Panasonic

I love how Panasonic unveils a new line of beautiful plasma TVs at the HD Networking Conference in Valencia, Spain and their biggest selling feature is the fact that they can withstand Wiimotes! According to Gamertell, these televisions can resist up to four joules of energy — preventing your wiimote from shattering your TV screen in a game of Wii Tennis, Bowling, Boxing, and the list goes on and on. I guess if you're a Wii fanatic, this television plus an upgraded Wii strap will do the trick — better to be safe than sorry!

Since the last big storm to hit the west coast came along (leaving North shuddering in the corner of his crate), my motherly instincts have definitely kicked in to overdrive, especially when I have to leave him behind and head off to work. Although I'm not totally tech savvy, I think this Panasonic Digital Pet Cam ($100) is perfect to stay connected to the little guy and make sure everything is safe for his day alone. Even if you crate train your pup, being able to peek in to make sure she is a-ok brings peace of mind so you can focus on work!

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Just when I thought I wouldn't run into anyone I know at CES, guess who appears in front of my eyes on the big screen? My girl Beyoncé! So maybe she wasn't really there, but seeing her on Panasonic's gorgeous 108-inch TV on Blu-ray, made me feel like I was watching a live concert. Beyoncé's tour DVD was played using Panasonic's new DMP-BD30 Blu-ray disc player, which offers advanced high definition technology, exceptional visual detail and not to mention, stellar audio.

Note to designers and gadget manufacturers: Some of us are sick and tired of candy-colored MP3 players, cameras and cell phones.

Apple's announcement that the new iPod nano will come in silver, black, blue, green and red and the shuffle will come in silver, mint green, turquoise, lavender and magenta (those are my descriptions of the colors, not theirs!) got me thinking about the fact that almost all gadgets in the US are either staple colors like white, silver and black or bright — almost juvenile — hues of red, blue, pink and green.

Where, my friends, are all the fall colors like orange and yellow, or the muted, retro colors? I was scanning through a catalog for the Japanese mobile communication company KDDI and was floored by its amazing color selection for Toshiba, Panasonic and Casio phones. I'm not asking for a full array of pantone colored cell phones, I'd just like a little more variety. I know someone is spending millions of dollars on market research, but I just can't believe I am the only American who would prefer a "jewelry gold," "fresco orange" or "palmer brown" cell phone to sorbet colored ones?

Just when I thought 4GB was a big enough size for a MicroSD card, Panasonic has come out with a 16GB Pro High Speed SDHC Memory Card which has a data transfer speed of up to 20MB/s.

Featured on The Daily Geek, this ginormo card can tape up to four hours of high def video in AVCHD normal mode, and approximately 3 hours of 1920 x 1080i full High Definition video in AVCHD fine mode. Also use with cameras and other compatible portable electronics.

Expect to see these hit stores in November with a price tag of $320 — no surprises there.

Shakira's work with Panasonic is destined to catch plenty of customers' eyes - what with her hips not lying and all. The Latin popstar has just extended her spokesperson partnership until March 2008 to include ads for Lumix digital cameras and the Viera plasma television in print and point-of-sale poster advertisements. According to a Panasonic Press Release Shakira's first appearance will be in ads for new models of LUMIX digital still cameras, which include Panasonic's own MEGA O.I.S (optical image stabilizer) to correct handshakes. The stunning commercials, which were filmed in the Bahamas, can be seen on the Latin American Panasonic website or by scrolling down.

To check out more images from Shakira's photoshoot, courtesy of Shakira Gallery, and to see the hot new Panasonic TV ads,  read more

I'm a sucker for old school Personal TVs - all you have to do is add a splash of color and I'll spend all day dreaming and giggling about them. Much like the huge PanaPana Personal TV, the Panasonic Personal TV (1984) is at least 40 times the size of today's video/MP3 players.

The popularity of "handheld TVs" didn't make it big until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the first pocket-sized TV, called the MTV-1, was released. Of course, Sony released the first Watchman in the 80s and soon every businessman and hipster needed their very own handheld TV. And to think, these days we can watch Justin Timberlake around the clock on our tiny cell phones. For a full gallery of fun Personal TV pictures, just read more

Today we are utterly spoiled with our video iPods and portable MP3 and video players - always looking for something smaller with a better picture and better sound - but there was a time when having a "personal TV" meant lugging around a hefty machine. The PanaPana, a colorful and curvy personal TV, which made it big in 1972, was perhaps, the video iPod or Zen player of yesteryear.

While the PanaPana was about 50 times the size of the original iPod - which was no Tiny Tim itself - it was quite innovative in its day. For more PanaPana photos, just read more