I was at CES last week schlepping around the halls looking for something cool. Unfortunately cool was in short supply at this year’s show. One of the things that I did find interesting was the new mobile GPUs that AMD was showing off.

AMD introduced its line of Radeon Mobility 4000 video cards for notebooks that includes the HD 4800, HD 4600, HD 4500 and HD 4300 GPUs. The HD 4800 is the first mobile GPU according to AMD to break the teraflop barrier.

Some new Pioneer receivers were caught talking at CES 2009 about how they want to hook-up with iPods and how they require Apple’s standard USB data cable to do so. The VSX series receivers won’t kill you in the wallet too badly, and they have features that I’m sure you will want, including out-of-the-box compatibility with iPods.

Just hook up your iPod or iPhone to the USB jack in front of the receiver and you’re ready. All you need to do is kick back, listen and check out the album art. The receiver remote also offers full control of your iPod, but surprisingly,(This may hurt sales) there’s no support for playing video off your iPod except for the VSX-919 and VSX-1019AH, the two models on the high end of the budget-minded VSX line.

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.

Flexible OLED displays are becoming more commonplace everyday. They just need to make it into some of the devices we can buy. However long it may take, when that day arrives, Universal Display Corporation thinks something like the gadget above will be a part of it.

It’s a wearable, flexible, 4-inch prototype screen that CES attendees will be able to drool over, maybe even wipe clean and try on. Just don’t expect to wear it comfortably. It won’t be in stores anytime soon either. This one was developed with military applications in mind, but bendy consumer devices are on the way at some point. Give it a few years and we will start seeing them in passports, clothing, packaging etc.

For a while there, manufacturers were concentrating on large sizes, now it’s depth that is all important. TVs are big and you can get one up to 150 inches if you’re rich and bored, but how thin are they? Chances are they are not thin enough to match your wall art. That’s all about to change as companies race to put out the first super-thin LCD TVs.

JVC is about to show off a new prototype of a 32-inch LCD HDTV at CES this week. It’s unique because it’s a mere 7mm thick and weighs in at just 11 pounds, which thinner and lighter than your TV. Most laptops no longer weigh that. Since it’s a prototype, it won’t be showing up on store shelves anytime soon, but with everyone racing to get them to consumers, it won’t be a long wait.

More powerful cameras mean that we need powerful storage solutions. Well, here’s the latest portable external hard drive photo manager from Digital Foci. It goes by the name of the Picture Porter 35 and the device features a 160GB+ hard drive, a 3.5 inch color LCD screen, an integrated card reader supporting CF, MMC, SD/HC, miniSD, Memory Stick, MS PRO, MS Duo, and xD-Picture cards, a USB host, and a TV or a projector output.

It’s not the most beautiful device we’ve ever seen, but it’s a great tool to backup your endless vacation photos and enjoy them. The Picture Porter 35 will be introduced at CES next week, but won’t be available until Summer of 2009. No price info yet.

This year’s CES will see Blaupunkt and miRoamer put Internet radio into car dashboards for the first time. According to miRoamer founder and CEO George Parthimos, “miRoamer’s development with Blaupunkt is the first seamless Internet radio solution. With the simple push of a button, users can access AM/FM stations or Internet radio’s thousands of music, entertainment, news and talk stations from around the world, all from the same car stereo.”

The first model will connect to a 3G/HSDPA/HSPA device via Bluetooth for Internet connectivity. When connecting to the Internet from an external device (Like an iPhone), the customer’s existing service provider is the default network. They have various models in the pipeline which may have their own internal modem.

Space is always an issue with PCs, so Originatic is aiming to put them on your wall. Scheduled for the CES ’09 debut is the all-in-one wall-mounted Smart-Leaf PC, designed with space-saving in mind. If you’re a casual PC user, it’s worth a look.

In Vegas, Originatic will showcase two of these PCs, the Smart-Leaf Oasis and the Smart-Leaf Mountain. The former features a touchscreen, fold-out keyboard, trackpad, TV tuner and Wi-Fi, and is perfect for the home, the latter features all keyboard lock and a trackball in addition to the other’s features, but lacks the TV tuner. That one is for business use.

Remember the Ladybug, that cute award winning iPod dock from Vestalife? Today, the company is launching two new versions of the stylish bug dock. They already had a pretty unique and innovative design, so this year they are looking to improve on the shape.

It’s far more curvy, looking less techie and more organic. With the Firefly, you have a more naturally elegant iPod/iPhone dock. The Firefly is iPhone compatible, unlike the LadyBug, and has a built-in subwoofer. Features after the jump.

Before the dawn of the netbook age, there were several tiny, ultraportable machines on the market like the OQO Model 2. These devices were much smaller than the notebooks of the day, but offered too many compromises in usefulness and performance so they never really caught on.

Today the netbook has shown many consumers that a lower performance computer can be very useful and netbooks are leading the computer market in growth. To grab some of this action OQO is getting a new Model 2+ of its little machine ready for a CES 2009 debut.

CES 2009 is only days away now and the hoards of new gadgets and HDTVs that will be shown are probably showing up at the convention center in Vegas right now. Each year there are a myriad of world’s first launched at the show, and often they can only claim that title for a day, if not mere hours because of all the product introductions.

LG has laid claim to the title of world’s first TruMotion 480Hz LCD TV panel. The typical HDTV has a 60Hz refresh rate, though some are on the market now sporting 120Hz. I expect that we will see many 240Hz sets at the show and LG may not be the only maker showing off a 480Hz set.