Check out all the geeky stuff going down at Showstoppers. Robert Scoble was streaming live from his Nokia phone which was broadcasting live on Qik and it is captured here for all of posterity. Skip to minute 18 and you’ll see the “best” part — me, the amateur spokesperson for Avnera giving Scoble the 411 on the FREETALK Wireless Stereo Headset and the Creative HS-1200. Thanks to Jim Courtney from Skype Journal for flagging down Robert and making the introduction.

[Link to video]

Our friends over at Logitech are showing what’s come of their acquisition of Slim Devices. The Squeezebox Duet is a slick piece of industrial design. A remote and a receiver. You can add receivers for $150, and you can add remotes for $300. Everything talks 802.11g in order to move music around.

Immediate Pros:

• Uses 802.11g. If you have WLAN already, it should work for you.
• Slimnetwork will offer some internet radio and other online content out of the box. Plugs right into the network, and accesses the internet directly.
• Support for Pandora, Rhapsody and my favorite Slacker.
• Slick design, leverages Logitech’s know-how on remotes they’ve built with their Harmony product line.

Immediate Cons:

• Price. $400 to start??? Holy crap. Additional receivers are rumored to be $150. So for $550 I get two zones. That’s pretty pricey. And it requires speakers to boot. Yikes. Still better than Sonos though, so you can argue it’s progress.
• Only as reliable as your home wireless network.
• Only supports media accessible via the home network and internet. No legacy gear.

Overall. Pretty hot, I must say.

It begins for me on Saturday, Jan 5th.  Some pre-meetings and strategy dinners, rep-training session, and preparation for press events and customer meetings.  Then come Monday, meetings, meetings, meetings.  This is Avnera’s third visit to CES, and again, we will be showing our partners, customers, and other interested parties what we’ve accomplished in the last year, as well as what is to come.  This year , Avnera has a compelling story on both counts.

On Monday, I’m slated to stand on my feet for a few hours and give 100+ reporters our elevator pitch at the Showstoppers event.  We’ll be talking about a few products that are either on shelves, or being announced at CES, and let you know the fundamentals of how and why Avnera is making sure progress in a fiercely competitive industry  Ought to be fairly interesting talking to press, rather than customers and partners which I’m more accustomed to.

Off-site from the show, Avnera will have some private suites, which are fully booked from go to curtains.  Customers from all over the world and from multiple industries will be present.  We are looking forward to showing them what Avnera technology can enable.  Our focus on the latest trends in consumer multi-media use-cases, wireless audio technlogies, and affordable, end-to-end high-definition audio systems, has created some truly unique IC products.  We’re truly just beginning to scratch the surface of application possibilities.

The plan is to post some updates as the week goes… it won’t be engadget- or gizmodo-thorough - a bit more personal and candid perhaps… stay tuned.

Just got back from CES.  Vegas, baby, Vegas.  I have about 2 parts love, and 20 parts hate for that town.

With three and a half days of intense presentations, technical discussions, and sales & marketing mania, I can honestly say that this is going to be an amazing year for us. The feedback we received on our technology was mind-blowing. What can I say, when you have good stuff, people notice.

So for four nights, I totalled 15 hours of sleep. I am wrecked.

In the coming days I will post some impressions I received about what technologies and trends will be fueling the user experience for the next year or two. There is a lot of noise to sort through after the show, but I can think of a few concepts outright that stuck with me…

1. Internet in, satellite out - I just don’t see any compelling reason for satellite radio or satellite television any more. It’s an expensive network, and there is nothing defensible about it’s content… It’s dead. Goodbye. Portable audio players with wi-fi, and connected speakers and radios that access internet radio and online media are the future. See Sansa Connect. Zune should follow.

2. Wireless in, wires out - Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will continute to be in everything, PCs, mobiles, portable audio players, cars. Mind you, Bluetooth still promises more than it can deliver, but the marketing machine is too powerful, and the mobile handset numbers are just too attractive to speaker-makers and automakers. Also, Atheros, Marvel, and Broadcom are making 802.11 chips with less and less power consumption, and applications for audio and video transport are compelling, if not a bit pricey for now. Like it or not, standards are useful. My only appeal relates to my next point, and that is, if you are selling me a device that does audio and video… and includes one of these standards… don’t underdeliver what its capabilities promise… if you use a standards-based wireless technology, give me the benefits of its bloat. If you give me BT, make it do headset, A2DP, and data… seemlessly. If you give me Wi-Fi, make it do streaming audio/video, VoIP, and feed-widgets, seemelessly. If you can’t offer me this, I am paying too much, and getting short changed on experience — by definition.

3. Killer-experience in, feature-spam out - Consumers demand a good experience. Ease of use. Robustness. There is fatigue and cynicism now about devices that are long on features and short on “f*ck yeah!” great experience. Stuff has to just work! Product makers, quit yanking our cords… more on this in future posts…