We've caught a lot of flak for our TV-B-Gone CES prank from two years ago. This year, we decided to focus on the press instead of the exhibitors.

We bought our fellow exhausted scribes free pizza! Because really, CES sucks the life out of you, we're all in this together and everybody loves pizza.

So yeah, it wasn't quite a prank, but a CES worker did get pretty ticked off at me and threaten to kick us out after taking my name down. Then she disappeared on the phone into an office, where I assume someone sensible told her you can't kick someone out of a trade show for buying people pizza.

On stage with Walt Mossberg, Google Engineering VP mentioned that an enterprise version of the Nexus One could have a physical keyboard and longer battery life—and there could be more Google devices, including a budget model.

The original question was about the the broader program of "Google" phones, as opposed to "With Google" phones, and generalized crap with Android. The Nexus One is the first in a series, or "program" as Rubin calls it, which could include new devices. Unprompted, though, he brought up the possibility of a new enterprise phone that's like the Nexus One, but with a physical keyboard and larger battery; he quickly backed off, but not before Mossberg asked about the possibility of a smaller phone, to which Rubin granted a half-nod. And then they dropped it. Come on, Goatberg!

Anyway: release date, specs, price, concrete existence are all still unknown or uncertain, but the Nexus One doesn't sound like it'll be alone in the Google Store for long.

Lego Universe has been in development for a couple years now, but we finally got the first hands on and impressions of the MMO for both kid and adult LEGO fans. It makes building and designing Lego sets incredibly accessible.

Basically, this is the natural evolution of the Lego brand. You know how you fondly remember playing with Lego sets when you were a kid? Your kids are going to remember this.

There are two components of the game that are pretty tightly interweaved: the more traditional MMO portions where you use your skills and interact with other players to achieve goals and defeat monsters, and the building bit, where you have your own territory and can build anything you want out of Lego pieces.

Since everyone's more interested about the building part, we'll cover that first. Lego says you have access to pretty much every part they have, from many of the unique Lego sets over the years (pirates, space, etc.). You have your own "home" area that you can build castles or whatever inside, invite your friends to visit and customize however you like. You can also assign behaviors and actions to what you build as well, by dragging and dropping actions onto easily-connectible UI segments. It's intuitive enough for kids, since Lego has been doing research into that segment for years.

The MMO part comes from the fact that it costs pieces (obviously) and in-game money to build, so you have to go out into the MMO world and adventure in order to earn both.

As for the MMO part, it's similar to a standard MMO, but instead of grinding for experience, you do certain tasks in order to earn achievements (like Xbox 360's). And when you earn achievements, you earn new items and abilities in order to access other parts—which are based on those traditional Lego sets.

Lego stressed that the game is going to be accessible to kids as well as adults, which is pretty great for parents who are looking for ways to relate to their children beyond yelling. And adults, like us, who are Lego fans, will get in on this game hardcore, making it an easy contender to top World of Warcraft in the MMO space.

This is a logical evolution in the Lego series. They already have Mindstorms, which has the programming aspect, and the set-design online tool, which lets you build your own sets and order them from Lego. Lego Universe integrates all of that into one cohesive (and fun!) product.

The best bit is the promise that you'll be able to take digital creations you make in the game and make a custom set, complete with constructions, in meatspace. Lego will figure out which pieces are necessary to build your masterpiece, give you a price list, and ship you a custom box with everything inside. It won't be available at launch, but it is coming soon. The game will ship in 2010. [Lego Universe]

Without a hint of doubt, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that chances of Netflix on Nintendo—are "excellent." Stir that together with October's confident rumors about forthcoming Netflix support on the Wii and, well, you get it.

The quote came in response to an onstage question from AllThingsD's Peter Kafka, during an interview here at CES. The choice of "Nintendo" rather than "Wii" terminology was Kafka's choice, and was kind of unfortunate, because the only caveat to October's rumors was that Netflix may be waiting for Nintendo's next-gen product. In any case, it's not a confirmation, but it's close—Wii people, don't let your hopes for native Netflix die quite yet.

"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss."—Sun Tzu, The Art of War [All Things D]

I promised a weekly update on yellow iMacs. But at CES, I haven't been able to comb submissions enough to offer a proper rant. Know that I'm still on the case. And, from a quick perusal, iMacs are still shipping with yellow freggin screens.

If your short term memory is shot, and you are the kind of person that gets their best ideas in the shower, Aqua Notes can help. This waterproof notepad can be used even when submerged.

The woman in the video seems pretty confident that most of the world's greatest ideas start in the shower. I'm more of a toilet/car man myself. What about you? [Aqua Notes via Twitter]

If Ballmer's revelation of the slate wasn't enough HP news for you, Bits reports the Palo Alto-based company is also working on an Android tablet roughly twice the size of an iPhone, and seemingly similar to Dell's Mini 5 Tablet.

Citing an anonymous source, Bits editor Nick Bilton was told there are multiple tablets HP has in the works, and the Android "half-pint" tablet was one of them. HP is also said to be rounding up magazine content partners for the devices, which include Microsoft, Adobe, BusinessWeek and Wired/Conde Nast.

In addition, TechCrunch heard similar rumblings about a HP Android tablet yesterday. [Bits]

Google's Street View team famously photographs all kinds of weird stuff as they drive the world, but Navteq, who basically invented this stuff, just built a mount with seven cameras and 64 lasers to see everything better, in 3D.

Mounted atop a VW Jetta wagon is this crazy apparatus with a 12-megapixel panoramic camera on top and six more cameras pointed in specific directions to pick up signs and other data points. But the best gadgetry—the laser array—is housed inside a rapidly spinning barrel positioned at an angle. By using LIDAR, basically radar but with lasers, they scan everything within view, capturing 1.2 million points of data every second. The result is all kinds of terrain data that is not possible using just cameras.

The goal is "high accuracy maps," a deliberately vague notion that ranges from additional information—bridge underpass clearance heights, multilayer cloverleaf navigation and other obvious issues—to super rich 3D environments like the ones you see below. Those aren't CG renderings, in the traditional sense, it's laser-enriched photography.

Navteq, a Chicago company owned by Nokia who has been driving around making maps since the first GPS satellites were hurled into orbit, still provides a massive share of map data for web and devices, so the fruits of this tech might get to you sooner than you know.

As for your own personal rig, I sure want one, and my guess is that Google wants one too—if they don't have it already. [Navteq]

Taking design cues from the Oakley Thump MP3 player sunglasses is never a good idea. But that's not the only fault these Vuzix Wrap 920AR glasses have. The resolution sucks.

Unless you've never picked up an iPhone or Android handset—or don't have boasting friends with them—you would've heard of augmented reality, right? These glasses use stereoscopic cameras to create a "virtual world" where something you're fixing your begoggled vision on suddenly turns animated, with different 3D layers. You can connect the glasses to a screen so your pals can watch whatever you're viewing—and they're the lucky ones, because what you're watching, the wearer, sucks. The video you can see in the glasses is really low-res, and I actually had trouble with seeing the bottom of the picture. The lower the video gets, it seems to just fizzle and fade out.

The demo Vuzix was giving at CES was pretty fun. I was given a chart with rows of QR-type barcodes on, and when I looked through the glasses at it, it looked like one of those games where you tilt the board to roll a marble through a series of challenges. Just like "Maze" on the iPod Nano, actually. It was a really hurried demo, and actually I was thoroughly confused—the quality of what you're seeing through the glasses is so poor, I could barely see what I was doing. Everyone watching me had a hoot though, watching my gameplay on the TV screen above.

The glasses themselves look really shitty, and unlike the Oakley Thumps, you can't wear them like sunglasses. At $800, and with only one purpose, I'd say avoid.

The Tweets are flying with reports that upon connecting to Google's free holiday Wi-Fi, people are getting redirected to Google's Nexus One page. Smart, sure. But is it fair play, or does this self-promotion spoil Google's charitable act?

Travelers are reporting that, in many airports, connecting to Google's free Wi-Fi redirects browsers to the Nexus One home page at http://www.google.com/phone/. Between the iPhone's ubiquity and the Droid's aggressive marketing campaign, Google has to think outside of the box to stay competitive in the smartphone market. Plenty of people took advantage of Google's generous offer this holiday season, and redirecting to the Nexus One page is a surefire way to raise awareness about the new phone.

This promo comes in addition to the Nexus One banner that was displayed under Google's search box when the phone launched earlier this week.

When Google displayed a Chrome banner on their homepage last month, we wondered if it could alter the course of the browser wars. Could their considerable influence change the status quo for smartphone advertising as well? As Google's empire continues to expand, this type of self-promotion seems inevitable. But does it leave a bad taste in your mouth? [TechCrunch]

Now this is a smart, sensible idea for pest control. While you're at it, why don't you get that mouse crawling inside your wall with a grenade?

[Johannes Vogl via Today and Tomorrow via Boing Boing]

So many gadgets around, so little cash with which to buy them. That's where convergence comes into play—and the enTourage eDGe dualbook is a great example. I'd get one myself, if only they weren't so damn big.

It looks like a laptop, with the left side devoted to a 9.7-inch e-paper screen, and the right side a 10.1-inch color LCD. Obviously, the left side is for reading ebooks on, and the right side has all the functions of a laptop—but running on Android. You're able to download apps to it, and with any luck the eDGe will attract some custom apps which will suit the integrated nature of this dualbook.

It's not just half an ereader, half a tablet. The two sides actually talk to each other very effectively, with one example being when you highlight a word or sentence on the ereader side. On the right side, a box pops up asking if you'd like to google the word, search for it on the dictionary, look it up on Wikipedia, and so on. Any notations you make on the ereader columns will be transferred to the tablet side for storage, and if the book contains pictures, you can choose to view them on the color tablet half.

You can either hold the eDGe like a book, with both screens in front of you, or fold it back on itself, so you see just one side. The outside has a glossy sheen, choose from red, blue, black or white, and the inside is silver. It looks nice, if a little cheap. I'd like to see them work on the design some more, if they bring out a second model.

The ereader works just as well as the Kindle, in my opinion. Flipping pages was easy—and fast—with the page buttons located to the left of the screen. The screen is very large, so you actually get quite a bit of white space located around the text, for writing in. You can flip to other chapters by pressing the stylus (which slots neatly into the back) on a bar at the bottom of the screen. Or, load the library function on the right side of the screen, and choose chapters there.

Using the tablet side is as easy as you expect it to be. It runs Android, so everything's really user-friendly. The touchscreen was really responsive for a resistive panel, in the 20 or so minutes I played with one I didn't have any problem opening icons. The actual machine runs pretty fast, I didn't notice any notable lag or programs freezing. To input text, there's a virtual keyboard (which fills half the LCD screen), or you can use the stylus, and write on the ereader side—it converts it into text. Or, plug in a keyboard via USB or Bluetooth.

Right, so here's the thing—I was bowled over by how many features the eDGe had. For $499, it's incredible. But I'd wait until they make a smaller version, the thing is just too big to read books on, you can't really hold it up in one hand (it's quite heavy), and as the page buttons are located to the left, you have to use your left hand. It's just a bit awkward to use, unless it's laid flat on a table in front of you. But hey, if you've got mutant hands and are able to handle it with ease, go for it—it'll make you as happy as larry. Whoever he is.