We first saw Ostendo's sexy curved DLP display all dressed up in Alienware garb at CES last year, but NEC had a version as well, and it looks like it's going to be the one to finally bring it to market. Branded as the CRVD, there's really nothing new inside the slightly slimmer case, but the 42.8-inch, 45-pound screen is still eye-popping in person, with a 2880 x 900 resolution, .36mm pixel pitch, and sub-.02ms response time. Bad news? It'll set you back $6,499 when it ships in April. Pics in the gallery, video after the break.

The last time we ran into SMART Table, they were demoing a very sturdy multitouch table to a group of schoolkids in Chicago, but they're here at Macworld with some sexier tech -- 50-inch and 65-inch multitouch plasma screens that interface with any OS X machine. The tech allows you to use the screen just like the built-in multitouch trackpad on newer MacBooks, so it works in basically any app, and while it's super-pricey (they just smiled and said "thousands" when we asked), the main cost is the screen and not the touchpanel, so we could see it come down to earth sometime soon. Check the video after the break.

Yep, there's a Macworld keynote going on this morning -- as usual, the Apple Store just went down. That's not all Apple's web monkeys have been up to this morning, though: the company's Downloads page now lists "iWork '09," which doesn't quite exist yet. We'll see what Philly Schills has to say about that -- we're also hearing there might be some iPhone tethering news coming. Keep it locked right here! iWork screencap after the break.

[Thanks, Jakob]

We don't have any hard details yet, but word on the street is that Samsung is planning on pairing up its 6.5mm (.2-inch) thick LCD HDTV with an equally svelte Blu-ray deck just 39mm (1.5 inches) thick. We'll find out more during Wednesday's press event, we're sure -- any bets on whether "thin BD players" will be this year's "thin displays?"

Sony's not playing it too coy with the upcoming VAIO P -- some more detailed specs on the widescreen netbook have leaked out, and they're just about what we expected: a 1.33GHz Atom Z520, 2GB of RAM, standard HDD with optional SSD, GPS, and a 3G WWAN card, all for about €700 ($974). No word on that crazy rumored 1600 x 768 display resolution, but apparently that sexy Photoshopped VAIO TT pic we saw is close to the real thing, trackstick and all. We'll see -- for close to $1000, this guy had better run Vista a hell of a lot better than the similarly-spec'd ASUS R50A UMPC Portal just trashed in a review.

[Via UMPC Portal, image from Pocketables]

Sure, that Photoshopped image of the VAIO P we got on Sunday wasn't the real deal, but it looks like it might have some relation to reality -- Sony's got a teaser up for a "VAIO New Mobile" that includes some brief shots of a very swank-looking keyboard and tracking nub. We'll be honest -- we're totally stoked to check this thing out at CES. Counting the days! One more shot after the break.

[Via Pocketables]

ASUS's R50A UMPC has been sort of lost in the company's flood of Eee PCs, and maybe for good reason -- the crew at UMPC Portal just reviewed the $2,000 handheld and came away unimpressed. Although the software package overall was described as "atrocious" and the lack of a keyboard was annoying, the biggest problems were all essentially related to running Vista on the 1.33GHz Atom Z520 CPU with 1GB RAM -- you can delete bloatware and use a bigger stylus, but you can't fix "pretty bad" performance on the lowest possible graphics settings. Ruh roh: Sony's upcoming VAIO P supposedly has a similar 1.33GHz Intel chip in it and runs Vista. Here's hoping Sony's got something a little more impressive up its sleeve for us than what ASUS managed to put together here -- otherwise the full R50A review at the read link might be discouragingly prophetic.

From the looks of our tip jar, the iPhone went on sale at Walmart today for $197 / $297, just as we expected. The plan is to attract consumers who don't shop at Best Buy, Apple, or AT&T stores, so basically Wally doesn't care about anyone reading this. We love you too, Wally. No crazy $99 4GB model or iPhone nano in sight, but maybe Phil's gonna blow us all away next week. (We doubt it.)

[Thanks to everyone -- seriously, it was like all of you -- who sent this in]

Read - iPhone on sale at Walmart
Read - Video of the display -- yes, someone actually sent in a video of the display

Psion, Psion. We hadn't really heard from the British portable maker since the halcyon days of the Series5, but it's back and making waves with a series of nastygrams asserting its trademark of the word "netbook." Psion's legal team followed up with jkOnTheRun, and according to them, it's only going after those sites and companies "making a direct, financial profit from use of the 'Netbook' trademark." (As opposed to profit in kind, we suppose -- did you know our advertisers pay us in toaster waffles and aviator sunglasses? True story.) Psion says it's mostly focused on retailers and manufacturers using the term netbook to sell machines, not "straight blogs" and other sites. Of course, that means next to nothing, since Psion says it'll still go after those sites that have sponsored ads or for-profit links containing the word "netbook" -- including automatically-placed ads and links like AdSense and Amazon affiliate ads that site owners typically have no control over. +10 weasel, dudes. Anyway, considering the widespread adoption of "netbook" in the past year with nary a peep from Psion, we'd say the term is pretty well generic and no longer a valid trademark at this point -- we'll see how it goes when it drags the first heavy-hitter using the term (like Intel) into court.

Disclaimer: Nilay's a lawyer and secret Asian netbook ODM, but he's not your lawyer and this isn't legal advice or analysis.

We're getting way too many tips on AT&T being down for it to be a coincidence -- how's it going for you? Both EDGE and 3G are pretty spotty for us at the moment in Illinois, but they're working in NYC, which jibes with reports of a Midwest-specific outage, but we're also hearing there are troubles nationwide. We've pinged AT&T for an official statement, but in the meantime let us know if things are working for you wherever you are.

Update: Still haven't heard from AT&T, but we just rolled back into Chicago at 5PM CST and we can't connect on either EDGE or 3G. Let's hope things get better, and soon.

Update 2: According to AT&T, a power failure in Bloomfield, Michigan is the culprit, and techs are working around the clock to get everything back up in the Midwest. We're told rebooting phones may help -- it didn't do anything for us, but it might be worth a shot.

Update 3: It's back up, at least in Chicago. How'd everyone spend their day off-grid? We mostly threw the sad face at our NO SERVICE display.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Apple's said it's taking a break from adding flashy features to OS X to focus on the foundations and stability of the system with Snow Leopard, and this latest leaked screenshot might indicate that those foundations are moving to 64 bits -- it shows System Preferences saying it needs to restart in 32-bit mode to open the Network panel. That's certainly interesting, given the rumors that Apple's dropping support for non-Intel machines and maybe even 32-bit Intel processors with this release, but it could also just mean that whoever took this screenshot doesn't have a 64-bit-friendly version of that preference pane installed. (We're guessing the latter, since there are a lot of 32-bit only Core Duo Intel Macs out there.) Restarting apps to change modes seems pretty clunky, though -- shades of System 7 and the 32-bit Enabler, for the olds -- so we're hoping Apple's got a more elegant solution in the works. Macworld's just around the corner, we're sure we'll hear more from Steve Phil soon.

We had an inkling that Casio and Verizon were up to something when we caught an Exilim-branded phone working its way through the FCC, and it looks like that hunch was right-on -- check out this hot snap of an Exilim NX9250 that just turned up. We're told that the chubby-looking handset features a 5.1 megapixel camera (right, Exilim) and "possibly" a WVGA screen, and those hinges suggest a swivel-flip design -- too bad it doesn't look as slick as that W63CA we were secretly hoping for. We'll see what this one looks like all dolled up -- we've got a feeling we'll find out soon enough. One more shot after the break.

Sony isn't being too coy with the VAIO P, is it? In addition to that teaser image, oh-so-beautiful FCC shot, and mistakenly-posted specs page, CNET's uncovered this pic of the rectangular netbook with its lid open. We can't really tell if the machine pictured has that crazy 8-inch 1600 x 768 display we'd heard about, but there's a lot of the VAIO TT in those lines -- so much so we're wondering if it's a 'shop, albeit a super-hot one. Of course, there's no word on pricing, but we're hoping it's somewhere close to reasonable -- we'll find out in just a couple weeks at CES.

Update: We knew it looked a little too much like the TT -- it's a 'shop. Oh well, at least we can dream.

We'd heard that Nippon Oil and Nippon Yusen were working on a million-dollar solar upgrade for a car freighter called the Auriga Leader back in August, and it looks like things have gone as planned -- the cargo ship launched today from Kobe, Japan. The $1.68m project involved the installation of 328 solar panels, which produce 40 kilowatts of power -- a measly 0.3 percent of the engine power required to move the 656-foot, 60,000-ton ship when fully loaded with 6,400 cars, but enough for seven percent of the juice required for lighting and other systems. That's a slow start, but we'll take what we can get, we suppose -- now let's bolt on some of those new record-high efficiency panels and see what happens.

[Thanks, Yossi]

The iPhone's camera may be thoroughly eclipsed by several of its competitors, but the insane popularity of Apple's baby means that we've seen tons of accessories aimed at making that 2.1 megapixel sensor somewhat more useful -- like the Snapture Flash here, which tucks a xenon flash with red-eye reduction into a sleeve-type case. Although it's powered by the phone, it's apparently quite low-power -- SnaptureLabs estimates that you'll take 1000 shots before going dry -- and there's some sort of "speaker amplification" built in as well, just in case you're super into enhancing mediocre parts of the iPhone experience. Bad news? You'll have to jailbreak your phone to get the Snapture app working -- hopefully that'll be remedied by the time this thing ships. Check out some sample shots at the read link.

[Via Engadget Spanish]