CES is rotten with Microsoft Surface tables, but there can be only one king. This is Kodak's 25-foot-long, multi-faced touch table. It is huge.

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We got a chance to experience Geneva's new Model S iPod/iPhone audio system today. It's sublime. The best part? You can actually afford it (probably).

Geneva has been combining killer industrial design with solid audio quality for awhile now but their new Model S marks their first foray in to the mainstream (read: relatively inexpensive) audio market. It's pretty clear that Geneva paid attention to details with the Model S. When not in use the dock is protected inside the cabinet and only flips up when needed. If Geneva made any compromises in the manufacturing process from their high end lines, I couldn't really detect them.

I've never been a fan of touch-sensitive buttons, but they work on the Model S. To activate the alarm's snooze all uses have to do is touch, or in my case slap, any one of the controls. The system will retail for $299 at Apple Stores later this month.

I was able to chat with Geneva's Managing Director, George Emerson, who said the goal of the Model S was to "bring HiFi to the iPod clock radio". They succeeded.

• Two 3" full range speakers
• Two bass ports with dynamic loudness
• Two Class D digital amplifiers - extremely efficient, low consumption
• Digital radio
• Digital clock with alarm program
• EmbracingSound DSP restores and improves compressed music files
• PowerDock for iPod/iPhone connection and protection
•TouchLight controls - backlit, touch-sensitive
• Line-in jack for external audio

Breaking into high-security areas is going to be a whole lot trickier in 2035, if this 2-inch electronic-ID has anything to say about it. The good news is, it's guaranteed to get your good side.

The sister product to the amazing Herman Miller Embody chair, the Envelop desk actually slides out and down on rails to give you the correct angle for working while in incline. It's amazing.

It doesn't sound like too much—desks are desks, right?—but it actually makes as much sense to pair a desk and chair together as a computer and peripheral. If they work together, they can elevate the whole product. The desk is selling by itself now for $1,100, but they'll probably pair it together (with a little discount) sometime later this year. Check out this video to get a real sense of how it works, and take my word for it: This thing is comfy in a serious way. [Herman Miller]

At tonight's Microsoft Keynote, dear ol' Steve Ballmer made it a point to include plenty of lame jokes, gimmicks, and antics. Whether all of them were intentional, we'll never know, but here are our favorites.

Yes, those are a crazy cat lady's Twitter page, a skydiving Sea Hawk, some censored boobs, Steve's anatomy homework slides, and half-loaded old-school Internet porn. What some of those we're doing on the screen, I'll never understand, but I've gotta hand it to Ballmer. The man knows how to give us something to laugh about.

Energizer just announced two new portable solar chargers, the SP1000 and SP2000, both of which provide power through an AC or USB adapter. If you're into that kind of hippie "let's not destroy the earth" stuff, this looks pretty good.

The SP1000 is a 1000mAh charger, while the SP2000 is, predictably, double that, but both can be charged either from outdoor or indoor light, or via AC if you're in a rush (it takes six hours to charge via light and half that via AC). They're available now, with the SP1000 coming in at a very reasonably $50 and the SP2000 at $100. [Energizer]

Though nothing I do these days involves a helmet of any kind, if I was an extreme sports maven, I'd rock a Tunebug at all times. While my skull didn't make a great speaker, Tunebug kept it a safe one.

Would you ever wear headphones while driving a car? Of course not, it's dangerous—having your ears open seems like an essential part of staying safe while operating a vehicle. Now why would it be any safer to plug your ears with earbuds while riding a bike or a skateboard?

The Tunebug, by SVC, uses SurfaceSound vibrations to turn your helmet into a surround sound speaker, letting you keep your ears open to potential hazards around you. The unit straps to any helmet with three strong velcro buttons and can play music via Bluetooth or an aux-in plug. In the chaotic Pepcom convention hall the sound didn't exact rock my world, but it seemed like the Tunebug's vibrations would be powerful enough to give you a nice, audible soundtrack in calmer environs.

The Tunebug module detaches from its helmet cradle to turn any surface into a speaker. Look for the Tunebug in Q2 2010.

Looking at the pictures this OLED concept produces is the strangest thing: a 3D image on a nearly 2D panel.

The 14-inch panel is just 1.6mm think, and if you look at it from the side you might miss it completely. It's at least three years away from being ready—much less affordable—at sizes that would make it worth owning, but even in the concept it's a pretty incredible feat of engineering.

It's only a proof of concept, but this is laptop with a clear OLED screen—but a stone's throw from those floating 3D displays of Avatar. Practical? Not necessarily. The future? OBVIOUSLY.

The resolution, I don't know. It's pixely, but let's not quibble.

You see right through the thing, then something appears on the screen (like a white background), and you can't see through it anymore.

Are you processing this? No, you can't be. It's only 2010. Man wasn't prepared for this kind of technology yet. The brain hasn't evolved enough. We're primates. Squirrels. Slugs.

Maybe in 100 or 200 years, the great artists of the world will reflect on what's happened today and make some sort of sense of it all. Until then, we'll just keep on breathing, in, out. Until then, we'll weep.

Oh Tennessee, you have been in rare form recently. The latest tale comes to us courtesy of Nicholas Nunley, who hooked a Coke machine to his pickup outside a Dollar General then began dragging it down the road.

Amazingly, an eyewitness noticed the one truck on the road with a vending machine engulfed in sparks dragging behind, and called the police. Apparently unfamiliar with the effect of drag, Nunley tried unsuccessfully to evade capture. After a Taser relaxation session, Nunley was hauled off to prison, where he is undoubtedly comparing notes with the Hill family from Walmart. [NBC-2 via Arbroth via Neatorama]

Sprint's Overdrive hub is a lot more than a cellular modem: It's got dual 4G/3G connectivity, shared connections with up to five devices over Wi-Fi, and can serve as a sort of mini NAS, with shared microSD storage.

Early leaks of the device were mostly right, but given that the Wi-Fi range is even further than expected—150ft, Sprint and Sierra claim—actually undersold it a bit. (WiMax is fast enough, and that Wi-Fi range is long enough, that you could conceivably use one of these as your primary source of internet at home. Nuts, basically.) A 1.4-inch LCD screen lets you know who's connected to what and how, and gives you a precise battery reading—fixing one of the dumbest problems with Verizon's Mifi. Actually, all around this device feels like the MiFi on steroids—it's even a bit bigger, at about 3 x 3 x .6 inches, though that's still pretty compact for what you're getting here.

The Overdrive goes on sale January 10th for $100.

With a two-year service agreement, ha! Thought you were getting out of that one, didn't you! Never. [Sprint]

UPDATE: For scale:

Take your pick as to what's better about these new Sanyo Xacti cams: On the one hand, they're thinner and lighter than ever. On the other hand, they got rid of that pain-in-the-ass AVCHD video format.

Slashgear says the bigger Xacti, the VPC- SH1 has 1080p recording, a 35mm wide-angle lens, 30x optical zoom and takes 4 megapixel photos. The taller Xacti model, the VPC-CS1 also records 1080p, but only has 10x zoom and takes 3 megapixel stills. It is, however, only an inch thick.

Both models have a zoom mic that hones in on the area you're zooming into, image stabilization, face tracking and SDXC compatibility. Both cameras will be available in February with the SH1 selling for $400 and the CS1 selling for $300. [Slashgear]

I just tried out the Fujitsu FLEPia, which has been shown in 2007, talked about in 2008 and finally released in Japan in 2009. It's slow and janky.

The FLEPia is still the production color ebook reader available, says Fujitsu. The problem is that it's really slow. Page turns take 1.8 seconds, and slowly loads from the bottom up. And because it runs Windows CE, the FLEPia can handle PDFs and Word documents, but they're slow as well.

The obvious benefit is that the FLEPia is its 4096 color display, and, well, the color isn't so hot. It's washed out and not worth paying such a premium for. It does have a pen-based toushcreen, but it's unresponsive as well.

So, Fujitsu should probably keep this version in Japan until they can figure out how to speed up the load times and make the screen more presentable.

It's not Courier, but HP's rumored slate PC is here, now. Steve Ballmer and his hardware specialist Ryan Asdourian just showed it off, and man is it cute. Updated with VIDEO

Update:Adrian just spotted this official video:

"They're more powerful than a phone and almost as powerful as a PC. Perfect for reading, surfing the web and taking entertainment on the go," said Ballmer at his CES 2010 opening keynote. He says that it will be available this year.

HP says they'll provide information on the slate after the keynote, but wouldn't say anything in the meantime. We're calling it a "slate"—well, Microsoft is calling it a slate, to differentiate from the pen-and-screen dealy that Bill Gates intro'd in 2001—but that's not its name.

It's a Windows 7 touch device, so it's nice in an accessible, netbooky (yeah, I'm guessing relatively cheap) context. But it's not exactly the Courier we have lusted after from Microsoft in our dreams (and waking hours).

Here you can see it in its various modes, movie mode, ebook mode and PC mode:

Fun fact: Adsdorian, shown above with Ballmer, moonlights as a (or the) Seahawks mascot.

From my admittedly quick hands-on, I've pretty much decided that the Kodak Playsport is the most practical pocket camcorder to date.

Why?

It's rugged and waterproof up to a modest (though useful) 10 feet. That's nice. But what you can't tell from a spec sheet is that it's wonderfully shaped and very solid in your hand—probably more solid than any other pocket cam I've held. The rubber grip is perfectly positioned to add...grip, and the HDMI/USB ports are plugged with a latch-protected stopper.

Basically, I trust that it's actually waterproof, especially as the demo unit was still working after being submerged for 8 hours.

And as for the internals, the sensor is identical to that in the larger but respected Zi8. So the Playsport's 1080P video should compete with other camcorders in the sector.

Bottom line, if you're taking a $150 camera on vacation, it makes sense for it to be more rugged and expendable than your cellphone. Good for Kodak for knocking out what looks to be a very decent cam. My only complaint would be that I certainly wouldn't mind a larger screen—oh, and what's with the purple back?

Available this April for $150, more details here.

This won't be officially "announced" until tomorrow, so there's no name or anything to it, but we just played around with Nvidia's 7-inch Tegra tablet design that runs Android.

Nvidia says they'll talk about the details tomorrow, but they have several OEM partners working with the Tegra, and one ready to bring it to market.

What we saw was 1080p video being played smoothly on a 1024x600 screen—lower resolution, of course, but Tegra can supposedly support TV out to a standard 1080p set. There's also web browsing, which we didn't see because of the lousy Wi-Fi, and the eBook reader application, which is very usable with its swipe-to-turn gestures and quick page flips.

Because it's not a phone, it's not clear whether or not this will get the official Google Android certification, so you might not be able to run those Android apps from the Marketplace on it. But there should be more details about this tomorrow during the Nvidia press conference. Basically, this is a promising tablet design that should be able to merge quality graphics performance with Android apps, provided it can run those apps.

Save for slight variations in storage mediums and capacities, resolution, and lenses, Sony's 13 new Handycam Camcorders aren't radically different from each other.

The ones that matter the most are Sony's XR550 and CX550, which (yes), has everything mentioned below, but either adds to or improves on its underlings' offerings with a either 240 gigs of HDD action or 64 gigs of flash storage, 3.5-inch screen, 12 megapixel stills and full manual controls. It also has a color viewfinder and mic/headphone inputs for those budding auteurs out there. Expect the XR550 to cost $1400 and the CX550 to cost $1300 when they come out in late February.

There's the 150 series, where you can get the 120 gig HDD of the XR150, or the 16 gigs of flash storage on the CX150, but they both shoot in 1080p, with a 25x zoom lens, have a steadyshot mode, take 3.1 megapixel stills and come with a 2.7 inch LCD. Oh yeah, there's also the CX110 that lets you customize the capacity with a memory card (presumably a MemoryStick). The XR150, CX150 and CX110 will hit stores in late January for about $700, $550, and $500, respectively.

Then there's the 350 series, which has everything mentioned above, plus it lets you choose between 160 gigabytes of HDD storage (XR350), or a 32 gigabyte flash capacity (CX350). From there, these cams come equipped with a 30mm wide angle lens with 12x zoom, steadyshot, 7.1 megapixel stills and GPS for geotagging. And for the middle aged male in us all, there's a golf mode, that lets you record your swing to either analyze it frame-by-frame, or create a composite image for that cool, strobe-y effect. Oh, and there's also the CX300, which only has 16 gigs of flash storage (oy oy oy). The XR 350, CX350 and CX300 will cost $1000, $900, and $800, respectively, when the come out in late February.

But Sony didn't forget about those of you still desperately grasping onto the 90s—there's an SD line as well! Sony has 5 of these that have varying capacities maxing out at 120 gigabyes of HDD storage and 16 gigabytes of flash storage, and lenses with 60x zoom, face detection, 2.7-inch touchscreen, and all that other crap old people like. The DCR-SX and SR lines will be available in late January, ranging in price between $270 and $400, and a couple of them will come in colors such as—aw, hell, who cares.

Seems a little random since it runs Google's Android, is all. And we know how Ballmer feels about Google.

Microsoft big boss Steve Ballmer is just now taking the stage here in Las Vegas to kick off CES 2010. What's he gonna do and say? Here, I'll tell you. UPDATING THROUGH THE KEYNOTE

Update: The keynote began with a testimony on the benefits of technology from SNL's Seth Myers. He thanks technology for all of the wondrous humiliations he can now participate in, such as worldwide publication of Halloween images, buying tobacco-store Indians on eBay, and having his grandma tell him he looks too fat or too thin from 1200 miles away.

Seth Myers as drunken smurf:

Says Ballmer: "We Bing and we Bing and we Bing. Bing! Bing! Bing!"

Steve doesn't have a whole lot of breaking news today. The company has already confirmed that the Xbox 360 motion-sensing technology codenamed Natal would be available in time for the holidays. Also, that that sexy Windows Phone the HTC HD2 will be coming to the US, via T-Mobile, sometime this spring.

He does have one trick up his sleeve, one that people have been buzzing about. But mostly, Steve and Robbie Bach, the head of the Entertainment & Devices division, will be talking about 2009.

And why not? 2009 was the year of Microsoft, and Ballmer & Bach are going to confirm it with facts from NPD and others, citing for instance that Windows 7 boosted PC sales in a huge way, with 50% growth over the previous holiday sales season. (Ballmer won't get too detailed though, as the real numbers are set to come out during their quarterly earnings report on January 28.)

They will brag about how awesome Xbox is, how in its 10 year existence, it has accounted for $20 billion in retail sales (games and hardware) and accrued 39 million Xbox Live members worldwide.

Ballmer will say that Bing, with 11 million users, is already a success (though there's no market share data to speak of yet), and that HP will use it as the default search engine and homepage on browsers in systems shipping in 42 countries.

They will talk about Ford Sync, and a new in-car experience they've developed with Kia. The 2011 Kia Sorrento will feature a service like Sync, called UVO. It may not look like Sync, but it will be similarly functional.

Finally, Steve will show off a bunch of sweet Windows 7 machines, many we've already seen, such as the Sony Vaio L touchscreen all-in-one, the Lenovo A300 and the Asus NX90.

Update: They were going to show off a TV with a PC built in, but the technical difficulties that delayed the show apparently screwed up the computer. To quote Steve: "It blew the tube." Didn't know they had tubes, but I get the picture. There it is, lurking in the back:

At some point during the hardware fondling, he's going to hold aloft a pretty sweet "slate" device from HP. This is not speculation, it is confirmed. It's not the Courier of bloggy lore. But it is a product with great battery life and a Windows 7 touch experience, not a prototype but a product that Microsoft says HP will be releasing. [Microsoft]