The top business picks from CES 2009

Best of show: Palm Pre
In 2008, most tech pundits and commentators had abandoned Palm and left it for dead. The once-great PDA and smartphone maker had been eclipsed in the burgeoning smartphone market by Apple and Research In Motion, the Palm operating system was outdated, and the company hadn't released an innovative hardware device since it first launched the Treo line in 2003.

At CES 2009, Palm surprised nearly everyone by stealing the show with the unveiling of its new Palm Pre smartphone and the Palm webOS that runs it. The Palm Pre is a slim, elegant phone with a full-length touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard.

The user interface of the new Palm features several innovations that will keep Apple and RIM on their toes. The biggest innovation is the multi-tasking in the new Palm WebOS, because multi-tasking has been a major limitation on smartphones — including the iPhone — until now. Palm has broken away from the window concept and created a multi-taking interface that relies on a deck of cards as its model. A user just pushes the centre button on the Palm and then flips through open apps and clicks one.

As for the Palm WebOS, it is based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Palm thinks it will be an easy and popular platform for programmers to design software to extend the functionality of the device. Palm has also done an excellent job of allowing the communications and contact management software on the Palm Pre to segment or combine personal and business work, based on user preference.

The buzz about this phone from CES attendees was so intense that there were even BlackBerry and iPhone users who were talking about switching to the Palm Pre when it comes out during the first half of 2009. If Palm delivers a fast, usable device based on the prototypes it showed at CES, then it will definitely have the first real challenger to the iPhone in design, interface and smartphone web browsing.