Las Vegas »The giant Consumer Electronics Show, which ended Sunday, ushers in a wave of cutting-edge consumer electronics and cool new ways to access your favorite entertainment. Here's a look at some of what you can expect to see this year.

Waking up: There's an app for that

Is it an alarm clock? Yes. Is it also a way to listen to streaming online music from Slacker and watch YouTube videos? Yes again.

Sony's Dash is another of those new multipurpose connected devices. Sony calls it a "personal Internet viewer," meant to reside by the night table, like an alarm clock. It will set you back $199. The units hit stores this spring.

The touch-screen Dash uses Internet widgets to bring in the best of the Web, including YouTube videos, Slacker radio, sports, recipes, traffic updates and even e-mail from Gmail. There's a virtual keyboard to sign in and register at websites.

Elsewhere at CES, iHome was showing off a couple of new "app-enhanced" iPhone/iPod alarm clock docks.

They are designed to work with a forthcoming iPhone/Touch app, iHome+Sleep, that the company says could launch any time now. When used with the app, products can track sleep patterns and help you gather other data about your sleep habits.

-- Jefferson Graham and Nancy Blair

Headphone-free music on the go

It's not safe to ride your bike through the streets with headphones in your ears. Ditto for dashing down the slopes.

But it's so much fun to soar along, listening to music.

What to do? The folks at Silicon Valley Global think they have the solution. The company just introduced Tunebug Shake, a music speaker that attaches to the top of your helmet to beam the sound into your ears the old-fashioned way -- without wires.

It turns "many 3-dimensional surfaces into a surround-sound speaker," the company says. To plug into the music without wires, the Tunebug uses Bluetooth technology to connect to MP3 players and phones.

The product sells for $119. It's a good idea, but when we tested it, the music sounded muted and hollow. Without the earbuds in our ears, the music just wasn't there.

-- Jefferson Graham

Verizon welcomes Palm Pre, Pixi

Verizon Wireless is embracing Palm's slick webOS mobile operating system. That's a boon for Palm, whose well-received Pre and Pixi phones have been overshadowed by Apple's iPhone and an invasion of Google Android devices.

Palm and Verizon's new Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus become available Jan. 25. Both have touch-screens and standard keyboards, and use Palm "Synergy" for neatly incorporating data from disparate sources into a single, easy-to-read view.

The most interesting feature: A downloadable app in Palm's App Catalog lets you take advantage of Verizon's 3G network and turn the new handsets into mobile hotspots that let you share a "personal Wi-Fi cloud" with up to five Wi-Fi-equipped devices, notebooks, cameras and portable media players.

AT&T says it, too, will add a couple of Palm phones in the first half of the year. Palm introduced the Pre at last year's CES, exclusively with Sprint.

-- Edward C. Baig

The magic of wireless power

Imagine getting home from work and just dropping your cell phone and laptop on your desk to charge. You go into the kitchen and whip up a frothy drink by simply putting your blender on the counter. Boil water for your pasta just by putting the pot next to the sink. It's all possible with something called Qi (pronounced "chee").

Qi is the standard for wireless power, much like Bluetooth is for connecting devices, and it can be used for everything from daily gadgets to power tools. Manufacturers have signed on to the Wireless Power Consortium to build hotel room furniture, airplane seats, car consoles and kitchen counters with built-in power.

They connect magnetically via a coil built into the device or retrofitted into a case to charge or power it up. Because the power system looks for that unique type coil, energy can't be transfered to you if you should happen to get between the two.

-- Kim McDaniel

A rugged ski and snowboard camera

Wouldn't it be cool to get some point-of-view video to share with friends and followers when you're out on the slopes? Sure, but most of the action cams out there are flimsy, unreliable and a pain to use with your gear on. Meet the Summit Series from Liquid Image.

The camera is built right into the center of the goggle and is entirely hands free. It records either 5 megapixel stills or 720p video (and audio) at 30 frames per second. The simple controls are mounted on the top right and the big buttons make it easy to turn the camera on or off, switch between still and video, trigger the shutter and start/stop recording. Tiny lights only visible inside the goggles tell you whether the camera is on, which mode is set and whether it is recording. It has 16MB of flash memory and can be expanded with micro SD/SDHC cards up to 16GB.

The Summit Series should be available by next ski season for around $150. More at www.liquidimageco.com

-- Kim McDaniel