After Bill Gates' slightly extended, hair-metal-friendly CES kickoff keynote, we hauled our bloggy butts over to Pepcom's Digital Experience event at Caesars Palace. The previous night's CES Unveiled event certainly had its charms, but Digital Experience has a warranted reputation as being the ultimate CES kickoff event, and this year's show--held in the imperial Augustus Ballroom--didn't disappoint.

As we elbowed our way through the thick crowd of journalists who had converged on the strip, it was difficult to take in everything on display (a phenomenon which will only multiply tangentially over the next two days), but we Gearlog did its best.

After the jump, a few of the gadgets that caught our collective eye.

C2 Climate Control

This Herman Miller-designed personal climate control device wins the Most Likely to Attract Lonely Sea Anemones award. Going for around $300, the C2 measures 5.5 by 10 inches and offers office workers or apartment dwellers their own 12-to-18-inch climate-controlled space. It also racks up some green points for using less than 9 percent of the energy output of a standard space heater.

Gorillapod

The Gorillapod is an eye-catcher, we'll grant it that. This handheld-device stand turns your phone, PDA, or audio player into something vaguely resembling a deep sea creature (is this a theme?). It stands up on three legs, twists around poles, or clamps onto the side of your monitor. [Ed. note: I've used the one for cameras, and it's terrific.]

Guitar Wizard

Guitar Wizard is that "real-life Guitar Hero" that you've probably been hearing about, all over the Internets. Users actually sit down with an honest-to-god real world guitar used to control a game on the screen that actually teaches beginners how to play the guitar. Music Wizard's CEO was sitting in a chair the whole time, making the game look easy, though honestly, the whole thing whole thing looks quite a bit tougher than Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but then, so is learning a real instrument.

Pacemaker

Awful name, just awful. Honestly, I can't really stress enough how unfortunate the idea of naming a gadget after after a piece of heart equipment (or a Mersey-beat British invasion band) is. It's especially sad given just how cool this little digital audio player is. It sounds like a pretty familiar claim, but the Pacemaker makes a pretty good argument for title of "the world's first pocket DJ system." With the X-fade and touchpad, users can create their own mixes on this portable device, bending pitches, manipulating the EQ, looping, fading between tracks, and more. Tonium has also set up a site allowing for the sharing of legal mixes between Pacemaker users.