Not all of it’s brand new, but CES is a great place to showcase it. There are geekier conventions, of course, but what would it be if Forever Geek didn’t give a decent nod Vegas way and showcase some of this year’s highlights.

The show is still rolling as we speak, so we may not have captured all the best bits yet. Still, let’s take a look at what’s hot at CES.

3DTV

You don’t have to look far before you find someone talking about 3D TV. It’s set to be one of the next big things and major players are lining up to get a piece of the action.

CyberLink, working in partnership with the Blu-ray Disc Association and major chip manufacturers including NVIDIA, Intel and AMD, has been showing off its 3D Blu-ray for PC solutions. That hopefully means lots of compatibility and less confusion for consumers.

XpanD showed off its latest advanced 3D active-shutter glasses designed to work with 3D-ready LCD, plasma and DLP displays. Any content encoded in 3D and that plays back at 120fps will compatible with the glasses, which are remarkably sleek given the technology hidden inside.

Dell has jumped on the 3D bandwagon with its 23-inch Alienware OptX monitor. As it shares its name with Dell’s inherited line of gaming PCs and notebooks, you can be sure that it’s aimed at gamers. Oh, and the Alienware M15x gaming laptop is also 3D-ready.

Many other manufacturers have decided to put “3D” in their blurb, including Toshiba on its new Qosmio X505 multimedia laptop.

Both Toshiba and Samsung have declared TVs containing processors which are capable of converting standard two-dimensional content into three-dimensions, and no doubt other top TV manufacturers will be doing the same.

And in case you think 3DTV is a long way off, the Consumer Electronics Association — though they may be over-optimistic — reckon that some four million 3DTV-ready sets will be sold this year.

Audio

CES always sees a huge range of speakers, headphones and other audio products come into the market and there’s no way we can cover them all, but enough interesting developments caught my eye to mention them here.

Firstly, Bowers & Wilkins has extended its range of good-looking, highly functional products which include the amazing looking 800 Series Diamond loudspeakers. They’re backed by names such as musician-producer Dave Stewart, film composer James Newton Howard and Abbey Road sound engineer Peter Cobbin. You can find out more at Bowers & Wilkins web site.

There are also some far-from-run-of-the-mill iPod docks and speakers including the Zeppelin.

Another Great British audio manufacturer (not that I’m biased or anything) is Naim Audio. They’ve just launched the UnitiQute high-end all-in-one audio player that’ll handle FM, DAB and Internet radio, streaming audio, iPod and USB sources. Find out more here.

Display and Touch

Pushing on with new technology in the world of touchscreens, Pacinian introduces its Surface Actuation system that offers a thin, responsive and power-efficient feedback system for use particularly in mobile devices.

Darice has already reported on a new material being considered for e-book readers. LG Display has created “metal foil” e-paper technology which is not only touch-sensitive and fairly high resolution but is also bendable.

Jayvee looked at Samsung’s transparent AMOLED screens which are sure to find some interesting applications over the coming few years.

Processors

Intel has introduced new features and processors including Turbo Boost Technology on its mainstream processors, the first 32nm processors, and Core i5 processors which are supposed to be around twice as fast as existing PCs.

Overall, Intel has introduced some 25 processors, wireless adapters and chipsets.

Gadgets

The Photosimile 5000 is an interesting product that will take a professional photograph of any object within seconds. It includes a 28-inch light box with 6500K daylight bulbs, automated camera positioning system and a turntable together with a Canon DSLR and imaging software.

Not only do you get a range of photos but also 360˚ and hemispherical Flash files. Neat.

Phone Halo Protect is a small Bluetooth-enabled device that can be attached to valuables and then used to locate them from an enabled smartphone.

Sticking to the location theme, Lok8u intros its GPS locator watch: the multi.m8 allows the wearer to be located with a 10-foot accuracy.

For those who just can’t survive without the magic of instant pictures, Polaroid has created a 12MP digital camera with a built in photo printer. It’s Polaroid for the 21st century.

We’re only partway though CES, so when the dust has settled we’ll take a look at some of the other gadgets that made it big here.

Hey geeks look at this chart. This is Intel’s “Tick-Tock” model for releasing faster, denser and smaller chips. You have an alternating innovation between making chip sizes smaller (Tick) and reinventing the chip to bring in new features (Tock). It’s sorta like how Nokia releases the 5800 XpressMusic phone and then shrinks it to the 5530 XpressMusic phone or the Nokia N97 and then following it up with the N97 mini. Yay, I managed to make the example uncomplicated.

A lot has happened since the 65nm Intel Core architecture and by next year we’re going to be seeing the new Sandy Bridge thingamajig released to the public. But that’s not the whole point of this whole article. What I want to illustrate with this chart is that the time line is predictable. Even Intel says so. Smaller chips. Better technology. Better technology. Better technology. You get the drift. So if you plot the X axis into infinity we’re going to expect chips at 1 nanometer embedded in our brands in 2016. By that time I’ll be at the latter part of my career as a media mogul and would probably retire after seeing what the world will be like with all of us embedding chips in our brains.

“In our time, all we did was embed YouTube videos into our blogs!”

Take a look at this beast. Pretty beautiful isn’t it? (I have to assume that you enjoy gear pr0n, of course)

Not only that, but it has a heck of a lot of power under the hood, utilising Intel’s new Core i7 processors and either an Intel Kingsberg P55 Extreme or EVGA X58 SLI Classified motherboard.

Cram it full of storage (up to six hard drives or 12 SSDs), your choice of graphics and sound cards, and up to 12GB of RAM and you’re set for a powerful computing experience.

Cooling is vital, and the SHIFT features bottom to top airflow, liquid cooling and 90-degree rotation of the motherboard.

There’s even personal support from the person who built each machine, should something go wrong.

Forget tacky plastic: SHIFT features an aluminium skin and steel skeleton, and goes for the classy, minimalist look.

Prices start at $2,199 for the SHIFT Intel P55 and $2,599 for the SHIFT Intel X58.

MAINGEAR

Last year, the UK’s Museum of Computing had to close because the University of Bath moved out of a campus in Swindon where the collection was housed.

Now, though, it’s received a new lease of life thanks to Swindon Borough Council which has offered the museum a three-year lease in the heart of the town.

Museum founder Jeremy Holt said that the new venue would be much easier to get to and could encourage more people to visit.

In particular, the staff are thinking of setting up championship league tables and online competitions in the gaming exhibition. Some 80% of the gaming collection is in working order and means it’s possible to trace the history of video gaming around 30 years back.

The venue means there’ll be more room to spread out and house themed exhibitions. It’s sponsored by Intel whose European HQ is also in Swindon.