LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Oh the irony! Microsoft showed off some of its best software in years at its final keynote at CES.

But just as Microsoft seems to be getting its act together, it is pulling out of the U.S.’s largest technology show.

Steve Ballmer didn’t dance around like a monkey. Bill Gates didn’t make a cameo, and there was only one of the goofy, funny videos that Microsoft is known for.

Overall it was a letdown, despite software that looks like it might really give Apple a run for its money.

The Looxcie camera is a neat little gadget by itself, able to clip onto an ear and record 30-second video bursts of your life. Now it has a fantastic little streaming app that you can use to stream those clips and even allows two-way voice communication. Hello, ultra-portable broadcast team.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – One of the challenges facing audiophiles these days is keeping their cherished old speakers while still taking advantage of your iPhone, iPad or Mac’s advanced AirStream capability. The Griffin Twenty is a sleek new accessory that lets you keep your old warm, room-filling speakers and make them AirPlay-compatible. And it looks damn nice to boot.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Although most of Intel’s ultrabook presser was a wash for Mac fans, the chipmaker did drop one extraordinarily interesting slide, showing exactly how Apple could make its next MacBook Air redesign almost 66% thinner. Holy crap. Here’s how Apple would do it.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – This is my friend Sergio Miranda, editor of the Brazilian Apple magazine MAC+. When I ran into Sergio last night, he complained that he’d lost his glasses on arriving here at CES. He couldn’t work without them. But no worries, a friend is already flying back to Sao Paulo in Brazil to pick up a spare pair from Sergio’s home! The friend will then hop on a return flight and bring them back to Sergio in Vegas.

“What!” I said, incredulous. That’s a 12,000 mile round trip. Each leg takes more than 12 hours. Surely it’d be easier to get a pair from Walgreens on the Strip?

The explanation?

The popular video sharing service Vimeo is at CES in Las Vegas this week to announce new mobile apps for the Android and Windows Phone platforms. However, it also has some exciting news to share about its existing iOS app.

An update set to hit the App Store later this month will not only bring support for the iPad, but also full HD video streaming, and lots of great new features.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Remember those old “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” ads (and the never-ending parodies that followed) for LifeAlert in the ’80s? Zomm has leveraged the new Bluetooth v4.0 technology to create a device with features that harken back to that older gadget; it too comes with a live operator — but the Zomm Lifestyle Connect‘s inclusion of Bluetooth makes it way cooler and vastly more useful.

ION Audio is showing off two new iCade products at CES in Las Vegas this week that provide retro gamers with physical controls while they’re on the go.

Unlike its original iCade Arcade Cabinet, which you wouldn’t dream of carrying around in your rucksack, the iCade Core and iCade Mobile accessories from ION are compact, lightweight, and ready to follow you about.

While popular iOS games can make their developers a small fortune in the App Store, not every title is a huge success. With over half a billion iOS apps currently available, some are bound to go unnoticed. However, one developer is attempting to make money from his iOS game in a different way.

With his latest game struggling to take off in the App Store, indie game developer Adam Schwartz is looking to bring in some cash by selling the title’s source code on eBay.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – We’ve seen countless solutions to finding lost car keys over the past few decades, but this latest solution from Treehouse Labs makes the attempt to be practical and fun while solving one of mankind’s greatest problems through an iPhone app. Bikn is a location tracking solution to help you find anything that has a tendency to get lost: dogs, purses, cameras, your grandparents at Wal-Mart, you name it. By attaching a small location tracker to any item you tend to lose, Bikn makes finding things easier than ever.