Every year the electronics community gathers to see what is the future of those lovable gadgets and plasma screens every technophile salivates for. This show is called the CES; the Consumer Electronics Show and this year it was celebrated January 7 to 10, 2008 in Las Vegas.

The lucky guys at Gizmodo where there and have created a list of what they think were the best offerings at the show. Everything from 150″ TVs (yep, that is right 150 inches of pure imagery), media players, geek appearances and weird gadgets you weren’t expecting. Like for example a leopard skin taser with built-in MP3 player - what? Don’t believe me? Just follow the link.

And that is why we love CES; a bunch of gadgets that we won’t get anytime soon, if at all, and a lot that are just fun reading about - because you don’t really want them.

Smashing magazine has an great collection of Photoshop tutorials. Anything from rendering products, lightning effects, retouching photos and improving their look, reflections, creating product boxes… you name it and it is probably there.

The list of tutorials is over 30 pages long, and that is not counting how long each tutorial is. So if you have a lot of free time to master your Photoshop skills this is a very good place to start; also a great page to bookmark since you won’t be done with those tutorials in a while and you might need them later.

If you are into usability and interface design these are a must; a great book collection by Smashing Magazine. If you are a web designer or developer some will actually help you not make common mistakes, others will take your techniques farther, but understanding them will surely improve the usability of your projects.

Here is their list:

1. About Face 3. The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann and David Cronin

2. Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen, Hoa Loranger

3. Designing the Obvious. A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman, Jr.

4. Don’t Make Me Think. A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

5. The Design of Sites. Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites by Douglas Van Duyne, James Landay, Jason Hong.

6. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

7. Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell

8. Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices by Dan Saffer

9. Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge

10. Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

This is only a partial list; for the complete list (they include editor choices) and for more information on each book read the Smashing Magazine article.

Apple lovers, keep in mind this is just a concept and not coming to stores any time soon so don’t go asking for it at the Apple store just yet.

The iRing, a concept design by Victor Soto, is meant to connect to the iPhone or iTouch via bluetooth. (although the iTouch doesn’t have bluetooth right now) It would control functions like volume, move back and forward through you songs or media, and mute. All this through touch sensitive controls on the surface of the ring; it also employees a lock mechanism so you don’t go changing the volume because you moved your hand.

A bit ahead of it’s time in terms of actual implementation, but I believe it is a nice idea on what the future can hold for device control. It was made with the Apple products in mind, but imagine music systems and TVs that can be controlled this way.

Imagine never running around the house trying to find the TV remote, it is always in your hand. I surely want to imagine that.

Just wanted to give a shout to those visitors from the GLCC ads. The GLCC is about to have their annual Stars of the Rainbow gala and celebration; their way to congratulate those that helped the GLBT community during the past year.

Save the date Sunday, February 17th 2008 and RSVP for this year’s gala. Contact Nicole for info.

For those of you that don’t know, Apple released their MacBook Air January 15th 2008 and it should start shipping the first week of February. The lucky guys at Gizmodo have received one already. How does it compare to other ultra-portables in the market? How does it compare to the Sony VAIO?

Gizmodo has an article about it. Looks like a great machine for those that don’t care to lose a bit of performance for commodity and design, it sure looks nice. Check it out.

design-police.org offers graphic design guidelines to stick it to bad design in a clever “sticky notes” way to mark a document. Their kit is called the “Visual Enforcement Kit”.

We designers find these funny. Why? Because we sadly see these mistakes over and over on every piece of media. It is part of the job, and what exactly makes these funny, sad and oh so true. :)