I just got back from my first week of field work with a new company and my time off couldn't have come at a better time. The Consumer Electronics Show started on Monday in Las Vegas. If you don't know what CES is you should check out some of the coverage. CES is where the latest in technology, from mobile apps to home entertainment, debut. It's somewhat similar to a car show where they roll out concept cars that never come to market with one difference. A good portion of the gadgets at CES DO go to market. Some of the things coming out this year are pretty amazing.

There are a lot of new gadgets coming out that would be great for archaeology. I saw a portable power device that you can charge from a wall outlet in about two hours or with onboard solar panels in about five hours. If also has an inverter attachment so you can plug in just about anything that needs a charge or power. Charge that Trimble while walking across the desert five miles from your truck!

I've seen some really good Ultra-Books too. Those are laptops that are trying desperately to be the MacBook Air from Apple. They will be running the new, and I must say, impressive, Windows 8 and are light and extremely powerful. The new one from Dell, the XPS 13, is very similar to the MacBook Air right down to it's aircraft aluminum body.

Samsung has a line of digital cameras coming out that will send photos via wifi directly to what ever device you have their software on. Poloroid has a camera running Android. I'm not sure whether the cameras need to connect to an existing wifi network or if they create their own, like the Eye-Fi SD cards. Either way its a nice feature. It would eliminate that panic on the first day of the session when you are five hours from the office and realize that you forgot to check and see if the camera's sync cable is in the case.

I'd like to have a post with pics of my favorite new gadgets when CES concludes in a few days. I'll try to put that together. In the mean time...back to my coffee!

See you in the field...