Update on 01.12.10 4:01pm: Video demo of Parrot’s ARDrone after the fold.

The big news at this year’s CES last week in Las Vegas were tablets and 3D TV.

Tablets have been one of the main topics of dialogue for the last few months, as Apple’s tablet has been gossiped about incessantly, really heating up around September and doing its best to outlive the Energizer Bunny.

At CES that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer . . . talked about tablets. As if there hadn’t been enough ‘just talk’ already. The consensus in the tech press is that Ballmer wasted an opportunity here, especially since the next big show is MacWorld 2010 in San Francisco next month.

3D TV is the technology that seems to only come out at CES. Last year this technology was the big story coming out the event — along with the Palm Pre, which has generally disappointed since. But this year we are ready for adoption — even if our wallets aren’t — especially after the mainstream success of Avatar and Up.

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Synaptics, probably best known for making laptop touchpads, is working in collaboration with TheAlloy, Immersion, TAT and Texas Instruments, has developed the Fuse, a phone that explores the possibilities of haptic (touch-based) mobile devices.

Instead of limiting input to the screen, as is the case with many of today’s touchscreen phones, Fuse extends the areas of the phone that can be used for inputting information. In addition to the standard touchscreen, input can also be made by squeezing the phone’s sides as well as by 2D input at the phone’s back.

The goal of the phone is to make single-hand usage better.

(video after the jump)

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Outside of Windows 7 going beta, by far the biggest attention getter at CES in Las Vegas has been the Palm Pre, the smartphone that many in the media are saying will save the struggling company. Gizmodo calls it “maybe the most important handset to be announced in two years.” Ubergizmo has a great review of the Palm Pre.

Speaking of phones, the LG Watch Phone also got a lot of buzz and raised the level of Dick Tracy references to a height not seen in decades. “Our new 3G Touch Watch Phone is stylish, sophisticated and the height of technology, but it’s also undeniably fun. How else can you reenact those scenes from your favorite sci-fi or spy movie?” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.

Something else getting considerable attention is wireless USB. Wireless USB works at up to ten meters’ distance, and it looks like a lot of vendors will be using it soon in notebooks, hubs, and phones.

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Microsoft got two new boosts to its Live Search service this week from Verizon and Dell this week. Steven Ballmer, the company’s chief executive, made the announcement Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The news spans from mobile phone search to personal computer search and a software suite currently in beta.

Verizon has confirmed a five-year deal in which Live Search will become the default search service on mobile phones and smartphones using the Verizon network. Customers will still be able to use Google or other search engine services through the mobile browser, but the default search gives Microsoft the position for a vast majority of user searches. The New York Times blog does not offer specific terms for the deal, but their anonymous source claims that Verizon will be paid over five hundred million dollars over the duration.

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Three years already that the U.S. team of Atelier is attending the Consumer Electronic Show held in Las Vegas. Life is tough! But we aren’t here for fun - because we do not see the day light very often here - but to cover this annual trade show (aka. CES for the insiders), the great mess of the electronics industry which has being held for over 30 years in the sin city.

This was Bill Gates who was until now addressing the opening session. This year, it will still be Microsoft, but it will be Steve Ballmer’s turn to take Gates’s place. At least he’s a real speaker. As we say, this is a page that is being turned. We will follow this course for you and keep you updated. Despite a background of crisis, a rich program is waiting for us: the Presidents and CEOs of Ford, Sony, Intel and Cisco will set the tone for the year. It is being said that it will be very, very green-oriented and also low cost. We will tell you all about that. So stay tune.

Original post here. [credit photo: L'Atelier BNP Paribas]

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com and Internet folk hero, was Marketing World 2008’s Thursday keynote speaker. Hsieh became Zappos’ CEO in 2000, a year after the company’s founding. In that time, the online shoe retailer’s gross merchandise sales have grown from $1.6 million in 2000 to $840 million in 2007.

Zappos is known for its commitment to customer service, sometimes to the point of legend. In his keynote Hsieh emphasized the importance of a company’s culture and customer service in building brand. Hsieh’s four keys to this (and his accompanying quotes) are:

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Widgets or gadgets, as they have come to be known for PCs, have become an easy and quick way for Web sites to attract traffic, but their rise has been accompanied with a new form of Internet spyware. Malicious widgets capitalize on the user’s assumption that all Google widgets are moderated, and some argue they are not. At the Black Hat Hacker conference in Las Vegas, consultants from SecTheory and Cenzic security companies demonstrated how a simple looking gadget could access personal information through an Internet web browser. Sites that encourage users to jazz up their pages appear to be the prime targets for such malicious gadgets.

But it doesn’t stop there. SecTheory and Cenzic believe that there are malicious widgets that steal information from other non-malicious widgets. Google discounts the SecTheory and Cenzic criticism. In a statement, Google retorts that the gadgets they distribute are regulated, and malicious gadgets are rarely found. When they are, the malicious widget is immediately blacklisted.

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Monday was the official kick off of the 2008 Consumer Electronic Show held in Las Vegas, at the Las Vegas Convention Center/Hilton Hotel and the Sands/ The Venetian. Atelier is in the city of sins to cover this 4-days international tradeshow for you.

1. The International CES is the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow.
2. Exhibit space for CES covers more than 1.7 million net square feet of space – equivalent to 35 football fields.
3. It would take 2.5 years to meet individually with each of CES’ 2,700 exhibitors outside of the show.
4. CES is the global meeting place for top international government officials and technology executives from 140 countries, representing nearly 75% of all United Nations member states.
5. There are 25,000 international attendees – 10 times the number of athletes who competed in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games
6. The number of slot machines in Las Vegas’ Clark County is equal to the number of CES attendees - more than 140,000.
7. 12,000 content and entertainment executives come to the show, which is more than two years worth of feature film releases in theaters worldwide
8. CESweb.org gets an average of 100,000 visitors per day during the week of CES – three times the population of Monaco.
9. 32,320 hamburgers were consumed at the 2007 International CES, enough to feed one person a burger a day for more than 88 year.
10. The average U.S. household has 25 consumer electronic products in it and U.S. consumer electronics sales should exceed $160 billion in 2007.

President and CEO of Consumer Electronic Association (credits: Atelier)

Keynotes are held in a gigantic ballroom at The Venetian.
Sunday, January 6 - For the pre-show keynote, the CES welcomed the Chairman of Microsoft Corp. Bill Gates, like for the past eleven years. Yesterday’s speakers were the President of Panasonic Mr. Toshihiro Sakamoto, and CEO of Intel Corp. Mr. Paul Otellini. And today’s industry leaders sharing their insight and vision first-hand will be the Chairman and CEO of Comcast Corp Mr. Brian Roberts, and Chairman and CEO of General Motors Corp. Mr. Rick Wagoner.

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The 2007 CES in Las Vegas will turn out to be a great one for digital television. How will we watch television in the future, on what equipment, and where - these questions were at the centre of the debate. All the major operators have taken up their positions on this subject: the mobile phone manufacturers, who all made their own announcements and presented their products, the TV manufacturers, who have declared war over the biggest flat screen, and the big software designers such as Microsoft, which is launching Vista and, most importantly, its home Media Server… and, echoing this theme, Apple’s response straight from the San Francisco MacWorld Expo with the launch of Apple TV.

However, there was one original newcomer that caught everyone’s attention this year. And it could well revolutionise our way of watching TV. SlingMedia, a company set up in 2004 in Silicon Valley, is launching the new version of SlingBox.

The principle behind SlingBox is so simple. You connect it to your TV reception system, whatever that may be: conventional aerial, cable, TiVo…. and of course to your DVD player. You also connect it to the Internet and then you can access your content from anywhere in the world, from any computer and from most mobile phones…

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On January 9th at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Michael Dell (Chairman and founder of the company that bears his name) and John Chambers (since 1995 CEO of Cisco, the world leader in telecommunications equipment), shared their vision of the future and their short- and medium-term strategy. Two visions inspired by consumer experience, totally in line with present trends, and above all, with strategies putting the network at the forefront of tomorrow’s communication and entertainment.

A real American-style show for Michael Dell: his presentation very quickly emphasised the obvious backwardness of the USA in so far as “real broadband” is concerned: optic fibre in every household. Michael Dell addressed US equipment manufacturers and Internet providers, urging them to move forward faster in their efforts. In a world of global competition, American children must have the same opportunities for access as children across the world…

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