For those people who have been wanting to jump into high definition video viewing on their fancy new HD televisions but didn't want to have to pick between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can pick up LG's new "Super Blu" (BH200).

It's a bit pricey at $999 but for those who want to jump in now but don't want to be the owner of Betamax v2, it's the first dual player of its kind.

LG also had a ton of really other cool things to show that I wish I could give them all adequate attention.  A wireless television set was one of the more interesting displays. With built in 802.11N, it can handle wireless high definition streams without a problem.

Garmin had several new GPS devices to show off.  For those who have been thinking of picking up geo caching or getting a GPS for their car but wanted to wait a little longer, you need wait no longer.

nuvi 880

The 880 adds speech recognition for navigation on the road. It makes use of MSN Direct services for getting the latest data from the net.

Thanks to its use of MSN Direct, it gains features such as traffic conditions, fuel prices, weather reports, movie listings, local events, news, and plan entire trips from your home computer and then upload.

The only down side is that MSN Direct costs $49.95 a year (or a one-time charge of $129.95). Users do get 3 months to try it out to see if it's worth it.

Users who just want the speech recognition but don't care about MSN Direct can get he Nuvi 850.

For more info, visit www.garmin.com

Intel had one of the most impressive displays at CES and one of the more impressive showcases was the myriad of real-world uses of the Intel Mobile Core Duo processor.

In one example, a eco-PC using it along with the 950gm Express chipset achieved an impressive PC experience while using less than 60 watts of power (i.e. less than a common light bulb).

In addition to being able to be used for eco-friendly PCs, they can be used in extremely small form factor PCs.

The PC that the Intel representative is showing is one from AOpen which you can find here.

 DeskScapes is a program that allows users to play animated wallpaper on their desktop. For the past year, it has been available exclusively for Windows Vista Ultimate users as way for users of Windows DreamScene to play dynamic animated wallpaper in addition to video content.

On January 16th, Stardock intends to make DeskScapes 2.0 available in beta form to users of Object Desktop. DeskScapes 2.0 will include dynamic animated wallpaper with the program and supports all versions of Windows Vista.

The final version of DeskScapes 2.0 will be made generally available in February.

To get Object Desktop visit www.objectdesktop.com

The Samsung booth has some really amazing video cameras coming out.  The one that really caught my eye -- the SC-HMX20C.  First, it's quite small. Far smaller than my current camcorder (it weighs less than 1 pound).  Secondly, it uses flash memory for storing video and will accept external flash memory modules.  And third, it records at 1080p. 

One advantage it has that other high-definition cameras do not have is that it records natively at 1920x1080 as opposed to a 4x3 ratio that is than extrapolated to 16x9 resulting in higher quality video.

A feature that video enthusiasts can appreciate is that it supports up to 300 frames per second allowing for very high speed recording. Imagine recording your kid's baseball swing in fluid slow motion.   It includes 8 gigs of flash memory.

The Samsung people tell me that it should be generally available in May 2008.

It took over 2 hours to get to CES today. The size of the show this year seems to, but doesn't necessarily, dwarf previous years.  So I just got to the show and have just finished visiting the Microsoft and LG booths. There's some really cool stuff being shown.

I'll write more about it when I get to the press room er I mean, blogger room. Incidentally, bloggers are definitely not treated at the same level as press (our badges are white, press is read).  Which is ironic since many if not most of the "press" people here work for places that have a trivial readership compared to what Neowin.net or WinCustomize can deliver. 

Of course, I feel dirty being labeled either since I'm a software developer too.

Once upon a time there was a collection of programs called Object Desktop. The most popular of these programs were WindowBlinds, IconPackager and DesktopX.

Millions of people around the world tried these programs and for the most part liked them. But users also often found it difficult to get a consistent look across their desktop since the different programs worked on different parts of the computer.

In time, a number of skinners helped popularize the concept of "Suites". A suite is a collection of skins, themes, and icons that when applied together create a single unified desktop experience.  However, as cool as suites were, it still required users to go out and find the various programs necessary to apply the suite.

Over the past few years, Stardock has worked hard to find ways to simplify the process of applying suites.  This past year, it devised a new product called MyColors.  The theme and the underlying technology would be one in the same. The suite would evolve into being called a MyColors theme. Users would search for MyColors themes instead of the software. MyColors would seamlessly include all the software needed.

Stardock Design

To sell themes to the mass market, Stardock would need to create a lot of themes. In the past, a handful of art houses like Pixtudio, Skins Factory, and SkinPlant had created a handful of themes.  To make the MyColors concept work, hundreds of high quality themes would need to be made. And so Stardock Design was created.

Stardock Design brought in, full-time most of the top talent from the major art shops that were devoted to skinning.  Alexandrie and Treetog now work full time at Stardock Design. So do both MikeB and Hippy. Stardock also brought in ChaNinja as a full time designer (ChaNinja was one of the top msstyles skinners).  Pixel Pirate, Danilo0c, and Essorant also joined up.  And Voo, well known for his icon creations in contract work with the art houses is now full time as well.

Stardock then licensed a number of properties from movie studios, sports teams, car companies, universities, etc.  Already the NBA, NHL, and NCAA teams are made with more coming on-line.

MyColors 2008

This month, Stardock will make available MyColors 2008.

This second-generation version is designed for the mass audience. MyColors 2008 is self-healing -- it automatically repairs itself if one of the components out of date or a problem in a theme is found or a bug in the underlying technology is found.

A number of major OEMs have already signed on to pre-load MyColors in the next year. In the future, users will be able to choose how they want their computers to look like.

Object Desktop 2008

MyColors will be made part of Object Desktop 2008. In this way, Stardock can provide those users premium themes during the course of the year and offer discounts on many others.

Moreover, MyColors allows users two very straight forward choices now:

The user can:

1. Pay $19.95 and have a branded theme with all the software they need for that particular theme. (i.e. they pay for the theme and the software is largely incidental)
   or
2. Get Object Desktop for $49.95 which provides the underlying software and can use the thousands of skins, themes, icons, etc. out there. (they pay for the software and the themes are largely incidental).

Below are some screen shots of what to expect and how it will work.

MyColors Theme Manager in action.

 
Quest MyColors Theme

Boston Celtics MyColors theme

 
Users can see Featured Themes right from MyColors Theme Manager

Great Britain. The United States. Canada. Italy. Belgium.

These are nation states. And their future is unclear. 

Nation states have historically provided 2 key benefits: The ability to pool resources for a common defense and a single market.

Globalization and the slow pacification of the modern states of the world are taking away much of that benefit.

For example, what exactly does Texas get out of being a state in the United States? What about British Columbia in Canada? What benefit to they get out of being part of Canada? What benefit does Scotland derive from being part of Great Britain?

I am not saying that these nation states are going to fall apart any time soon. But in the long-term, the forces keeping these states together is going to keep getting weaker until it's only inertia that doesn't split them apart.

At CES there are companies from all around the world. And the respect people have for intellectual property seems to depend on the culture. 

There's nothing quite like walking the show floor only to see your stuff on some computer's screen without permission.

The above photo doesn't really show it well but Chinese Computer Manufacturer "Lime Computer" was showing their full screen weather application on their PCs. It's cool but it's using Stardock's copyrighted weather images.

These images come from here: https://www.stardock.com/weather. It's a collection of weather icons that are very high quality. And they have a very generous license use. If you have a free program or website, you can use them provided that you display Stardock's copyrighted notice somewhere. For commercial use, a paid license is required typically.

By now you have probably heard that this year is the last year Bill Gates will be giving a keynote. He's going to devote his full time efforts to his foundation. You can see his awesome keynote (parts are hilarious) over at Neowin.net here.

The nice thing about trade shows is that they force companies to pick the things that really matter to show off.  Booth space is always at a premium and so only certain things can make the cut.

Based on what I saw at the Microsoft booth the key initiatives are:

1. Windows Live.
2. Games for Windows
3. Home Server
4. Media Center

Those weren't the only things they showed. But those things certainly got the lion's share of the attention.  For example, Office certainly was front and center and so were Windows Vista. But in terms of actual booth space, the focus was much more on Live.  Office Live Workspace went into beta and looks quite cool. Essentially, it will allow users of Microsoft Office to put their files on-line seamlessly and work more easily with others.

The November update to Live really does show that Microsoft has its act together. That said, if I were emperor of Microsoft I would be integrating Live into the desktop as opposed to trying to battle Google and Yahoo and others on the web.  Where is Windows Live Desktop? I don't want to use web pages for everything.

In terms of Windows Live, Microsoft showed off a new feature called Events. It's part of Live Spaces that is very similar to eVite but is integrated into the other Live services (like calendar and such).

It's a little bit clunky still but shows massive promise. 

Events on Live Spaces

Games for Windows was showing off a number of new games including Space Siege, a new game from Gas Powered Games. It looks pretty cool and is similar to Dungeon Siege in terms of game play. Microsoft also announced that Sins of a Solar Empire would be out in February at retail as part of the Games for Windows section. Picture Homeworld meets Civilization meets Total Annihilation for an idea of what it's like.

Microsoft also gave us a lot of NDA-based news regarding Media Center that I should be able to discuss tomorrow.

No big news on Windows Vista that I could see. No big previews or announcements on what the next version of Windows might have.  Windows Live seems to have a lot of the company's energy right now.