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From The Globe and Mail - Technology News:
Gadget blog caused a ruckus at CES and now the fallout has split the blogosphere
The trouble started when the inventors of the TV-B-Gone sent free samples to some kids on their way to the biggest television-related convention on the continent.
The TV-B-Gone is a miraculous little thing. Shaped like a small keychain fob, it's a universal remote control that will turn off any TV it's pointed at. When you press the button, it cycles through hundreds of different "Off" commands, until, by sheer perseverance, it hits on the one that matches the television it's being pointed at.
Its inventor, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mitch Altman, was philosophically opposed to televisions and liked to use his device to slyly turn them off in places such as laundromats and restaurants, as if he was cleaning up a kind of psychic pollution. This may or may not have been what was going through his mind when he sent a batch of the gadgets to the young staff of Gizmodo, one of the top gadget websites on the Internet, just as they were heading for the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this month.
Now, if a television is a psychic pollutant, then CES is a psychic Exxon Valdez. The show takes over Vegas every January. It's so big, even journalists at the event read the gadget blogs to find out what's going on.
Read the whole article
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