Cool Hunting

As many of you have noted, I follow most things from a guy's perspective. For Digital Life, which started yesterday, I asked Carol Chung to check it out and bring back a report for the ladies. Here's her story (details and pictures after the jump):

I met up with my friend Matt outside the Javits Center. Today was the first day of the Digital Life event. The chill was starting to get to me and I gladly finished off my smoke in exchange for the warming glow of all those electronic goodies that awaited us inside. I felt like a kid in a candy store. Where the hell to start??? There were so many different types of booths some offering services, gadgets, home entertainment systems, and of course video games.

First, we hit up Google. How could we not? It’s one of the first booths you see when you enter. Plus, they have these giant Lego bricks and give you free stuff if you pay attention to them. Who says ‘no’ to free stuff? Their SMS service is really cool. Benjamin Ling, the project manager, filled us in with a demonstration. It’s great cause when I’m out and about now I don’t have to call friends asking them if they’re online to look something up for me. Another cool feature is their desktop search, which is a text-based search that goes through your entire hard drive and even checks emails and chat logs for your keywords. I think their booth was probably the most successful. We were there for about 3 hours and it was packed from the moment we got there till the time we left.

So there I was meandering about. I thought that there would be more gadgetry and less service booths. Plus if you follow this blog or other sites, you’ve seen pictures of some of the stuff that was there. But what makes it worth going is actually getting to play and drool over some of this stuff. I saw a round mp3 player pendant there. It looks okay. But there’s just something kinda lame about it. I just can’t imagine wearing it like around my neck. (I think I associate it with the idea of fanny packs and family vacations.) If you’re looking for something small to encase your musical persuasions, I’d check out the MuVo Mico from Creative. It’s really cute, comes in 8 colors and is about the size of a lighter. I also got to play with the Zen Micro, which came out publicly earlier this week. Even though I’m an iPod kinda gal and it pains me to say this (but I justify it by saying its not competing with my iPod, but the iPod minis which I’m not so fond of) the Zen Micro isn’t so bad. The touch pad takes a bit of getting used to, but it has this neat search feature.
Human contact is overrated… Business Design Laboratory made these robots that are able to communicate and interact with you at the level of a 5 year old. It sounds kinda weird, but they are so cute! Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not ready for kids, live alone, and that pets are not permitted in my apt building, but I really want one! There’s the ifbot and the Hello Kitty ROBO. The ifbot’s got facial expressions and dances. The Hello Kitty ROBO is not as blessed when it comes to movement. She moves her arms and head. I think she may be a bit more docile than the ifbot since she finds gratification from a pat on the head. Unfortunately she is only currently available in Japan, but they’re working on getting her a visa. Perhaps I can make her a little bag or put some Velcro on her hand so she can carry my Hello Kitty “shoulder” massager…

My favorite item there, which I am in love with, is the Motorola Razr V3. I’m sure avid readers here heard about it earlier this year during the summer. It hasn’t been released for public sale. If you go to this event, go and play with this phone. It’s amazing. It’s so thin and just plain slick. There were plenty of electronic mental extension goodies from various producers, but none as sick as that phone. The others were bulky or lacked appeal, which is fine if aesthetics aren’t your thing. But honestly, what could possibly more alluring than brains and beauty?