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Beyoncé won six Grammys - including Song of the Year, for Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) at the 52nd annual Grammy awards event held at Staples Center at LA Live in Los Angeles tonight. Taylor Swift won four Grammys - including Album of the Year, for Fearless. Beyoncé led the nominees with ten Grammy nominations followed by Taylor Swift with eight nominations. Performances by Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Black Eyed Peas, Green Day, country group Lady Antebellum and Pink are the highlights of this year's Grammy awards event. Below is a list of winners in each category-

CircuitCity is offering Sony KDL52V5100 52-inch Bravia V Series LCD HDTV and Sony BDP-N460 Blu-Ray Disc Player combo for $1474.98 with free shipping. The 52-inch KDL-52V5100 model TV features include 1080p 120Hz widescreen LCD display, 4 HDMI ports, DVD upscaling, 50,000:1 contrast ration, USB connectivity, picture resolution up to 1920x1080 and BD-live technology.

Sony BDP-N460 Blu-ray player features include support for 7.1 channel surround sound in Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master audio, ethernet support to watch streaming media from Netflix, YouTube and Slacker applications and HDMI, composite video and component video connections.

Amazon has teamed up with Samsung, the official sponsor of the NFL and Super Bowl XLIV to offer free WS1 series sound bar with purchase of Samsung LED HDTVs.

Google announced that the Click-to-Call feature that they introduced for Mobile Ads is live now. Click-to-Call feature lets advertisers include a local phone number to their Mobile Ads. When users search for businesses on their Android powered smartphones and iPhones, resulting Ads contain a phone link to the nearest business. Click-to-Call feature takes into account the location of the smartphone using built-in GPS and displays the contact numbers of nearest businesses, which users can call to get in touch with businesses.

Growing popularity of iPhone and other smartphones is an indication that mobile search is going to be a huge market for Ad revenues. Both Google and Apple are trying for a strong foothold in Mobile Ad market. On November 9 2009, Google acquired AdMob - a mobile ad platform for $750 million. Apple reportedly lost the AdMob bid to Google. On January 5 2010, Apple bought Quattro - another mobile Ad company - for $275 million.

On a related note, Apple is reportedly in talks with Microsoft to make Microsoft's Bing as the default search engine on it's iPhones. Since the introduction of iPhone, Google has been the default search engine in iPhones. As part of the deal, Google has been getting valuable location based information on all the searches performed through iPhones, that it uses to serve mobile Ads on iPhone. Recent acquisitions by Google and Apple is an indication of growing competition between the tech giants in the mobile advertising area. Apple is reportedly also developing it's own search technology and to buy some time on that, it is planning to use Bing as the default search engine on iPhone.

Netflix announced that the company sold it's stake in TV set-top-box maker Roku to Menlo Ventures. Roku makes set-top-boxes that allow users to watch streaming movies from Netflix, Amazon and streaming music from Pandora on their TVs. In an effort to move away from mail-order DVD rental to online model, Netflix has been adding it's streaming service to Blu-ray players, internet connected TVs and gaming consoles. List of devices that support Netflix streaming include Roku player, Tivo player, XBox 360, PS3, Wii, LG/Samsung/Insignia Blu-ray players, LG/Sony/Vizio HDTVs, LG/Samsung Blu-ray Home Theatre Systems, Windows and Mac computers. As internet connected TVs and blu-ray players are becoming more popular, less number of consumers are willing to buy a separate set-top-box to watch streaming content.

Earlier this month, Warner Bros. and Netflix announced that new DVD and blu-ray releases from the studio will be available to Netflix customers only after the 28-day window. This deal helps Netflix save money on DVDs that it buys from the studio, thus giving the movie rental company an opportunity to utilize the money to enhance it's online streaming business.

Have you ever felt the need for speed while doing data transfers between your USB enabled devices? Are you the kind of person who checks data transfer rate specifications of USB devices before buying them? Then, here is the good news for you. Nearly a decade after USB 2.0 devices were introduced in the market, hardware companies have started introducing new version of USB 3.0 devices. These USB drives - also known as the SuperSpeed devices - have high data transfer rates compared to 2.0 devices.

USB 3.0 has number of advantages compared to USB 2.0 including high data transfer rates -up to ten times that of current USB 2.0 devices, support for bi-directional data transfer, improved interaction between device and host computer, ability to go into sleep mode when not in use this saving power and being backward compatible with older USB ports.

2009 saw launch of few USB 3.0 products with hardware company Freecom announcing the first USB 3.0 hard drive XS 3.0 at Intel Development Forum (IDF) in San Francisco. But, 2010 is going to see more introductions, as many companies are ready to jump on USB 3.0 bandwagon which is clearly the future direction for USB technology.

 At recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010 in Las Vegas, many companies have announced their USB 3.0 products including Western Digital's My Book 3.0, Seagate's BlackArmor PS 110 and Buffalo Technologies' DriveStation.

Western Digital My Book 3.0 - Western Digital announced their latest product “Western Digital My Book 3.0 “ which is a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external hard drive. The drives is backward compatible with old USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 ports and has transfer rate of around 5 Gbits/s which is ten times more than current USB 2.0 devices. The company has initially launched this drive in a 1-terabyte version and scheduled the launch of 2 TB version in late January. This SuperSpeed hard drive will cost $179.99 and $199.99 with a desktop PC USB 3.0 adapter card for your Desktop PCs.

BlackArmor PS 110 – Seagate has announced the launch of its latest USB 3.0 drive version called BlackArmor PS 110. This 500 GB capacity drive is only 12.5 mm thick which is as thin as CD jewel case.  The drives will come with Express USB 3.0 card adapter at the price of $179.99.  Seagate claims that the drive reads at 32 MBps and writes at 24 MBps via USB 2.0 port versus 100 MBps while reading and 67 MBps while writing when connected to USB 3.0.

DriveStation desktop drive - DriveStation desktop drive is introduced by Buffalo Technologies. According to Buffalo Technologies' reports, this SuperSpeed drive can transfer data at the rate of 5 MBps. The company has launched the drive in three versions. 1 TB version is going to cost $199.99,  while 1.5 TB and 2 TB versions are available for $249.99 and $399.99 respectively. You need to buy Express Card adapter for  $59.99 in order to take advantage of USB 3.0 features.

Mark Thompson contributed to this guest article. Mark advises clients on brand enhancement using custom gadgets and peripherals.

Apple today announced the much anticipated iPad tablet device at it's "latest creation" event in San Francisco. The 9.7-inch multi-touch tablet device is going to be available in two variants. One with WiFi connectivity and another one with WiFi and 3G. WiFi version will be available in 60 days while WiFi+3G version is going to be shipped in 90 days. The base price of entry level iPad with 16 GB storage is set at $499. 32GB version and 64 GB version are going to cost $599 and $699 respectively. WiFi+3G version iPads are going to cost $130 more compared to WiFi variants.

AT&T provides 3G data connectivity for iPads. There are two data plans available for 3G connectivity with no contracts, which means you can cancel your subscription anytime. First plan costs $14.99 for 250 MB of data per month. Second plan costs $29.99 for unlimited data usage. Both the data plans allow  free use of AT&T's WiFi hotspots. iPad 3G models are unlocked and use new GSM micro SIMs.

Apple partnered with publishers Penguin, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster to provide digital books through it's store for e-books called iBooks. Using iBook Store, you can download e-books directly onto your iPad and start reading them. Apple is using ePub format for it's e-books.

Apple made it's new iWork software available for iPad. Each application in iWork suite like Notes, Keynote is going to cost $9.99 each. It's worth mentioning that features like multi-tasking and camera are missing in iPad.

It's official. James Cameron is "King of the World" again. Avatar overtook Titanic as the highest grossing movie ever. As of Sunday, Avatar had collected $1.858 billion worldwide ($1.303 billion foreign + $ 554.9 million domestic), beating the record held by Titanic for 13 years. But, if gross figures are adjusted for inflation, 1939’s Gone With The Wind, directed by Victor Fleming takes the top spot as the highest grossing film followed by Titanic and Avatar.

In the US, Titanic is still the highest grossing film with $600.8 million. Avatar, with $554.9 million gross is poised to take the top spot soon in US as well. Avatar's success at box office is fueled by 3D technology. Excellent visual effects and futuristic storyline drew audience to watch the movie in 3D helping the movie with record box office performance.

Apple today announced its fiscal 2010 first quarter results for the period ended December 26, 2009. The Company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $11.88 billion and net quarterly profit of $2.26 billion, or $2.50 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

During the quarter, Apple sold 3.36 million Macintosh computers, 8.7 million iPhones and 21 million iPods. iPhone sales grew 100% compared to previous year, while sales of Macintosh computers and iPods saw 33% growth and 8% decline respectively. Apple sold 42.44 million iPhones since its introduction on Jan 09 2007.

Apple is holding a product announcement event on Jan 27 to reportedly announce a tablet device. Number of reports suggest that Apple has been in talks with game developers, book publishers and content providers to get digital version of books, magazines, newspapers and TV shows onto the new tablet device.

We are just two days away from Apple's event on Jan 27th and new details and rumors about the tablet device are surfacing so much so that tablet announcement looks almost certain. While features like multi-touch display, wi-fi, 3G, blue-tooth, GPS receiver, digital compass, proximity sensor and accelerometer are the expected features in Apple's tablet, it's ability to act as a digital reader for books, magazines and newspapers and let users watch videos and TV shows are the most talked-about features. Additionally, there are reports that Apple is planning to push the new tablet - which has been referred to as iTablet, iPad, iPhone tablet - as an ultimate gaming device.

BD370 is an entry level Blu-ray disc player from LG. This profile 2.0 compatible internet ready network player can access and play content from YouTube, Netflix and Roxio CinemaNow. There is an HDMI port that outputs 1080p video and high-resolution multichannel audio. Component port can output Blu-ray content at 1080i and DVDs at 480p. USB port can be used to play audio files and slideshow of pictures from thumb drive. Even though BD370's video quality is not best in class compared to high-end Blu-ray players, it has impressive load times for an entry level player.

Major electronic retailers are offering sweet deals on HDTVs, home entertainment systems and Blu-ray players just in for the Super Bowl that are as good as holiday deals. Amazon has teamed up with Samsung, the official sponsor of the NFL and Super Bowl XLIV to offer free WS1 series sound bar with purchase of following Samsung LED HDTVs.

In an effort to make it's YouTube service more profitable, Google is venturing into online movie rental business. Google today announced that it is partnering with Sundance Film Festival to make five films from the 2009 and 2010 film festivals available in YouTube for rent for US users. These movies will be available from Jan 22 through Jan 31. In addition to these five films, Google announced that they will be partnering with companies to make small collection of videos available for rent in the areas of health and education. Pricing and other details are not disclosed for this rental service yet.

Google partnered with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment to provide it's YouTube services to Vevo - a popular online music video website, which debuted on Dec 08 last year. Google's venture into movie rental business through YouTube places it in direct competition with services from Netflix, Apple and Amazon.

Offering independent films for rental seems a right step for YouTube to test the waters and eventually make friends with big Hollywood studios. In order to compete with existing players, Google has to make sure it has decent collection of titles available for rent and provide an option to stream the content in 1080p (HD), wherever possible. With so many independent films and documentaries available free for streaming from services like Netflix, Google would also need to have an affordable pricing structure for online rentals to attract more customers.

Apple has sent out invitations for a product announcement event to be held in San Francisco on Jan 27. Analysts have long been expecting that Apple will announce a Tablet computer - to be named iSlate during the Jan 27 event with the availability of the same in March 2010.

The invitation reads, “Come see our latest creation.” The event is scheduled to begin at 10 AM pacific on Jan 27. As always, the invite doesn't contain the details of the event or product(s) to be announced.

Apple is reported to be in talks with Movie studios and book publishers to make TV shows, other media content and e-books available on the tablet computer, which is rumored to be a 10-inch version of iPhone.

According to Nielsen's US search rankings for the month of December 2009, Google's share of web search is at 67.3%, which is a 1.9% increase from it's November 2009 share of 65.4%. Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing have managed to maintain 14.4% and 9.9% of web search share respectively for December 2009. Compared to November 2009, both Yahoo and Bing lost their web search market share for Google in December. Internet users in US used search engines to query more than 9.95 billion times in December 2009, which is slightly less than the 10 billion queries performed in November 2009.

Latest announcement from eMusic is an indication that streaming is going to be the direction digital music industry is heading for. eMusic and Warner Music Group (WMG) have announced that eMusic will begin selling tracks to it's US customers from WMG's artists. The agreement includes titles from WMG's Atlantic Records, Rhino Records and Warner Bros. Records as well as from independent labels distributed through WMG's ADA stable that are not currently sold on eMusic.

eMusic offers subscription based services to it's customers. It's monthly membership plans begin at 24 credits for $11.99. Members can typically obtain single tracks for as low as $0.40 to $0.50 and albums for as low as $6. Similar to Last.fm and LaLa, eMusic plans to offer streaming services in addition to it's subscription-basedmusic download service.

In December last year, Apple acquired LaLa for a reported $85 million, indicating that cloud based streaming service may be coming to it's iTunes soon. Lala is a streaming and downloading digital music website that allows it's users to stream any song once for free. Unlimited streaming can be purchased for 10 cents per track, and songs can be downloaded for $0.79.

Google today announced that they are rolling out the file upload feature for Google Docs which enables users to upload and share any file type in Google Docs. Every Google Docs user gets 1 GB of storage space and can upload files up to 250 MB in size. Google Docs enables people to store, share collaborate on documents online without having to store them on computers, thumb drives etc. Below is a list of notable new features added to Google Docs:

Analytics tracking on published documents
You can now track how much traffic a particular published document is getting through Google Analytics.

Translate document
You can now translate an entire document into over 40 languages.

Data Validation
With two levels of validation, strict and lenient, you can now control what you and your collaborators enter into a spreadsheet.

Slide Zooming
Zoom in and out of your slides to see your content in detail.

After all, your neighbor may not be as nerdy as he looks. He enjoys romantic comedies as much as you do. The New York Times published a heat map of favorite Netflix movie rentals in top 12 metro regions for 2009. In San Francisco bay area region, as expected, Milk tops the list of most rented Netflix movies in Berkeley and San Francisco. While Eagle Eye seems to be a favorite movie for East bay and South bay residents, parts of Peninsula and North bay did not seem have liked it that much. Below is the list of top 10 movies rented by the two most expensive zip codes in bay area for 2009.

In an interview with Peter Kafka at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told that the chances of Netflix on Nintendo are "excellent". It is not clear if the streaming service is going to be available on existing Wii consoles or on the next generation Wii console - Wii HD.

 Netflix streaming service is already available on Sony PS3, Roku player, Tivo player, XBox 360, LG/Samsung/Insignia Blu-ray players, LG/Sony/Vizio HDTVs, LG/Samsung Blu-ray Home Theatre Systems, Windows and Mac computers. Addition of Nintendo Wii to the list helps Netflix get more gaming customers to subscribe to their service. Dwindling DVD sales and growing popularity of online media are driving Netflix to shift it's focus to online streaming. In a recent announcement, Warner Bros. studios told that their new DVD and Blu-ray discs will not be available for Netflix subscribers to rent until after 28 days of the release. So, it is important for Netflix to grow it's subscriber base to focus more on it's streaming service.

For the first time in three years, the Netherlands overtook Denmark as the country with highest broadband penetration. According to data from the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), The Netherlands tops the list of countries with highest broadband penetration. For every 100 residents, Netherlands has 38.09 broadband subscribers, followed by Denmark(36.09) and Norway(34.51).

Warner Bros. and Netflix today announced that new DVD and blu-ray releases from the studio will be available to Netflix customers only after the 28-day window. So, finally Netflix accepted and yielded to the studio's demand. While this deal definitely helps Warner Bros. to sell more DVDs during the 28-day period, it is going to undermine Netflix customers' ability to have a satisfactory movie watching experience with new DVD releases. If Netflix follows the suit and inks similar deal with other movie studios, Netflix customers would have to either wait for 28 days to rent new DVDs or go buy them if they want to watch before that. New releases account for 30 percent of Netflix rentals. And, Netflix is reported to be getting huge discounts from Warner Bros. on existing DVD purchases.

Netflix says that they are going to use the savings from this deal and invest more in their streaming technology. Netflix's success depends on how much improvement they are going to make to their streaming service in terms of quality of the stream  and availability of titles for streaming.

This morning, Google released Nexus One smartphone. The HTC manufactured smartphone features include 3.7" OLED display, dynamic noise suppression technology, voice-enabled keyboard, 5 megpixels camera, digital compass, Accelerometer and 4GB Micro SD card (expandable to 32GB). Nexus One is available at Google's web store either unlocked or with service contract from T-Mobile. Unlocked version costs $529 and can ship to the US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. If you are going with a 2 year service contract with T-Mobile, it will cost you $179.  Detailed specifications below:

2010 is going to be an eventful year for Consumer Electronic manufacturers, Technology companies and consumers alike. January is here and we are already busy waiting for announcements from Google, Apple and all those companies that are ready to showcase their best products/concepts in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Rumored Apple tablet (called iSlate) as usual has been drawing lot of attention, while Google Phone is scheduled to be announced tomorrow. Below is a list of 3 technologies that we are going to read, tweet about and eventually would like to own in 2010.

1. 3D TV:  Avatar made us like the 3D technology so much that we might actually be willing to pay little bit premium to experience 3D on small screen sooner rather than later. Number of TV Manufacturers including Sony, Samsung and JVC have partnered with RealD 3D to produce 3D TVs. Many of these manufacturers are scheduled to unveil 3D TVs in the upcoming CES in Las Vegas. Direct TV and UK's Sky are reportedly planning to broadcast a collection of Movies, TV shows and sports in 3D in 2010.


2. Tablet PCs : Well received touch-screen technology, more 3G internet coverage, affordable solid state memory and the app ecosystem are few reasons why everyone thinks the market is ready for a tablet computer now. Blogosphere is ripe with rumors and speculations about the Apple Tablet. According to the latest blog grapevine, Apple's tablet is going to sport a 7.1 inch multi-touch display with finger print resistant coating, 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 120 GB hard drive, 2 GB RAM, built-in iSight camera and projector. While Apple's tablet is expected to be announced on Jan 27, few manufacturers are planning to announce their Tablet variants earlier in CES. Notable among them is a tablet from an Indian tech startup - Notion Ink - which has been getting good press recently. Other tablets expected to be announced in CES include ASUS' Eee Pad, Google branded tablet from manufacturer HTC, Microsoft's Courier, Lenovo's "smartbook" and a tablet from Freescale semiconductors. There is no doubt that 2010 is going to bring Tablet close to consumers and if released, Apple's iSlate is going to be the first in list.

3. Controller Free gaming : If delivered as shown in demos, controller-free gaming is going to take gaming to the next level in terms of how we approach and interact with objects and other participants during the game. Microsoft's project Natal promises to let consumers play games using body gestures. The device uses 3D depth camera and microphones to recognize players movements and voice for controlling what is on the screen. Natal can recognize player's face and automatically log them into their Xbox profile. Project Natal control free gaming is expected to be released in late 2010.

Best Buy is offering select Blu-ray titles for 2 for $30. Titles include Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth. Also, few popular titles are available for $14.99 and $9.99 each. Below is a list of $14.99 Blu-ray titles available from Best Buy:

• The Dark Knight
• Gladiator
• Braveheart
• Flight Club
• Heat
• Lock, Stock and Two smoking Barrels

• Batman Begins
• Beetlejuice
• Cast Away
• Dodgeball
• Igor
• Lethal Weapon
• Lethal Weapon 2
• Troy

There is no doubt browser space is getting increasingly competitive now-a-days. In Nov 2009, Firefox's market share crossed 25% for the first time. Now, Google Chrome has surpassed Safari as the 3rd most popular web browser. According to Net Applications browser share data for December 2009, Chrome stood at third spot with 4.63% share overtaking Safari which has 4.46% share.

While Firefox's constant gain at the expense of Internet Explorer is expected, Chrome's recent dominance over Safari could be attributed to the availability of Chrome for Mac OS last month. We can expect these two browsers to trade positions as Apple and Google release their rumored products iTablet and Google Phone in coming weeks.