THQ today announced that its uDraw Gaming Tablet will be available in the US in time for this year’s holiday season. This wireless drawing system that will also be used by games from THQ is exciting news, unleashing the creative potential of gamers (and non-gamers alike) and once again thrusting the Wii into the forefront of “innovation”.

Nintendo is fond of saying, and I believe it will reiterate this morning's press conference, that the reason for its success is innovation and creativity realized in both hardware and software. There is no doubt that Microsoft's newest offering, Kinect, is also innovative. More powerful than the Wii, the new hardware device can see and hear us, permits us to control the console with voice and movement. But is that enough?

The generation that grew up on Xbox and Playstation has now grown-up and has kids. Microsoft is betting that those twenty-somethings that typified the the rock-and-roll pioneer of video gaming are now looking to play with their family. In a bold departure from the hard-core blood-and-guts b-roll that was the staple of E3 launches in the past, tonight's debut of Project Natal, now renamed Kinect, was a love fest that featured yoga and pet tigers.

It has been a long time since I got excited about a mouse...[Ed. Digression: The first time I was travelling to camp with my mother. I was 8 years old and we had just checked into the Mackinac Island Grand Hotel. My mom was taking a shower while I watched TV. Suddenly, there was a shreek...and she ran out of the bathroom clutching a towel so as not to scar me for life, screaming wildly, pursued by a little grey mouse that disappeared under the door to the room. It is hard for a battery driven mouse, however nobly designed to compete w/that memory for excitement.] This Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX does the trick.

Eye-Fi wireless SD cards for your camera are my favorites for all around use because they allow auto-upload to the web while I'm on the road. Google is selling the $70 version of the card for $50.  The catch is that the deal comes with a 200GB of storage online included in the price.  It is a good deal even if you don't want the subscription.  Sign up and then set the subscription to not renew.  You're still getting a bargain on the chip.   Note: this card doesn't handle RAW images...there is a new, more expensive pro version that does. But, if you're shooting jpgs this is a real bargain.

It is difficult to imagine where the Imation Pro WX Wireless USB Hard Drive fits into the competitive world of mass storage.  Priced too high, with limited functionality and hardware that looks like it was designed in the '90's, it is a product that will be of value to an extremely small subset of users.

The idea of a scanner that can breeze through a stack of photos from the family album is very appealling. Pandigital's Photolink One-Touch Scanner promises to do just that (and without need to hook it up to a computer, no less). But, this product gets just about everything wrong; so, hold onto your hats...this is going to be a bumpy review!

Before we get to how well it works, let's focus on how it works.

Here is the link to my latest segment on the Today Show.

Cardscan Executive (Cardscan $259) isn't the newest gadget on the planet, but I recently took one for a spin, and was so impressed that I thought it merited special praise.

This mini-scanner, designed primarily to scan and organize business cards, a chore that I tended to put off until, well…never. I came to the product skeptical of its price and claims. It seemed too expensive and too good to be true. It turns out that by reliably cleaning up my contact list, it more than earned back its not inconsiderable price.

Replica from Seagate has quietly revolutionized the backup business for PCs. There are few products that receive “Must-Have” status, but no PC should be running today without a Replica backup system attached. It is cheap, simple to operate, and nearly foolproof. Replica not only backs up you documents – it provides complete image restoration if your computer is hit by virus or hard disk failure!