It's not the sound of the ocean that this woman is listening to at CES -- no, it's her iPod! The ice bucket she is holding is one she borrowed from her Las Vegas hotel room. That little thing stuck on the end is the Rock-It, a device that creates vibrations to amplify the sound from an MP3 player so that almost any such object can be used as a makeshift amplifier.
She and another woman demonstrated the device at the OrigAudio booth, sticking the business-end of the Rock-It to plastic water bottles and cardboard boxes, demonstrating the ability to pump up the volume of their little music player.
At that point, I saw the opportunity to take a funny photo, with her holding up the bucket to her ear like a tin can on a string, and she gladly complied. That's the fun thing about being a photojournalist -- you can get almost anybody to do almost anything you want them to do.
But now that I think about it, I feel a little bad. She was friendly and helpful, and I took advantage of her like that.
But look at it like this -- if I hadn't seen a funny photo opportunity, I wouldn't have taken the picture. And I wouldn't have posted it to this website. And you wouldn't have read about this otherwise useful product. So perhaps I'm doing them a little good. In fact, I urge you to check out the Rock-It at the OrigAudio website. If you decide to buy, enter the promo code Plugtouchrock to get 20 percent off your order.
Now I don't feel so bad.
Although Ninjasistah has nightmares of Teddy Ruxpin when she sees something like this, I couldn't resist taking a picture of this animatronic dog singing along with an iPod Nano at the CES convention Wednesday afternoon.
NinjaSistah always comes back from CES with tschotkes of dubious need. One of the favorite giveaways these days is the now-ubiquitous thumb drive, which are about as useful as floppy disks.
There is was, staring me in the face this morning. It was all over the internet. I'm sure you saw it, too. The Spice Girls will be announcing their "future plans". Next week. Thursday, June 28, to be exact.
In today's news:
If you've got the ability to surf the internet with your cell phone, you'll soon be able to start reading the latest blog entries by the Sistahs on the same phone.