Welcome to beautiful Las Vegas. A five and a half hour flight, and we hit the ground running, in full great white shark mode--slow down and we'll all surely die, or, at the very least, miss the ever-important 2008 buzz product and invoke the negative side of the omnipresent gadget blog karma.

Our first few hours were devoted to getting our bearings and sorting out the game plan, before heading over to the Venetian at the other end of the Vegas strip for the show preview with the appropriately over-the-top name, CES Unveiled. And, like every other aspect of the trip thus far, we were greeted with a long, winding line out the door that ended mere moments before we began seriously considering giving up and taking the long, shameful monorail ride back to our hotel room.

The first of a series of consecutive pre-show warm-ups, Unveiled showcased a small meeting hall full of award-winning products that are set to be displayed at the convention. This being my first CES, the whole thing struck me as being a bit odd, representatives at each of the booths inviting us to check out another booth featuring the same products a few days later--sort of a "Hey, if you like my iPod dock in this room, just wait until you see it under the buzzing florescent lights of the convention center."

In the end, I suppose these events are useful, after all. Expecting anyone to check out every product in the context of the actual event is the stuff of demagogic Greek mythology, so, without further ado, I present to you some of the highlights of the pre-show spectacular.

Aquallusion iTube
Still not sure how I feel about this one. In some ways this speaker system is as hokey as its name, while also like its name, possibly transcending said hokeyness to such a degree that it almost seems cool again. I called it a "Lavalamp 2.0," and the PR guy nodded. The thing has a speaker on the top and an input jack. You play your music through it, and the Lavalamp-like effects kick in and sync to the audio.

Celestron

Hands down my favorite table of the night. Celestron is pioneering some truly cool consumer optics products, like telescopes, binoculars, and microscopes. The SkyScout helps you locate objects in the night sky, via GPS, giving you detailed information about what you're seeing along the way. The company also offers a lot of telescopic Skyscout plug-ins for true amateur astronomy enthusiasts. The company's real star of the night, however, was the LCD Digital Microscope, which offers up stunning close-ups of tiny objects on a 3.5-inch LCD screen.

RC Cooler
Wow. Like drinking, but hate, um, you know, getting up and walking around? Interactive Toy Concepts' RC Cooler has you covered. With a 30-foot range, this RC-controlled cooler will bring your ice-cold longnecks to you. $49.99 seems a small price to pay for the ultimate expression of beer-fueled laziness.

PUCC (P2P Universal Computing Consortium)

PUCC wins the award for the most oddly diverse collection of devices. The company designs home automation systems, but the two that really caught my eye were the cell phone-control mini robot, which can be given commands using a mobile device, via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and the machine pictured above [taken from here]. Looks like a coffee maker, right? Yeah, well, if you ever see one at a friend's house, it's probably best not to drink from the thing. It's actually a urine tester. What you can't see in the picture is the attached adult diaper. CES Unveiled, indeed.

Vestalife

We've covered Vestalife's Ladybug iPod docks before. We just can't get enough of the things, which managed to stand out in a room that was filled with a few dozen devices that essentially do the exact same thing. What can we say, it's a sharp-looking dock.

For our full CES 2008 coverage, check out PC Mag.com.