The Consumer Electronics show, the behemoth of tech, the Valhalla of gadgetry, has come and gone for yet another year. But this time, rather than arriving with a bang, it slinked into sight with something more like a whimper.

CES 2010 had really had the wind knocked out of it before it had even got into the ring this year. All eyes were already on Apple and their rumoured Tablet in the run up to the event, despite the fact that Apple are traditionally a no-show at CES, instead planning their own top-secret unveiling at the end of January. Likewise, Google delivered a sucker-punch in the shape of the Nexus One, their flagship handset revealed at their own event on the eve of CES 2010's opening.

To make matter's worse, Microsoft's opening keynote speech (delivered by walking personality drain Steve Ballmer) was pretty darn dull. First a power cut, then a load of waffle on the 2 month old Windows 7, Ballmer hardly seemed to be trying to keep our attention. Though the Christmas release date for Project Natal was welcome news, it revealed nothing new about the device, whilst the partnership with Hewlett Packard for the new Slate device seemed merely like a case of keeping-up with the Joneses. Or should that be the Jobs-es?

But the Las Vegas event wasn't without its highlights. Far from it in fact. Maybe it's the recession, or the generally pocket-pinching mood in the air these days, but for once the most sought after tech wasn't in the realms of dreamy aspiration, but was actually fairly affordable.

Take for instance the brand new 3D TVs on show, of which the Sony BRAVIA XBR-52HX900 (video above, courtesy of Ashley) was the pick of the litter. Finally shaping up to the standards set by its cinema siblings, company reps promised that the average 3D TV will cost little more than a top-end Full HD set. Skype and video calling in many TV sets too will help turn your living room into somewhere the Jetsons could only dream of.

E-readers are also looking to be both big and affordable in 2010. As a comic book fanatic I'd have liked to have seen more attempts at a colour screened e-reader (I'm not including the MSI offering, which is really just a dual-touch screened PC, super-cool as it is). Plastic Logic's Que Pro e-reader looked great though, with a massive, durable screen, and was far lighter than the hundreds of books you'd be able to store on the tabloid-sized device.

There were, of course, tablets aplenty. The dual-booting Viliv P3 may be an underdog in the category, but seemed way more exciting than Microsoft's offering. The offer of both Windows and Android on the same device showed a respect for user choice not often seen in the back-slapping world of consumer tech.

There was still time for fun too. The Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter was fun and fresh, combining real-world toys with augmented reality controls. A little less high-tech but full of retro-chic was the Lasonic i931 iPhone dock/ghetto blaster mash-up. Odd's on its at the top of Flava Flav's Christmas list. And there was still some time for the weird and the plain old dumb, too.

Though less prevalent than other years, there were some great examples of brand new tech on show that were genuinely exciting. A real head-turner and my favourite item of the show was the Light Blue Optic Light Touch. Using a pico projection engine and a touch sensitive sensor, it'll turn any flat surface into a touchscreen. It works ridiculously well despite still being in the development stages, and has almost unlimited potential.

Some detractors say that, recession or not, CES looks to be on its last legs. It's sad, but not unlikely, when you consider the audiences that companies like Apple and Google can command for just a single product launch. However, for emerging companies like Light Blue Optics CES is still vital to gain some exposure, not to mention the fact that such a prominent date in the calendar forces the tech giants to have made some significant, competitive advances in their gear, year-on-year.

So here's hoping the old dog's got a bit of life left in it yet. Hopefully next year will kick off the recessionary cobwebs and kick the show back into high-tech gear. It wouldn't take much to tempt us back to the City of Sin once more.

Click here for full CES 2010 pre-show, day one, day two and day three round-ups.

Microsoft have caused quite a stir this week, banning over 600,000 Xbox Live users for having modded their consoles. The move is an attempt to deter piracy and cheating in online games, two problems that obviously and validly need addressing. But have the bans hurt users with more innocent intentions for their modifications? Read on to find out.

Piracy in the games industry is no new thing; I can remember way back to weekend car boot sales in the early 1990s where dodgy Del Boy types would be selling knocked off Amiga 500 floppies for peanuts. Sales of software for the original PlayStation were marred by piracy-enabling mod chips, and the Dreamcast too was ridiculously easy to exploit, requiring just a boot-disc to play copied games.

Widespread peer-to-peer piracy is rife too, with illegal downloads being cited as a major contributor to ever declining PC software sales.

Despite the might of Microsoft behind it, the Xbox 360 is no better defended against piracy-enabling mods. Specialist services will modify your Xbox 360 for under £100, allowing a user to download and burn their own software. Though Tech Digest does not condone piracy, it is easy to see how strong the temptation of buying cheap knock-off games or downloading them for free could be, especially with games like Modern Warfare 2 commanding an extortionate £54.99 price tag.

Though the gaming industry is becoming increasingly wealthy, piracy costs companies billions of pounds in revenue. While larger publishers may be able to bear the brunt of such losses, small independent companies literally go hungry without legitimate software sales. It results in companies less prepared to go out on a limb and innovate with new creative games, instead focussing on an established series or intellectual property. Cue boring sequels, dire-movie cash-ins and derivative Halo-clones.

Even giants like EA are looking to cut as many as 1,500 jobs in the new year, which will cause a dozen games in the development stages to be canned indefinitely.

However modding does not necessarily equate to piracy.

Here is where the argument gets interesting. Piracy is bad, no question about it. But banning a console modded to increase hard drive space, when the only official alternative is a measly 120GB drive? That can't be fair, right? Microsoft seem very keen to limit the choices available to users to just Bill Gates branded gear; just look at the recent lock-out of third party memory units.

Also, having shelled out for the inflated price of a game, shouldn't a user be allowed to back up their copy? Discs are still a fairly fragile, scratch prone medium. If something so fragile as a disc breaks, should the consumer really have to buy a brand new game? Sure, there is the increasingly available option of legal digital downloads, but, just like with digital music downloads, I think I speak for many people when I say that I like the ritual of walking into a shop, handing over my money and coming home with something physical in my hand.

Modded consoles also open up the Xbox 360 to the homebrew community, with gangs of bedroom designers the world over teaming up to try their hands at game making. This is often a well of creativity and a great entry point for designers with untapped talent. It's easy to forget that massively popular games like Counter Strike started life as software mods themselves.

But perhaps the homebrew community wouldn't seem so vital to creative design if game companies had the money saved from piracy to invest in it themselves. It's a vicious cycle.

Piracy will never go away, but how we deal with it is important not just in terms of punishing cheats and thieves, but also in how we go about protecting consumer rights and defending those who just like to innocently tinker under the bonnet of their favourite toys.

Live Macworld 2009 Keynote coverage. All times are GMT. Reverse chronological:

With thanks to Engadget, Gizmodo, Macworld, Electric Pig.

6.30pm That's it. Tony Bennett takes to the stage to play the keynote out...

6.25pm iTunes

Have sold over 6 billion songs, iTunes world's largest media library, 75m accounts.

1. Price

More flexible pricing. A $0.69 price point and a $1.29 tier also. UK tbc.

2. iTunes Plus

Apple has worked with "all the major companies". From today, 8 million songs will be DRM free right away, 10 million by end of first quarter 2009.

3. iTunes available on iPhone over 3G

Preview and purchase music anywhere using iPhone, sync on computer at home.

More over the jump: 17-inch MacBook Pro, iWork '09, iLife '09...

Astraware's GTS World Racing for the iPhone and iPod Touch should go live in the App Store over the next 24 hours or so, according to one of my industry contacts.

As the name suggests, GTS World Racing is a driving game in which you race a coupe, sports car, or Formula One car around a variety of international tracks using the built-in accelerometer to control the car.

I've been playing with a pre-release version of the game for a couple of hours, and it's a slick application with lots of potential.

Though I love the genre, I'm not a driving game fanatic, and so it's difficult for me to compare it to some of the other big names in racing. I found the cars pretty easy to control from the start, as using the accelerometer (just as in Monkey Ball Island) is intuitive.

Here we go with Steve Jobs' Keynote Speech at Apple's WWDC08 in San Francisco.

All times are BST (GMT+1/PDT+8), entries in reverse chronological order.

1950: All done.

1950: Steve concluding with talk about WWDC08. Go developers, get stuck in to the new iPhone!

More affordable iPhone

1944: More affordable: iPhone 3G 8GB will cost $199, 16GB for $299, also available in white.

Rolling out on July 11th to 22 countries, for a max of 199 all around the world (damn exchange rates)

iPhone worldwide

70 countries over next few months.

The BlackBerry 9000 was officially announced by Research In Motion this morning, and within minutes I was on the phone to my mobile contract provider, arranging the return of the Pearl 8110 I'd just ordered. Even though the 9000 won't be out until Summer, it's still worth waiting for, in my opinion.

Or is it? Do you prefer the 45g-bar-of-chocolate-size of the Pearl 8110, or the BlackBerry Maps featured in the Curve 8310? Let's take a look below the jump at the key features of the three feathers RIM has in its cap...

According to virtually every tech or gaming-orientated blog on the internet superhighway, come July the rumour is that Nintendo will be announcing the next-gen DS console at the E3 expo.

As someone who's rushed out and bought both previous incarnations of the portable gaming console, I can appreciate the huge lead made between the two, and as much as I adore the Lite, I can think of a couple improvements I'd like to see in the next version, which is rumoured to be called the 'Liter' or 'Extreme'.

The rumour mill has already started grinding, with fingers being pointed at 'larger screens', with both possibly being touch-screen, and the hardware being 'lighter and thinner'. So far, the DS fans aren't really thinking outside the box, so if you read below, you'll see my hopes for the next version...

Yesterday the second official teaser trailer for the upcoming X-Files 2 film was uploaded to YouTube (above), churning Files fans' stomachs with the possibilities for the hugely-awaited film. Snow! It has snow! What does that mean? Ooh, Scully looks gorgeous with long hair! Wow, Billy Connolly looks even more insane than normal! Amanda Peet - oh noes! Wait, was that Xzibit?!

To celebrate the film getting a release date of July 25th, I've rounded up some of the best X-Files related products and applications available on the internet. It's what Mulder would've wanted.

1.) Fanmade PC tower case on eBay - currently on $50 with no bids, the tower has six drive bays and two floppy bays, plus several carefully-chiseled see-through bits. Plus a big 'X' etched into that metallic green spraypaint, which, as the seller says, is 'great for THE X FILES Fan!'

The things I do to review camera phones for you lot! I'm a tad bit scared of heights, yet I just went up the famous London Eye to test five of the best models money can buy you. Featuring the Nokia N95, LG Viewty, Samsung G800, Sony Ericsson K850i and Apple iPhone, which do you think will succeed in taking the best shot of the Houses of Parliament?

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A consistently popular article on Tech Digest over the past year has been about Virgin Media's broadband throttling scheme, whereby they slap a speed limit on the customers they deem to be "heavy users" if they download or upload too much during peak hours.

It's certainly got you hot under the collar, as most of the 80+ comments -- plus the search terms you're using to find the article in the first place -- testify.

Here, as a public service, is Tech Digest's Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ] guide to Virgin Media's broadband speed throttling.

Hopefully, Blu-ray players will continue to come down in price, even though rival format HD DVD has fallen out of contention. However, there's always room at the top end of the market for super-expensive models for crazy rich people. To wit: Goldmund's Eidos 20 BD.

(No, it's nothing to do with Tomb Raider.)

The player is set to cost $17,000, despite looking like a big, heavy old-skool beige PC. Needless to say, you're paying for the circuitry inside, including an AC-Curator power supply circuit, and mechanical damping. But really, the main reason to buy it is so you can tell friends the price tag while settling down to watch Black Hawk Down again.

(via Born Rich)

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Panasonic's DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player is out next week, for £349
New Blu-ray players from Sony announced, the BDP-S350 and BDP-S550
Blu-ray bigwig: "Toshiba sealed HD DVD's fate with $99 pricing..."

Hey, Sony is doing a pretty cool-looking Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots PS3 bundle. You get an 80GB PS3, the game, and a DualShock 3 controller. Just the thing if you've been waiting for Solid Snake before shelling out on Sony's console.

Oh, except there's one snag: the bundle will only be available in the US. At least, that's what Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is saying, as well as denying that a similarly attractive God Of War themed PSP bundle will be crossing the Atlantic too.

Personally, I think Sony should go the whole hog and make a true MGS PS3, which sneaks around your living room hugging the walls, then creeps up behind your Xbox 360 and slits its throat. Before lighting a fag. That would be cool.

(via PSPSPS)

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Phil Harrison, Sony's global head of game development, quits - PS3 disaster to blame?
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Time to pack up your clothes and head for the nearest bunker. Crazed scientists have taught a monkey how to control a robot on the other side of the world through brain-power alone, thus setting us on an inescapable path to a Simian/Robot alliance that will wipe humans off the face of the Earth. Probably.

Oh, alright, the Duke University researchers had no such nefariousness in mind. Instead, the experiment is about helping people with paralysis regain their ability to walk. "This is a breakthrough in our understanding of how the brain controls the movement of our legs, which is vital information needed to ultimately develop robotic prosthesis," explains the team's Miguel Nicolelis.

Look away now if you're an animal rights activist - the experiment involved planting electrodes inside two rhesus monkeys' brains, then making them walk on a treadmill. Sensors analysed the movement, then sent a signal to a robot in Japan. Even when the treadmill stopped, the monkey continued to make the robot walk, JUST BY THINKING.

The high-definition war is all over bar the shouting (and trust me, the Blu-ray camp is doing plenty of that). At least, it's over until Blu-ray comes up against digital distribution, which may wipe the smile off their faces.

In the meantime, Matsushita's Masayuki Kozuka - a key figure behind Blu-ray - has given an interview giving his take on why Toshiba pulled out of HD DVD, and why that format ended up losing the war.

Factors include Blu-ray outselling HD DVD for the first time in the US at the end of 2007, Warner Bros' defection to the Blu-ray camp just before CES, and rising sales of PS3 consoles. However, he thinks Toshiba's own aggressive HD DVD sales tactics sealed the format's fate.

There's been a lot of talk about mobile social networking in recent months, but it's mostly focused on the big consumer sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. However, business-focused social network LinkedIn has just announced its move into mobile, with a new WAP site.

You can access it by pointing your mobile browser to m.linkedin.com and, yes, the site is in beta for now. It lets you search profiles, send invites, and burrow into your network of contacts from any internet-enabled phone, including the iPhone.

"Let's face it, every professional today is carrying a wireless device," says LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye. "Many of these professionals are on the move, attending conferences, sales meetings and client events. Making LinkedIn available on mobile devices responds to both these business realities." It'll be interesting to see how the company follows up this initial launch - for example, copying Facebook's dedicated BlackBerry application would seem to be a logical move.

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Is Rupert Murdoch eyeing up LinkedIn for a possible acquisition?
LinkedIn signs up millionth time-wasting business person in the UK
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POW! Apple's MacBook Air has a "perfect, sophisticated external appearance, but its insides are full of waste."

BLAM! Its structure is "hard to comprehend".

OOF! "I can't find anything that is technically superior. We can make the same computer at a lower cost."

These are the words of a bunch of Japanese engineers surveyed by Nikkei Publications, who've reached the utterly shocking conclusion that, gasp, the MacBook Air is more expensive than it needs to be. You don't say.

Next week, the engineers present their research into whether mammals in the Ursidae family exrete in forested areas.

(via Digital World Tokyo)

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Brando claims their portable DVD drive is perfect for Eee PC or MacBook Air. O RLY?
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While at Mobile World Congress, I grabbed a demo of oneConnect, Yahoo's innovative new mobile application that draws various social networks and instant messaging apps into one place, including Yahoo's services, but also MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, LinkedIn, MSN Messenger and AIM.

It's expected to be included in Yahoo's Go 3.0 application by June this year. I was really impressed at how slick it is, and how neatly it presents the different information from all these different Web 2.0 feeds. There's a Pulse feature that lets you see people's profile updates and photo uploads too.

However, it seems the app could be derailed after a complaint from Microsoft, and concern from Facebook over how Yahoo is pulling in information from their services, and whether it's respecting people's privacy.

It was at last year's 3GSM show in Barcelona that we first clapped eyes on Polymer Vision's Readius e-book display. The show's name may have changed to Mobile World Congress, but Polymer Vision was still there this year, showing the latest version of the device, which is now a fully-fledged mobile phone, as we recently reported.

Naturally, I nosed around the company's stand to find out more. According to Pieter van Lieshout, display R&D manager, what was on show this year is an almost-final version of the device, which is due to go on sale in the second half of 2008.

The screen is lovely, I have to say. It's five inches when unrolled, and QVGA resolution. The photo above gives you a sense of how it displays newspaper pictures and text, but my personal impression is that it's very comfortable for reading indeed.

Remember the big news yesterday about LG's MusicStation Max handset, which they're working on with Omnifone? You know, the one that you buy, sign up to a monthly contract, and then get unlimited music downloads for the duration of your contract? Pretty cool, eh?

Omnifone has the handset at Mobile World Congress, and you can play with it, but they're not letting anyone photograph it. It's to build mystique, apparently. When I interviewed Omnifone's Rob Lewis, these were his exact words: "You can describe it. You can draw it..."

So I did. See above. It really is that minimalist, too. Check over the jump for another WORLD EXCLUSIVE picture of the handset, from my own fair hand.

Here's a nugget from my interview with LG's Jeremy Newing that I thought was worth spinning off as a separate story. It seems it'll only be a matter of months before LG releases the next phone in its Black Label series, following the Chocolate and Shine handsets (latter pictured).

"We have the third Black Label handset coming in May, which we can't tell you about just yet," he says. "And there'll be the successor to Viewty, obviously, which has exceeded our expectations so far."

Newing also said LG is keen to build on its momentum with the two previous Black Label handsets, with those who bought a Shine last year likely to be looking for an upgrade during the next six months. With that in mind, the third Black Label phone is guaranteed a keen reception.

Find more mobile news in our Mobile World Congress 2008 category