2011 CES

After two full days of scouring the floor for the coolest, most exciting, and most original new gadgets, here is a list of my five favorite gadgets from this year's CES.

• House of Marley iPhone and iPod Dock — Take a look at this gorgeous dock, called the One Foundation. It was one of the first products I had a chance to look at during CES and remained one of my favorites throughout. The entire House of Marley collection is made from eco-friendly materials, and the sound quality is excellent. This $500 beauty is high on my wish list.
• Samsung 7 Series Slider PC — After initially knocking the device for its slide-out keyboard, I got a firsthand look at the tablet/PC hybrid and am impressed with both its form and function. While it would take some serious power to convert this Apple girl into a Windows fan, Samsung's answer to the tablet craze hits closer to awesome than I expected.
• Speck TimeToRock iPod Nano Strap — I love my perfect-for-exercising iPod Nano, and this wrist strap takes it to the next level. It's lightweight, but keeps your Nano accessible. And an included arm strap keeps a long cord from getting in the way during your workout.
• Kodak's 3D printing software — Kodak All-in-One Printer owners can now print photos in 3D with new software. The technology is so cool, I even waited in line myself to check it out. To print a 3D photo, take two photos of the subject, shifting the camera about three inches to the right for the second picture. It's very important your subject stands perfectly still as you snap the photos, but combining them using the Kodak's new software yields a great 3D image that can be printed on most recent Kodak printers and viewed with traditional red and blue 3D glasses. A little bit kitschy, a little bit geeky, all awesome.
• Laptop bags and sleeves from PKG — PKG is a Canadian company who I saw for the first time at CES. After nearly two days of looking at hundreds of bags and accessories, their excellently designed bags and sleeves stood out from the rest. They aren't in US stores just yet, but you can check out some of their offerings on their website. I'm especially in love with an orange version of the Quilted Laptop Sleeve that also has an outer pouch to accommodate the iPad.

We had a great time at this year's CES in Las Vegas, but even the best-planned conventions could use a little constructive criticism. While the show itself ran excellently, I couldn't help notice a few small tweaks that might have made a huge difference.

There's more! Find out the rest of the reasons after the break.

We were packing a lot of gadgets during our trip to CES, and they helped us capture the moments on video, film, and via Twitter and Facebook. Want to know what we were using? Find out below!

• MacBook Pro — You can't blog without a laptop computer, and it just so happened that a trusty 15" was all we needed.
• Sony NEX-3 — This camera came into my life just a few weeks ago, but it's already changing my photographic life. All the pics you see from CES were unedited, coming straight from the NEX-3 to the Internet. I'm pretty impressed with the quality.
• iPhone 3GS — The 3GS became a tweeting and Facebooking machine during CES, and kept us connected with our official CES app.

See the rest of what we were carrying after the break.

We saw a ton of cameras at CES, but none that looked like the Casio Tryx. Made for the social set who like to take self-portraits with friends (you know who you are), this camera is easy to hold at just about any angle thanks to its swiveling and twisting body. Coming with a 12MP lens and full 1080p HD recording capabilities, this camera is lightweight and super sleek. Check out the details in the video below, but see it in all its movable glory in a behind-the-scenes video we posted on our Facebook page.

In case you missed it, we just spent three insane days at CES Las Vegas, and even though we had to battle long geek lines and exhaustion, we managed to stay focused enough to notice something — there's a few consistent personalities that you'll run into on the show floor and out on the town during the various industry parties.

While not everyone that attends CES falls into these five categories (and it's worth mentioning that we met some pretty amazing people while there as well), I'd challenge anyone to debate their existence. I'll break it down for you below.

• The Complainer — Before you go to CES, you should know that it's crowded and noisy. In fact, it's probably common knowledge by now, but you'll always run into those few that seemed to be surprised it's crowded and noisy.
• The Flirty Biz Dev Guy — It's the business development guy's job to schmooze potential clients while at CES in order to drum up new accounts, but we ran into a few that toed the line between flirty and kinda gross. One of us basically got our hand licked. Ew.
• The Self-Described Twitter Superstar — Running with a geek crowd, you'll always overhear that conversation that starts with "I'm pretty big on Twitter", then ends hours later with a virtual contest on how many Facebook friends, YouTube subscribers, and About.me links you've received. It takes a lot of work (and ego) to be popular.

You know you want to see the rest, so keep reading after the jump.

There were plenty of celebrities in attendance at CES — from Olivia Wilde to Rick Fox and Eliza Dushku — but who was the most tweet-tastic of them all? According to info from Webtrends, Lady Gaga came out on top. With her high-concept video glasses, retro-styled instant camera, and printer she debuted with Polaroid, the Internet was all a-buzz over Gaga.

Taking second and third place is Darth Vader (thanks in part to the Star Wars on Blu-ray announcement), followed by 50 Cent, who introduced his own line Sleek Audio headphones.

After checking out the awesome debut collections from House of Marley in the morning, I had a chance to sit down with the man behind the brand (or, at least one of them), Rohan Marley, son of Bob. Fittingly, since House of Marley is a family product, many of his younger family members were on hand too, and the entire group rocked most of the showroom floor with loud reggae. We were even lucky enough to catch Rick Fox jamming with Marley toward the end of the set. Also spotted: actress Eliza Dusku.

I chatted quickly with Marley about the inspiration behind the line, how it honors his father, and the show that rocked the CES floor — take a look!

We are hitting the CES ground running and have been working the expo floor to bring you all the gadget goodness you can handle. Did you miss anything? Check it all out in the links below!

• Take a look at the new eco-friendly House of Marley audio lineup
• We're talking about tablet/slider hybrids from Samsung
• You're gonna want these Tron Legacy Monster headphones
• We take a closer look at the Motorola Xoom
• Get the skinny on the Sony Handycam projector
• Get a peek inside CES 2011
• Lady Gaga works her magic for Polaroid