Meade appear to have hit one out of the park with their new ETX-LS telescope. The ETX-LS has a self aligning mount that first uses GPS to figure out where it is and what time it is, and then works out in which direction lies north. A number of electronically-controlled telescopes on the market do this, but then still require the users to manually line up the telescope with a number of guide stars to exactly align the telescope with the celestial sphere. The ETX-LS, on the other hand, has a light sensor that lets the telescope work through a list of guide stars all by itself.

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It somehow escaped my attention in 2008 that a version of the Taser (the “C2 Personal Protector“) is now available for consumer use.  Yes, you too can subdue potential attackers with same technology as the Gainesville police.

In the far reaches of the CES North Hall, a company marketing associate demonstrated the product (no she didn’t tase me, she just turned it on — but it was still pretty scary) and outlined a few product benefits:

- shoots two small, fishhook-ended probes into an attacker from fifteen feet away, incapacitating him or her with 30 seconds of electrical pulse;

- comes with a lifetime replacement guarantee — when you tase someone, you’re supposed to drop the weapon and run away (taking the Taser with you might recapacitate your attacker).   Afterwards, if you send the company the police report, they will send you a new C2 for free;

- available in six colors.

The spokeswoman also loved that she could take the C2 to places like bars in her homestate of Arizona where she was prohibited by law from bringing her concealed firearm.

Buyer beware, however.  The C2 is illegal in several states (including New York and New Jersey) and comes with a sophisticated lock that only opens after you’ve completed a background check.

In addition to the Vaio Series P, another neat new product that Sony is showcasing at CES is the PM1 Webbie HD Camcorder. Weighing only 4 ounces, this camera is capable of shooting full 1080p HD video in the popular MPEG-4 format. About 80 mins of video fits on a single 4 gigabyte memory stick, while the rechargeable battery will support about 90 mins of continuous recording.

What’s really neat about the Webbie is that onboard software means you can just plug the camera into any Internet-connected computer around the world and, without installing any software on that computer, directly upload your movie to video and photo sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr. The PM1 will become available in April for about $170.

In the new camcorders that Canon displayed here at CES, it seems the company has focused on trying to help customers end up with better videos–improve the real-world finished product rather than improve the stats of the camcorders (though they’re doing that, too, of course).

This is probably most clearly visible in a new feature called video snapshot. When in video snapshot mode, pressing the record button starts an automatically timed four-second recording. A highlight circulates around a blue frame on the screen to show the user where they are in the recording; when the highlight moves from 12 o’clock back to 12, four seconds have elapsed and the clip stops.

That’s it. But Canon hopes this seemingly simple function will significantly improve the videos that its customers produce.

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As Stephen mentioned yesterday, 3D HD TV is a big theme here at CES this year: Multiple manufacturers, including Sony, LG, Samsung, and Panasonic are all showing products. Panasonic is using LCD shutter glasses to make it happen–the glasses receive IR signals from the TV and alternately blacken each of the lenses to give each eye a slightly different perspective, and that binocular difference creates the 3D effect.

But perhaps most importantly, the glasses remind me of the classic 80s sci-fi B movie They Live, with super awesome wrestler-turned-actor Rowdy Roddy Piper (and one notoriously, ridiculously long fight scene) . Before The Rock, there was Roddy, God love ‘im.

By the way, there are apparently plans to remake They Live. This could end in disaster.

Today Panasonic showed off a new television that is really really skinny (“flat-out skinny” might be more appropriate): the 54-inch TC-P54Z1 is just 1 inch thick, which beats out even the thinnest LCD screens on the market.

The key to making this all work is that Panasonic pulled the tuner out of the TV entirely and moved it into a separate box, which transmits the full, uncompressed 1080p HD signal to the screen using a proprietary format called (cleverly) WirelessHD. This frees up a lot of room on the display, which Panasonic’s taken full advantage of. Funny to think that in an era when Internet is converging like mad with TVs, here’s one TV that’s diverging from itself.

Beyond the wow factor of having a really skinny screen and the ability to hang the thing on your wall relatively easily (it’s 67 pounds, which is pretty good for that size), this new screen is a welcome development for those who have long been waiting for wireless HD to appear. In fact, LG also displayed a wireless HD TV here at CES, and they’ve also joined up with Amimon, Sony, and other companies to create a new format called Wireless Home Digital Interface, or WHDI. But ultra wideband, which once seemed to be the leading candidate for wireless HD, still hasn’t come to fruition.

Panasonic also says that they’ve improved the cells that hold the phosphors in this TV, allowing the screen to be 1/3 brighter while using 1/3 less energy. The TC-P54Z1 is due out this summer, with more models in the super-thin Z1 line to follow.

Update, Friday, January 9: Here’s some video I shot of the TV spinning around so you can really grok the thin-ness. If you buy the Z1, you might as well show it off by putting it on a rotating spit like this:

Following Alan Mulally‘s keynote address at CES, DISCOVER’s Stephen Cass spoke to him about how an automotive company adjusted to the breakneck pace of the consumer electronic industry, and why he felt the Sync technology was so important.

DISCOVER: It’s a challenging time for the automobile industry. Why did you feel it was important to leave Detroit and come to Las Vegas to deliver this keynote?

Mulally: We wanted to share with everybody all of our new technology associated with Sync, a lot of new capability that goes across all of our cars. It’s really a time when the electronics industry and the automobile industry are really coming together to create a lot of value. So we had a chance to talk about all these new products — this is a great venue to do that because you’ve got so many people in the electronics industry here and so many of our partners are here too.

DISCOVER: What kind of cultural shift did embracing the Sync impose on Ford?

Mulally: The electronic industry changes so quickly. We’re marrying that with an automobile industry where we come out with a new product every two or three years. So all of a sudden, [we were] marrying a cycle time for creating a car with a cycle time of electronics.

DISCOVER: One of the themes of your keynote was learning from the electronics industry. Conversely, do you think the electronics industry has anything it could learn from the automotive industry?

Mulally: One thing that comes to mind is the importance of really focusing on the customer, what they really need and what they value. Think about all this capability that we’re bringing to the driver, but the most important thing we do is create an environment where the driver is even a better driver. It’s a safer environment. Really thinking about what has value in the consumer’s eyes is something that both industries will do together going forward.

DISCOVER: Looking to the future, you talked about creating a platform for people to run plug-and-play information and service applications. Are there any thoughts about extending that to, say, allow an application to adjust the timing of the car’s engine if the driver wants to try a new biofuel that appears on the market?

Mulally: I think we’d say that we’re just about right by giving the driver information, letting them know the health of the car. I think that when you go past that you’re going into a expertise area that ought to be left to the people making the car. But letting the driver know exactly what the car’s status is, and where it might need special attention, that’s really value added capability.

DISCOVER: For some people, the ability to escape the world for a little while is a very important part of their driving experience. Will connecting the car up to so much information from the outside world threaten that experience?

Mulally: I think just the opposite. This approach allows the driver to absolutely stay in charge. The whole thing is for us to access stuff when we want it in a way that’s very efficient. So if you want to be by yourself you can be by yourself. And if you need directions or if you need any of the other services you can get them with a lot less fuss than having to go through maps and stop along the way. I think it is going to put us even more in control of our lives.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally recently wrapped up today’s keynote speech, an argument that the company is not only working hard to incorporate technology into its cars but also into its corporate DNA; “we are a car company but we are learning to think and act like an electronics company,” said vice president of product development Derrick Kuzak during speech time borrowed from Mulally. Emulating the successful tech industry could be an important move for the company, especially at a time when two-thirds of the Big Three require massive government intervention to stay afloat–a fact that was never mentioned outright but gave the talk a special relevance.

Whether Ford succeeds in its goal of creating a technology-oriented “new Ford Motor Company” depends on how good those technologies are. Mulally and other Ford officials mentioned 5 main information technologies that they said were making the company the hands-down leader in in-car information, entertainment, and connectivity:

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While wandering amongst the gigantic yet wafer-thin HDTV’s of CES, it’s easy to forget that a significant part of the world’s population has no access to a reliable supply of electricity, never mind 24/7 internet connectivity.  With that in mind, one of the coolest gadgets I saw today was a deceptively simple self-powered radio from British company Freeplay Energy.

The Freeplay Lifeline radio is powered by both a hand crank and a solar panel that can be detached and placed outdoors while the radio is used indoors.  Available for purchase only by licensed NGO’s, over 300,000 radios have been distributed to date for educational use in remote locations.

Sony have announced a new addition to their Vaio compact notebook computer with the Series-P, and it is sweeeeet.

Starting at just $900, the P boasts an 8-inch display and weighs just 1.4 lbs. It has WiFi built in of course, but also allows you to connect to the Internet through a 3G connection (Verizon is the service provider in the US.) In the “other snazzy features” category, there’s also a GPS receiver built in. The P comes with bundled navigation software, but I suspect the GPS will be indispensable to road warriors as a way to google for ATMs and restaurants near whatever hotel they find themselves in.

The basic model ships with 60 gigabyte conventional hard drive, but you can go up to a 128 GB solid state drive. The graphics chipset will drive an external screen at a resolution of 1600×1200 pixels in addition to its own 1200×768 screen. The CPU is a relatively modest 1.33 gigahertz single-core Intel chip, but given that the Vaio isn’t intended for high-end gaming or video editing, the choice of CPU is a reasonable tradeoff for the low weight, 2-4 hour battery life and price. Certainly as I clock up the miles walking the halls of CES while hauling my desktop-replacement MacBook Pro around, the advantages of a lightweight notebook that would let me blog from almost anywhere is becoming more and more appealing. Earlier members of the Vaio line have already found their way to the heart of many an owner, and the P series will be no exception.