Las Vegas: Here’s the high-definition DVD product they’ve all been talking about. Fire marshalls had to close the doors when too many press tried to crowd into LG’s news conference at CES this morning to launch their 2007 product line.
All the attention surrounded the Super Multi Blue high-definition disc player, capable of playing both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs and providing one solution to the format war between Toshiba and Sony.
LG said it would launch in the first quarter in the US and an internal drive for computers that handled both formats would also be available.
The LG announcement had a sting in its tail….it will retail for $1200, so at that price you could buy a Sony PS3 Blu-Ray games console, a Toshiba HD-DVD player, solve the format war and still have change.

If robotic vaccuum cleaners, Sandisk’s V-Mate and television fire engines tickle your fancy, have a look at our first CES slideshow. The FT’s full CES coverage is here

We’re at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this coming week and arrived in time for CES Unveiled – a first look for the media and analysts on Saturday evening at what may be the hot products.

The stars were out in force – almost - with Little Richard and Cher look-alikes putting in an appearance. Elvis was also in the house, but only as WowWee’s robotic bust of the King.

Hold the microphone remote-control up to his face and he sings a selection of classics from Hound Dog to Love Me Tender. WowWee says Elvis will be available later this year for $350 with a cartridge containing eight of his greatest hits and monologues costing $30.

Robots appear to be a theme this year. A possible threat to the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner may have emerged with the Ubot from Microrobot. It both vacuums and mops and can move by reading invisible bar codes impregnated on hard floors (click any of these images for more detail).

Making it easier for consumers to move around their pictures, music and videos is also occupying the thoughts of many manufacturers. The V-Mate from Sandisk connects up to TV and video sources such as DVD players and enables recording directly onto standard flash memory cards. They can then be inserted into devices such as notebook PCs, mobile phones and PlayStationPortables for watching on the go. The V-Mate is available now at a recommended retail price of $130.

More multimedia uses are being found for Bluetooth wireless. Parrot is freeing all those digital photos trapped on your cell phone with its Bluetooth-enabled photo frame. Up to 500 images can be beamed onto its seven-inch display and made into slide shows. The frame, with natural wood or leather finishes, will be available in the second quarter for $249.

A game controller like nothing we’ve ever seen before was on display from Novint Falcon. The way you move it and the force feedback gives a 3-D-like feel to games - making players feel more inside them. Half Life had been adapted for a demo but the company needs the cooperation of video game developers and publishers to insert code into future games to enable the device.

Finally, if you want to stand out from the crowd now that everyone has a flat-panel TV, we can recommend this set from Hannspree.  This fire truck with a 42-inch screen is a grown-up’s version of the 10-inch one currently sold in its store. While not designed to set the world on fire, it certainly rang our bell.

Chris Nuttall, Las Vegas

Netsuite, the software developer that helps companies run their businesses through a web browser, is taking the unconventional route to an expected IPO this year.

It is planning a Google-style Dutch auction process for its offering and has just strengthened its bench by adding a well known baseball manager to the board of directors.

Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is recognised for the high degree of statistical analysis he has brought to the game.

“Billy’s outrageously successful approach in changing the game of baseball by …using facts to supplement instinct is very similar to the transformation our customers undergo when they move their business to Netsuite,” said Evan Goldberg, Netsuite chairman, in a somewhat unconvincing comparison.

However, Billy’s maths skills do seem a natural fit with the geeks at Netsuite, whose software already runs the Oakland A’s sales and marketing operations and whose CEO Zach Nelson is a big A’s fan.

As far as the IPO goes, Netsuite was completing its beauty parade of bankers last month and it seems only the Silicon Valley company’s other sporting influence - sailor, majority investor, Oracle founder and would-be San Francisco 49ers owner Larry Ellison - could delay its march to the market now.

Chris Nuttall, San Francisco

Spare a thought for Bill Gates. Steve Jobs’ annual appearances at MacWorld are the subject of breathless speculation. Next Tuesday’s event may bring more news on Apple’s iTV video streaming box, more content partnerships with movie studios, an iPod phone and a video iPod with a bigger screen (there again, it may not.)

Why so little speculation about Gates’ annual pitch to the digital consumer, which comes this Sunday at the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas? To  set the record straight, this is a guide to what Gates may have up his sleeve:

Zune 2.0 Forget the apparently weak sales so far: Microsoft is at least finally in the game against iPod. It now has to move fast. Gates should extend the Zune range and announce new uses for the device’s wireless capabilities.

Windows Vista With the consumer launch coming on January 30th, Gates won’t be able to resist showing this off. But expect him to be upstaged two days later, when Jobs shows off more features of Apple’s upcoming Leopard operating system. Jobs kept them under wraps before to prevent Microsoft copying them.

Home Server According to Microsoft Watch and others, Gates is likely to unveil a home media server, a machine for storing and managing all the digital media that is building up on users’ PCs. There could also be an option to store the same stuff on servers run by Microsoft, a service rumoured to be called "Live Drive."

An iTV spoiler With Jobs expected to talk about Apple’s new box for streaming video into the living room, Gates is likely to dwell on his own plans in this area. After all, Microsoft got there first with its Media Center Extender, and the capability is built into every new Xbox.

Xbox 360 There should be lots of bragging about the early lead in next-generation consoles, but as Sony and Nintendo ramp up, how will Microsoft keep the attention? Halo 3 and other blockbuster games are badly needed.

A sharper presentation would also help. Gates may lack the Jobs cool factor, but last year’s flowers and open-neck shirt didn’t cut it.

A rebound in spending on IT by corporations and governments, while not back to boom-time levels, has provided a solid foundation for the technology industry over the past three years. Will 2007 be the year things slow down again?

Here are some straws in the wind from recent global forecasts:

                                           2006    2007

Forrester Research (IT spending)           8 pc      6 pc

Forrester (External IT purchases)            8 pc      5 pc

IDC (IT spending)                                       n/a       6.3 pc

Goldman Sachs (IT spending)                 6-7 pc    “probably down"

Sanford C Bernstein (CFO survey)           5.2       4.7 pc

Gartner (spending by big companies)    n/a       2.8 pc

The danger, as IDC points out, is that falling profit growth in the US, along with a harder economic landing, could make current expectations look too optimistic. That would not mean a return to the dark days of 2001 and 2002, but it would certainly be a far less hospitable environment for technology investors - particularly given the current high valuations on tech stocks.

Looks like YouTube’s soaring popularity has left some of its rivals - and their venture capital backers - wondering if it’s game over for other online video start-ups.

According to these reports from CNET and Matt Marshall, founders of two of the better-known video sites - Revver and Guba - have quit in recent days. Most telling was this comment from Tom McInerney, who stepped down as CEO of Guba (a site which had established enough credibility late last year to forge a content deal with Warner Bros):

"I think we can all acknowledge that YouTube has won the big prize."

The slim Neo1973 cellphone that will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week bears little resemblance to the two-pound brick it commemorates – the phone used by inventor Martin Cooper at Motorola to make the first cellphone call in 1973.

But the Neo hopes to post its own small landmark as the first to be based on an all-Linux platform, according to its maker, Taiwan’s First International Computer.

FIC  has been promoting the OpenMoko platform as open source Linux-based software that can offer new opportunities for developers, enthusiasts and enterprises to configure phones just how they want them and not how a manufacturer like Nokia dictates. MontaVista is providing the Linux kernel, Trolltech the middleware and Sean Moss Pultz, FIC’s product manager and OpenMoko “evangelist” is assembling a posse of Linux devotees to help develop applications.

This first phone may only have geek appeal at an unsubsidised $350 and we suggest a subtle penguin motif somewhere to entice Linux followers.

Chris Nuttall, San Francisco