Woot® : One Day, One Deal™

Now that we’ve been back in the real world for a while, we can finally start to process some of the strange and fantastic sights we saw at the Consumer Electronics Show in that arid Oz called Las Vegas. Some of them. Others of them were too horrible to ever think of again, though they’ll probably haunt our nightmares forever.

For those of you couldn’t be there, we’ve put together a short video showcase of a few of the highlights from the convention floor—set to music, for no particularly good reason. Enjoy, if possible, and see if you can’t almost smell the funk of despair!

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As you know if you've been following our CES 2010 coverage, the best parts of CES are the happy accidents, the incidental freakouts, the stuff that washes up in the corners while everybody's jostling to see the latest 40-acre 3D TV. And with five writers on the ground, we found a LOT of it. Cancel your appointments, shut off your pager, and settle in with several dozen of our favorite CES moments...

Best Use Of Torture As Ad Campaign

I'm guessing the "magic" involves having metal spikes shoved under your toenails. I can only imagine what they're forcing this guy to watch.

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If all you knew about CES was what you see in our blog posts, you might think the whole thing was about gawking at gadgetry and making fun of poorly-worded signs. But of course, CES is a place for making connections, for striking deals, for selling your sizzle to key decision-makers. So we made a point of touching base with the industry's power players...

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Before we snuck out of Vegas, we decided to do one thing that was fun. So we took a walk. Like a two and a half hour walk. Seriously, it was like three miles. But at the end of it, we found the heartbreakingly poorly marked Pinball Hall of Fame.

And we went inside.

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Samsung's new home theater system IS pretty sweet, but we're waiting to see a price tag before we commit.

Also, we're going to need a much more spacious living room.

Make room for more CES 2010 coverage - including our annual Wootable Awards post tomorrow!

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It's hard for two busy CEOs to find love together, especially when their keynotes are scheduled on different nights. So Ford CEO Alan Mulally had to resort to posting his mash note to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on a notice board at CES, sharing his love with tens of thousands of passersby.

But for the spurned party, there's nothing worse than compounding the heartbreak with this kind of very public embarrassment.

Our hearts will go on for another (and final) day of CES 2010 coverage tomorrow.

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One of the things we would've liked to see at CES was Roxxxy the Robot, the latest and most horrifying advancement in sex technology: a sex robot. In researching said monstrosity, some interesting things came to light:

For starters, Roxxxy has downloadable personalities. Aside from making for the weirdest iTunes receipt ever, they'll allow you to program your uber-lady with different moods, points of view, and characteristics. True Companion LLC founder Douglas Hines listed only two personalities so far: "Wild Wendy," which seems pretty expected (it's a well-known fact that ladies named Wendy are just insatiable), and "Frigid Farrah."

What? Frigid?

Because the last thing I want in my $9,000 sex robot is a robot that just wants SEX all the time. I want to spend an hour in stony silence as we lie in bed at the end of the day and I backtrack in my head what I might have done to upset her. I want my sex robot to have emotional issues and tersely eat dinner across the table without making eye contact. Yeah, Frigid Farrah sounds great.

Will there be a personality that eventually gets tired of watching me play video games and leaves me, presumably for my best friend or boss? What about one that is a perfect woman but hates my family, making Thanksgiving awkward? Can I get an extremely jealous sex robot that coerces me into not seeing my female friends any more? That would be great.

Come to think of it, a sex robot you had to "crack," or woo with the proper amount of interest in other things, nurturing, compassion, and personality might be a really great socialization tool for the types of people who want or need sex robots.

In case it wasn't weird enough, Hines went on to explain that the idea for the sex robot came from 9/11. Specifically, his friend died in the terrorist attacks and he wanted some way, any way, that his friend's personality could be stored or imitated so that eventually his infant children could grow up and know what he was like. That's a pretty touching, human, and amazing concept.

Naturally, this evolved into a sex robot.

I can only imagine the tearful scene as Hines rolled out Roxxxy to a quiet living room with two children sitting on the couch.

"Kids," he'd say while smiling, "I want you to meet your dad."

"Daddy? Is that you?"

"TAKE ME, YOU STUD."

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We're all music lovers. Snobby, snobby music lovers. The kind of music lovers who rattle off facts and trivia for fun. The kind of lifestylers that work very hard to stay on the cutting edge of cool.

See? Even at CES, we don't stop with the pretensions. And that's why finding TWO different record player booths made us happy. After the jump, you'll see some of what brought us joy!

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We knew the last day of CES was going to be slow when we got off the monorail (monoraaaaail) and saw even the “help the homeless” panhandler for charity had decided not to show. The guy wore a clerical collar when we saw him on previous days, though, so maybe on Sundays he has another engagement.

Not pictured: Panhandlin’ parson

Fortunately, there were lots of restorative therapies to sample, like these massage chairs just opposite the Woot booth...

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Imagine our joy as we crossed into the back corners of CES and found this sign:

Each year, we thrill to our little trip through CES's own little Asian ghetto, not just for the bizarre tech surprises but because we get to see some of the very best signage the convention has to offer. Join us after the jump to see what we mean...

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