Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. In its introductory press release, here’s what Sony has to say about the Dash , a “personal Internet viewer” that it announced at CES: “Featuring a vivid 7-inch color touch screen… Dash utilizes an existing home wireless connection to continuously deliver Internet content to its viewers.” And according to its SonyStyle.com site, here’s what that Dash has to say about itself: “I use over 1,500 free apps and your Wi-Fi connection to deliver the information and entertainment you crave…

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Switched On: Sony’s forward Dash

RIM has an interesting reputation in the trade show world: it rarely makes any announcements of interest or consequence during events, but if you look hard enough, you still might just find something juicy. Last year’s CES, for example, briefly saw a Curve 8900 mysteriously running AT&T-branded firmware , which we now know foretold a release several months later

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Unannounced BlackBerry Curve 8910 took CES refuge at Case-Mate’s booth?

Not sure why we’ve been putting this off, but we’ll just come right out and say it: there’s no doubt that this was the year for 3D at CES. We walked the show floor for countless hours and can tell you that just about everyone was showing something related to 3D at their booths. Most of these demos required a bit of a wait to experience them (thanks, hype), and everywhere you went people were talking about 3D

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3D stole the show at CES 2010

Yeah, we know: you haven’t bought a pico projector and you really have no plan to do so. Still, it’s kind of fun to see them doing their thing, beaming little, dim images onto walls from improbably small boxes. The folks at PicoProjector-info are happy to oblige, posting two videos of DLP picos in action at CES.

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Pico projectors caught in the wild, one on a camcorder, one in Samsung’s W9600 cellphone (video)

This is soon enough to market that it’s hard to blame the iPod nano specifically for its appearance, but either way it seems that the Philips Cam is the newest member to the oh-so-small club of MP3 / camera combos. The new player is joined in its life of crime by the new Muse and Ariaz, which at last offer a higher-end aspect to Philips ‘ long-lackluster PMP lineup. The Cam does up a 1.8-inch screen, 8GB of storage and a 2 megapixel camera for $100, but the Muse has a full 3.2-inches of touchscreen, 16GB of flash, SD expansion and HDMI out for a mere $50 more

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Philips Cam, Muse and Ariaz mark a renaissance for the boring PMP

We know, we know, it’s only $149! What could possibly be stopping us from entering the marvelous world of Android-powered netbooking? Well, maybe it’s the fact that it’s been tried before, and just didn’t make any sense . Maybe for someone who doesn’t have $50 more to get a “real” netbook, or $150 more to get a “great” netbook , it could make sense to be subjected to a 7-inch screen, 500MHz ARM Cortex A9 processor in the name of “lightweight” web surfing, but we’d like to imagine we have a little more self esteem than that.

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Hivision’s $149 Android-based netbook reminds us we’re not really shopping for a netbook right now

While certainly less “depressed” than last year’s recession-tainted affair , CES 2010 was a busy show without a stand-out, knock-em-down, blockbuster release. Last year the Pre stole the spotlight, while this year we were more focused on technologies and concepts like 3D, tablets and e-books. That said, there sure was plenty of it , and we’ve sifted through some of our favorites to present you with a highlight reel — just in case your carpal tunnel or general lack of motivation prevents you from clicking through all 631+ posts we did last week

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CES 2010: all the stuff (and more)

Ah, HD DVD, our old friend - we thought we’d never see you again . But there was no mistaking it, here’s the logo tucked away in Chinese manufacturer TCL’s booth on a China Blue HD deck next to a similar Blu-ray player. The Blu-ray demo appeared to be down when we stopped by making this not much of a fight — although with recent gains by CBHD like adding studio support from Paramount, it may want to take this challenger more seriously

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HD DVD rides again: TCL brings China Blue HD & Blu-ray together for a CES face-off

You might recall Apple having a hard time keeping its lock screen locked at one point, and it looks like we’ve got a common theme brewing here now that Android’s suffering from the same drama. Turns out that Android 2.0.1 — the build currently deployed on the Droid — suffers from a flaw whereby you can back out to a locked phone’s home screen simply by pressing the Back button after accepting an incoming call.

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Droid security flaw makes lock screen a mere inconvenience for evil-doers

Nokia has announced that it has started pushing the N900’s very first post-launch update, but apparently it’s not anything crazy like Maemo 6 (yeah, we know it’s not even close to ready, but you know you want it) or system-wide portrait orientation support — instead, it’s just a minor bump designed to prepare the set for the upcoming launch of the Maemo-flavored Ovi Store . That’s great news for anyone looking for a more unified way to get paid apps on the phone, a significant step towards making Maemo a more consumer-friendly platform than it is at the present. Look for the update to be available globally within the next day or so, both over-the-air and via Nokia Software Update on your desktop.

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Nokia N900 gets first software update, but don’t expect much