ces 2010

LAS VEGAS--Mere hours after LG announced the Lotus Elite, we headed over to the company's booth to get a closer look at the touch-screen successor to the LG Lotus. The Lotus Elite is indeed much curvier and sleeker than the original. Measuring 3.43 inches wide by 2.44 inches long by about three-quarters of an inch thick, it still has that square-ish design and is quite lightweight at less than half an ounce as well.

The most interesting part of the new design is, of course, the new external touch screen. It is 2.4 inches diagonally, which … Read more

LAS VEGAS--As Day 1 of CES 2010 comes to a close, Intel CEO Paul Otellini will be giving a speech beginning at 4:30 p.m. PST.

We'll be posting frequent updates here. People are still filing into the Las Vegas Hilton, but we should be getting started momentarily.

Update 4:45 p.m.: Otellini kicks off the speech by talking about Moore's Law. Today, he says Intel has the first shipping 32-nanometer microprocessor, and he's going to talk about "the evolution of personal computing."

Update 4:55 p.m.: First up, the home. High … Read more

LAS VEGAS--LED and 3D are the (not so) new hotness this year at CES, and Samsung is seemingly leading the charge with their newly announced monitors, HDTVs, and now digital projectors.

On Thursday, Samsung announced the launch of what it claims is the first LED data projector with 1,000 ANSI lumens, the F10M. The projector includes a LED light source that eliminates the need to replace a lamp. According to Samsung, the light source will last 30,000 hours and that the LED light source maintains its brightness over the entire life of the projector.

From an environmental standpoint, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--It's almost old news now when a vendor introduces a new digital media player. Western Digital has the WD TV Live, Seagate has its FreeAgent Threater+, and LaCie has the LaCinema Mini HD. Many other vendors have a players, too. However, what QNAP showed off at CES 2010 still strikes us as completely new.

The company demoed the NMP1000 Network Multimedia player Thursday, and from what I saw, it is by far the most comprehensive and complete multimedia player yet.

The device is a marriage of a NAS server and a digital media player. That said, it has … Read more

Update: CNET video added.

Outside of its Mobile Digital TV trial and the pledge to recycle one million phones in 2010, Samsung didn't have a lot to offer at CES. The company didn't announce any new phones, but it did offer a couple of handsets that debuted late last year. We got our first look at the company's W9600, which offers a pico projector for your viewing pleasure, and the bling-worthy Samsung Diva. Check them out in the accompanying slideshow, and be sure to watch Tom Merritt's W9600 video first look.

LAS VEGAS--Here's a cool idea that was demonstrated at the OLED Association booth at Digital Experience event, a pre-CES event. This Samsung innovation weds the ultraslim property of OLED panels with contactless RFID technology for security applications. The result: a photo card with a screen that's also wafer-thin. In this case, the panel is displaying a rotating image of the person, which is automatically generated once the card is scanned over a sensor, presumably for identification purposes.

According to the OA's spokesperson, this solution is a finished product and all ready to go to market. One of … Read more

RealD, a company whose 3D display technology already is widely used in movie theaters, has enlisted a raft of prominent partners for the TV industry: Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, JVC, Samsung, and DirecTV.

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, RealD announced deals that will bring its technology to Samsung products, Toshiba's ZX900 TV, Panasonic's Full HD 3D Viera TVs, Sony's Bravia HDTVs, and LCD monitors from JVC.

Beverly Hills, Calif.-based RealD also announced it's cooperating with those same companies for 3D eyewear.

Being able to display the 3D imagery is one part … Read more

Our problem with Wilson Electronics' cell phone signal boosters has never been their performance--they actually work quite well--but rather with their complicated and clunky setup. Though the company's Mobile Professional Amplifier Kit from 2008 was relatively compact, we're more used to products like the Wireless Amplifier Cradle Kit that involve a few parts.

Luckily, Wilson continues to evolve. At CES, the company showed its new Sleek Cell Phone Signal Booster that offers a compact, easy-to-use design for in-car use. It consists only of a small cradle with adjustable arms, a power adapter for your car's cigarette lighter, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--After the launch of the Apple Magic Mouse in 2009, we knew it was only a matter of time before Windows users demanded their own touch-sensitive mouse. Mad Catz delivers just that with its stylish new Eclipse touchmouse, a Bluetooth-enabled pointer that actively responds to a series of gestures on an integrated trackpad.

We hate to do it, but aesthetic comparisons must be made with the Magic Mouse. Just as the Motorola Droid departs from the iPhone silhouette, so does the Mad Catz touchmouse. Instead of a milky-white finish, Mad Catz went with a brushed aluminum exterior and positions your hand at sloping angle to promote streamlined ergonomics. It operates on a single AA battery and connects to a host computer via Bluetooth for wireless access.

However, unlike the Magic Mouse, the mouse only responds to gestures made on the small rectangular touchpad on the top of the device. Swiping your finger across the top of this pad enables four-way on-screen scrolling for intuitive navigation forward and backward across Web pages.

The $60 mouse currently works with Windows 7, Vista, and XP. More images of the Mad Catz Eclipse touchmouse after the jump.… Read more