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CES: www.cesweb.org

Yahoo Podcasts: http://tinyurl.com/8rnh8

CNet: http://tinyurl.com/8xhfb

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4594290.stm

More than 130,000 people flocked to Las Vegas last week to get a glimpse of the future at the annual Consumer Electronics Show and as usual there was a fascinating glimpse of the amazing and the dubious.

If you want to get a full rundown on the hottest gadgets at CES, log on to the official site at cesweb.org. You can also download podcasts from there or Yahoo's special CES page, with topics ranging from the Digital Home of the Future to Market Opportunities For Personal Robotics.

One of the big announcements at CES was that Google is to sell video online (video.google.com), much like Apple’s iTunes video store.

Google has been offering video for free since last year but this is the first time it will enable its users to pay for premium content.Some 3,000 items will be available to rent or download and watch in Google's new desktop video player and Google has done a deal with CBS to offer $1.99 episodes of blockbuster shows like CSI and Survivor as well as archive shows like I Love Lucy and Star Trek, although these will initially only be available in the U.S. due to international copyright issues. The video will be available to download for Windows or Mac, as well as for the Sony PlayStation Portable and Apple iPod.

Tech site CNet (cnet.com) has an excellent rundown of the best gadgets in the show.

Their editor’s choice was Creative’s new “iPod killer”, the US$330, 30GB Zen Vision:M which includes video player, FM radio and voice recorder. CNet readers, however, voted for the Pioneer Inno — a standalone player/recorder for XM Satellite Radio which can record up to 50 hours of programming and also doubles as an MP3 player.

Among the other new gadgets that caught my eye from this week’s online coverage:

Star turn: If you’ve ever stood outside on a starry night and wondered what the heck was up there, then the Celestron SkyScout (pictured) is a cool tool. This nifty GPS handheld unit uses your earthly co-ordinates to literally tell you what stars and planets you’re looking at.

Available in March for US$399.

Phone features: Among the new phone stars at CES were the new Treo 700w — Palm’s first Windows Mobile device and first handheld using Verizon’s high-speed EV-DO network; and the Motorola Rokr E2 (available mid-2006) which ditches iTunes in favour of iRadio Music Service, but now features a bigger screen, built-in FM radio, video camera and Bluetooth capability.

And talking of Bluetooth, LG ‘s Style-i was one of the most unusual Bluetooth phone accessories on show. The pen-size device is a sort of second handset and features a display, headphone jack and eight hours of talk time.

Mediaplayer

Lounge link: D-Link won some rave reviews for its new MediaLounge Wireless Media Player with DVD and Flash Card Reader.

It connects to your TV, stereo, and other such equipment and hooks up to your home network either wirelessly or via Ethernet, letting you organize and stream movies, MP3s, video CDs, and photos from your PC.

Faster readers

Books are from dead in the digital age. BookDrive, a new automated book scanner from ATIZ Innovation, a company formed by former Apprentice TV candidate Nick Warnock, literally turns pages of an entire book and scans them.

The $35,000 machine will copy 248 colour pages an hour or 500 an hour in black and white.

Meanwhile, the new Sony eBook Reader is a handheld device that uses electronic paper technology called E Ink, which mimics an actual page of a book.

The Reader holds up to 80 e-books or you can store extra books on Memory Stick or SD Card.

The Reader can also hold PDFs, JPEGs, personal documents, blogs, and newsfeeds, and it even plays audio files.

WebWiseWords

“I think that what most people want from the next Windows isn’t more stuff added, but rather stuff to be taken away — like crashes, lockups, viruses, error messages and security holes” — New York Times tech writer David Pogue is less than enthused about the latest bells and whistles of Windows Vista, unveiled at CES last week.

NetShopper

Toronto for Can$328? Air Canada's seat sale ends on January 18 at ww.aircanada.com

Spotted a great or bizarre web deal you want to share? E-mail me at [email protected]

Caught In The Web is not responsible for the content of sites listed. Chris Gibbons can be reached at [email protected]. Read this and recent columns at http://caughtintheweb.typepad.com[[In-content Ad]]

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