Best of CES 2010

The Consumer Electronics Show was full of new and exciting products, from human-powered bicycle-iPhone-chargers to electric cars. Here are a few technologies that caught my eye:

e-READERS

No doubt that because of Kindle's success, the eReaders are getting a lot of attention this year: CES 2010 reserved a whole section on eReaders. For me, enTourage eDGe DualBook with dual screen  was the most impressive of all. Below is a demo video:

DualBook has an ePaper on one side (9.7'' display) and a tablet PC (10.1'' LCD display and 1GHz processor, running Android) on the other side. It also has Wi-Fi, a 1.3 megapixel camera, a microphone, and it supports writing on the ePaper display with a stylus. The device will be available for $490 in February 2010 through a wireless carrier - which they have not announced yet.

Another noteworthy eReader was Spring Design's Alex Barnes & Noble reader with Android and dual display.

DISPLAY TECHs

Panasonic Skype TV: Panasonic announced their collaboration with Skype to allow users to make Skype video calls directly from their TV. Below video shows how to place and receive video calls:

In order to use Skype you need to own a VieraCast supported Panasonic TV and a camera. VieraCast also allows users to connect to other web services such as Netflix, Youtube, Pandora, and Twitter.

Kodak Pulse Digital Frame: Kodak's new digital frame allows e-mailing pictures to the digital frame directly without paying for an intermediary service.

Handheld Projectors: Every year at the CES I am always amazed by the small handheld projectors. A video of Microvision's projector is here. It is the size of an iPhone and lasts about 2 hours on battery. 3M also has a similar projector that is equally impressive.

MOBILE PHONES

Motorola Backflip was one of the most interesting phones at CES 2010. Below is a video demo:

Other video demos include Blackberry Bold 9700, Blackberry Storm 9550, Blackberry Curve 8500, Nokia N900.

ROBOTS

There were two really cool robotics demos at the CES.

Parrot AR.Drone is a robot helicopter that is controlled by an iPhone. The killer app that they are thinking about: A virtual reality game for iPhone where the real helicopter will fight with the virtual objects on the screen.

Soccer playing robot from Kowatec Robotics:

CNET's Best of CES list can be found here, CrunchGear's here.

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