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I’m currently carrying two smartphones and a laptop on my person, with a netbook and desktop at home, plus a TiVo and a game console. In five years, a single device like the Motorola Atrix could replace all of them.

The Atrix is an Android 2.2 (Froyo) phone with a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage (with a storage slot for up to 32GB more). The specs aren’t THAT different from my netbook.

So why do I need my netbook? Well, it has a bigger display and a keyboard, along with USB ports.

The premise and the promise of the Atrix is that we don’t need so many CPUs in our lives. We use different size monitors and different PC form factors for different tasks, but what if we had a single device that could just plug into those monitors and form factors? That’s what the Atrix does.

Carry it around as a smartphone. When you need a laptop, plug it into a super thin and light dock that looks like a laptop: It’s got a display and a keyboard, but no guts…just a battery to charge the phone when it’s docked. The smartphone UI morphs into a more traditional interface when the phone is docked.

Want a bigger display? Plug it into the regular dock, which has HDMI-out and 3 USB ports (below photo).

As mobile processors get more capable of fulfilling our computing needs (and, if they follow Moore’s Law, this will happen faster than we expect), the notion that smartphones could serve as our primary computers becomes not just a possibility but a safe bet. All we need are KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) docks to plug our phones into at work, at home, and wherever else we sit and get our stuff done.

PC World points out another exciting feature about the Atrix: It includes Citrix Receiver for virtualized access to a (more powerful) Windows 7 PC. Meaning the Atrix can serve as the user-facing computer, while all the necessary processing horsepower lives in a real computer somewhere else, and your large files can either live on the virtualized desktop or in the cloud. 

This virtualization is amazing in it’s own right, but I see it as a stopgap solution until mobile processors go superpowered. For instance, right now, the Atrix is powerful enough to run the stripped-down Quick Office productivity suite (or Angry Birds); if you want to run Microsoft Office 2010, or Adobe Creative Suite, or Civilization V with the Atrix, you can do so by accessing your virtualized desktop.

That gap will close someday, though, and you’ll be able to run the real stuff right on your phone, at which point the virtual desktop becomes unnecessary.

Best thing about the Atrix: It ain’t far off. Coming to AT&T in Q1 of 2011, so we’re talking weeks or months. I just got a new smartphone from JWT…someday soon, that might be all I need.

The best justification for 3D displays that I’ve seen at CES is at the Panasonic booth…they’re just showing clips from ESPN 3D. I’ve spent the whole show being skeptical of the technology, but WOW. The football field in 3D is cool, ice skating is gorgeous, and watching Roger Federer serve in 3D blew my mind.

Got me thinking about how sports videography will adapt to a possible 3D era. Early adopters will often choose to consume the content that best shows off their superior technology–guys with big subwoofers in their car will blast music with heavy bass, while hi-fi snobs will look for music with high dynamic range.

So 3D TV owners might gravitate to sports that look amazing on their TVs. And I’m thinking the best-looking sports for 3D might be baseball and tennis. Big distances between players can be accentuated by 3D, and it’s easy to get good camera angles…the next step will be finding the camera angles that really play it up. 

Panasonic was demoing this 3D UI for smart HDTVs. This is very important–3D TV owners are going to want all their content to be presented in 3D (much like early HDTV adopters wanted everything in HD as soon as possible). 

How soon before we’ll need to be building our own websites, ads, and experiences in 3D? 

Sharp was showing off what they call i3Wall, an immersive display. It’s basically a box that displays the image on 5 sides, so the viewer is surrounded by picture everywhere but behind. Cool idea for installations.

I don’t get this camera. New Polaroid GL30 from Polaroid and Haus of Gaga, Lady Gaga’s design firm. Like most Polaroids, there’s an integrated printer that spits out 3×4-inch photos.

It looks cool and all, but the ZINK (zero-ink) photo paper costs $10 for 10 pages. If you’re printing a lot of photos, this will quickly become the most expensive consumer digital camera. If you’re not printing a lot, then why choose a Polaroid? 

Polaroid told me the camera will be available for the 2011 holidays (price TBD). That’s a long window with which to do more market research…

Convertible tablets certainly aren’t new, but the keyboard is typically on a swivel. In tablet mode, the devices don’t resemble iPads so much as closed laptops (see for instance the Lenovo ThinkPad X-Series, which has been around for a few years).

Samsung’s new Sliding PC mimics the form factor of QWERTY-equipped slider phones: Closed, it’s a sleek-looking tablet; open, it’s a laptop with a decent-size keyboard.

The Sliding PC runs Windows 7, weighs 2.2 pounds, and will be available in Q2.

I love some of the smart TV stuff on display here at CES. Steve Ballmer pointed out in his keynote that we should be interacting with content on the biggest screen in our homes, and while that’s a very rough paraphrase, I completely agree with the words I just put in his mouth.

Big beautiful TVs are cheaper than ever, so let’s fill those screens with content and interactivity. Browsing and searching instead of passive channel surfing. A “lean-forward 10-foot interface.”

For instance, the killer smart TV app I’m waiting/hoping/praying for is one that blends my real-time social activity with my on-demand, time-shifting media consumption habits. The two are often at odds.

The problem: On Saturdays and Sundays, I have to be careful on Facebook and I have to completely avoid Twitter because I don’t watch sports in real time (I hate taking 3.5 hours to watch a game that I can get through in less than 1). So I get to watch the game when I want, but I lose all the commentary and reactions from my social sphere, which I want.

The solution: Develop a smart TV app that addresses the disconnect between real-time and time-shifting.

The most obvious example: When a referee’s call is overturned, or a big touchdown is scored, or a punt is blocked, give me the reactions from my Twitter friends in a sidebar. How hard can that be? All it would take is some clever utilization of timestamping and hashtags.

The same principles would apply for Glee, American Idol, whatever. Time-shift the show without losing the “real-time” social reactions.

For us as marketers, the possibilities could be powerful, because we would be able to sponsor moments in time and reach that long tail of time-shifted viewers. It could be as easy as a rapidly deployed sponsored tweet: “This goal-line stand is brought to you by Symantec—nothing gets through!” Or whatever–the incredible Marshawn Lynch run that just happened could be sponsored by Energizer–he kept going and going.

The Nucleus system from General Electric piggybacks on the smart meters some utility companies are starting to implement (to the chagrin of some utility customers). The Nucleus is a single plug that slips into a power outlet and tracks power usage, peak prices and times, and combines the data so your dryer can be set to auto-start when energy is cheapest (for instance).

You can control the system via mobile app or PC, and the Nucleus will store 3 years worth of energy data, revealing trends in your usage and ways to save money and energy.

It’ll arrive in H2 of 2011, priced at $200.

Mike Wiese (far left) sat on the branded entertainment panel, during which all of the 8(!) other participants acknowledged him and JWT as the experts in this space.

This is the best photo I took at the show.