CNET has recently announced the winners of this year's Best of CES awards at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. Gamers will be happy to know that Nyko's Wireless Nunchuk attachment for the Wii was counted as the winner for the gaming category. More details up ahead in the full article.

We've been blown away with Sony's press conference about their new HDNA products, and they still have a lot of ammo to feed the waiting presses. Sony presents the newer additions to their plethora of mobile gadgets, such as the cute Rolly and the new Sony mylo. More details in the full article.

LucasArts is about to unleash two of its highly anticipated games for the season at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Get ready as LucasArts will unveil Fracture and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Details in the full article.

Goodyear and NCC have teamed up and are unveiling a new line of GPS units at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. The system has some pretty good features that other systems on the market don't have, such as granting users Bluetooth control over cellular phones.

Interested in finding out what this new gadget can do for you? Head on over to the full article for more details.

Followers of major electronic and gaming events take heed: the activities for the upcoming 2008 International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) are finally announced, and there's a lot of stuff in store for gadget aficionados and gamers alike.

The 2008 International CES will put the latest gaming technology in the spotlight, with major gaming exhibitors such as Commodore Gaming, Entropia Universe, Red Lion Interactive, Shuttle Computers and War Machine as participants.

The gaming-related CES events are as follows: CES Game Power Conference Partner Program; Sandbox Summit, where people can experience the latest gaming gear, toys, and products; CES Mobile Entertainment Partner Program, where breakthroughs in mobile gaming and technology are featured.

For general electronics consumers there's the Home and Lifestyle Entertainment Knowledge Track, where visitors are given a peek of whats to come in the future of gaming as well as the possibilities of 3D home theater.

Finally, close followers of the current format wars should be interested in the Blu-ray Disc TechZone and the HD DVD TechZone, where the features of each of the leading high definition formats are tackled.

The 2008 International CES will be held in Las Vegas on January 7-10. Bill Gates will deliver the opening keynote address for the event on January 6.

No less than Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates, Panasonic President Toshihiro Sakamoto and Intel CEO Paul Otellini will keynote the 2008 International CES organized by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) in Las Vegas Nevada on January 7-10 of next year.

This was announced by the CEA as it ushers in the latest that the industry has to offer for people who like to live off the high-end. The show is known as a stage for previews of upcoming products and campaigns of each firm.

Gates is scheduled to kick things off with a pre-show talk discussing the state of the computer world and how his company is pushing it forward. Sakamoto and Otellini are set to do similar speeches as the first day progresses.

Some 2,700 exhibitors will show off their latest gear encompassing some 30 areas which include entertainment, wireless connectivity, audio and gaming. Products such as gaming consoles, TVs, notebook computers and portable audio are just some of the many devices which have been shown off in the past CES gatherings.

 

Remember that custom Dell World of Warcraft laptop that would be auctioned at eBay? Just to refresh your memory, Michael Dell announced during the concluded CES 2007 that two custom airbrushed Dell M1710 laptops featuring some TBC artworks will be auctioned off on eBay, with the proceeds going to the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the U.S. - Second Harvest. It's for a good cause and it's always nice and a bit heart-warming to follow up on stories that bring back your faith in the human race.

You may ask, how is the auction going? Pretty well, actually. The Mike Lavalle airbrushed Dell M1710, Burning Crusade Edition, which bears the signature of Michael Dell would be open for bids until January 25th. The current bid is US$ 4,250.00. Nice to see that people don't mind coughing up some dough for a good product and a good cause, right?

Anyhow, if you're interested to help out or get the laptop, you could click on our read-link below to check out the actual eBay page.

While technophiles the world over got worked up and hyperventilated at Steve Jobs' announcement of the iPhone, the Japanese simply looked up a while from their keitai, then went on with their business. And the reason for this? The fact that the iPhone has nothing new to offer to them.

While Jobs boasts of the iPhones new interface, the Japanese are finding it hard to believe that it is a "revolutionary product" that will "change everything". Apple also notes that the iPhone can be used to download music and surf the internet, as well as support one-way conferencing in the future. Over at Japan, the whole population have already been doing all this for years. On top of that, most phones can support five-way video conferencing, and their mobiles can also be used to buy train tickets, pay for taxi rides, design a webpage, update a blog, pay for puchases at the convenience store, book hotel reservations, watch a movie or the latest baseball game, use GPS, get exclusive content by scanning a barcode on the seats at the baseball stadium, and an entire plethora of other features and uses which Apple still seems to be clueless about (they should probably start off by checking out Strap-Ya, or something).

All this can again be attributed to one main attribute that Apple is missing, and that would be 3G technology. At the moment, the iPhone is still on a second-generation network.

So, when Japanese retailers were told about the amazing, new iPhone and its features, one shopkeeper merely laughed and said, "Sounds like business as usual".

The days when we use our cell phones to call and send SMSs are so, so gone. Why you ask? Aside from the influx of smartphones and the recent unveiling of the iPhone, one of the world's biggest credit card payment scheme has launched a global system to turn mobile phones into wallets. Of course, we're talking about Visa.

Visa has entered in a deal with Nokia to let future users of this payment system, created with the help of IBM, to pay for groceries or other stuff by swiping a phone over a reader that electronically "talks" with a microchip on the phone. The owners would simply push a button, and voila, transaction complete.

According to a Visa statement at the CES, consumers will also be able to control and manage their payment accounts and funds, using only their cell phones.  A Near Field Communication (NFC) chip is the wireless standard used to link phones with payment systems in stores. This NFC mumbo-jumbo is developed by Philips chip unit, NXP and Sony. The initial version of the mobile payment system launched last Monday and future plans include remote payment and person-to-person payment.

There's no word on what happens when your mobile-payment-enabled cellphone gets lost or stolen. Most likely, you could cancel it the same way you do with stolen credit cards.

FiringSquad reports that the Press Preview event for this year's Consumer Electronics Show was a bit of a misnomer. They say that because many of the products displayed by the exhibitors have already been released.

It is reported that more than one exhibitor has said that they will show off and announce all of the new products when the CES actually begins this Monday.

Hotseat Chassis showed off a PC flight simulator set up that puts the player in a chair and harness while the game is played. Super Micro Computer showed off a dual PC server rack set up. AMD displayed some unique notebook and PDA like devices that ran their chips. ASUS was proud about their notebook lineup which includes a unit that has a special small screen on top of its case that allows you to check things like e-mail before you even open up the laptop. Hitachi was proud about its first 1 TB PC hard drive.

Many major companies will hold press releases including Sony and Netgear. Bill Gates is set to deliver the conferences keynote speech. As always, we'll be sure to keep you folks updated. Stay tuned.

Here are some images of the event taken by the folks from The FiringSquad:

More images after the jump!