Coming off a so-so quarterly earnings report last month, Palm announced some expected news and some surprisingly good updates at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday. Palm confirmed that it will be on Verizon Wireless' network with the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus. Verizon says it will make the two devices available for sale on Jan. 25 though the prices have not been disclosed yet. For Verizon, Palm doubled the storage (16GB) and RAM of the Palm Pre Plus compared to the Sprint version. The Pixi also gets Wi-Fi. Both are nice touches but nothing too surprising. But Palm threw in some promising news including a new Palm mobile hotspot exclusive to Verizon. What it means is that your Palm Pre can become a Wi-Fi access point for five other devices. It's like tethering but it involves no wires and can support multiple users. You'll have to pay for the privilege but it's a cool feature no one else has. Palm's webOS is also getting some nice improvements in its 1.4 release in February. It will have better battery efficiency and better performance so some of the sluggishness opening and switching between apps should be improved. WebOS 1.4 users will also be able to record video for the first time. It comes with the ability to trim video clips and upload them easily to YouTube and Facebook. But the coolest thing is that 1.4 will include Adobe Flash. Users can now watch Flash video on Web sites from their mobile device. The webOS platform will be one of, if not, the first mobile operating systems to get full Flash support. Palm also announced that in addition to making its SDK publicly available, game developers will now be able to access deeper parts of the OS to develop 3-D games. Developers like EA, Gameloft, Glu and others have developed 3-D games for Palm's App Catalog, which now has more than 1,000 apps. The Ford Motor Co. is betting motorists will want to tweet while driving. At CES, the automaker unveiled plans for Web-connected dashboard technologies that include OpenBeak, a mobile Twitter application formerly known as TwitterBerry. The app will be part of the Sync platform in Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles. Drivers will be able to use voice commands to have Twitter messages read out loud, while steering wheel controls will skip forward or backward. San Francisco's Twitter wasn't the only Bay Area company highlighted in the keynote. Ford also plans to install apps for Pandora, an Internet music service based in Oakland that has more than 40 million users. Also, Ford is adding an app for Stitcher, a San Francisco service that streams podcasts and Internet news and talk radio stations. .. .. .. Asus' NX90 is one of the most eye catching laptops at CES. That's the idea Asus was going for when it partnered with Bang & Olufsen subsidiary Bang & Olufsen ICEpower to create a powerful and stylish multimedia laptop. The computer is designed by Bang & Olufsen chief designer David Lewis. This desktop replacement features mirrored aluminum on the outside and on the palm rests, offsetting nicely against the black keyboard. If that's not striking enough, it's got two big speakers flanking the big 18-inch screen, wider than the bottom part of the laptop. When you get inside, the keyboard features two track pads at the far ends. Asus has some multimedia software that allows you to manipulate content using DJ like moves. It's also good for left handers and could enable head-to-head gaming for two users. The computer looks like it should be sitting on the desk of a CEO or in a house of the future. But it's not just all looks. The speakers put out some very good sound. And it's got a choice of Intel Core i7 CPUs, an 18-inch 1080p display, an Nvidia GeForce GT 335M GPU, dual hard drives, and a Blu-ray drive. It starts at $2,000. Sling Media, known for its place shifting technology, unveiled four new products at CES aimed at helping people view more video. Here's a rundown of the products: -- Slingbox 700U: This device can connect to an HDTV set top box via a USB port allowing you to sling your video out to a Slingplayer. Sling calls this making the set top box 'SlingLoaded.' -- Sling Receiver 300: This works with Slingloaded set top boxes and allows a user to receive their video on another TV in the home via a home network. -- Sling Monitor 150: It's a light-weight portable HD screen that can take in content around the house wirelessly. -- Sling Touch Control 100: This is one cool remote control. It's got a 4.3-inch capacitive touch screen that can control HD digital video recorders and other devices that have been Slingguide enabled. It can also control other AV equipment using infrared. The idea is that this remote control will provide a personal electronic guide of programming, helping people better discover content that they didn't know was available. Plastic Logic's Que made its premiere Thursday, trying to carve out a space apart from emerging e-readers. Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta showed off the 11.6-inch-screen Que, saying it will try to reproduce a paperless briefcase. The idea is that this will sit between a laptop and a smart phone, providing mobile business users with a complete solution. From the home screen, users get access to their Exchange calendar on the left pane, complete with attachments. Users can also access their e-mail. In the bottom left corner is a button that takes you to an online book store. Plastic Logic has said that they will work with Barnes and Noble to sell books. Because of the manufacturing process, which allows Plastic Logic to build transistors on plastic, the Que doesn't require a glass screen. That saves on weight and thickness. Plastic Logic will sell a 4-GB model with Wi-Fi for $649. An 8-GB version with 3G and Wi-Fi will sell for $799. It should go on the market in the coming months. Chinese manufacturer Haier is showing off a 32-inch TV set at CES that runs completely wireless. The video is provided by a DVD player using wireless HDMI, which is something a lot of manufacturers also offer. But the real eye-opener: The TV is powered without electrical wires. Haier is working with WiTricity's wireless electricity technology and plans on being the first to deploy it in a TV set in the next few years. It's a ways off but the technology works now. WiTricity uses specially designed magnetic resonators in both the device and the power source to efficiently transfer power. Tune the two resonators together and they can transmit electricity. This approach allows for safe power transfer as well as an extended reach many times the size of the device. WiTricity showed a proof of concept last year but this is the first year that it's got a working model up at the show. Not many people are thinking of buying a Windows Mobile phone these days, not with iPhones, Droids and Palm Pres running about. But HTC's HD2 could change that. The Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, which has only been available in Europe, will come to the U.S. through T-Mobile, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The phone has a huge 4.3-inch capacitive touch screen with multi-touch, the first of its kind for a Windows device. It's also got a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor like Google's Nexus One. And it's got HTC's Sense UI, a layering of software over the Windows Mobile operating system. Windows Mobile 6.5 gave the platform a nice face-lift but when combined with Sense UI and the capacitive touch screen, you have an experience that is better than any other Windows phone before it. The phone also has a 5 megapixel camera with a flash along with GPS. The HD2 will be out this spring. Pricing is not available yet. Note: Benny Evangelista reported from San Francisco. . . . 