By Andrew Liszewski

While they had little to no information about the phone itself, the good people at Texas Instruments were showing off this unnamed Samsung phone (I believe the model # 9600 was thrown around?) since it features a built-in DLP-based projector. While it’s not as thin as the Nexus One or the iPhone, it’s still remarkably compact given there’s a projector crammed inside! And a decent one at that!

Now a crumpled piece of copier paper isn’t the most ideal thing to use as a projection screen, but to be honest it’s pretty close to real world conditions. I mean if I was at my desk and wanted to show someone something via the projector, it’s probably the first thing I would reach for. And the projected image was suitably bright with decent contrast, so we’re definitely getting there!

By Andrew Liszewski

We’ll have more hands-on coverage later in the week, but tonight I managed to get a first glimpse at Qualcomm’s Mirasol display technology, and rest assured, e-book readers are in for a vast improvement. Imagine the extreme readability and battery life of an e-ink display, but with vibrant color and refresh rates fast enough to permit video playback. That’s basically what the Mirasol technology is promising, and based on the demo device they were showing, it will be pretty amazing.

The technology itself is based on a reflective technology called IMOD, or Interferometric MODulation, and according to Qualcomm it was developed with inspiration from nature, specifically the iridescent and shimmering wings of a butterfly. But thankfully mother nature never patented the idea, allowing Qualcomm to adapt it for consumer use, which is great for us.

More to come…

[ Qualcomm Mirasol Display Technology ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The group behind the OLED display technology was showing off this pretty neat concept laptop that features a see-through AMOLED display. Right now it seems like a solution looking for a problem, but anyone who’s ever had to look around their laptop screen in order to see their TV will immediately see the benefits. The display has a resolution of just 960×540, and is about 38% transparent, but it’s also 10bit which makes the colors really vibrant. Now I can’t say I’d run out and buy one right now, but the idea would be a lot more practical if and when they added an option to switch the transparency on and off as needed.

By Chris Scott Barr

Back in November of last year we saw that GM was working on a mobile app that would talk to your Chevy Volt. While interesting, the app had limited functionality and wasn’t all that exciting. Well GM teamed up with OnStar here at CES to show us just how much has changed in the last couple of months.

With an actual Chevy Volt in the room, the two teamed up to demonstrate the various functions that would be at your fingertips. The app was able to not only tell us how much of a charge the car has and various statistics about recent mileage, but it gives you remote access to a variety of the car’s functions.

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By Andrew Liszewski

In David’s “What’s Buzzin’?” post about this year’s CES he mentioned 3 early trends we’ve seen including 3D TVs, media players and ebook readers. And this afternoon Samsung delivered on all 3 fronts. In addition to a slew of 3D LED TVs and a new PMP with a see-through AMOLED display, the company also announced their E6 and E101 E-Books. They come in 6-inch and 10-inch screen sizes (you guess which model # is which) and feature 802.11b/g wireless connectivity as well as Bluetooth for downloading content directly to the device.

And in addition to a clever sliding mechanism which hides a set of hardware navigation buttons and speakers, you might also have noticed that the E6 pictured above doesn’t feature hard or soft keyboards like the Kindle or Nook. That’s because it’s got a touch screen with built-in handwriting recognition.

Unlike other e-book devices, Samsung’s E6 and E101 enables handwriting directly onto the display, allowing users to annotate their reading selections, calendars and to-do lists with a built-in electromagnetic resonance (EMR) stylus pen. This dedicated pen prevents mistypes caused by hands and other objects that may graze the screen’s surface. A variety of pen and eraser thicknesses make the Samsung e-books perfect for drawing and writing.

Yeah, it kind of sucks that you have to use a stylus in this enlightened age of touchscreens, but the technology leaves their readers with a very crisp and high contrast e-ink display, not to mention the fact that most of us are far more comfortable writing with a pen than our fingers. Both E-Books are expected to be available sometime in early 2010 for $399 and $699 respectively.

[ PR - SAMSUNG UNVEILS ITS FIRST E-BOOK FOR READING, WRITING AND SHARING ON-THE-GO ]

By David Ponce

As mentioned yesterday, media players are popular this year at CES. This is LaCie’s Mini HD, a “Full HD WiFi Media Center in a DVD-Sized Footprint”. Sporting a 500GB drive, the box will playback an array of formats on your HDTV. Loading content onto it is done through USB or network, be it wired or not.

It’ll be available later this quarter for $300. Keep reading for the full press release.

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By Andrew Liszewski

Interactive Toy Concepts is back at CES this year, and if you remember from our last year’s coverage they were responsible for the Duck Hunter game which you probably saw in every store this past Christmas. Well this year they’re introducing a different take on the ‘hunting toy’ game with their Skeet Shooter toy. Instead of trying to bring down a flying duck, the Skeet Shooter launches 3 plastic discs in the air which you try and hit with your infra-red mini-rifle. Unfortunately the prototype had just arrived at the show and wasn’t in working condition so we couldn’t see it in action, but I’m sure it will be just as popular for Christmas 2010 as Duck Hunter was for 2009.

The company was also showing off their VRC or ‘Virtual Reality Control’ flying RC toys which are controlled via a Wiimote-like gyroscope-equipped remote. So instead of piloting your plane, or in this case your RC helicopter, around a hotel ballroom with a set of sticks which aren’t that intuitive, you simply tilt and pivot the remote like you would a yoke in an actual flying craft. As you can see in the photo the VRC toys were in better working condition than the Skeet Shooter, but both should be available sometime this year.

[ Interactive Toy Concepts ]

By Evan Ackerman

Lacie would like to offer you some free cloud storage to back up your data and make it accessible to you and your friends anywhere, anytime. It’s called Wuala, and you can get as much of it as you want. Really. Infinite cloud storage, for free. Absolutely free.

Well, sort of free.

Kinda.

Okay, so it’s not totally free. But you don’t exactly have to pay for it, either. Wuala (it’s pronounced like “voilà”) functions by transforming your local storage into cloud storage for someone else. Here’s how it works: if you want a gig of cloud storage, you donate a gig of your local hard drive to the Wuala cloud. Wuala will dump a bunch of data onto your drive, and in return, you’ll get up to a gig on Wuala. Unlike most cloud storage solutions, Wuala itself isn’t a bunch of servers somewhere, but rather a bunch of users who have donated drive space to other users. Your data is encrypted before it leaves your computer, and it’s stored in several different places (like a big distributed RAID system), so it’s safe. Essentially, you’re just trading storage with other people, and Wuala is managing everything.

Now, this does mean that you’ve got some random stranger’s files on your computer. They’re encrypted, so you can’t DO anything with them, but I could see being bothered by having a bunch of random crap sitting on one of my drives. Plus, if random stranger dude wants to get at his stuff, it’s going to cost you bandwidth. Since the storage network is distributed, it’s not a big deal, but again, it’s the principle of other people using your resources that I could see being mentally problematic, even if it does make a lot of practical sense. The other catch is that this system collapses if everybody shuts their computers off, so unless you leave your computer on pretty much all the time, you won’t get a 1:1 trade for your storage.

Any way you look at it, Wuala is an interesting communal storage idea. You can try it for free from Wuala.com, and it comes bundled with Lacie’s hard drives and flash drives, including these durable little flash drives shaped like keys:

The key drives start at $20 for 4 gigs and are available at 32 gigs for $100.

[ Wuala ]
[ Lacie USB Keys ]

CES is very much about showing off the latest and greatest in technology. However, sometimes it gives us the chance for a hands-on look at things that might already be on the market. One such item is the ASUS Crosslink. I remember this coming out a few months back, but wrote it off as yet another terrible USB device that promised to make sharing files and internet access between two computers a breeze. I’ve used such things in the past and never walked away pleased. While visiting ASUS at the show, we were given one of these to check out. As it turns out, we had a need to share internet access between two of our laptops.

The Crosslink appears to be your average USB flash drive, but with a mini-USB port on the end. The drive does have 2GB worth of space (around 300MB is used by the software) that you can use just like any other flash drive. However that mini-USB port (along with the special software installed) allows you to share files, Outlook configurations, optical drives and your internet access. Skeptical, we proceeded to share a 3G connection between two computers running Windows XP.

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