Walt Mossberg, Chad Hurley, Kara Swisher, and Greg Harper at “Making a List: Fourth Annual What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology”

Last night I had the fortune of being able to attend Making a List: Fourth Annual What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology. This event was hosted by the Churchill Club - Walt Mossberg, Chad Hurley, Kara Swisher, and Greg Harper were the presenters.

Here’s a photo I took of Walt and Chad on stage:

The event started with Walt making fun of the Zune - most well deserved. Walt got it though - Microsoft’s in it for the long run.

That said, Walt also noted that this wasn’t a great year for gadgets - I tend to agree. I didn’t really see anything that was “OMG” worthy.

Check their podcast site later to see if this shows up there. Otherwise, here are some of the gadgets I remembered:

1. Chad showed the $150 laptop from the MIT Media Lab. Personally, I’m not convinced that having governments contribute $150 per child for 3rd world nations is a good investment - seems to me that clean water and malaria prevention/treatment would be a better bang for the buck - but then again, I’m not an expert in public health/education policy.
2. Chad also showed the Chumby. I’d have to agree with Kara that it’s a little disturbing.
3. Kara showed some neat LED candles as part of the romance theme that she had.
4. Kara showed the Sky Scout.
5. Greg showed way too many things to remember. One was a watch that showed videos. One was a belt buckle that showed videos (which Walt called a “celibacy” device). One was a $1200 HD camcorder that’s a joint venture from Panasonic and Sony.
6. It was pretty unanimous that if you had to buy a gift for someone that was under $100, the new iPod Shuffle was the way to go.
   

All in all, a good time was had - it was pretty light and fun. The gadgets were kind of eh.

Here’s to 2007 being a great year for gadgets!