CEA estimates that about 140,000 people attended CES, and the state of the industry is showing strength. Gary Shapiro predicts that consumer electronics spending will show a 6% increase for 2010, to $180 billion, and will rise an additional 3% this year, to more than $186 billion. The predominant themes this year were tablets, apps, 3D, 4G, gestural interfaces, and ‘smart’ connected devices. We saw a great deal in terms of sharing content across multiple CE platforms – and the high-speed networks required to do so. ETC will have a post show analysis with details of the major themes and trends available by next week.

Winners of this year’s CNET Best of CES Awards were announced Saturday morning in the lobby of South Hall. ‘Best of Show’ went to Motorola’s Android-based XOOM tablet, one in a growing number of tablets targeting the burgeoning iPad market. This year’s ‘People’s Voice Award’ went to the Razer Switchblade – an Intel Atom-based concept design to bring PC gaming to a portable form factor. Razer has taken the familiar keyboard and redesigned it as a tool for mobile gaming controls.

Facebook and Twitter had a strong presence at CES … in the form of apps on connected TVs, Blu-ray players, set-top-boxes, and just about any connected device. Samsung even announced that their new connected refrigerator could display your Twitter feed. The popularity of social networks have forced CE manufacturers to include them on their products’ feature specs, irrespective of how appropriate the application truly is. Unfortunately, this knee jerk reaction to include social networks clearly demonstrates the lack of imagination or understanding as to how social networks are really used by people.

Adobe announces partnership with Samsung to support the AIR development platform on Smart TVs. This will allow developers to reuse existing assets to quickly develop apps for connected televisions. AIR’s cross-platform technology is especially good news for content companies who can re-purpose existing assets to quickly create an app for a movie property that can then be delivered across an array of CE devices.

Home Server Technologies Inc. (HSTi) showcased an innovative new technology called Wireless Media Stick, a simple and affordable ($119) product that allows media connectivity between mobile devices, TVs, DVD players and other devices. What’s especially interesting about the technology is that you can also stream on-the-go; the Wireless Media Stick app is downloadable for smartphones and by taking the Stick to any location you can directly stream data from a mobile device to any TV, computer or stereo that is USB playback compatible.

Vidtonic provides open source hardware solutions for tinkerers hoping to build their own Android TV platforms. When the SageTV, MythTV and current Android hacking communities get their hands on these units we’ll see a wave of incredibly innovative applications for media hubs.

Cobra Electronics’ iRadar becomes GPS-enabled via a downloadable app that syncs to an iPhone. The app will be upgraded in spring to include a real-time data gathering component that collects information from all mobile users and distributes it live, via the cloud.

A new company called Kryptos is showing an app to provide secure, fully encrypted voice communications over mobile phones. Kryptos provides VoIP connectivity for secure calls over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi if users on both ends have downloaded the app. Might be an interesting solution for executives, teams working on sensitive projects, or paparazzi-dodging celebrities.

In the ongoing quest for a truly universal remote, German company VooMote has presented an impressive contender. The VooMoteONE is a snap-in case that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a universal remote to control any consumer electronic device with IR functionality.

The Orb BR is a Blu-ray disc that leverages the connectivity of your BD Live enabled Blu-ray player. When you place the Orb BR disc in your Blu-ray player, it uses BD Live to stream content from your PC or Mac directly to your Blu-ray player. The key is that you must have the Orb Caster client software running on your computer. The client can stream content from sites such as Netflix, Amazon VOD, Pandora, and Hulu as well as being able to stream personal content from your music, photo and video collections.