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On Thursday night, a slew of well-dressed publishing types flooded into a cavernous space in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood for the opening celebration of 2007's Wired Store . For the past few years, the tech-focused magazine has created a "pop-up store" to feature the gadgets that it wants to highlight this holiday season.

And like any party, there was an open bar. Last year's Wired Store party had featured booze from Budweiser and Yellow Tail. This year, Wired parent company Conde Nast had stepped it up a notch with drink selections courtesy of Patron tequila--including a mojito bar that was consistently mobbed all night.

But the real attractions were the gadgets, which visitors can order by hitting up a computer kiosk inside the store. On display were digital photo frames, satellite radio consoles, solar-powered messenger bags, HDTVs, robots, and thousand-dollar headphones. There were also talking barbecue thermometers, the cute One Laptop Per Child computer , a "Darth Vader Learning Laptop," and a $13,450 "water bobsleigh" designed in Germany.

And no "hot gadgets for the holidays" list would be complete without a mention of either or both Red Octane's Guitar Hero III and MTV's Rock Band video games. At the Wired Store, both were on display and fired up for test runs. But one party guest I was talking to thought that Guitar Hero had passed its prime ahead of the holiday season.

"I don't know," he said to me. "I think Guitar Hero totally jumped the shark on Wednesday night. Did you see it was all over Gossip Girl ? That's when you know it's totally over."

"Yeah, um, I watch Gossip Girl ," he added, embarrassed.

Microsoft announced Thursday it has made plans to acquire MobiComp, a mobile-data company founded in 2000

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. MobiComp, which is based in Braga, Portugal, will become part of Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business division.

The acquisition will be used to bolster a number of services on the Windows Mobile smartphone platform as well as the Windows Live Web services division.

MobiComp has developed an array of products: MobileKeeper Backup

Over on Silicon Alley Insider this afternoon, there's a piece about RealNetworks' announcement Thursday that it plans to spin off its games unit.

According to a release from RealNetworks , the Seattle company has decided that its casual games unit would be best positioned as an independent company.

RealNetworks also said it will distribute the shares in the new outfit to its existing shareholders.

The company said that it might plan an IPO for the new unit, whose name is yet to be determined. If it chooses the IPO route, that would likely happen prior to spinning off the unit, RealNetworks said in its release, and up to 20 percent of the new company would be sold to the public.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I'll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South's most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I'm doing on Twitter .