilling robot, Bender. Fry is constantly trying to win the heart of Leela, the companys ship captain…SERIES REGULAR

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=164702&title=flashback-freeze (Episode 5ACV03)

[ TURANGA LEELA (LEELA) ]
Leela, a sexy Cyclops, is the captain of the Planet Express delivery ship. Leela is in charge of every company mission, having her hands full keeping Fry and Bender in line. Her early years were spent in an orphanage where she was a bit of an outcast for having one eye. She took up kickboxing and other similar sports to make up for the lack of friends. She still has problems with men and often gets jealous of Amys (her co-worker) popularity among the opposite sex. She has a soft spot for Fry but is unsure of anything further than that, due to Frys clumsy advances…SERIES REGULAR

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=162824&title=leelas-timeline (Episode 4ACV02)

[ BENDER BENDING RODRIQUEZ (BENDER) ]
Bender, a cigar-smoking, booze-guzzling, kleptomaniac robot, had a successful career in bending girders but tired to kill himself when he found out the girders were being used for suicide booths. He was saved by Fry and later took a job at Planet Express. To be able to function properly, Bender needs the chemical energy from alcohol. Excessive drinking is mandatory or he will become sober and unable to control his body. Magnets stuck to his head make him sing like a folk singer…SERIES REGULAR

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=188899&title=bender-the-drone (Episode 5ACV05)

[ PROFESSOR HUBERT FARNSWORTH (PROFESSOR) ]
Professor Hubert Farnsworth is the owner of the Planet Express delivery company, which he uses to fund his strange scientific experiments. He also lectures at Mars University on the mathematics of quantum neutrino fields (he made up the name so no one would dare take the course). He is technically 160 years old, but to avoid being picked up by the sunset squad and taken to the near death star he says he is only 150…SERIES REGULAR

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=217636&title=back-in-action (Episode 5ACV01)

[ DR. JOHN ZOIDBERG (ZOIDBERG) ]
Dr. Zoidberg, a lobster-like alien, left his home planet of Decapod 10 to become a rich doctor but instead became the Planet Express staff doctor (doesnt pay so well). Zoidberg, who is usually shunned by the rest of the Planet Express crew, is always in search of his next meal. His skill as a surgeon, and basic knowledge of human anatomy, are often called into question. He secretly desires to become a stand-up comedian…SERIES REGULAR

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=147743&title=love-lessons (Episode 2ACV05)

FUTURAMA RECURRING ROLES:

[ MOM ]
Mom is the very old, very rich, very ruthless founder of Moms Friendly Robot Company. She has three sons: Walt, Larry, and Igner, who work for the company and help Mom do her dirty work. Many years ago, Farnsworth worked for Moms Friendly Robot Company, and they had a fling, which ended when Mom kept turning Farnsworths cute inventions into mad, killing machines…RECURRING

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=147736&title=mothers-day (Episode 2ACV14)

[ ZAPP BRANNIGAN ]
Zapp Brannigan is a 25-star General of the Democratic Order of Planets and has been responsible for several successful wars including a triumph over the pacifists of the Ghandi Nebula. He is always accompanies on mission by his hapless assistant Kif Kroker. Behind all his bravado he is a wimp who is not very intelligent. He once slept with Leela, a fact hat he constantly reminds her of…RECURRING

http://www.hulu.com/watch/60311/futurama-zapp-in-the-shower (Episode 2ACV17)

[ KIF KROKER (KIF) ]
Kif Kroker is a hard working, long suffering alien Lieutenant of the DOOP who does all the hard work and takes the rap for problems usually caused by Zapp Brannigan (his superior officer). Zapp considers Kif to be his most loyal friend however, Kif in fact views Zapp as an imbecile. He is smitten with his current girlfriend Amy. He has no bones and is supported by a system of inflated bladders…RECURRING

http://www.hulu.com/watch/4471/futurama-kif-is-pregnant (Episode 4ACV01)

Forces of Geek via Topless Robot

The Walkmans are available for pre-order at Sony’s site; $299 for the 16GB version and $399 for the 32GB version. Each contains a 3-inch OLED touchscreen, podcast and YouTube access, up to 33 hours of music playback on a single charge, web browsing, and the aforementioned Slacker feature.

According to the product description:

“Slacker Radio comes integrated on the X Series. Once you register your Walkman MP3 player with Slacker.com, you can choose up to 3 stations of music. Each station is cached on the device and can be refreshed using a Wi-Fi connection. Best of all, it’s free.”

There’s no mention of whether or not you’ll be able to subscribe to Slacker’s premium service. Perhaps that’ll be added later. The devices are expected to ship on or around June 20th.

OLED Touch Screen Walkman [SonyStyle.com via Electronista]

He talks about his experience, and why he went with an HP iPaq of all things, in this interview. He’s pretty bullish about the Kindle, much more so than I am, but it’s true that it is a breakout device; authors and publishers need to start working with e-books early or risk ending up like the recording industry. My question is, if he knew he was going to be doing so much typing, why not get something with a really sweet keypad like a Sidekick or Blackberry?

If you’re curious, the book has been uploaded to Scribd, so you can get an idea of just what one can write from a moving subway train, on a device I’d be afraid to compose an email on.

*Unlimited Skips
*Unlimited Song Requests
*No Audio or Banner Ads
*Complete Lyrics – NEW!
*Over 2 Million Songs

What’s that you say? How can I win? Why were we put on this Earth?

What is Slacker, incidentally? Per CrunchBase:

Slacker provides a three part music personalization suite, which includes an internet radio, desktop music player and portable music device.

The Slacker Web Player plays songs depending on what you like or dislike. Slacker does not allow users to choose specific songs upon request; instead, it will play songs depending on the user’s voting history. Ideally, the personalized station will become more and more refined to the user’s music preferences. This basic service is free and ad-supported.

So it’s like Last.FM or whatever but the Plus add-on gives it a little more kickass juice. Anyway: How to win. Just comment. Drop us a comment below and we’ll pick one winner at random on Friday. Easy peasy.

UPDATE – The winner is Emily King. Thanks for reading and playing!

AquaPulse measures underwater heart rate
Review: Mountain Dew Throwback [Update]
Too Late watches: Oddly endearing
Token Earth Day Post: Frito-Lay announces biodegradable snack bags
Contest: Win one year of Slacker Radio Plus

Short Version: SanDisk’s slotRadio player provides good value as it pertains to content, with the $99 kit featuring 1,000 popular music tracks and an attractive hardware player. The “radio” portion of the slotRadio name should be given close attention — you can skip tracks but you can’t go backwards, and everything’s played in random order, just like conventional radio.

Long Version: If you read CrunchGear regularly, you’re probably savvy enough to know how to load songs on an MP3 player. If that’s the case, the slotRadio player isn’t for you — unless you’re open to the idea of a portable device with a ton of music on it that you didn’t download yourself and can’t access track by track.

I can’t stress enough that the slotRadio player is NOT an MP3 player. It looks like an MP3 player, it feels like an MP3 player, and it works like an MP3 player, but it’s somehow not an MP3 player. I spent the first ten minutes going “What the f@%k was SanDisk thinking?” before realizing that I needed to look at the concept from a lay person’s point of view, not the point of view of a handsome technology blogger.

So here’s the deal: you pay $99 and you get the cracker-sized slotRadio player and a microSD card filled with 1,000 popular songs from Billboard’s music charts. The player has an On/FM/Off switch, volume up and down buttons, a combination next track/play/pause button, and two buttons for toggling back and forth between playlists. The hardware looks and feels pretty nice. The brushed aluminum body is solid and there’s a sturdy belt clip on the back side. The 1.5-inch OLED screen is greyscale but is super readable and there are cool little animations depending upon which playlist you’ve selected.

Think of the playlists as “stations” — there’s Rock, Country, R&B/Hip Hop, Contemporary, Alternative, Workout, and Chill — with all 1,000 songs appearing on one or more of the playlists. The player itself has no on-board storage, so you can either buy preloaded cards from SanDisk or you can load your own tunes on a blank microSD card.

You start playing a particular playlist and if you don’t like the song you’re listening to, you can skip it. If you move to the another playlist, whichever song you’re currently listening to will pick up where it left off when you select the playlist again. You can not, however, go back to a previous song no matter which playlist you’ve selected. Similar to how the real-life radio works, things just move forward and in real time. The only difference is that you can skip tracks you don’t like. It’s very similar to online streaming audio services like Slacker or Pandora, except that you get unlimited skips.

This, in my opinion, is the biggest strike against the slotRadio idea. It’s simple to a fault. The two big left and right buttons on the face of the device are used to navigate between the seven playlists when they should be used to toggle back and forth between songs. Instead, the small-ish play/pause button on the right side of the device is used to skip tracks. Even the noobiest of noobs will wonder why they can’t go back to the song they just accidentally skipped over. If there’s a second iteration of the player, SanDisk should seriously consider letting people go back to recently-skipped tracks.

Once I got the hang of this newfangled concept, I immediately thought, “Oh boy, I’m gonna dump these 1,000 songs on my computer.” No, no, no I’m not. The microSD card that comes with the slotRadio player is locked down tighter than Peter Ha’s bicycle and the music on that particular card can only be played on the slotRadio player. I’m sure that was a concession by SanDisk in exchange for being able to sell 1,000 songs for under $100 when the regular bill would be ten times that amount. If you want to keep these songs, you’ll have to record them in real time — hey, just like how regular radio works! — until someone figures out how to crack the card. To SanDisk’s credit, other microSD albums and compilations that it’s selling are DRM-free and can be copied willy-nilly.

All that aside, what you end up getting is a setup that’s good for a) people who don’t care/can’t/are too lazy to download a bunch of stuff and transfer it to a regular player, b) an okay impulse buy at an airport, and c) something to hook up to your stereo if you’re having a party and want to make sure that there’s music to suit anyone’s tastes. I’d consider myself a fairly picky music snob and there are enough tracks on this microSD card to keep me happy and listening for quite some time. There’s plenty of crap, to be sure, but it’s not all crap.

Battery life is rated at around 13 hours, which is accurate (I left the thing playing from 9PM to about 10:15 AM) and the kit includes earbuds, a gel skin case, and a USB cable that plugs into an included AC adapter. The player has no menu; there’s no shuffle or repeat settings, no equalizer, none of that stuff. The audio quality is okay but not great. You get a more-than-capable FM tuner, as well, and you can easily add station presets.

All in all, it’s an interesting concept that serves to bridge the gap between those who download and those who don’t. The interesting thing to watch will be if there are enough of those who don’t that’ll be willing to dip their feet in the digital music pond without getting overwhelmed. While only being able to skip forward over tracks is this whole idea’s Achilles heel, if SanDisk can sell the overall concept to the masses, it just might catch on.

slotRadio [SanDisk]

The standard alarm clock radio I owned as a kid is an archaic POS compared to Acoustic Research’s Infinite Radio. The ARIR200 connects wirelessly to your home network to stream music from Slacker Personal Radio, blurp weather reports from WeatherBug and stream my own collection of hits from MP3tunes. Oh, and it streams regular AM/FM stations and stores up to 10 hours of recorded content from whatever it is that you’re streaming. A USB and Ethernet port are also available in case you don’t have a Wi-Fi router or you want to hook up your MP3 player. It packs a lot of great features into a small package for $130, but it sure is ugly.

In order to make way for the new Slacker portable players, it looks as though the first-generation units will continue to be priced to move. You can grab an 8GB Slacker WiFi Internet Radio Player for $69.99 plus $5 shipping over on sellout.woot.com, today only.

You can listen to free, lightly ad-supported streaming radio on the device or pay $7.50 per month strip out commercials and be able to download tracks directly to the 8GB of storage.

Slacker 8GB WiFi Internet Radio Player [sellout.woot.com via Gear Diary]

Here’s a pretty great deal on a 2GB Slacker Portable player. It generally costs about $75 to $100 elsewhere but you can pick one up for just $54.99 at Geeks.com – that’s for a new unit, too, not a refurbished one (Geeks.com sells a fair amount of refurbished stuff).

Keep in mind that the second generation of the Slacker Portable, the G2, is now out. Our own Peter Ha called it “10x better than the first gen device,” but it starts at $199.

If you just want to get in the game, $55 for the first-generation device might not be that bad.

Slacker Portable 2GB Personal Radio Player [Geeks.com]

We’re all officially home; safe and sound, tired and broken. Another year of not eating all day following by drinking all night, backpacks never leaving our shoulders, our fingers still involuntarily typing even though our notebooks have been shut down for hours.

All in all, it was a good CES this year. The crap-hole economy meant the event wasn’t too crowded and there wasn’t as much meaningless fluff. There was fluff, to be sure, just not as much. Speaking of fluff, here are some of our more memorable posts for your perusal…

LIVE CES 2009 Palm keynote

CES Video: Interview with Dr. Dre

Hands-on with the Sony VAIO P

Those are MY hands on the Blu-Ray thing, Engadget, just for the record

Eyes-on the 3D BCS Championship game

CES Video: Hands on with the MSI X320 netbook, plus pricing and availability info

Video: Hands on with LG’s prototype watchphone

Video: Peter Ha praises the Palm Pre on G4’s Attack of the Show

Interview with Mark Cuban and Bud Mayo

CES 2009: BeerTubes.com beer tube video review

CrunchFail: Doug and Greg crash and burn at Rock Band challenge

Look out, Microsoft Surface – the iTable might just trump you in every way

LG and GotWind’s solar+wind “SkyCharger” at CES

Exclusive hands-on with Asus’ prototype Eee Keyboard

Palm Pre Hands On: The Movie

Like this video? View more here…

When we had our surprise hands-on with the Slacker for iPhone application a few days ago, the rep mentioned that it could be available “as soon as tomorrow”. Well, just a mere 5 tomorrows later, their prophecy has come true. Apple has greenlit the application, and now nothing stands between you and the customized internet radio goodness.

What it can do:

-Free music library featuring millions of songs
-High-quality stereo playback from any wireless connection
-Over 100 professionally programmed genre stations
-Create custom artist stations
-Fine tune stations to play more of the music you like
-View artist biographies and photos
-View album art and reviews
-”Peek Ahead” artist and album preview
-Pause and skip songs
-Rate songs as favorites
-Ban the songs and artists you don’t like

What it can’t do:

- Fight bears
- Solve criminal mysteries

Even if you’re a hardcore Pandora (or last.fm) devout, Slacker has plenty of features that make it worth checking out. Nab it from your local Stevie J’s Tunes and Vids here.

Hungry for some Slacker streaming radio on your iPhone? The BlackBerry app just became available earlier today, and it looks like they’re already prepped to go live on Apple’s finest. We ran into a Slacker rep tonight at the ShowStoppers CES event, said some magic words, and were presented with Slacker for iPhone in all of its glory – and we’ve got the screenshots to prove it.

Hungry for some Slacker streaming radio on your iPhone? The BlackBerry app just became available earlier today, and it looks like they’re already prepped to go live on Apple’s finest. We ran into a Slacker rep tonight at the ShowStoppers CES event, said some magic words, and were presented with Slacker for iPhone in all of its glory – and we’ve got the screenshots to prove it.