You’ll be hearing me talk a lot about CES for the rest of this week, at least. I guess I just visited too many booths while I was in Vegas. One of them was Westinghouse Digital, whose booth was so fine it was in another location entirely. Yeah, they had to have a car come pick me up, and the Stirling Club was the ideal place to view of TX and SK series of televisions.

The TX Series are a series of 1080p LCD HDTVs with a 120Hz refresh rate. For those who don’t know what a 120Hz refresh rate is, it is a way of showing fluid motion not seen on 60Hz. Westinghouse Digital had a side-by-side demonstration, and now that I’ve seen motion of the 120Hz, I don’t want to go back. The TX Series include the 37 inch TX-37F510Z, the 42 inch TX-42F970Z, and the 55 inch TX-55F350Z.

As for the SK-Series, it appears the Westinghouse Digital intends these 720p models to create a “comfort zone” with many HDMI inputs and DayBright panel technology for daytime or nighttime viewing. These models include the 26 inch SK-26H630S and SK-26H735S, the 32 inch SK-32H635S and 32-32H820S, and the 37 inch SK-37H730S.

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Less than six weeks. That’s all that’s remaining until broadcast analog TVs all over the country go noisy if they haven’t already received their AD converter boxes. It’s not like there hasn’t been warning, or even billions in aid to help those who can’t afford to pay for the new boxes – which aren’t even that expensive to begin with. But President-Elect Barack Obama thinks the timing is all wrong and is asking Congress to delay the big handover.

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I couldn’t stand reading the article one year ago when we reported that The Sharper Image filed for bankruptcy. For years, The Sharper Image had been a beacon of inspiration to technology enthusiasts everywhere.

Fortunately, the company has signed a licensing contract with another company called HoMedics. So now Sharper Image Products, or SI Products, lives once more. In fact, The Sharper Image had a lot to display at its booth at CES 2009 with twenty-four new products.

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Steve Ballmer began his first keynote with a brief look back of the 15 previous during the Gates’ era. He then paid tribute to Gates work in Africa. Then, looking ahead, Ballmer acknowledged that in the short term, the economy is going through what he considers to be merely a speed bump on the road to technological advancement. Tech marches on and it’s drumbeat is convergence. Ballmer said that Microsoft is committing a considerable amount of treasure to research and development to what he considers are three main areas: 1) the Convergence of the PC, phone, and TV; 2) How we compute through new interfaces that will augment the traditional keyboard – being voice and gesture recognition; and 3) moving our lives from the hard drive to the cloud. The future will meld these three and we’ll be even more connected online and we’ll be all the richer for it.

To that end, Windows will become the hub, the lynchpin to what Ballmer refers to as everyone’s “personal solar system.” And it will transform that system from a PC OS to connected environment. To that end, Windows 7 has become streamlined with faster boot times, less alerts, and a modular design which will bring more features as they mature and become available. It’s quite the departure from the “all up” variants which became larger and slower and more security prone. But Windows 7 changes all that with the basic , stable and secure OS that Microsoft can build upon. And everyone can play with it now as Microsoft will release the beta version beginning Friday. Then, users who need options, like email, video editing, and instant messaging, can download Windows Live! Essentials and begin their connection to the cloud. Part of the Windows 7 advantage is that home networking has become easier and more connected with other PCs, Media Players, and even game consoles. There’s even what Microsoft promises to be – seamless integration to phones using an improved Windows Mobile.

Lastly, Microsoft announces two near Halo games coming this year and the new Xbox experience which will have custom avatars, “primetime custom programming,” and Netflix movie downloads. But the most fun could be “KODU,” an application that will let users, and especially kids, make their own social video games! Then there’s a new tablet PC turned into a collaborative digital text book for students, Microsoft Surface, of course with flexible 3D color display and interactivity.

I dunno. By comparison to the Schiller MacWorld keynote we see what we always see between these two platforms. Both competing, but on different roads as they face a future without their founding fathers (although Jobs is still in the Apple captain’s chair for the moment).

The short term may be a bit rocky, but the road to Redmond looks pretty smooth.

Hat Tip – CoverItLive! Photo Credit – The Gray Old Lady

HP has expanded it’s Planet Partners Recycling program and added a buyback element to it. The new program dubbed the HP Consumer Buyback and Planet Partners Recycling Program, will buy back any brand of PC, monitor, printer, digital camera, or which still has some sort of value, rather than simply recycle the e-waste it receives. And it’s a lot. To date, HP has recycled close to one billion pounds of computer waste and hopes that the new buy back program will double that figure by 2010. Here’s how it works.

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The speculation that Steve Jobs skipped the last Apple keynote may actually be due to the fact that it was so uninteresting that it wasn’t worthy of his dramatic presentation skills. In the end, the final Apple keynote at MacWorld was about as uninteresting as the next step products Phil Schiller was tasked to “schill.” From the next iLife `09 update to yet another $2700 17” MacBook, there really wasn’t anything introduced that made live blog comments go beyond “this is disappointing,” “boring,” and “what a let down.” No dual port Mac Mini, no iPhone Nano, no Cloud, not even the Beatles catalog on iTunes. But there is some highlights in all the gloom –

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With rumors running rampant about Steve Jobs’ health over the last few months, including that he was either dead or at death’s door, and with the announcement that he was not going to be giving Apple’s last keynote address at MacWorld, the Cupertino Guru decided it was time to quell the scuttlebutt and explain his health condition which prompted his recent rapid weight loss. According to Jobs, a strange hormonal imbalance has cause his Holocaust survivor like appearance and his decision to pull out of the MacWorld keynote was more to spend the holidays with his family rather than preparing for the last great Apple Keynote (you may remember Apple announcing they will not longer participate in MacWorld Expo after 2009). Anyone buying it? I mean, seriously.

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The day the 30GB Zune stood still – news reports of this particular Zune model just freezing up has spread far and wide across the Internet, and it shows no sign of stopping, regardless of where you are in the world. It seems as though some sort of unidentified bug has simultaneously attacked this portable media player with no particular reason, preventing them from booting up and freezing halfway in the process. While this isn’t as serious compared to a situation where its supposed rival (”supposed” is used since the Zune never came near that category after its launch, with the iPod pulling way ahead to leave the Zune biting its dust) breaks down in a similar manner, it is still groundbreaking news as it involves Microsoft of all people.

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