Gizmodo shows oddest gadgets

Fans of the hi-tech gadget blogGizmodo went to visit its temporary SoHo gallery to witness the wildest and geekiest devices and concepts featured on the site throughout this past year, reports NY1.

A guitar with lasers of light instead of strings and the world's largest Cheeto were some of the oddities on display at the second-annual Gizmodo Gallery in SoHo last week.

Another display was a wall panel that looked like a giant iPhone, which turned a person's touch into a row of digital flowers. Finally, the gallery had live musical performances on automated instruments, without bothersome human musicians.

While memory and functionality are all growing exponentially, laptops, smartphones and digital cameras are becoming the incredible shrinking machines, states Koam TV.

Thanks to customer demands as mobile consumers, technology manufacturers have gotten the message that a gadget can never be too light or too thin.

Witness Apple's MacBook Air, a laptop that is three-quarters of an inch thick and weighs only three pounds. It's not just the cool factor that drives demand for thin tech. There's practicality at work in an on-the-go society.

Facing a Christmas without a new blockbuster gadget to excite shoppers, electronics retailers hope they can make up the difference by selling a greater number of smaller, cheaper items, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As they fight grim forecasts that sales this holiday season will be as bad as last year's, leading electronics sellers Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Sears Holdings and RadioShack are counting on merchandise such as $300 netbook computers, private-label speakers and electronic book readers to appeal to customers who have put thrift at the top of the list.

"The frugality trend is still the overriding sentiment out there," said Jin Chang, the Best Buy executive charged with predicting shoppers' mindset. "Consumers are willing to spend money, but they want value."