In China, 2012 is the Year of the Dragon, but at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, 2012 bears a far catchier catchphrase: the Year of the Interface. At least that’s what Canada's CBC has dubbed it.

The New York Times' Gadgetwise tech blog sees ultrabooks taking over the show floor, along with car-related tech announcements (such as Ford's Silicon Valley lab news) aplenty — a convenient overlap with the North American International Auto Show (aka the Detroit Auto Show) taking over Cobo Hall in Motor City this week. The New York Times' big story this morning, however, dismissed CES as irrelevant, citing the pullout of Microsoft as sounding the death knell for the show.Continue reading...

Microsoft's announcement today that the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will be its last took the tech world, and particularly tech journalists and bloggers, by surprise.

The kick-off CES keynote addresses by Bill Gates and then Steve Ballmer (who last January talked up Kinect, among other big product launches for the company) were always highly anticipated as agenda-setting events for the global consumer electronics industry, while a massive Microsoft booth typically dominated the show floor.

Starting in 2013, neither will be present.Continue reading...

We knew that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has an irreverent sense of humor — but we didn't realize how wacky until we checked out Chet. That's "Chet Logothestian," a touchy-feely character that Microsoft used to build viral buzz ahead of Ballmer's third annual kick-off keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show, which streamed on Facebook and at Microsoft.com.

The kooky "Creative Presentation Creative Consultant" was played up with a Facebook page and Twitter feed, while on YouTube the viral social marketing effort was mocked by commenters. (Watch Chet chat about CES with execs for Windows Phone, Xbox and Kinect, plus Elvis impersonators, after the jump.)

Ballmer's keynote presentation was nowhere near as kooky, with highlights including a tablet-ready version of Windows (dubbed System on a Chip), and the successful 4th quarter launch of Kinect, which sold 8 million units in its first 60 days.Continue reading...