Axiotron is back at it again with doing after-market modifications to Apple laptops. Its latest product, the new Modbook Pro, is currently being showcased at MacWorld and prices around $5,000 starting if modifying one of their in-house MacBook Pros.

The Modbook Pro is designed to be a a 15.4-inch pen-enabled display with a pixel resolution of 1440 x 900 WXGA which runs the Mac OS. It also incorporates a technology which uses touch functionality primarily in support of the pen input. Axiotron ends up replacing the original Apple MacBook Pro’s enclosure to accomplish this, voiding the current Apple warranty and replacing it with one of its own.

JVC is introducing at CES 2009 what it calls a new category of flat panel television design – a super slim monitor said to feature a color space wider than typical HDTVs. It is called the LT-42WX70 and no pricing or release information is known as of yet.

The LT-42WX70, said JVC, was designed to reproduce the colors, detail and “texture” of high resolution images captured on digital SLR cameras. It, in fact, is designed to target digital imaging professionals and others into using high end digital cameras, though it is fully functional as well as a home television. It sports a 42-inch display in a slim body design.

What’s one to do with all of those used up hard drives lying around? Turn them into swappable storage options, ala flash memory cards? That’s the idea anyhow with the new NewerTech Voyager Q hard drive docking station, being shown off at MacWorld and costing around $100.

Looking something like a stylish, small toaster for a hard drive, the Voyager Q is designed to turn any 2.5- or 3.5-inch SATA I/II drive up to 2TB into a bootable and hot-swappable external drive solution. It works with both Macs and PCs and lets its owner boot and swap drives at will, offering transfer speeds with a connected computer of up to 300MB/s.

Gaming accessories maker ezGear, teaming with a music and gaming technology company out of California, is showing off at the Consumer Electronics Show what it believes is the world’s most advanced video game and music controller. It’s a gaming guitar – the You Rock Guitar – and you’ll have shell out around $150 later this year if you want one.

The You Rock Guitar works with both guitar-based video games as well as music programs like Garage Band on the Mac. It sports a full , multi-touch fret board to accomplish this, including offering raised bars to give the feeling of playing the guitar with strings.

This game looks familiar. Except now you can really score a kill. Well, not really. But it’s as close as some of you will ever get to killing a flying duck. Available this spring, the Duck Hunter is like a WowWee Dragonfly mashed up with the classic Duck Hunt lightgun shooting game.

The duck launches from your IR blaster, charging in just 10 seconds from a few AA batteries in the pistol. When the robotic duck takes flight autonomously, just shoot the bird three times. Robot duck death will follow.

The future of touch and gesture interface technology continues it’s rapid march forward, but traditional hardware interface devices are still making improvements. Hitachi recently showed off a new kind of television remote control specifically designed for the computer savvy needs of IPTV viewers. It may look like a crystal ball, but it won’t…or maybe it will reveal the future.

The idea is to get away from all of those buttons and make the process of using an onscreen GUI an intuitively simple process. Which is how it should be. No word yet on release date or price, but we are hoping to see it soon. Regular TV remotes are so last century.

If you love music, but aren’t picky about what you specifically listen to, this one may be a good bet for your ears. It comes with 1,000 “hand picked” songs. Yeah I know this could spell disaster. Hopefully the songs were handpicked by someone in your age group, so you don’t end up with Britney Spears or Hannah Montana.

It comes with 1,000 songs “handpicked from the Billboard charts” coming on a microSD card for use with the player. If you get bored with those, you can get genre-specific 1,000 song bundles for $40 more. It’s a cool idea, which brings the cost of music down to 4 cents per song and it also cuts downloading out of the equation. The problem is most of the songs will probably be garbage. There’s also an FM radio integrated in there too.

In the US, JVC fans have had to watch with envy as the rest of the world gets all of the JVC Blu-ray products. Not anymore. Today JVC announced a stand-alone Blu-ray player and a 3.1 home theater in a box. The XV-PB1 Blu-ray player will be available in March for $299. It will support BD Live content and also playback AVCHD videos that you create on your HD camcorder.

The new TH-SB100 is likely just the US version of the NX-BD3 previously available in Europe, which is a BD Live player. There’s no mention of any support for DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD. It will be available in April for $699.

If there’s one certainty in life, it’s that gadgets get smaller and smaller while storage size goes up. Thin is in. And it’s not just TVs and display screens that are shedding pounds, but even the portables. Now there’s Samsung’s slimmest Blu-ray player. The player is only 1.5-inches thick.

With the BDP4600, other manufacturers are sure to follow and scale down their Blu-ray players as well. Because let’s face it, most look like crap. No other specs at the moment, but we’ll let you know if anything is sacrificed to gain that trim exterior. It sure looks pretty.

As expected, Apple has announced its 17″ MacBook Pro that has had the intertubez all abuzz prior to Macworld. It is 0.98″ thin and tips the scales at just 6.6 pounds. Now that’s not the lightest ever, but it is a 17-inch laptop. But it is the lightest and thinnest 17″ notebook in the world though.

Some features include: 17″ LED backlit display 1,920 × 1,200 resolution 700:1 contrast ratio 60% greater color gamut compared to its predecessor, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93 GHz Dual Core processor, 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM and a 320GB hard drive. You also have the choice of a $50 anti-glare option if you want. There’s a trio of USB 2.0 ports on the left, a Mini DisplayPort, FireWire 800, digital audio in/out and an ExpressCard slot and all the other features you love.

Much like the Rovio, the WowWee Spyball spy camera will let you live out some James Bond fantasies. Or at the very least snap some upskirt pics. The tiny remote controlled robotic ball features built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and gets around on sleek wheels, capable of smooth mobility and quick 360-degree turns.

It can also transform from a ball to a camera and back within seconds, and it does it’s job quietly, so you can sneak around and get some dirt on people. The blackmail will follow. Another cool feature is that when it’s connected to a home network, the Spyball can be controlled remotely via the Internet.

As always, WowWee has some new robots up it’s sleeve, despite branching out into other products. They look interesting as ever. What I like about their robots is that they actually infuse them with some personality.

In this case, Joebot is the large guy. A dancing rhythm robot that responds to beats. He’s the life of the party. The Roborover explorer on the other hand, starts out shy and gets bolder over time. I love the design on these guys. Full press release below.

It sounds wrong, but I’ll just say it. I’ve never seen a joystick so huge in my life. Now that I have I want one. This has to be the most awesome lamp ever for a bachelor geek. You can make one just like it with a little hard work and some nerd enthusiasm.

You’ll need the enthusiasm as this DIY project is a bit more time consuming then some others. The creator was able to get it done with just a small supply of basic tools. If you have a band saw or a scroll saw, you should be able to knock one out faster. Check out the shade too. It’s brimming with retro Atari cartridge art.

Meet the new best keyboard ever. The official Eee Keyboard. It features wireless HDMI, and it’s a “fully functional PC” with full QWERTY and an awesome mini secondary touchscreen.

Asus is mum about if and when we’ll actually see the Eee Keyboard come to market (It looks like a very real product), but if it’s a concept for a home theater PC, it is an amazing one. With wireless HDMI you could probably make any television into your monitor without having a huge PC taking up space.

WowWee is smart. They know that in this economy, it’s smart to diversify. We are all used to seeing the company’s latest robotics offerings, but now the company responsible for Tri-Bot is serving up a Cinemin line of micro Projectors.

Another thing of interest is the Spyball spy-cam, a remote controller, WiFi-enabled robotic ball. The company has more too. It doesn’t stop there. How about the Joebot and Roborover robots, FlyTech Lightstar flyer / Hoverpod racer, four brand new breeds of Alive Cubs and a fresh line of “pajama pals” called Sleeping Cuties.