2010CES美国国际消费电子展

Super thin high-definition televisions are on big display. But one of the major attractions at this year's annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is 3D technology. TV manufacturers want viewers to strap on the glasses and go multidimensional says CNET.com's Molly Wood.

"That is all that anybody is talking about, 3D TVs, 3D projectors, Blu-ray players, 3D glasses galore. I mean, you're actually seeing people make custom 3D glasses to kind of just go along with the whole trend toward 3D."

Walt Disney Company says it's working on some 3D programming even though there's little infrastructure to actually broadcast 3D. But the whole point of CES is to look to the future of technology with new and flashy products.

Along those lines, a new crop of eReaders, trying to compete with Amazon's Kindle. Plastic Logic's Que reader, for example displays digital forms of newspapers and books on a barely centimeter thick touch screen and by integrating with Microsoft, let you read email on the move.

"Everyone is doing an eReader and everyone is doing some sort of tablet computer.
I mean  I think you're really seeing a huge explosion in those two spaces
As for big tech player Google, it's in the spotlight as HTC shows off the search giant's new Nexus One phone. The phone uses Google's Andriod, an open source operating system that Google hopes will spell a big change for the US mobile phone market.

The big name missing from CES is, of course, Apple, which holds its own big event at the end of the month.

Rumors are rife that the company will unveil a new cutting-edge tablet computer and trying to get ahead of Apple, Microsoft and HP briefly displayed their own tablet at CES.

The unstated assumption for many of these future gadgets is that the economy will recover enough in 2010 to rev up consumer demand. Upgrading to a tablet, buying an eReader, or switching to an expensive 3D TV won't be easy for a lot of consumers who are still facing an economic crunch.

Manoush Zomorodi, Reuters