LAS VEGAS — We’ve heard the same story for years: the revolution in home automation is just around the corner! And yet, despite the hype, it still hasn’t arrived. But talk to vendors at CES, and they say it finally is just around the corner — thanks to the iPhone.

The iPhone finally gives ordinary consumers a bunch of good reasons to automate their homes, beyond the geeky thrill of turning on the sprinklers from the couch. For example, it can alleviate the universal anxiety of worrying about the stove when away on vacation. Paired with a connected-range (there are several on show here at CES), your iPhone can you tell you if the oven is on, and then let you switch it off.

The best evidence that home automation has arrived is that the nation’s home builders are finally including home automation technology in many new homes as standard. Lennar Homes, the third biggest home builder in the US, is making home automation standard in more than 20,0000 new homes this year, said Matt McGroven, marketing leader of Nexia, a San Francisco-based home automation company.

Nexia makes an app that works in conjunction with a Home Bridge ($60 on Amazon) and service ($9 a month). With 70% of users on iOS, Nexia controls a wide range of automated products, from nannycams to lighting, locks, thermostats, and dozens of others.

“You can do a bunch of cool and genuinely useful things,” he said.

Wearables are all the rage at CES this week, but everyone is waiting to see what Apple does with its rumored iWatch. The mysterious device has been in the rumor mill for several years now, but reports have started picking up more frequently in the past year.

According to The Information, Apple is running into problems developing its watch-like device. Specific panel technology isn’t mentioned in the report, but Apple has apparently had problems choosing the right display. A “sizable” team is working on the project, which was reported last year. Battery issues (which are tied to the screen problems) have also been slowing development.

LAS VEGAS — There are countless ways to catch up on the news thanks to the advent of services like Flipboard and Feedly. You may stick to traditional papers like The New York Times or USA Today, scan Twitter or Facebook, use RSS, visit a few of your favorite sites every day, or a combination of all the above. The possibilities are endless.

Then there’s Yahoo. At a big keynote today during CES, the tech giant announced its new News Digest app for iPhone. It’s a beautiful, bold take on presenting the news that has a good chance of being quite successful.

LAS VEGAS — Plenty of companies have come up with cable-tidying solutions for MacBooks but few let you tame the beast as easily as this miniaturized belt for your power adapter, the Cordlupa.

LAS VEGAS — The simplest solution is always the best. Take external battery packs for your iPhone, which are sometimes hard to use when you’re actually talking on the phone. Either you have to remove your case to snap in a battery case, or you have a long cord dangling to an external pack in your pocket.

MyCharge’s clever Talk & Charge ($100) is a slim external battery pack that works with any and every iPhone case on the market because it doesn’t physically attach to your iPhone; you just hold it against the back of your iPhone while talking, like an electronics sandwich. Simple.

It’s almost the same size and shape as an iPhone 5s or 5c. It boasts a 3000mAh battery (good for more than two full iPhone 5 charges) and a Lightning cable built right in, so you’ll never forget your charging cable again. It’s a nice touch.

In fact, I think all of MyCharge’s wares are thoughtfully designed. The tech is pretty good too. According to the company, they are the fastest chargers on the market. Check out their well-designed charging bricks:

LAS VEGAS –  I just finished my annual slog through the world’s largest ever exhibition of iPhone cases  – a.k.a. The iLounge at CES. While most of this years’ offerings are focused on providing extra battery power, PureGear has a lineup of cases that turn your iPhone into a retro physical game, no app required.

LAS VEGAS – Dropping your iPhone in a pool of water can be a traumatic experience. Especially if you don’t have AppleCare+. Sure, there are a bunch of home remedy methods you can try to dry it out, but I’ve never had any success shoving my soaked iPhone in a bag of rice. Enter Bheestie, a small plastic bag that claims to remove water from you gadgets faster than any home remedy.

LAS VEGAS — Remember Anki, the little iOS-powered toy car app that Apple brought up on stage for its World Wide Developers Conference last year?

We got to catch up with them at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show to talk about the app, the AI-controlled toy cars, and how they’ve created the latest must-have toy gadget with Apple’s help.

LAS VEGAS –Brookstone’s Perfect Drink is an app-Controlled smart bartending system that’s a dream come true for the cocktail-challenged. If you become paralyzed when confronted with a liquor cabinet, Perfect Drink is all but guaranteed to turn you into a bartending genius with it’s real-time pouring instructions.

On the Mac, you can close all the tabs in Safari (or any browser of your choice, really) with the keyboard combo of Option-Command-W. Hit that, and all the tabs in all the windows open will close at once. It mirrors the Finder command, which will close all Finder windows.

You can swipe away the tabs one at a time when you’re browsing on your iPad or iPhone, but there’s no keyboard command equivalent to close them all at once. How can you close all the tabs you have open in one fell swoop?

LAS VEGAS — Remember the View-Master? I used to spend hours looking at 3D reels but after awhile the same pictures got boring. Now, a Kickstarter startup called Poppy has taken the immersive 3D scenes concept but instead of stock photos, you can take your own iPhone photos and videos and make them 3D.

Apple released iOS 7.1 beta 3 to developers today, and like always, many have already combed through the new software to find what’s new. The second beta of 7.1 brought a few additions and UI tweaks, and beta 3 also includes several noticeable changes.

Here are 8 design changes Apple made in the latest iOS 7.1 beta today:

The Independent Games Festival (IGF), held every spring at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, is a celebration of the independent spirit. It’s both a gauge of the cutting edge in game design as well as an increasingly popular event among gamers of all stripe.

This year, the list of nominees for the awards contains a veritable boat-load of games that are available on iOS or Mac. It’s a who’s-who of the hot new games tat everyone’s talking about as well as a notice that mobile gaming is definitely on the map.

LAS VEGAS — Mophie’s Juice Packs are widely considered to be the best battery cases you can get for the iPhone. They attach via Lightning and give you a backup power reserve for long days when a normal charger isn’t available.

Today at CES, Mophie unveiled its new lineup for battery cases for the iPhone. The Space Pack not only doubles battery life, but it has a pretty cool trick up its sleeve: additional storage.

Apple seeded the third beta of iOS 7.1 to developers today as a direct download and OTA update. The release comes after beta 2 was seeded in the Apple Dev Center on December 13.

Apple hasn’t said what new features are in beta 3, but rest assured that we’ll let you know. New betas for the Apple TV and Xcode were also released alongside 7.1 beta 3 today. The public release of iOS 7.1 hasn’t been revealed, but this new beta is a sign that the software is getting closer to prime time.

MyTeeth — Education — Free ($1.99 unlock)

It’s important for people to learn proper tooth-brushing techniques, and not just because toothpaste and floss are way cheaper than root canals and fillings. Brushing is just an important part of fitting in with society because society is full of people who will notice if you have broccoli stuck in your teeth or if your breath smells like the inside of a garbage disposal.

MyTeeth is here to help with a selection of slightly creepy-looking children who will brush along with your kids — or you — to ensure that your chompers get nice and clean. Just don’t stare into their beady little eyes too long. I think I saw Cthulhu in there.

MyTeeth

Just after we waxed rhapsodic about the new SteelSeries Stratus iOS 7 gaming controller comes a new controller to the news cycle, the Signal RP One.

If the picture above is any indication, this one is sized more like a typical console controller in the Xbox style than SteelSeries’ mini stature, which could bode well for Signal, as not everyone has the tiny hands to deal with a smaller controller device.

As a designer, you can never have enough icons. Period.

The iOS 7 App Developer Icon Pack is a collection of vector icons and symbols optimized for iOS 7 app development. Engineered for the tab bar and toolbar in iPhone and iPad, they’re always pixel perfect and ready for Retina displays. During this limited time offer, Cult of Mac Deals has it for 48% off the regular price…only $39.

LAS VEGAS – It seems like every company is busting out a tiny sensor that keeps track of your steps and other fitness goals here at CES, but if you’re slouching over a computer for 8 hours a day, correcting your posture can go a long way toward improving your fitness. Lumo is putting a different spin on the pedometer by focusing not just on how much you’re moving, but on whether you’re keeping your head up and shoulders straight too.

LAS VEGAS — For years now, Olloclip has been making stellar lenses that slip over the iPhone’s camera lens and enhance iPhoneography with the ability to take fisheye, telephoto and macro photos. But there has apparently been a struggle within Olloclip about whether or not to offer an iPad lens. Now the struggle is over, and iPad-loving photographers have won: The first Olloclip lens for iPad will be available soon.

Chong Pak, the company’s design director, told us there were only a few hurdles to clear before Olloclip went iPad — but those hurdles were tall.

LAS VEGAS — Shure has hit the extremes lately in terms of how much they think music lovers are willing to pay for headphones and earphones, but their latest in-ear monitors cost just $50.

The new SE112s are just half the price of Shure’s previously cheapest IEMs, the SE215, and only $20 more than Apple’s iconic, earbud-ish EarPods. It’s quite a change for Shure: Earlier this year, the company came out with the ultra-high-end, $1,000-plus SE846 canalphones. And their exotic, carbon-fiber SRH1540 headphones arrived just a few months ago at a robust $624.

Apple has today announced that App Store sales topped a whopping $10 billion in 2013, with over $1 billion made during December alone. Almost three billion apps were downloaded during the final month of the year, making it the most successful month in App Store history.

When you create a new email message in OS X Maverick’s Mail app, you can choose–assuming you have more than one email account in there–which account you’re sending the email from. For example, you might want to send an email from your work account rather than your personal one if it’s work related, and vice versa if it’s about a party you’ve recently attended.

The problem is, when you choose from the drop-down menu in the mail composition window, the account you want to send from may not be in the top spot. It might be a couple of slots down the list. If you want to rearrange the order of these accounts, you can search in the Mail preferences until the cows come home because the ability to do so just isn’t in there.

It is, however, possible to do.

We all know that the iPhone 6 will be thinner than the current model — Apple hasn’t released a major iteration of a product yet without making it at least a tiny bit svelter — but will it also be physically bigger? That’s the million dollar question, and a new rumor says ‘yes’, and that Apple may release a physically bigger iPhone as early as May.

The iPhone 5c is not a cheap phone. In fact, it costs $549 without a contract. Apple has 0% share of the sub-$400 “budget” smartphone market by sole dint of the fact it doesn’t sell a budget iPhone.

But hey, don’t let that get in the way of Microsoft trying to claim they are outselling the iPhone in the under-$400 market, which is sort of like saying that Louis Vuitton is outselling Apple in designer clothes.