Panasonic's 150-Inch Plasma TV

Whoa!!! Who has a wall that they could dedicate to something that big?

The 150-inch plasma, dubbed "Life Screen," is now the largest in the world. It boasts 2,000-by-4,000 pixel resolution and is 11 feet wide, or the size of nine 50-inch plasma TVs, Sakamoto said.

"It's capable of an amazing picture that is four times the resolution of our current full HD plasma displays," Sakamoto said. "It gives new meaning to the words reality TV."

[...]

Two years ago, Panasonic unveiled a 103-inch plasma TV that was, at the time, the largest available plasma TV. Sharp bested that record at the 2007 CES with a 108-inch device.

Panasonic sold 3,000 of the 103-inch plasmas in 2007, Sakamoto said. "Even I was amazed," he said.

I guess Panasonic decided not to mess around with a couple inches and made it much bigger to keep the record a few more years.

The 103-inch plasmas sold for $70,000 and there are reports that the 150-inch will be $100,000. All that money and no new shows until after the writer's strike :-)

Smartparts' 32-inch digital photo frame

Who in their right mind would need a 32-inch digital photo frame? I just can't see it. Don't you need that room for you 108-inch TV? Check it out for yourself.

Glenn Reynolds is covering CES for Popular Mechanics again

He has some photos up and he says that Sharp will start selling the 108-inch LCD TV they showed last year.

Behind the scenes photos of CES

At Popular Mechanics.

BTW, looks like they'll be a 102-in plasma from Samsung at the show. And Brian Williams will be broadcasting live from the show floor.

WowWee's WiFi-enabled Rovio

Now, this is something that I think I could use. You know when you go away on vacation and you're worried about your house burning down while you're gone? Having this robot would be worth it just to check to make sure your house is still there.

It has a Northstar GPS system and it knows where it is in the room and can locate it's recharging station on your command. You can use the Internet, cell phone or game console to control it's actions.

It has a bi-directional microphone so you can speak to people who are in the room with the robot. ("Hey burglar get out of my home! I'm calling the police." or "Warning you have violated the sanctity of my home prepare to be annihilated!")

It will be available in the summer for $299 which isn't too much for eyes and ears into what's going on in your home while you're away. Which could be very convenient when you want to check up on your teenagers while you're away. ("I thought I told you no parties while I was away, miss! You are so grounded and don't even think about touching Mommy's Rovio! It better be in one piece when I get home.")

Here's a video of Rovio in action.

It's time for CES again!!!

Yes, it's starting this week and I plan to blog about it just like I did last year even though it comes at a completely inconvenient time (the Fox News debate tonight and the NH primary on Tuesday).

More when I have something to blog about.

Solar Tote

This is kind of cute but expensive ($274). I don't know if I'm out in the sun enough to charge it enough to a usable level. They also have a satchel for guys that is even more expensive ($412).

Hindus upset over use of gods on underwear

Hey! This is America where you can buy all kinds of blasphemous products. Nobody cares about "hurting religious sentiments:"

India's eastern state of Orissa has lodged a protest with the US government seeking action against a California-based website for hurting religious sentiments of people by selling undergarments with images of Hindu gods, a newspaper reported Friday. Hindu priests and religious groups had slammed the website, cafepress.com, for selling undergarments embellished with faces of several gods and goddesses, including the presiding deities of Jagannath temple, considered among the most sacred Hindu temples in India.

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iDiamond Earphones

For $6,400 you can bring a little bling to your listing pleasure. Why not look elegant while you listen to The Killers, Radiohead, Pink or Nelly Furtado?

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USB Santa claus boots

And the purpose is...? Um...why would I attach my computer to my feet? That's not the smartest thing to do, especially when you're absent minded like me.

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Huggable Urns

Ewwww! But cute!

U.S. online shoppers set record on "Cyber Monday"

On Black Friday I turned on the local news and watched the reports about the shoppers lining up to spend their hard earned money. Before the stores opened there were 10,000 people waiting to get into the mall at 4:00AM! There were lines around the block for stores like Best Buy and Toys R Us. One local mall was so packed that created a traffic jam on the highway for miles.

But despite the crowds and the people walking by with huge bags in their hands, the reporters wanted us to buy the fact that people are spending less money on Christmas because the economy is so bad and the gas prices are so high. People with huge shopping bags would say things like, "Yeah, since gas prices are so high, I'll be shopping less this year." But what is less? They sold out of Sony Vaios at $399, the Compaqs at $299, even a $699 Toshiba was sold out. They were selling out of big screen HDTVs costing thousands of dollars. If the economy was so bad, then people could not afford to pay even the discounted prices.

The newscasters were also pushing the idea that since the economy is bad the retailers are expecting sluggish sales this year. As we're watching people jam the malls and the stores at 4:00 in the morning and walking out with large ticket items, they're saying this anyway. Can't get away from their script obviously.

And now more proof that the economy must not be as bad as everyone thinks:

U.S. online shoppers spent a record $733 million in a single day on "Cyber Monday," according to market research firm comScore Inc.

Cyber Monday is the first Monday after Thanksgiving and is considered the start of the online holiday shopping season when consumers return to work and seek deals not found in bricks and mortar retailers.

The spend was 21 percent up on the same day last year, according to comScore.

The number of online buyers rose 38 percent from a year ago while the average dollar spend per buyer slipped 12 percent partly due to deep discounting.

Lowe's Apologizes for 'Family Trees' in Christmas Catalog

Not a good move by Lowes but they're smart to get ahead of it before it got out of control.

An early skirmish in this year's "War on Christmas" ended on Tuesday when the nationwide home improvement chain Lowe's apologized for referring to Christmas trees in its holiday catalog as "family trees."

"That was a complete error," Maureen Rich, a spokeswoman for Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse - which serves more than 13 million customers a week in its 1,400 stores across the nation - told Cybercast News Service. "Right now, we're extremely disappointed in this breakdown in our own creative process.

"We are apologizing to customers today for any confusion our holiday catalog created," Rich said. She explained that the full-color document is called a holiday catalog "because it encompasses all the holidays from October through January."

Rich's comments came in response to an "Action Alert" sent out earlier in the day by the Mississippi-based American Family Association. The e-mail stated: "In an effort to avoid the use of the term 'Christmas tree,' Lowe's [is] now calling them 'family trees.'"

[...]

In addition, the AFA Web site encouraged readers to send an email to Lowe's and "ask them why they refer to their Christmas trees as 'family trees.'"

The catalog's use of the term "family trees" was "a plain old error," Rich told Cybercast News Service.

Those particular pages dealt with Christmas trees, she said, and the creative group responsible for laying out the catalog put "family trees" at the top to mirror the other "family oriented" headlines on each page, she said.

[...]

Nevertheless, later on Tuesday, a new message went up on the AFA Web site stating that "Lowe's has contacted the AFA and assures us that it is proudly committed to selling Christmas trees this year, as it has done" in the past.

Here's the ad:


This kind of stuff really doesn't bother me, I could care less what they call it, if it looks like a Christmas tree and I want it, I'll buy it. I also don't care what the salesperson says to me as long as they get my change right :-) I know why it bothers people, they're making money off our holiday at least they can call it by it's right name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just happy that Jesus' birthday is so universally celebrated that I can get the stuff I need to celebrate it. I don't begrudge them their coin and I certainly don't want to force anyone to say something that they don't really mean.

BTW, follow the link to read a survey of the recent Christmas wars.

Saudi Prince Buying 'Flying Palace' Jet

I see a campaign ad in this: "Why give our money to this sheik to spend buying palaces in the sky, let's drill in the Gulf and ANWR and end the flight of our money out of the USA" (I will be more than happy to sell this ad to you for cheap, email me :-)

In the annals of excess, it could be a new high: a more than $300 million dollar, super-sized luxury airplane, bought and outfitted solely for the private comfort of a Saudi Arabian billionaire.

Once done, the Airbus A380, the world's biggest passenger plane, will be a "flying palace" for Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the manufacturer announced Monday.

Airbus SAS would not give a specific price tag for the VIP double- decker jet, with its football field-length wings, saying only that it would cost more than the aircraft's list price of $320 million.

I can't be the only who gets ticked off seeing this after paying close to $3.00 a gallon this morning.

Obnoxious Tween TV AD

This is the ad that I mentioned here. I think it's the most obnoxious ad I've seen in a while and if I really cared about getting a hybrid (I couldn't afford one because I'm not rich like the environmentalists) I wouldn't buy this one just because of it's ad.

Hybrid SUV Commercial
Uploaded by maxsilvestri

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Oh MY Gosh! Hybrids are the new status symbol for tweens?

How sick is that? I just saw a Ford commercial where the tween says she doesn't want her dad to drop her off because people in the part of town she is going to drive hybrids. Fortunately, he dad had one.

Water bottler using Jesus to sell his water

I hope my brothers and sisters in Christ will avoid being manipulated into buying this water. I hope that he bombs so completely no one will try this again. I hope this but I don't trust the church to have the wisdom to reject this as the blasphemy that it is.

Spiritual Brands Inc, a start-up company from Florida, is hoping to make a splash in the competitive bottled water market, worth over $11 billion a year in the United States alone, with its new Spiritual Water.

Available in 10 varieties, one flavor "Balance" features a picture of Jesus on the front with The Lord's Prayer on the back in both English and Spanish while "Focus" carries a likeness of the Virgin Mary.

While the labels are different, all 10 kinds of Spiritual Water, which made its official debut this week at a trade show in Miami, are the the same -- purified water -- with a suggested retail price for 16.9-ounce bottles of up to $1.99.

[...]

"I tried to figure out ... something that people have access to all the time, and if they're losing their focus, or feeling negative or sad, they can see it and get back on track," the Israel-born entrepreneur told Reuters on Friday.

He said the company chose Christianity first, since it is so prevalent in the United States, but has plans to expand.

"We are working on covering everyone, from Muslims to Jews to Buddhists," said Taieb. "Hopefully by next year we will begin to launch those products, by right now we are working hard on getting distribution."

See what the Jesus doll manufacture has wrought!

This is soooo wrong!

Jesus doll sanctifies shelves at Wal-Mart

If that wasn't bad enough, how about this:

Down the Wal-Mart aisle, past the hot brunette Barbie wearing an (always low-cut) dress upon perfect bosoms and the GI "Commando" with a gun larger than his body for "rapid-action" firing during a large-scale assault, he serenely sits on the shelf.

Jesus, the son of God.

He's wearing a simple tunic with that Kenny Loggins haircut. Push the button on his back and he says this:

"I am Jesus. I am the son of God."

[...]

On the box for Jesus, these words are printed: "God's Son" and "Fully Poseable."

Yes, just what we need, a fully poseable deity.

Related Posts:
Walmart to sell Jesus action figure
Giving Jesus dolls away to churches to create a buzz
Jesus doll coming to a Wal-Mart near you

Knock offs are funding terrorism

You might want to pass up that fake Coach bag the next time you go to the flea market, you wouldn't want to fund our enemies' next attack:

According to consumer surveys conducted by Coach, the average American woman was buying two new handbags a year in 2000; by 2004, it was more than four. And the average luxury bag retails for 10 to 12 times its production cost.

“There is a kind of an obsession with bags,” the designer Miuccia Prada told me. “It’s so easy to make money.”

Counterfeiters agree. As soon as a handbag hits big, counterfeiters around the globe churn out fake versions by the thousands. And they have no trouble selling them. Shoppers descend on Canal Street in New York, Santee Alley in Los Angeles and flea markets and purse parties around the country to pick up knockoffs for one-tenth the legitimate bag’s retail cost, then pass them off as real.

[...]

At least 11 percent of the world’s clothing is fake, according to 2000 figures from the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group in Paris. Fashion is easy to copy: counterfeiters buy the real items, take them apart, scan the pieces to make patterns and produce almost-perfect fakes.

Most people think that buying an imitation handbag or wallet is harmless, a victimless crime. But the counterfeiting rackets are run by crime syndicates that also deal in narcotics, weapons, child prostitution, human trafficking and terrorism. Ronald K. Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, told the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that profits from the sale of counterfeit goods have gone to groups associated with Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist group, paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland and FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Sales of counterfeit T-shirts may have helped finance the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition. “Profits from counterfeiting are one of the three main sources of income supporting international terrorism,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.

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Church gives away a free iPhone to new visitors

Somehow I just can't see the apostles doing something like this:

A Baptist church in Florida is using iStore gift cards and the chance of winning an iPhone to lure newcomers to its pews.

[...]

Hughes said he planned a series of sermons titled “i: Successful Living in a Self-absorbed World.”

Hughes has increased church membership from 500 to 2,500 during his eight years as pastor. Previous tactics to draw the curious included a January billboard with the headline: “The Bare Naked Truth on Sex.”

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I think a better sermon series would have been, "The Eternal or the Temporal? Where is Your Focus?" or "Can Gadgets Bring Everlasting Joy?"

Um, I think that we've lost the whole purpose of the church and our focus has shifted from the message (the good news of eternal life in Jesus our Lord) to filling the pews. This pastor has 2,500 members, he should be focused on training them so that they'll go out and bring in visitors. If he did that, he wouldn't need gadgets to bring in the lost.

As our regular readers know I have nothing against iPhones, I just don't see why the church needs a gimmick to bring in the lost. The message is the draw, not freebies. It cheapens what the church has to offer: freedom in Christ.

Update: Dr. Jim West is a bit more blunt than I was.