This as the 1^st post of my 2008 Blog Season is pretty incredible. Not so much that it's my 1^st post of the year, but at the last minute, I received an invitation from a colleague to attend the final day, January 10^th , of Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, as a guest of Intel.

So after an early morning departure from Houston to Las Vegas, with pass in hand, I had the great opportunity to join friends for an all day excursion, going through CES 2008.

One underlying theme that was never far from the surface of the show was the US Economy. Not so much as an overt statement from any of the participants, or Exhibitors, but more in the themes from the Speakers.

The Standard & Poor's Retail Index was down 7 percent this year and on Monday, January 7^th, Bear Stearns downgraded Best Buy to "underperform" from "outperform."

"Given recent macro data, including worrisome trends in payroll reports, this sector is positioned poorly in such an environment," wrote Bear Stearns analyst Christopher Horvers in the note.

Also on Monday, Circuit City said December sales at stores open at least a year fell more than 11 percent, and it expects to post a fourth-quarter loss.

But are that retail sales, on the decline due to the economy, or more so because of the way consumers are shopping?

While at CES, I saw a number of innovative products, and services being displayed, and a number of attendees, indicated that they would still buy at least one new gadget this year, as opposed to several as in 2006 and 2007.

As expected, Apple did not have a banner announcement as they did in 2007 with the iPhone, but made reference of a new computer half as thick as Apple's current MacBook lineup, but using flash memory chips like those found in its iPod music players rather than a hard drive.

At the National Retail Federation's (NRF) annual convention, last week, retailers were urged to go high-tech to stand out in the crowd and improve sales, especially amid a flagging U.S. economy, and cited examples where three-dimensional parallel universes on the Internet where users typically create and dress up characters, buy goods, and interact with others, as a way to attract retail spending dollars. While some retailers have started building stores in these virtual worlds, others should consider doing the same.

All in all, the Consumer Electronics Association forecast U.S. consumer electronics sales this year will rise to $171 billion, up from an estimated $161 billion in 2007, which was an 8.2 percent rise from 2006.

"This growth rate is actually terrific compared to the forecast of any other industry," said Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, told CES.

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