The suspense is over! Yesterday morning, a standing-room-only throng of CES attendees attended the tenth annual Last Gadget Standing event (co-sponsored by Technologizer and LGS creator Robin Raskin’s Living in Digital Times), and witnessed demos–from the straightforward to the wild and crazy–from the ten finalists. Then they voted for their favorite gizmos by clapping, cheering, whistling, hooting, and hollering.

The Last Gadget Standing–as determined by applause-o-meter at the event is Acer’s Iconia, a notebook with two 14-inch screens and a touchscreen interface. And the People’s Choice winner–determined by an online poll–is Barnes & Noble’s Nookcolor “reader’s tablet.”

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A two-screened laptop. A color e-reader. A camera that does 3D. A scanner to go. A state-of-the-art Android phone. A next-generation integrated chip. A camcorder you wear. A watch with GPS. Blocks with brains of their own. And earphones that customize themselves for your particular ears.

Ten innovative products with nothing in common except one thing: They’re our Last Gadget Standing finalists. And now it’s time to figure out which one will be, indeed, the Last Gadget Standing.

If you’re in Las Vegas for CES, please come to our live event at 10:30am on Saturday, where you can see live demos of all ten products and vote for your favorite. That event will determine the Last Gadget Standing. But if you’re not in Vegas…vote anyway! This online poll that will determine the winner of our People’s Choice award.

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And then there were nine: Here’s our next-to-last finalist in our Last Gadget Standing competition here at CES 2011 in Las Vegas. It’s a scanner–the newest, smallest, and lowest-cost model in Fujitsu’s ScanSnap line. The $199 ScanSnap S1100 is built for portability: It’s the size of a junior box of aluminum foil (it has fold-out paper guides), weighs just 12.3 ounces, and runs off USB power so you don’t need to plug it into the wall. Fujitsu loaned me a unit for evaluation.

The S1100 does single-side scanning only (unlike its portlier-but-still-portable big brother the ScanSnap S1300) and its simple paper path can handle printouts, photos, magazine pages, business cards, and any other document you’re likely to try and feed through it; it can scan a color page at 300-dpi resolution in seven and a half seconds. An adjustable paper path lets you scan both thick plastic cards and pieces of paper as long as 34 inches, and the quality of my test scans was excellent.

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Dozens of companies that will be demonstrating their products at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show nominated themselves for the Last Gadget Standing competition. We judges whittled the contenders down to 25 semi-finalists. And now we’ve cut down that list to ten finalists who will get to show their stuff at our event at CES in Las Vegas next week. One of them will be…the last gadget standing.

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Believe me, picking products that epitomize emerging technologies at CES ain’t easy. Come to think of it, even getting a cab isn’t easy at CES. But we Last Gadget Standing judges have spent the last few weeks sorting through a fabulous selection of products. I figure our judges have each easily seen at least a couple of hundred new products this year year alone. And when they get a little jaded or overstimulated we turn to you for crowdsourced intelligence.

We’ve choose eighteen products we think you should keep your eye on. (We also have more products–including ones from Fujitsu, Intel, Nvidia, and other companies–that we can’t even talk about until January 5th, when the press day at CES begins.)

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Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Fujifilm Real 3D W3

Price: $499.99

I’m not sure if the world is ready to start taking photos in 3D, but Fujifilm sure came up with an attractive was to do it. The FinePix Real 3D W3 digital camera is the first compact consumer 3D digital camera capable of capturing both 3D still images and HD 3D movies at 720P resolution, thanks to its dual-CCD, dual lens system. You can view 3D photos and movies on the W3’s autostereoscopic widescreen display–no glasses required–and the HDMI output port lets you connect the camera to 3D TVs. Other features include Advanced 2D Mode, which takes advantage of the dual CCD/dual lens system to capture two different 2D images at the same time–zoom and wide angle, for instance, or two different sensitivity settings.

Attention, hardware makers! We’ve extended the deadline to nominate products for Last Gadget Standing, our yearly competition to find the single coolest gizmo on display at the Consumer Electronics Show. Maybe it’s the tryptophan; maybe we’re feeling your holiday pressure. Either way, we’ve decided to give you a few more days to get your gadgets in ship shape and show the crowds your stuff.

On January 8th, at our Last Gadget Standing event at CES, we’ll have a surprise host who’s going to have you splitting your sides with laughter (and he doesn’t even need an app for that).

So if you’ve been sitting on the fence, this would be the chance to write a few words about your product and why it deserves to be Last Gadget Standing. It’s sort of our very own Black Friday! Register by December 7th (the Day of Infamy by the way). May the best gadget win.

To apply, go here.

Normally the electronics industry is about as mum about what they’ve been up to as Lindsay Lohan on a Saturday night, but this year seems very top secret.  We’ve already received 6 requests for non-disclosed products to be part of CES’s Last Gadget Standing.  That means that we won’t be able to tell you anything  about them until the bitter end… the day that CES opens.  What to do?  What to do?  All I can say is … stay tuned from some very different kinds of gadget beasts at the show this year.  Maybe they’ve all taken a class in Apple Mystique 101?

In a couple of months at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Technologizer will cohost the 2011 edition of Last Gadget Standing, the awards ceremony that’s been a CES highlight for ten years. The goal is to find and celebrate the single coolest gadget at the show–we define “gadget” as any device that’s small enough to carry without too much trouble–and we need your help to identify contenders.

As usual, the CES show floors will be dense with stuff, including thousands of products introduced since the last CES. So start chiming in with nominations, please: What are the coolest, most interesting most innovative gadgets of 2011? Feel free to name either the ones you think have changed the industry the most, or the ones that have simply made your life better.

As we LGS judges draw up our list of contenders, we’ll draw on your recommendations. Thanks in advance, and let the debate begin!

If you head to CES in January, make sure you pack your Emetrol along with the rest of the first-aid kit.  You’ll be walking through miles of aisles of 3D TVs, PCs, and other gizmos, and it’s not likely you’ll be wearing your 3D glasses.  Life is about to look very out of focus.

Still, like any nascent technology, 3D has its rightful place amongst competitors in our Last Gadget Standing contest. 3D TVs and monitors, profilic as they are, don’t fit in your hand, so we’re not including them in this year’s LGS.

One big topic among our LGS judges is 3D eyewear. What happens when you invite the gang over to watch the big game?  Bring your own glasses?  Compatibility issues?  One-size-fits-all issues? There’s enthusiasm for universal glasses that cross brand lines and work with all 3D systems.

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For 10 years Last Gadget has played to standing room crowds

Last Gadget Standing, now in its tenth year, made crowdsourcing fashionable before it was even a buzz word.  The idea was simple.  People know what products are winners. Marketing has its place, the press have their place, but ultimately the product is going to rock your world or not–and the best people to decide which are the rockers are the people who buy products.

In January of 2011 at our live event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (and online) we’ll re-live a few of the craziest moments of Last Gadget history.  Crazy as fox, that is. The products that have been the winners combine the perfect blend of passion, entertainment, education and great products to nab the title.

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