Michael York

Phew! What a day–I didn’t stop walking from 8:30am until 6:30pm, when I was asked to leave the convention center as everyone was closing shop for the day. Today’s biggest event was without a doubt Palm’s somewhat epic comeback (that I, unfortunately, did not attend) into the mobile phone industry with their brand-new webOS. For those who similarly missed out, check out gdgt’s excellent live coverage of the event. No worries, though. I saw plenty of interesting stuff while scavenging the show floors.

I’ve decided to outline the most interesting and worthwhile things I’ve seen today here, and follow it up with a photo gallery to correspond.

Motorola Booth

Motorola surprisingly wasn’t considered the boring booth this year as it had been in the past. Rather, Motorola used CES to release two new, noteworthy phones. First up was the Motorola W233 renew, an odd name for a phone that may just dictate the future of the mobile phone industry. The environmentally-friendly, “candybar-style” phone’s housing is made entirely from recycled water bottles. Through Motorola’s efforts, they offset the amount of energy needed to manufacture, distribute, and operate the phone. It’s a great new direction for the company and industry as a whole.

Next, the much more advanced Motorola SURF A3100 was shown off today at the Motorola booth. This is one of Motorola’s few touchscreen Windows Mobile-powered cell phones. Its 528MHz Qualcomm processor gives the phone a noticable edge in the performance of simple tasks such as browsing the web and checking e-mail. More so, its loaded with 128MB RAM, quad-band GSM, a 3.1 megapixel camera, and a trackball as seen in the G1.

Sling Media Booth

As I had hoped for, Sling Media had their much-awaited iPhone app on display, running on at&t’s 3G network–not WiFi. This gave a much more realistic depiction of what we can come to expect of the app in real world situations. My impressions of the fully-featured alpha application were positive. The remote controls were quick to respond for the most part, and video quality was excellent. Sling Media has confirmed to me that they will be submitting their app to Apple in late March for approval in the App Store soon after. There will be a limited beta before then, of which a lucky select few will be able to join.

Canon Booth

I actually had not expected to drop by Canon’s booth today, but the EOS 5D Mark II captured my attention and lured me in. The update to the popular EOS 5D includes a 21.1 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, Live View shooting, and 1080p video capturing. It has already been released and is available for purchase directly from Canon, although you must be on a waitlist. One can also get the DSLR at Canon resellers, where stock is not guaranteed.

The Outdoors

No, there is no such booth named ‘The Outdoors’. Rather, outside of the convention center I had a chance to meet and chat quickly with Ryan Block, former editor-in-chief of Engadget, and co-founder of gdgt, which has been covering CES as well. Lots of fun here…thanks for the chat, Ryan! =)

BlackBerry Booth

It’s been seen before, but hasn’t been officially released as of yet. That’s why this sleek device caught my attention: it’s the new at&t-branded BlackBerry Curve 8900, an update to the previous (and extremely popular) Curve. This confirms the device’s eventual presence in at&t’s BlackBerry lineup.

TiVo Girls

You read it right. I caught sight of TiVo’s new (and shall I say clever) advertising campaign in the form of surfers in bathing suits–at a consumer electronics trade show. Unfortunately for all the men in the convention center, the women were not permitted to enter the show floor due to “improper attire”…no joke. Get a glimpse below.

Well…that about does it for today! Catch you tomorrow for Day 2’s update.