As you can image, we are prone to hearing about ever single new home media networking hard drive and back-up solution that is released onto the market. But what I saw at Iomega really impressed me (and Doug). The new Home Media Network Hard Drive provides a super easy-to-use network storage for your home. To get going all you need to do is plug in the devise to a power adaptor and a ethernet cord (which should be connected to your router). You then go through a very basic install wizard on your computer and you can begin playing back your pictures, videos and music from almost any other device, including game consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3), digital picture frames or networked TVs. There is also a USB slot on the back so you can share a printer over your home network as well. Plus, the unit backups your computer (PC or Mac) automatically — it can even be synced with two computers. Seriously, this could not get any easier. They plan to add a bunch of features in the coming months such as remote access over the net. It is available now in 500GB ($179) and 1TB ($249) options.

At CES 2009 I had the opportunity to sit down in a roundtable discussion with three of the leading Samsung execs from the Digital Media Business. Mr. Sang-heung Shin, Dr. Dongho Shin, Mr. Kyung-shik Lee fielded questions from the press around Samsung’s HDTV strategy, their entry into LED TV, ambitions with Blu-ray, and the future more »

If the Powermat wireless charging system lives up to its claims, Powermat is going to be huge. The idea is simple, just place a device like a phone on a Powermat and your phone is charged. There is no need for lots of wires or numerous power adapters; you just need a mat and a device. We’ve got a huge photo gallery on this one.

The walk through of the product was fantastic. Powermat had actual working versions of their product. The first thing to see was the iPhone in a sleek case atop a white mat.

At Casio’s press conference, founder Kazuo Kashio wowed us with the company’s latest development in portable video — Dynamic Photo. Dynamic Photo is similar to a feature in Apple’s Photo Booth you may be familiar with. First, you capture a video of someone using one of their new point and shoot cameras, then you take a picture of the background without them in the frame, let the camera do some processing, and whala — you can make the background disappear. The technology finds the difference between the frames in the video and the picture you took, and creates a “cut-out” of the person, so you can place them on top of any other picture. This is similar to the technology Hollywood uses with green screens, however sans the green screen. Check out the video demonstrations and let us know what you think.

Dynamic Photo will be available in many of the company’s new products, including the new EX-FC100.

At yesterday’s LG press conference, the company announced plans to launch their touch-screen Watch Phone later this year. Today, we got to take a closer look, and are liking what we saw. We do however have a few concerns about the performance of the device.

Do you need to hold the watch up to your face to talk on the phone?

Apparently not. The company claims if you hold your arm down at your side, the microphone will pick it up, and you will be able to hear the person on the other end. I am very skeptical of this, but until I try it, I’ll cautiously take their word for it.

Is a watch really supposed to replace your mobile phone?

I suppose the answer to this one is yes since the device is a full-featured phone. It seems a little silly to me to do everything on a screen as small as a watch, but if they can make the experience usable, then it does have possibilities.

If you’ve been rooting for Palm, they’ve finally delivered with the Palm Pre. Designed not only to compete in today’s crowded smartphone market, but Palm has done what so many of us hoped: go beyond what is out there today. The Palm Pre, for me, brings back the wonderlust of the first Handspring Treo and opens a path around the iPhone I was starting to believe didn’t exist. Palm is back, here is why:

Far too often, large consumer electronics manufacturers have so many different divisions, and engineers working on so many products, that there is a different user interface on each product line. Samsung has finally snapped out of it and realized people want easy to use, familiar menus and firmware on their devices. No matter if you’re playing with your new camera or your new HDTV, you should be able to easily figure out how to do what you want to without reading an instruction manual or calling customer service.

Toshiba has finally made good use of the cell processor — one of the most powerful chipsets (you may know it from the Sony PlayStation 3 processor). This will bring some amazing features into your home such as simultaneous HD viewing (up to 4 channels at once), unbelievable user interfaces, and super smart video adaption technology at speeds 3x faster than today’s tv’s (helping it respond to fast action, bright scenes, etc without any lag time – resulting in significantly better overall quality).

We have begun to prep for the Steve Ballmer press conference. This is going to be interesting since Bill Gates has given the CES opening keynote for over 10 years – check out last year’s live blog here. We have seen Steve going absolutely crazy in the past: screaming, yelling, and sweating beyond control. More more »

Click for a larger image. As they announced and showed at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, the new LG Watch Phone will be released later in 2009. FROM OUR LG PRESS CONFERENCE LIVE-BLOG: Prototype Watch Phone: touch screen tempered glass face, 2 hours talk time, 61x39x13.9mm, 84g, bluetooth, 3 keys. Paik has one that is more »