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Open the Gates – With more than 31 football fields of show space, CES attendees have to crowd in opening day and walk themselves ragged in hopes of not just seeing all the show but seeing what will win/fail big in the coming year.

While a few folks have said CES is on its last leg, we wonder if they were at the same show we were this month.

More than 3,100 exhibitors squeezed into a mere 1.861 million net square feet (31+ football fields) of exhibit space and the show drew more than 153,000 attendees.

There was the urban sprawl of the big boys trying to out-glitz each other (even as they experienced record losses or marginal profits).

Microsoft announced that this was their last keynote, last time of exhibiting; and folks immediately said, "See the show is losing its relevance in a real-time world."

These same folks probably said Ballmer couldn't get out of his own way.

Suddenly he's brilliant?

Folks pointed out that really big things in the past have gone on to bomb, die.

You know Palm/WebOS, netbooks, 3D TV, etc.Read more

Better Year – To know where you're going you have to know where you've been, what you've been through. Based largely on what we've been through, people are cautiously more optimistic about the coming year. Image – Universal Pictures

Imagine:

• A global population of seven billion people … and growing.
• More than six billion mobile subscribers … and growing.
• More than nine billion connected devices (two billion machine to machine) … and growing.

We've become a mobile and open world, and there's no turning back.

Constantly Connected – Some feel at a loss if they don't have their mobile "tools" – smartphone, iPad, notebook – with them constantly. Admit it. You go back home if you forgot your phone. You're at a loss when your tablet/computer battery runs low. No wonder we feel we're always connected … we are!Read more

While the government is busy crafting legislation to protect your privacy and prevent companies like Apple and Google from tracking your online activities, this recent Gadgetology study from Retrevo discovered there's a lot of snooping and tracking going on among people who know each other. If you've ever wondered what the likelihood is that someone is reading your emails or text messages or even tracking your comings and goings, you might be surprised to learn it's more common than ever, especially among spouses and parents and their children.

Easy access to someone's emails, text messages and call history on cell phones, laptops and other gadgets make it easy to invade someone's personal space. Everyone's personal information is, more times than not, left sitting on the kitchen counter, readily available to curious onlookers like spouses, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, significant others, or who knows, even nosy friends and relatives. In this recent Retrevo Gadgetology study more than a third of respondents (33%) admitted to checking a boyfriend's or girlfriends email or call history on the sly. Slightly more married couples snoop on their spouses (37%) and an even larger number of parents spy on their kids (37%). The number of parents snooping is highest among parents of teenagers with 60% snooping on their kids and possibly for good reason as 14% of those parents reported finding something they were concerned about.Read more

After the first social media frenzy you'd think/hope people learned so things won't go wrong this time around. If understanding is overpowered by greed, things won't go wrong…they'll go seriously awry. Screenshot – "The Hangover Part II," Warner Bros (2011)

A friend recently gave us a flyover of the island he owns out in the middle of the ?????

Another's son took us on a tour of his farm complete with cows, chickens, pigs, tractors and a horse out in the middle of ????

It was fast, simple, easy…they just went to SecondLife, Farmville respectively and showed us around.

You may think it's the virtual world, but they paid real money for their property and improvements.

The new round of online, social media fervor/fear is as interesting as the stuff we saw in the 1995-2000 dot-com bubble.

Could it happen again?Read more

"It's difficult to maintain enthusiasm for your leadership when you keep getting beat up by that old man." – Alfanz, Fool's Gold, Warner Brothers (2008)

You have to admire Google. They're masters at giving stuff away free and making it up on the backend … selling your click, interest, movements to others.

O.K., that's about it.

Their other strategies have taken the gleam off their golden touch:

• Nexus was an empty mine
• So few folks download Android/Honeycomb apps that developers focus on the Apple mines that have action
• Google convinced a lot of companies to throw money into their wet, musty TV mine; they just forgot the content owners
• The Google music mine was empty at first and … yep, pretty much still is

Group-buying coupons are everywhere, from the monolithic Groupon to sites that service just one or two cities. Some of the coolest coupons are for stuff you never imagined doing, like skydiving. Others offer deals on movie tickets and -- most popularly -- spa services.

Groupon, which recently was heavily courted by Google, is coping with competition from Living Social, which is backed by Amazon.com. Facebook recently launched its own daily-deal program for five markets, and rebuffed Google is now going at it alone in several test markets.

With all this competition, many offers seem irresistible, but how do you know when it's truly a good deal? Here are eight ways to get the most out of your deal-of-the-day. Read more

"It is a choice, Wesley, that each of us must face: to remain ordinary, pathetic, beat-down, coasting through a miserable existence, like sheep herded by fate - or you can take control of your own destiny and join us, releasing the caged wolf you have inside." – Sloan, Wanted, Universal Studios (2008)

Soon we will all be able to spend our time blindly, mindlessly, fearlessly on the Web. Government officials who can't balance their own budget have taken up a more difficult, more popular (and visible) challenge – protecting your online persona.

These people know that you want 1st class services from your government and lower taxes. And … that you want instant access to information/material that is relevant to you without paying for it.

Boy, you're a tough cookie.

Actually, the public outcry over Apple's, Sony's, Google's, Facebook's, recent problems did more to force the companies to look at their policies, their procedures, their programs than the grandstanding Congressional hearings.Read more

Samsung creates another industry-first device.

May 12, 2011-- Samsung this week announced its stylish Series 5 Chromebook, the world's first Chromebook built on the principles of speed, simplicity and security.

"With the creation of the Series 5 we are again pushing the boundaries of innovation by introducing an entirely new product category to the notebook market," said Scott Ledterman, director of mobile PC marketing at Samsung Enterprise Business Division. "This partnership has allowed us to combine Samsung’s design and engineering expertise with Google’s simple, secure software to provide consumers with a revolutionary notebook to fit today’s web-centric lifestyle."

"Samsung's reputation for innovative design and hardware development makes it a great partner to introduce one of the first Chromebooks," said Caesar Sengupta, Director of Product Management, Google. "We look forward to bringing a much better computing experience built around the speed, simplicity and security of Chrome." Read more