SONY is betting big on Web gadgets.

At last week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) - the mother of all gadget shows - Sony chief executive Sir Howard Stringer promised that 90per cent of all its gadgets - including TVs, cameras, video players and even clock radios - would be able to go online by 2011.

The TV and PC have come full circle, we say, and CES was where geekdom went agog over such changes - and 20,000 gizmos.

From a bedside wake-up light from Royal Philips to not-quite-there wearable digital cameras (they look like weird helmets), the world's biggest names from Acer to Sony were in Las Vegas to stake their claim on the newest and best in tech toys.

The two hottest wars were fought by the makers of e-readers and 3-D TVs for home entertainment (see pages 8 and 9).

Then, there were wireless smarts for cars and green gear.

And what is show business without the show?

For star power, Polaroid trotted out Lady Gaga as its creative director, while at Sony's press event, country crooner Taylor Swift was shown in 3-D on a screen behind her while she performed.

Digital Life rounds up the best offerings from the show.

Connected cars

In just five years, you could have cars that do not just go honk-honk, but tweet-tweet as well - Twitter tweets, that is.

Wi-Fi on wheels was a big thing at the show and automobile makers trumpeted vehicles with broadband on board, allowing you to browse the Web and send chat messages from the driver's seat - on top of giving voice-based GPS directions and weather and traffic data.

Ford Motor said it would add Twitter messages (the car will be able to read posts aloud) and Internet radio to its in-car entertainment and communication service, known as Sync.

Because it is voice-activated, Sync promises to be safer than using the cellphone in the car.

The aim is to get social networking and Web browsing tools in 80 per cent of its models by 2015.

Kia, South Korea's oldest car company, has its Uvo (shortened from 'your voice') system.

Based on Microsoft's existing speech know-how and an embedded version of Windows, it lets motorists make and answer phone calls, respond to text messages and play music by voice. Want to know which track is on? Just ask Uvo, 'What's playing?'

Alcatel-Lucent modified a Toyota Prius with big data pipes for its long-term evolution (LTE) or 4G wireless brains.

The company said its 4G is five times faster than 3G, with data zipping at almost 15Mbps.

Few surprises why in-vehicle know-how was big at the show: the space grew to US$11.7 billion

(S$16.3 billion) last year over 2008 - a 10 per cent increase, said the Consumer Electronics Association. Sales of portable navigation products, like GPS systems, jumped from US$2.4 billion to US$3.8 billion in that period.

3-D goggle panels

Let the eyes pop as 3-D visuals hit the television set in your living room.

The big four TV boys - Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic - jockeyed for media eyes on their 3-D-compatible high-definition TVs.

Samsung wowed with its super thin (1cm) 9000 series LCD displays with an engine that converts 2-D programmes to 3-D. Sizes will stretch from 19-inch to 65-inch models.

It was beauty and brains in one package, and even Dreamworks Animation's chief executive officer Jeffrey Katzenberg could not keep his eyes off them.

Like Samsung, Sony had Oled brains - the smarts that allow thin displays, bright colours and rich blacks - in its 3-D TV prototypes.

Panasonic announced a spring release date of its TC-PVT25 series, which will sell with a pair of 3-D glasses.

The impetus for 3-D TV stems from two changes.

The first: Hollywood is driving the buzz with a string of 3-D programmes and movies. Up and Avatar were some of the latest sensations.

Also, TV makers need to whip up excitement, now that the hype from HDTV has simmered down.

Smartphones

Smartphones garnered the most attention at the show. As its name suggests, the Motorola Backflip flips open like a clamshell with a backflip. Set to ship globally this quarter, it runs on the Android 1.5 OS. For wireless agility, there is 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. There is a trackpad for scrolling, a 5-megapixel camera and 2GB internal memory (expandable up to 32GB). Put it on the table to watch video clips hands-free. A backpad behind the screen means no fingerprint smudges.

Small and steady wins the race? That seems to be message from Palm: its Pre Plus shows small soup-ups over the Pre.

Memory has been doubled to 16GB and the Qwerty keypad is said to be more tactile. An application called Palm Mobile Hotspot allows up to five devices to tether to the phone. So the smartphone becomes a modem for, say, a laptop via Wi-Fi for 3G Internet access. Other than that, it is still a touchscreen with a slide-out Qwerty keypad.

The Pixi Plus is Palm's thinnest phone ever and now has Wi-Fi power too. Both phones use Palm's induction smarts (coils in the docking station) so that you simply 'slap' the back of the gizmos on the dock to charge; no wires needed.

Google gatecrashed the show by launching its Nexus One phone a day before CES and introduced a new way to sell phones - only online. Technically, it was the US launch of the phone but Google also took orders from Singapore, Hong Kong and Britain.

The Android 2.1 OS phone runs multiple apps in the background at the same time and synchs e-mail, contacts and calendars over the air with Google's servers through Wi-Fi and 3G.

How it got so big

THE first Consumer Electronics Show took place in New York City in 1967 with 200 exhibitors and 17,500 visitors. Since then, it has grown more than 10-fold.

Run by trade body Consumer Electronics Association, CES is the watershed show for every breaking technology. Game changers make their global debuts here.

These include videocassette recorders in 1970, camcorders in 1981, plasma TVs in 2001 and Oled TVs in 2008.

Vying for attention at this year's CES were 2,500 exhibitors showing 20,000 gizmos across 38 product categories from audio software to wireless smarts and home appliances and robotics in between. The number of first-time exhibitors alone hit 330.

Some 110,000 people attended this year's show (picture at top, with reflections of visitors on the mirrored ceiling), made up of the likes of broadband developers, financial analysts and government buyers.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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