Yahoo has improved its powerful and versatile cell phone offering with a more intuitive design, a highly personalized home page, and the ability to add widgets from third parties like eBay and MySpace. It’s an easier-to-use, more developer-friendly platform that will help users access the information they want more quickly.

Available on the 30 devices now in beta with hundreds more to come, Yahoo Go 3.0 also does a better job than its predecessor of updating you on what’s new since you last launched the application, whether it’s alerting you to new e-mails or new photos posted to your Flickr account. And because the Home widget lets you deck it out with mobile snippets of your favorite content from around the Web, this service will feel like it’s made just for you.

Motorola takes music phones to a new level with the ROKR E8, which uses innovative ModeShift technology to transform this glossy handset into a music player. With the touch of a button the perfectly flat virtual dialpad disappears and is replaced by music playback controls, and they feel like real buttons because of the amazing work Motorola has done to improve haptics technology.

A variable-speed FastScroll navigation wheel makes it simple to scroll through the ROKR E8’s menus by sliding your thumb, as well as up to 1,500 songs stored on the 2GB of memory. And the sound quality rivals what you would expect from standalone music players, whether you’re listening through traditional earphones (plugged into the 3.5mm jack) or the powerful speaker.

Sleek and smart, the IdeaPad U110 is one of Lenovo’s first notebooks made for consumers, and it packs an awful lot of innovation into a 2.3-pound package.

This 11-inch laptop makes securing your system simple with VeriFace Face Recognition, which leverages software in combination with the built-in camera to log you in and make passwords obsolete. The IdeaPad U110 also includes Dolby Home Theater technology for robust audio and optional solid state drive technology for the ultimate in performance and battery life.

It’s all wrapped up in a stylish textured design that features a red aluminum alloy top cover and cool touch-sensitive media controls. If you can do without a built-in optical drive, the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 has it all.

I’ll admit GPS was a tough category this year. The market is exploding, and there are a couple of emerging technologies that make us really excited for next year, but in truth, they’re just not here in finished products just yet.

But all is not lost. Garmin (along with MSN Direct) came through with the nüvi 880. Its coolest feature is its voice recognition combined with a remote that straps to your steering wheel. Anyone who has a Bluetooth headset knows how this works. You touch a button to signal that you’re ready to talk, and it goes from there. What’s nice about that is that you don’t have to reach over to touch the device itself, so you can keep your hands on the wheel.

Available in the second quarter for $999, the the nüvi 880 isn’t cheap, but it’s the best voice-recognition model we’ve seen to date.

There were plenty of high-definition camcorders at this year’s show, but none of them rivals the innovation inside Sony’s HDR-UX20. This model not only captures footage at an impressive 1920 x 1080 pixels, it offers face detection for both photos and videos, allocated more pixels to the detected face on the fly. We really like the Face Roll Index, which remembers specific faces and lets you sort accordingly. The HDR-UX20 also has a built-in zoom mic, so as you zoom in closer visually on a subject, you should be able to hear what he or she is saying.

You won’t find more recording flexibity on any camcorder. You can record to the built-in 8 GB of internal memory (about an hour of footage in 1920 HD mode), Memory Stick Pro DUO, or DVD media. And you can copy images and videos from the internal memory or Memory Stick to DVD for playback. A 2.3-MP CMOS censor in combination with a BIONZ image processor ensures crisp video footage with a minimum amount of noise, and you can capture 4-MP still shots. If you’re going to shoot in high-def, you won’t find a more versatile or powerful option for the price.

Talk about fast. thanks to its high-speed LSI processor, the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1  can shoot up to 60 frames per second at 6 megapixels, ensuring you never miss a shot. Its continuous flash means you’re not stuck waiting for that, either. And, unlike D-SLRs, this prosumer camera can record movies at at an amazing 1,200 fps. That means you can really slow down the action and make out striking details.

We really liked the way the EX-F1 groups your shots together. If you take a bunch of shots in rapid succession, it shows you only the first one, so you can either select the whole group of them or move on to the next individual shot when you’re in Play mode. It’s just one of those things that tells you Casio has thought of everything.

Everex, the same company that recently released the $200 gOS Linux based laptop to Wal-Mart, today announced its little brother, the Everex CloudBook ultra-mobile PC.

Weighing in at just 2 pounds, the CloudBook certainly lives up to its near-weightless name. It features a VIA C7-M ultra-low voltage (ULV) CPU clocked at 1.2GHz, which helps achieve its 5 hour battery life on a 4-cell battery. By way of comparison, the Asus EeePC has a 900MHz Intel Celeron processor.

Everex’s CloudBook features the same 7 inch 800×480 resolution screen as the Eee PC, similar built-in speakers, and 802.11b/g that the Asus Eee PC 701 has, but instead of packing in a measly 4GB SSD, Everex has opted for a full-blown 30GB hard drive. It’s an awesome feature that media-heavy users are looking for, although it will most certainly boot slower than the Eee PC. The CloudBook also has a 4-in-1 card reader, as opposed to just a SD/MMC one, and a better 1.3 MP webcam. Unfortunately, Everex only packs in 512MB of DDR2 RAM, and it can only be upgraded to 1GB.

Instead of a Xandros Linux distribution, the CloudBook has the same gOS V2 Rocket distro that the Everex desktop has. It features pre-installed apps like Skype, Firefox, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and OpenOffice.org 2.3, among others. Size-wise, the CloudBook measures about the same as the EeePC: 9.06 x 6.73 x 1.16 inches as opposed to 8.9 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches.

The black faceted unit looks pretty attractive in our pictures, and we admit, it’s going to take a lot of will-power to hold back from grabbing one on January 25th when it hits store shelves for $399.

The amount of place shifting devices and services has been overwhelming. Its actually hard to find a company that isn’t doing wireless video streaming in one way or another. But, D-Link’s PC on TV caught our eye. The media player allows users to stream their PC’s video to a TV, either wired or wirelessly.

We like to hear that D-Link understands that the Web-based content out there is pretty damn good. Instead of streaming your TV or DVR to your computer Sling style, you can send YouTube videos and Google Video from the PC without the use of a proprietary media player. Supported are MPEG-4 or any AVI videos or virtually any local video content, and use any media player, such as iTunes, Nero, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.

The device supports photo viewing at 1280×720 screen resolution and streaming video at 640×480 resolution at up to 30 frames per second. Even better it comes with a mouse-like trackball remote control.

We’ve long been fans of the Sonos Multi Zone Digital Music System, which taps into your PC and music services like Rhapsody and streams tunes throughout the home using an elegant mesh networking technology–complete with a remote control that has a scroll wheel and big color screen. But no one I know can afford the $999 it costs for all that wireless goodness. Logitech has found a way to deliver a lot of the same features and functionality for a fraction of the cost. The $399 Squeezebox Duet Network music system is one heck of a bargain for what you get.

What a difference mobile broadband makes. When we previously reviewed the LifeBook U810 from Fujitsu, we liked its $999 price point, sharp 5.6-inch display, and over five hours of battery life. But something was missing. That thing was a wireless connection that lets you surf the Web from anywhere. Enter the refreshed U810 with integrated HSDPA from AT&T.

Even inside the Las Vegas Convention Center the U810 got five bars of coverage, and sites loaded in about 15 seconds. We can’t wait to take a final review unit of this UMPC for a spin. It’s funny how you’ll overlook things like a tiny keyboard when you can check your e-mail and update your blog on the fly.

We’d like the 12-inch P8o10 even more if it had mobile broadband, too, but based on our hands-on impressions we think it could be one of the better value-priced ultraportables of the year.

802.11g’s impending irrelevancy has been written on the wall for some time now. For proof, look no further than Netgear’s new 802.11n RangeMax products, just announced this past Sunday at CES. The lineup, which includes two routers, a bridge, networking kit, and USB adapter, is designed for real-time gaming, HD streaming, and high-quality VoIP calls, scenarios where 802.11g falls pitifully short.

For users who want to upgrade to 802.11n either for improved throughput or, as Mark likes to say, to future-proof their notebooks, the RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router ($129) is a good choice with a pretty standard price tag. For thirty dollars more, the RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router is a better option for people who need their router for gaming and media-streaming.

Other upgrades include the 5 GHz Wireless-N HD Access Point/Bridge ($129), which lends high-performance N capability to an 802.11g router, and the HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit ($229), which provides optimal connections between routers, network servers, and wireless media devices such as XBox, Nintendo Wii, and Apple TV, among others. Finally, the RangeMax Wireless-N Dual Band USB Adapter ($99.99) boosts your notebook’s adapter to N level. All of these devices are backward compatible with 802.11g products.

Case Logic has launched a set of laptop bags which serve a (equally great) dual purpose - they protect your system and also help crank open your beer. The SN Canvas line of bags not only look stylish with their slick screened “street art” graphics, but the bottle cap opener looks more like a part of the design than a tool to open up a brewsky.

We also checked out the new SN Artist Series. Perfect for the breakout artist the canvas bags comes along with markers that allow you to draw your favorite image or design. Case Logic is definitely putting the cool in laptop protection.

Yesterday, Avnera announced a few new products that use its AvneraAudio technology. Two of my favorites that look particularly attractive are the Acoustic Research Wireless remote system and the Skype Certified FREETALK wireless stereo headset.

Acoustic Research wireless remote system

The Acoustic Research wireless remote system lets you roam around your house with your iPod, while another dongle sits attached to your stereo playing any music you choose. It’s perfect for a fully audio-enabled house where the stereo may be in the living room while the music listener is cookin’ up bacon to the tune of Jack Johnson. With the latest announcement, the chef can control their songs, whip (me) up an awesome breakfast, and not have to worry about leaving the room when Cher comes on. The wireless remote will be available in April for $129.99.