Say, photo buffs, if all these new, stinking cameras announced at the Consumer Electronics Show excite you, don't cool your jets yet. I just got spam mail from Adobe. Photoshop Lightroom 4.0 Beta 1 is now available. I downloaded the Windows 64-bit version right away and installed it on my Lenovo ThinkPad T420s.

It's a hefty download, more than 410MB. Given this is CES Day 1, I don't have time for any kind of review. But I must say this: Norton Internet Security 2012 auto-protect sent up the red flag during install, regarding two DLLs -- "mc_enc_mpa.dll" and "qtp.parser.dll", which were quarantined. That's gotcha #1. The second surprised even more. LR 4 Beta 1 warned on opening that it couldn't open "Lightroom 3 Catalog" because "the Lighroom 4 Beta release does not support catalog upgrades". I created a new one, and, of course, it's empty. Hey, I'm really loving this software now.

EASEUS Software has launched CleanGenius 2.0 Free, a cleaning tool for Mac users. CleanGenius is the new name for MacCleaning, which debuted just over a month ago as EASEUS’s first foray into the Mac market.

Also available with several additional features as a paid-for Pro version, CleanGenius 2.0 adds a new uninstaller component and extends the user’s control over existing cleaning tools, all wrapped up in a redesigned user interface.

These days, innovation in HDTVs is hard to come by. However, Sony is ready to change the industry with its new crystal LED displays on display this week at Consumer Electronics Show 2012. While the technology is nowhere near ready for production, the Japanese electronics maker made it one of its key announcements during a keynote Monday night.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer saved no rhetorical flourish while describing picture quality: "Your eyes will pop, your mouths will water, you'll tell your friends 'I have seen the future, and it's a Sony'". The company claims the color reproduction is far superior to an LCD television set, the technology powering a significant portion of HDTVs.

Our friends at BlueStacks have done it again. Tuesday, the Android virtualization software company announced that they have ported the BlueStacks App Player to Windows 8 for use on ultrabooks and tablets powered by x86 processors.

BlueStacks App Player has only been available for the last three months in an early alpha/pre-beta format for Windows 7, Vista, and most recently XP.

It could definitely be argued that Sony is one of the few consumer electronics companies perfectly suited for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. They have lots of different branches working on diverse technologies, but all with the consumer in mind; from stereo equipment to cameras to computers to TVs to video games.

As such, they don't necessarily time all of their different product lines to have a major announcement for CES, so it's easy to pick out the new stuff and hold it in one hand.

There are no more chances for Steve Ballmer. This is the end. His swansong. The final hurrah. Microsoft's CEO stepped onto the Consumer Electronics Show keynote stage for the last time tonight. If my count is right, a Microsoft chief executive has given 13 CES opening keynotes -- with this year's the 12th consecutively. Ballmer's last is his third.

Ballmer was in good form as he donned the stage. Boisterous, cagey but not his usually caged manner -- he typically paces around like a penned up tiger, and he often yells like one growls. Ballmer was subdued tonight, as he took the stage with Ryan Seacrest, who seems to be everywhere these days (not just "American Idol"). Seacrest was an excellent choice for a fireside chat with Ballmer. Many people probably don't remember the TV-show host from his days at CNET. Yeah, CNET. Seacrest co-hosted a tech show.

Before buying Galaxy Nexus last month from Verizon, I considered holding out for Galaxy Note, after hearing confident rumors about AT&T bringing it stateside. The idea of sketching and taking notes on a smartphone appealed. Samsung had created something of a hybrid -- a cross between a smartphone and tablet. Then I saw a Samsung media player on display at Best Buy, with a similar size screen -- 5.3 inches. Galaxy Note is too big for me. Is it for you?

AT&T and Samsung officially announced Galaxy Note LTE -- the third big 4G phone announced today for the carrier, the others being Nokia Lumia 900 and HTC Titan II (technically there were a half-dozen LTEs); all done at Consumer Electronics Show 2012. Galaxy Note has something of an identity crisis, being a phone, mini-tablet and S-pen -- that's stylus to you, bud -- device. The hybrid is meant to be used for drawing as much as touch, and I see it designed for more of a niche market -- unless of course 5.3-inches, and that's just the screen, isn't too big for your pocket.

Your computer can reveal a great deal of information about you and if other people have access to your machine, it would be all too easy for this data to fall into the wrong hands. Simply deleting files you no longer need is not enough as there are numerous tools that can be used to restore anything that has been erased -- even from a drive that has been formatted. This is where East-Tec Eraser 2011 can help, making it possible to securely wipe information from your computer so that it cannot be recovered.

The application is broken down into a series of different section, with the main interface making it easy to securely delete any files you no longer need. You can simply drag and drop files onto the program window before choosing how secure the wiping should be -- this ranges from deleting and overwriting with random data to the Gutmann method, which is very slow but renders files completely unrecoverable, even using hardware tools.

Nokia's big announcement for CES was all about the United States. Specifically, the Finnish mobile phone company announced the first Nokia Windows Phone designed for the United States: the Nokia Lumia 900.

The Lumia 900 is nearly a clone of the Lumia 800, but with a couple of the features that Americans had complained were missing, a forward-facing camera, and 4G LTE connectivity.It has the same one-piece carbon polymer case (optionally in bright cyan), the same Carl Zeiss optics, and the same Windows Phone 7.5 operating system.It's powered by a 1.4 GHz applications processor, and has an 1800 mAh battery.

Currently there are 11 4G LTE phones -- two from AT&T and 9 from Verizon -- available from major US Carriers, and they're all Androids. Even more are coming, some this month, and again they're all Androids. There is no LTE iPhone and until today's HTC Titan II announcement, nothing running a Microsoft operating system. Finally, prospective Windows Phone buyers can get super-fast cellular data. iPhone users are out of luck. Well, maybe. HTC says the LTE Windows Phone is coming to AT&T "in the coming months". Who knows, iPhone 5 LTE could come sooner.

Like its predecessor, Titan II will be available from AT&T, which is good for HTC, Microsoft and Windows Phone. The brawny 4.7-inch-display smartphone will only compete with two other LTE handsets there -- HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket. Better to be one of three at AT&T than one of 10+ at Verizon. That's assuming AT&T adds no other LTE smarphones "in the coming months", before Titan II goes on sale. Last week I posted the "7 things I really don't want to see at CES". Among them: Products announced that don't ship for many months later.

CES Press Day is also known as the day of back to back press conferences, when journalists are served a giant hype sundae topped with sprinkles of actual news.

It's an important day for companies to tell the consumer electronics press (and by extension, consumers) what to expect from them for the year, so at every CES, I spend the day darting in and out of rooms and trying to keep up with the deluge of announcements.

If you’re not satisfied with the performance of your Firefox installation then a good first step is to make sure you’re fully up-to-date; Firefox 9, released just before Christmas, introduced some worthwhile improvements aimed at optimizing speed and cutting resource use.

If that’s not enough, though, you could always check out Pale Moon 9.0.1, released today. It’s a custom version of Firefox that has been further optimized for performance, and our initial benchmarks show some interesting results.

There's always the race at the Consumer Electronics Show to be the smallest, the lightest, the thinnest, the biggest. Huawei is following that strategy, debuting the Ascend P1 S on Monday. At 6.68mm thick, it claims to be the thinnest smartphone on the market. For comparison purposes, look at iPhone 4S, which measures in at comparatively stout 9.33mm, or the Galaxy S II, also a little overweight at 8.49mm.

The Ascend runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and features a 4.3-inch screen with Corning's Gorilla Glass. You have to wonder though if Huawei waited a bit could it have slimmed down the Ascend even more with the new thinner Gorilla Glass 2. Other features include a 1670/1800mAh battery depending on the model, 8-megapixel rear-facing and 1.3-megapixel front-facing cameras, HD picture capabilities and integrated WiFi and Bluetooth.

Move over YouTube. Vimeo is finally making its big mobile splash, and it's way, way overdue. The online video pioneer has ceded too much to Google and, by comparison, latecomer YouTube for too long. Today that changes, with new mobile apps for Android, iPad, Kindle Fire and Windows Phone. Vimeo released an iPhone app 10 months ago.

I downloaded the Android app to Galaxy Nexus and XOOM LTE early this afternoon and must say that I'm impressed. The app is well-organized for video discovery -- much better than YouTube. Not surprisingly, the options are viewing/uploading and options are better for the tablet than the smartphone. Overall, the user interface is clean, uncluttered and responsive.

Corning has made a name for itself in short order in the tech sector, as manufacturers look to the textile maker to produce "indestructible" glass for its gadgets. The Corning, N.Y.-based company on Monday debuted the second generation of its Gorilla Glass product, allowing companies to get the same damage resistance in glass that is 20 percent thinner.

"In response to our customers' drive toward thinner form factors, we designed this new glass to enable meaningful reduction in thickness without sacrificing the outstanding glass performance for which Gorilla Glass has become highly recognized", Corning Specialty Materials head James Steiner says.