As always, CES is one enormous hype factory. Its primary purpose these days seems to be getting consumers all hot and bothered about some whizzy new technology. This year CES is agog with talk of and Android-based phones like . (I also hear TechCrunch will be introducing , but I'm not sure I believe that.)

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Of course, easily a third of the stuff that gets the most attention never materializes, or if it does show up, it isn't nearly as impressive in the wild. So I thought I'd step back and take a look at what CES was supposed to bring us last year and how well it fared. (The Retrevo shopping engine, surprisingly enough, also has .)

Here are some of the things people were gushing about after last year's CES, and what happened to them:

: Arguably the biggest story to come out of last year's confab, the Pre arrived to , followed by her cute little sister, , in December. But like a Hollywood child star, she's already looking ridden hard and put away wet, surpassed by sexier Droid and Nexus handsets. The don't do much to change that. With everyone and their dog now coming out with smartphones and app stores, the prospects for Palm's resurrection look even dimmer than they did a year ago.