Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

Maybe you hear about all the celebrities making appearances at CES and you imagine us tech-industry nerds mingling with the megastars. Let me tell you what it's really like.

First, you'll be cheek-by-jowl with a big crowd of people in a space not really made for crowds. And directly in front of you will be the tallest man at the show...

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The Balding Bombshell takes to the stage tonight to kick some hardcore Microsoft reality for all y'all. And we'll be there furiously thumbing our smartphones for your Twitterfication. Follow every breathtaking moment on our Woot CES twitter feed, @WootOnTheStreet. We bet their tablet will be bigger and clunkier and more useless-feature-heavy than Apple's, but hey, it'll have the advantage of being unveiled a few days earlier. Stay excellent, Microsoft!

(Of course, all this depends on a reliable phone connection, which at CES is a worse gamble than Keno.)

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In past years, us Woot bloggers came only to observe CES; this year, we're part of the show. If you're in Vegas enduring this annual ordeal, you're invited to our titanic super-colossal booth (South 1 - Booth 22110) for the following whoop-de-doo:

• Dramatic Readings of Woot Writeups - Thursday, 2 p.m.: all five wordslingers in our verbal crew will read aloud from a selection of our (ahem) finest product descriptions. If you think our writing would be better mumbled in a halting monotone by unattractive people who have no business wasting an audience's time, you won't wanna miss this.
• Live Analog Derby vote - Friday, 2 p.m.: as we mentioned over on Shirt.Woot, cartoonist and shirt designer Dan Zettwoch will be at the booth all day Thursday and Friday morning, drawing ideas submitted by you, the people of CES. The theme is CES Plus or Minus 1,000 Years - in other words, what would CES have been like in the year 1010, or what will CES be like in 3010? Then Friday at 2, the assembled semi-throng will vote on the winner. Recommended for anyone who would like to witness the miracle of artistic creation before their very eyes, or who just wants the $500 prize.
• The Monking Booth - Saturday, 2 p.m.: in which you may shoot Screaming Monkeys at Woot writers for prizes, including the cathartic thrill of hurting the writers who make it so hard to figure out every day what the damn product does.

Keep up with all these hijinks, lojinks, and mediumjinks on our CES blog page and the Woot CES Twitter feed (@WootOnTheStreet). You're also welcome to come by any other time, too. Maybe you'll meet one of our nerdy writers, or one of our affable product buyers, or our friendly Director of Marketing. Be careful, though - she can drink any ten of you under the table.

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I'm making myself a promise this year. To paraphrase Sir Paul McCartney's 1984 #6 (U.S.)/#2 (U.K) smash hit, no more lonely CES nights. No more after-hours basic cable marathons in the hotel room. No more asking the guys handing out the cards of the naked ladies, "So what do you guys do for fun? And can I please, please, please come?" No, this week while I'm in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, I shall endeavor to enjoy the company of my fellow show-goers, at least until they call security.

So if you're going, let me know here and perhaps we shall deign to "hook up" (not in the current teenager sense of the word). Also, look for us in our distinctive yellow-and-black exclamation point t-shirts and hoodies like some kind of "street team" - sorry, we're not bringing a t-shirt cannon. And the truly desperate are invited to keep an eye on our new event-specific Twitter feed @WootOnTheStreet. Throughout CES, we'll post updates of our whereabouts for the benefit of stalkers, process servers, and paparazzi.

Now hip us to where us Woot writers can party like it's 1999 - in other words, like we have a robust economy and aren't involved in two protracted wars!

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Wait, it's almost January? Damn. That means the brutal slog that is the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show is upon us. All next week, our team of snide, hungover bloggers will cover the side of the convention that the mainstream media won't show you - mainly, the dumb side. And if you've followed our previous CES blogathons, you know there's plenty of dumb to go around. Diving into that morass isn't recommended for the weak of stomach, so enjoy this selection of some of the, ahem, highlights of past shows.

2009 Wootable Awards
You've known this convention was coming for months, right? So why did you wait to put your booth together until the night before the show?

0.5-Handed Battle Axe
Who could possibly shred righteous fake riffs on this tiny guitar controller? You know the answer to that question...

15 Ways CES Organizers Lured People To The 2009 Show
We were crestfallen to discover that the organizers did not keep the promise that "Steve Ballmer would deliver keynote address while tripping on angel dust". Then again, his pupils did look kind of weird...

2008 Wootable Awards
If one gadget could be the physical embodiment of the tease that is CES, it's this "brilliant" handheld system.

Nonsense: The Universal Language
The international nature of CES produces some pretty choice examples of linguistic zen. We're not making fun - in their off-kilter way, these bits of unintentional poetry are more expressive than a million generic marketing slogans.

The 2007 Wootable Awards
OK, maybe in this one case, we were making fun. But it takes stronger men than us to resist the lure of the Wallet Flesh.

If you're going to CES yourself and you'd like to experience this sparkling wit in the (wallet) flesh, here's how:

• Stop by our booth at CES (South 1 - Booth 22110). And look at our blog's CES page for announcements of various Woot happ'nins therein, including a live analog shirt Derby with artist Dan Zettwoch, a Woot trivia challenge, and other surprises we still have to figure out.
• Look for us roaming the floor in our distinctive exclamation-point t-shirts. Last year's period t-shirts just weren't emphatic enough.
• Invite us to your company's party, party suite, party tent, hog roast, meet-and-greet, or staged reading of "Our Town". We really, really need stuff to write about, and we've blogged about every single CES event we've ever attended, so if desperation turns you on, we'll beg if we have to.

We'll either see you there or see you on our blog. Yes, our blog can see you. So wear something nice. Or at least a pair of pants.

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The Woot blog will be pretty quiet until Monday, so enjoy these bedazzled, bedecked, bewildering Christmas-light-equipped cars as our gift to you. Merry Christmas and drive safely!

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Whoa! Hey! We're all familiar with our user experience badges (aka "Woot qubes") on the forums - but where'd that triangle come from?

Yeah, I'm lame now, but you should've seen me in beta...

That triangular badge indicates your Deals.Woot reputation score. In other words, it measures how much you've been taking part in the crowd-sourced, social-bookmarking, all-singing, all-dancing deal hub we call Deals.Woot. It's the Woot site that lets you sharpen your deal-hunting fangs on the herds of deals roaming the Internet. If you haven't been, what's stopping you?

Anyway, as some of you have noticed, the hierarchy of colors is the same as the qubes, from lowly white all the way up to lofty black. But the formula is a lot more complicated than just a simple tally of how many items you've bought. The point is to recognize users who post deals, vote on deals, ask intelligent questions, make insightful comments, and do all the things that make Deals.Woot the delight that it is today.

I'd break down exactly how the reputation algorithm works, but I keep falling asleep everytime Shawn says "interquartile". I do know enough to know they're always tinkering with it, so whatever I told you now would soon be obsolete anyway. But if you're a regular participant in Deals.Woot discussions, and you submit good deals, and you vote on deals and questions, it will show in your triangle. (We can't bring ourselves to call them "qones", but we can't stop you from doing it.)

And if you're a little ashamed for your prestigious Woot badge to sit next to an empty triangle, there's only one way to fix that: get over to Deals.Woot! Now! Post deals! Ask questions! Answer questions! Vote on everything that catches your eye! The future of your qon- er, Deals.Woot reputation badge hangs in the balance!

Now, Deals.Wooters, feel free to gloat over your superior triangles. And entice, cajole, or shame your fellow wooters into coloring in their triangles, too.

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Christmas music: love it or hate it, you can't escape it. Rock 'n' rollers have been trying to make peace with the season since "Jingle Bell Rock", with decidedly mixed results. But who does it better, us Yanks or the Brits? Sounds like it's time for a no-holds-barred, hell-bent-for-eggnog throwdown between Merrie Olde England and the upstart colonies...

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Once again, your sloth, indolence, and disregard for others have put the whole holiday season at risk. You waited too long to buy that Christmas gift from Woot, and now it won't be here in time. We shouldn't bail you out again like this. You'll never learn. But in the spirit of the season, please accept this PDF file suitable for printing out and giving in lieu of the actual, not-yet-arrived gift.

If we all wish real hard and believe with all our hearts, that one-page PDF might just be enough to save Christmas. You might want to print it on some enchanted elf paper or something, just to be on the safe side.

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Robots are made of metal, right? They're rigid, clanking machines made of gears and wires and whatnot, aren't they? And don't robots move via one slow, heavy footfall at a time? Well, if our pals at iRobot (and their pals at the Defense Department) have their way, robots are about to get a whole lot squishier. Ready or not, here comes the blobby, quivering, slithering Jambot:

"The focus of the project was a mobile platform that is completely squishy," says Chris Janes, Research Program Manager at iRobot. Their partner on the project, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was looking for a drone "that's roughly the size of a softball but can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter. Everything should be soft: the power system, the activation, everything should be soft."

It's all possible through the magic of "jamming", and not the kind you'd find going on at the guitar store...

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