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"So CES is just about to open its doors and I have sneaked in for a quick look around.
There are, dozens of people making last minute adjustments to their stands - the Samsung booth is a towering masterpiece of thick pile carpet and what appear to be 30ft high LED mirrored in the ceiling to look even more spectacular.
All the buzz is about 3D TV and about slate/tablet computers following Steve Ballmer's keynote speech last night.
But from what Ive seen so far two products from British companies really have the "wow" factor. I've just come from the Plastic Logic press conference where they've finally unveiled the Que e-reader I wrote about last week. It looks and feels very good - a much better way of reading a newspaper than Amazon's Kindle provides. But there are still two concerns for me. Is there really a big market in travelling executives who need access to their documents and don't want to open a laptop because that's the Que's target audience? And I still think it's likely that Apple may come thundering over the horizon and take the e-reader market by storm.
The other product is from Light Blue Optics, another Cambridge based firm which is showing off a mini projector which turns any surface into a touch sensitive screen. I played with it for a while, watching then pausing a movie, moving photos around much as you would on Microsoft's Surface computer, and playing a game by simply tapping on the table. It's great technology but unlike Plastic Logic, Light Blue Optics isn't marketing the Light Touch product direct to consumers but licensing it. Less risky perhaps for a small company in a world where fighting for consumers' attention is a struggle.
Anyway the doors are about to open, its showtime in Vegas and there are more gadgets to seek out."
Follow Rory (@ruskin147) on twitter for all the lastest from CES
What's showcasing at CES2010 ?
The BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones takes a sneak preview at CES2010 :"So CES is just about to open its doors and I have sneaked in for a quick look around.
There are, dozens of people making last minute adjustments to their stands - the Samsung booth is a towering masterpiece of thick pile carpet and what appear to be 30ft high LED mirrored in the ceiling to look even more spectacular.
All the buzz is about 3D TV and about slate/tablet computers following Steve Ballmer's keynote speech last night.
But from what Ive seen so far two products from British companies really have the "wow" factor. I've just come from the Plastic Logic press conference where they've finally unveiled the Que e-reader I wrote about last week. It looks and feels very good - a much better way of reading a newspaper than Amazon's Kindle provides. But there are still two concerns for me. Is there really a big market in travelling executives who need access to their documents and don't want to open a laptop because that's the Que's target audience? And I still think it's likely that Apple may come thundering over the horizon and take the e-reader market by storm.
The other product is from Light Blue Optics, another Cambridge based firm which is showing off a mini projector which turns any surface into a touch sensitive screen. I played with it for a while, watching then pausing a movie, moving photos around much as you would on Microsoft's Surface computer, and playing a game by simply tapping on the table. It's great technology but unlike Plastic Logic, Light Blue Optics isn't marketing the Light Touch product direct to consumers but licensing it. Less risky perhaps for a small company in a world where fighting for consumers' attention is a struggle.
Anyway the doors are about to open, its showtime in Vegas and there are more gadgets to seek out."
Follow Rory (@ruskin147) on twitter for all the lastest from CES