Watch the video: Fred Katayama reports as Semel unveiled the new service at CES in Las Vegas.  

Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Terry Semel is set to describe later how he hopes to propel his company beyond the Web browser and onto cellphone and TV screens. The television plan seeks to target the emerging market for consumers buying PC-connected TVs that embed Internet connections directly into video watching, company executives said ahead of Semel’s presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Yahoo Go TV will allow consumers to link their existing base of Yahoo contacts and other resources directly into their televisions, allowing them to watch digital photos, check news or sports or other Yahoo services from the same account they use on their computer or mobile phone, Yahoo said.

Not only the latest high-end MediaCenter TVs, but any TV that a consumer can connect to Windows XP should work, the company said. At its most basic, consumers can use their remote control to see whats playing at their local theater or share pictures from a recent vacation with friends, all on their television screen.Marco Boerries, the executive in charge of the Yahoo Go project showed how a user might take a picture on a Nokia phone and instantly share it with friends or family over Yahoos Flickr photo-organizing system who are watching TV. Boerries said Yahoo expects to launch Yahoo Go Mobile within weeks and Yahoo Go TV in the coming months. The full Reuters news story is here

TiVo has partnered with services like Yahoo!, Fandango (on-line movie tickets) and Live365 Internet radio to allow TiVo customer to access the services through their TiVo machines. REUTERS/Steve Marcus

Just weeks on the job, Henry Gomez, the new president of the U.S. business for Skype Technologies, is using the Consumer Electronics Show this week to get his head around the exploding consumer market for Web-based phone calling.

Skype, which has helped popularize Internet-based phone calling, is already an international sensation, attracting millions of daily users.

Gomez, the former vice president of communications at eBay, has been charged with making quick in-roads into the United States market, where the two-year-old Skype is only beginning to become better known among mainstream Web users.

Skype must contend with a host of potential competitors from big phone companies to major Internet rivals of its parent company, eBay. Gomez, who also handled governmental relations for eBay, will have to gear up for likely regulatory battles meant to hobble its free or low-cost phone calling services.

“My goal is to make Skype a household name,” Gomez said, comparable to Europe where “Skype me” has become a trendy way for saying “call me.”

He speaks with amazement of the way people are finding new uses for Skype — from non-native English speakers finding people on Skype to help them with their accents to law students who no longer need to meet face to face for case study sessions. Instead classmates show up at an appointed hour on Skype for group video conference calls.

His favorite Skype anecdote so far is the Skype baby monitor. According to Gomez, one U.S. father who spends a lot of his time traveling in Asia has set up a computer in his baby’s room using Skype to act as a remote baby monitor. While his wife sleeps, the father works at his computer in Asia, casually listening if one of his children should awake in the middle of the night.

Throughout the night, the father is there to reassure his kids. Of course he’s half a world away but in constant virtual contact.

Could nannies or babysitters fall victim to this dangerous new outsourcing trend?

Lenovo showed off its new ThinkPad X60 line on Thursday, lightening the load still further over its smallest, existing ultraportable laptop.

The X60 weighs in at just 2.5 pounds, two-tenths of a pound lighter than the X41, the current state-of-the-art ThinkPad ultraportable.

As a class, ultraportables refer to computers that weigh less than three to four pounds and which are typically thinner than most laptops. The design emphasis is on portability. Traditionally, the trade-offs of this compactness are the smaller keyboards and typically shorter battery life.

But the new unit boasts increased battery life up to eight hours with an extended battery — and better performance through optional dual-core processing and a faster Intel chip.

We have really improved over the X41, said Lenovos Matt Kohut, showing off the unit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

The X60, which ships in February, has a 12-inch screen and an optional built-in capability to use mobile phone networks to provide data connections. It also sports an optional fingerprint reader that eliminates the need to remember passwords.

Jim Wolf , Reuters

Computer memory company Sandisk Corp. on Thursday introduced a family of tiny digital music players and said it plans to challenge Apple Computer Inc. for dominance in the “flash” memory player market that represents the low-end of Apple’s gadget business.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Sandisk introduced a 6-gigabyte player using flash memory, made with chips that are smaller and lighter than those based on hard-disk drive technology. Because flash memory has  no moving parts it is far more durable than disk drives.

Sandisk said its Sansa e270 is now the highest-capacity flash-based player in the market, and will be priced at about $300.
 
At a press conference at CES, Sandisk said it intends to take on Apple, whose hot-selling iPod Nano music player runs on flash memory.
 
“Ultimately, we would like to make this a two horse race, and reach 35-40 percent market share,” Nelson Chan, the president of Sandisk, said at a news conference.

He cited industry research data showing that Apple enjoyed a market share of around 49 percent, with Sandisk at about 29 percent in December.

Because Apple sells both flash-based and far higher capacity disk-drive players, it still dominates the overall global market for digital music players, with some estimates ranging upward of 75 percent of the music player market. In the past year, several former competitors have withdrawn from the market in the face of Apple’s success.

Like a cheeky talk show host, Sony Corp. CEO Howard Stringer made light of the uncompetitive pricing of his own company’s sleek multimedia computer line.

On stage during his keynote speech on Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Stringer joked in a self-deprecating way with Dell Inc. Founder and Chairman Michael Dell, whose online store is known for dramatically lower PC prices.

“Expensive laptop, buy a Vaio,” Stringer quipped, causing the audience to roar with laughter.

Dell said his own company, the world’s largest personal computer maker, has shipped 10 million PCs so far in the fourth fiscal quarter which finishes at the end of January.

Stringer also was joined onstage by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks, director and actor respectively of the film version of the hit book “The Da Vinci Code,” which is due out this year.

Stringer said Blu-ray disks to be available this spring include “Hitch,” “House of Flying Daggers” and “Black Hawk Down.”

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Challlenging the notion that Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 was the top-selling Christmas gaming platform, Sony’s U.S. gaming chief Kaz Hirai said his company’s PlayStation2 was the No. 1 game console during the holiday season and that Sony’s handheld PSP also had outsold Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in unit terms.

He did not specify whether he was describing U.S. sales or global sales nor the timeframe of his share claim.

While Stringer was in a joking mood, Hirai couldn’t have been more serious when he said: “We know the next generation of computer entertainment doesn’t start until we launch it.” Sony is expected to launch its much-anticipated rival to the Xbox, known as PlayStation 3, in the middle of this year.

Jan. 5 - Many advances and new products are being unveiled at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Jon Decker reports.

It’s all about portable music players and flat-panel TVs at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where offerings of digital televisions and MP3 players dominate the show.

The maturation of the digital world is bringing a number of significant newcomers to CES this year, including Internet powerhouses Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc.

The big Asian electronics makers, automakers, computer and phone companies are also out in force, aiming to define their role as new technologies blur the lines between industries and allow for media on the go.

According to Randy Smith, Vice President marketing, Samsung Mobile, ”What we’ve seen is that the cell phone is an extension of the content that people experience not only on the computer, but, also in the family rooms at home. So, it is very much about entertainment, it is very much about information on demand.”

Actor Tom Hanks, starring in the upcoming Sony Pictures movie ”The Da Vinci Code”  jokes with Sony CEO Howard Stringer (L) and the movie director Ron Howard (R) at the Sony keynote address at CES. (Photo: REUTERS/Rick Wilking)

Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer: “The scale of the transition from analog to HD (high definition) will make the shift from black-and-white to color small by comparison.” Reuters reports that Stringer, speaking at CES, said Sony is making progress in positioning itself to compete better with rivals Matsushita and Sharp Corp. (Photos: REUTERS/Rick Wilking)