Winners of this year’s CNET Best of CES Awards were announced Saturday morning in the lobby of South Hall. With all the buzz surrounding tablet PCs taking over Las Vegas, it’s apropos that a new Android-based tablet would take ‘Best of Show’ for 2011.

Motorola’s XOOM turned a lot of heads this week – from its appearance in the opening keynote to crowded demos in Central Hall at the Motorola booth. The XOOM is one in a growing number of tablets targeting the burgeoning iPad market, but as Bob Lambert wrote in his CES event coverage, Motorola’s solution is compelling, “with Android’s refreshingly thoughtful user interface, growing range of applications and high-speed LTE-based wireless connectivity.” Additionally, CNET reports some interesting distinctions: “(XOOM) comes standard with front- and rear-facing cameras, including one that can record in HD, compared with none in the current version of the iPad. It also boasts a larger screen with a higher resolution, supports Adobe Flash, and uses Verizon’s network instead of AT&T’s.”

We’ll be watching how this potential competition will play out in 2011.

This year’s ‘People’s Voice Award’ went to the Razer Switchblade – an Intel Atom-based, concept design for a Netbook of sorts, designed to bring PC gaming to a portable form factor. Razer has taken the familiar keyboard and redesigned it as a tool for mobile gaming controls (CNET has a great online video demo). By combining a multitouch screen with a tactile adaptive keyboard (the keyboard actually changes on-the-fly based on which game you are playing), Razer presents a compelling solution for portable gaming.

Whether the Switchblade takes off or not, we expect the form factor is something we’ll see with future interface technologies.

Our audience should also be interested in some of the category winners, including: Nintendo 3DS (Gaming), a portable system in which gamers have the option of adjusting the 3D intensity or shutting it off; Toshiba 3D eyeglass-free technology (Prototype), a proof of concept design for 3D laptops that leverages eye tracking software; and the Motorola Atrix 4G (Smartphones), an Android-based phone featuring NVIDIA’s dual-core Tegra 2 chipset, support for AT&T’s 4G network, and an interesting laptop dock.

For the complete list of winners and related articles, visit the CNET Best of CES page. Other awards presented during CES worth noting include:

— The CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards program (sponsored by PCWorld)

— The 61st Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards (NATAS)

— The 4th Annual Mashable Awards (formerly the Open Web Awards)

— The 2011 CES Mobile Apps Showdown (created by Robin Raskin of Living in Digital Times)

— The 2011 CES Hot Stuff Awards (sponsored by Stuff magazine)

Home Server Technologies Inc. (HSTi) showcased an innovative new technology called Wireless Media Stick, a simple and affordable product that allows media connectivity between mobile devices, TVs, DVD players and more.

The product addresses this year’s underlying theme of connectivity, but unlike Google TV or Samsung’s Smart Hub products, all of which can run a hefty cost after subscriptions and hardware, the Wireless Media Stick is available for a modest $119.

The unit looks like any USB flash drive. After connecting to a main computer that contains media files, the computer is enabled (all the software is embedded into the product), and the Media Stick can be inserted into any device with a USB playback port — and through a wireless connection users have the ability to access and share photos, videos and music.

What’s especially interesting about the technology is that you can also stream on-the-go; the Wireless Media Stick app is downloadable for smartphones and by taking the Stick to any location you can directly stream data from a mobile device to any TV, computer or stereo that is USB playback compatible.

The reasonably-priced Wireless Media Stick is currently available and should be particularly appealing to high school and college students who are constantly on-the-go and accustomed to easily sharing their media content.