Here are our picks of the best products and services from the Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest show of its kind, which ended Sunday after a five-day run in Las Vegas. We cruised the show floor, press conferences, and parties and these were the most exciting offerings we found. Enjoy.
1. Que proReader, from Plastic Logic. This product -- an electronic book reader with a plastic display -- epitomizes what you can accomplish when you design a total solution. Plastic Logic did some fundamental work, starting a decade ago, on how to build a transistor on plastic. It raised $200 million and built its own factory to make lightweight displays that are less than a third of an inch thick. But the company also thought about targeting the business professional and exactly what that person would need, beyond the ability to read books.
The 8.5 inch x 11 inch product can display books, magazines, newspapers, Adobe PDFs, and Office documents. The display uses E-Ink to show books in black-and-white, but it also preserves the look and feel of magazines and newspapers. USA Today, for instance, shows up on demand every morning with its recognizable typeface. You can access your calendar, email or favorite documents from the well-organized Home page on the Que. The battery life can last for days. You can subscribe to numerous periodicals or buy books in the Barnes & Noble online store, where there are more than a million books to choose from. The Que is pricey at $649 for a 4-gigabyte model and $799 for a 8 gigabyte model with 3G connectivity. But we hope the price comes down in time. For now, no one else can match what the Que does. Watch out, Amazon.
2. AR.Drone quadricopter from Parrot.
It's mesmerizing to watch it float in the air. The drone comes with two augmented reality games that make use of the fact that it can detect other drones and track markers on the ground. You can fight a gigantic robot that appears on the screen of your iPhone and circle around it to avoid its shots. You can also duel with other drones using your virtual cannons and missiles. It will be available this year. Price is to be announced.
3. Clickfree for BlackBerry from Storage Appliance.
Backup, as an industry, has grown 400 percent in the last few years, but the vast majority of consumers still don't back up their data. With devices like this, now there is no excuse for failing to keep a copy of your important PowerPoint presentation or your precious family photos. Look for the product in April.
4. Intel Wireless Display from Intel, Toshiba and Netgear.
5. Skype video calls for flat-panel TVs.
6. Casio Digital Art Frame. The Japanese camera maker showed off a 10.1-inch digital picture frame that can take your family photos and turn them into works of art. In its quest to turn cameras and picture frames into creative digital imaging devices, Casio will let you transform photos into eight different artistic images. The conversion is automatic, but the results can be very cool. You can upload them to a social network via built-in wireless networking. You can alter faces and expressions. The art styles include: Water Color Painting, Color Pencil Sketch, Pastel Painting, Pointillism, Air Brush, Oil Painting, Gothic Oil Painting, and Fauvist Oil Painting. The frame uses Adobe’s Flash Lite playback technology, which lets users display preset Flash content, such as clocks and calendars. The screens have two gigabytes of memory, an SD memory card slot, stereo speakers and a power-saving display that turns on when you approach. It will be available in the spring.
8. Intelligent Loudness Control, from Motorola and Dolby. Dolby Laboratories. Hopefully, it will put an end to the accursed loud sound volume of TV commercials. Advertisers have been cranking up the volume of their commercials in a desperate attempt to get viewers' attention. The effect is jarring for viewers and ruins the attempts of parents trying to keep the noise down so they don't want to wake the kids. Motorola will use Dolby Volume technology in its cable set-top boxes for the North American and Latin American markets. You can expect to see this one spread if it really works.
9. Liquid Image Wide Angle Video Mask.
10. Sony Dash personal Internet viewer
The apps are what really make the Dash more useful and customizable than a typical picture frame. It's not the sort of device you take on the road, but it fits nicely in the living room. Sony plans to make the device available in April for $199.
Honorable mentions: Sony Bloggie, Samsung TicToc MP3 player, LG's 6.9-millimeter thick flat-panel TV, the Yogen cell phone charger, and the Jaybird Blue Buds ear phones. Anthony Ha contributed to this story.