iPad Free App of the Week: E! Live From the Red Carpet

With all the winter award shows upcoming, E!’s new app Live From The Red Carpet is the perfect app to keep you up-to-date on the glitz, glamor, and gossip associated with all of the accolades. The app even includes live streaming from the red carpet so you won’t miss a second of the excitement.

You'll hit all the big shows, live and in high-gloss interactive bliss: the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Grammy Awards, SAG Awards, red carpets of weekly movie premieres and film fests.

This app brings you celeb news, A-list fashion photos and interview videos from awards season's marquee events. (And on the iPad, you can zoom in and check out every fab fashion detail in stunning high-res galleries.)

Get up-close celebrity interviews with our livestreams and massive video coverage, and dive into the GlamCam 360, our futuristic Matrix-like fashion cam!

You'll have instant access to hundreds of E! articles, breaking down everything from the winners and upsets to the shows' best (and worst) moments. Plus, connect with Twitter to share your VIP access with the world.

It's free, so get it today!

Kindle Free Pick of the Week: Unbillable Hours

Do you like John Grisham?  Well, Ian Graham tries to do his best Grisham impersonation here.

The story—part memoir, part hard-hitting expose—of a first-year law associate negotiating the arduous path through a system designed to break those who enter it before it makes them.

Landing a job at a prestigious L.A. law firm, complete with a six figure income, signaled the beginning of the good life for Ian Graham. But the harsh reality of life as an associate quickly became evident. The work was grueling and boring, the days were impossibly long, and Graham’s main goal was to rack up billable hours. But when he took an unpaid pro bono case to escape the drudgery, Graham found the meaning in his work that he’d been looking for. As he worked to free Mario Rocha, a gifted young Latino who had been wrongly convicted at 16 and sentenced to life without parole, the shocking contrast between the quest for money and power and Mario’s desperate struggle for freedom led Graham to look long and hard at his future as a corporate lawyer.

Clear-eyed and moving, written with the drama and speed of a Grisham novel and the personal appeal of Scott Turow’s account of his law school years, Unbillable Hours is an arresting personal story with implications for all of us.

A good read, get it now for free.

What Will the Story Be at CES 2011?

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will descend on Las Vegas next week as 100,000+  attendees will get a glimpse at some of the new gadgets and gizmos that companies like LG, Sony, Motorola and Samsung plan to offer later this year or in the future.

Each year, certain products garner more attention than others and draw the biggest crowds, clogging up the narrow convention center aisles.  I've been to CES seven-times and have seen all sorts of products that became staples of our lives and even more that we never saw again.

Here's what to expect this year.

Tablets, tablets, and more tablets.  With the success of Apple's iPad, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, look for a HP-Palm product running webOS, RIM’s PlayBook, the much talked about Droid Xoom and countless other pretenders to the throne.

3D TVs and Content.   Prepare yourself for much lower cost active-shutter 3D glasses, big drops in 3D TV prices and lots of stunning content for both.  Customers main complain about 3D televisions has been the lack of content to watch.  We might even see how we can convert out regular DVDs to #D capable DVDs.  That sounds interesting.

Superphone Smartphones.   Smartphones are all going multi-tasking while improving both single- and multi-threaded application performance. These phones will offer 4G as well, providing what may be the biggest single bump in performance ever, and giving us an early look at what might be in the fifth-generation iPhone.  Mobile phones are where it is all happening and handset makers are racing to showcase the latest innovations.

Smart TVs.  Hoping to steal some of the attention from smartphones, Smart TVs will be at the show this year, in full force.  The vast majority of which will be DLNA compliant. These TVs have been quietly getting better all this year, and advance press materials I've received have me impressed.  Watch for them to be wrapped with products like Skifta, which allow you to seamlessly move your content from any source to any player, be it a DLNA-compliant TV or stereo.  Ease of use will be a key for this product.

Auto innovations.  Head on over to the automotive pavillion this year and you'll see what you may soon be doing in your car.  Expect to see  in-car hotspots, and some incredible sound systems ane touch screens that will allow you to control your life from the dash of your car.

More e-book readers.  Thought you saw it all last year when it comes to e-book readers?  Think again.  Will the next generation of e-book readers offer video, or also act as tablets?  E-book readers continue to be a popular category of consumer electronics.

Who knows, maybe something we've never herd of will steal the show this year.  By this time next week well be on electronics overload, but we'll have some idea of what to expect in the coming months.

Samsung Galaxy Player to Debut at CES

Looks like the next member of the Samsung Galaxy family will be unveiled at CES next week.

The media player will be modeled after the Galaxy S smartphone, without the phone function of course, and run Android OS 2.2 Froyo. Like the later-gen iPod touch, the device will feature front- and rear-facing cameras and come in 8, 16, and 32 GB options.

The Galaxy Player is expected to include:

9.9 mm wide in width

1 GHz Hummingbird processor

4-inch LCD screen with up to WVGA resolution (800 x 400)

SoundAlive audio enchancing technology

Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth 3.0 enabled

3.2 MP rear-camera

HD video playback

microSD card slot

No price has been leaked or when it might be available for sale.  Can't wait to see one at CES.

iPad Free App of the Week: Santa GPS for iPad

Find your location in relation to Santa’s workshop! Get up-to-date North Pole news and toy production information from Santa’s head elf publicist! Send Santa your Christmas wish list, or rate yourself or be rated on the naughty or nice meters. Know exactly how many days, hours, minutes and seconds remain before he arrives with all the toys and presents.

This all-in-one Santa tracking tool is great for kids and even some adults who act like kids.

When the bearded man in the red suit leaves the North Pole on Christmas Eve, Santa GPS provides minute-by-minute detailed location information, including when he’ll be in your area. Santa GPS will help you take the guesswork out of one of the most magical seasons of the year.

A great free app from the folks at Fission Media.