CES 2009 -- the cool, the weird and the non-existant

The annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas has had an abundance of gadgets across the board, from the ultra-thin giant Samsung TVs to cheap all-in-one Pac-Man joysticks. Below are a few doodads that either tickled our fancy or made us laugh at their obvious futility.

Radware
Remember Palm? They made the first PDAs that we mostly used to play Tetris with during meetings. Most people assumed the company was on the way out, but they pulled something special at CES that has given them more than a fighting chance of survival. It's called the Pre, a new Smartphone with full touch, and a sliding keyboard. It uses a new innovatitve operating system called Web OS to coordinate all your important every-day apps (like Facebook, Gmai... and Tetris) and recharges wirelessly (like a cordless phone or electric toothbrush). The Pre should be out in Europe in the first half of this year.

Weirdware
iRobot, the fine people who brought us the Roomba robot vacuum, are rolling out a robotic gutter cleaner. It's called the Looj, and rolls around on tank-treads to clean out your gutters. Sadly, you still have to get on the ladder and get the Looj up there. We'd much rather have an iRobot to deal with more frequent tasks we neglect, such as laundry, changing lightbulbs, feeding pets and calling our mums.


Check out our picks for Failware and Vaporware after the jump.

Failware

Remember at school there was always one dorky kid who wore a hat with a radio antenna sticking out of the top? Well if that billy no-mates happened to be you, and you still think that wearing audio devices on your head is the height of cool, you're in luck. Everyone else, avoid this like the plague. The iCap is a hat with an integrated MP3 player and set of speakers. It's also completely and uterly awful, and will inflict years of bullying on any man, woman or child unlucky enough to be bought one.

Vaporware
As tech nerds we can admit to wanting a watch phone. It's just so very James Bond. However, the prospect of a real life watch phone has been as elusive and mysterious as a working jetpack. Now LG is promising that their new watch phone -- which we've already poured over on this site -- will go into production this year. Just like those secret decoder rings and the flying car. (We aren't holding our breath.)