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Amazon is officially taking the wraps off its long-awaited Amazon App Store for Android, with the formal launch of a developer program. The Amazon store — which won’t arrive until sometime later this year — is aimed at creating a high-quality destination for Android app buyers and will give Android users a trusted place to pick up apps.

Google TV may be struggling, but Android could still play a big role in the future of TV, at least if MIPS has its way. The chip developer is announcing a new Android-powered SmartCE platform at CES today that squarely targets the lower end of the CE value chain.

Google presents a very different picture, perhaps no better illustrated than by the ungainly Cr-48 machines Google offered to those wanting to test-drive Chrome OS. The devices lacked Apple's polished charm, but came with something Apple resolutely refuses to offer: open distribution, open development, and open source.

Clive Thompson's newest Wired piece argues that the flow of short-form messages as we see on Twitter and Facebook is encouraging longer meditations in other media. I've been thinking about this phenomenon for a while in terms of the impact that it has on me and other bloggers, with the simple premise that I'd like to be writing the content that everyone links to in those media, instead of merely passing around links to other people's work.

To be fair, Google isn’t sorting its ‘Top Paid’ list in order of purchases (though I’m not sure why) — a few of the other applications in the list are doing better, but even those are still showing lackluster sales. The paid application with the most recent activity is MathBoard, which has 65 weekly installs and sells for $2.99 (less Google’s fees, so it gets around $2.56 a pop). In other words, it’s earning around $165 a week. That’s not nothing, but given that every other app on the store is probably making less than that, it’s not good.

In an order unsealed late Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Judge Braden wrote that Google had made a preliminary showing that the agency "violated the Competition in Contracting Act," which was passed in 1984 to promote "full and open competitive procedures" for federal contract bids.

The top tablet to watch for this year is Motorola's Android tablet, which will be the first device to run the Android 3.0 OS, called "Honeycomb." It's not the only Android tablet that will make its debut this week either. We expect a 10.1-inch tablet from Toshiba and an 8-inch device from Vizio.

ASUS preps three Android tablets. They were announced in a late-day press event yesterday, but are still interesting enough today. The king of netbooks now is looking to tablets with the Eee Pad Memo, Slider and Transformer, which aren't exactly inspired names. But, hey, they'll ship -- sometime during first half of the year -- with Gingerbread (aka Android 3.0) and nVidia Tegra 2 chips. What's not to like about that? The tablets come with 7.1-inch and 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreens, and the Slider has a physical keyboard. Oooh, baby!

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The TWiT team part two heads to Vegas @ Virgin America SFO-LAS VEGAS

Vegas is sparkly @ Renaissance Hotel

I just unlocked the "Super Swarm" badge on @foursquare!

I just unlocked the "Super Duper Swarm" badge on @foursquare!

iJustine for Spike (@ International Baking Industry Exposition 2010)

We're love from CES (@ TWiT Live Booth @ CES 2011)

Jerry Pournelle and Scott Bourne at our booth. (@ TWiT Live Booth @ CES 2011)

Sure, the Mac App Store is a good idea in theory. Just like the Linux repositories that came before it, it provides a one-stop shop for all your software needs. There's just one big problem: Apple made it.

Most of the applications that go on the Mac App Store [in the first instance] will be decent, they'll be pretty good. Apple isn't going to put crap on the App Store as soon as it gets released. It'll probably take months for the App Store to actually have a bunch of crappy applications and when we feel that it has a lot of crap in it, we'll probably release Kickbac

Apple® today announced that over one million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store℠ in the first day. With more than 1,000 free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac, so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, download and install them in just one step.

The Mac App Store changes the paradigm and usage rights associated with it. Buyers use an existing Apple ID (usually from iTunes) or create another. Software purchases are tied to that identity, not the PC. If a licensee buys another Mac, he or she can redownload the software using the same ID without paying again. People buying music from iTunes or apps for iPad, iPhone from iTunes are used to this kind of identity approach, but it's not common for computer software.

I’m happy to announce that we’ve entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Qik, a provider of mobile video software and services that let people capture, instantly share and preserve great moments on video from anywhere. Qik has 60 employees, and is headquartered in Redwood City, California and has an office in Moscow, Russia. We expect to close the transaction in January 2011.

There was a time when Intel and the rest of the consumer electronics industry could have chosen to stand up and fight, but that window has now closed. The fix is in, and Hollywood is likely to get everything it wants from here on out.

LAS VEGAS — In a step forward for television episode sales, Boxee said Thursday that CBS would allow it to begin selling episodes through its software platform later in the year. The arrangement, announced here at the Consumer Electronics Show, is the first content deal between Boxee and a major television network. Boxee is one of several companies that wants to bridge television and the Internet, and it is hungry for deals with content providers like CBS.

Verizon will be launching LTE into 175 markets by the end of 2011. But what’s more important than markets, to us, are devices. The latest count stands at 10, with all of them being launched by the middle of this year. 4 smartphones, 2 tablets, 2 netbooks and 2 hotspots.

DECE announced this evening at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas that it expects companies that have licensed UltraViolet to begin rolling out products and services beginning this summer. DECE said it expects UltraViolet will appear in the United Kingdom and Canada later in the year. If you believe that the DVD and physical media are in their twilight years, then UltraViolet's backers appear to be laying the groundwork for the next home-video format.

Preparing to interview Ford CEO Alan Mullaley before his CES keynote. # fo... (@ CES Speaker Ready Room - LVCC N263)

...and party every day? (@ Renaissance Hotel)

My ride is here. Off to dinner with @Vidyo . (@ 2011 CES, Las Vegas Hilton #CES11)