On June 6, Palm (PALM) will release the Pre, a smartphone many hope will fuel a resurgence of a company long since fallen from grace. But numerous miscalculations and missteps endanger this hoped-for turnaround.

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Last week, PCMag.com’s Sascha Segan pointed out something unusual about former Vice President Al Gore’s keynote speech at next week’s CTIA Wireless phone trade show in Las Vegas: It wasn’t going to be open to the press, apparently at the request of Gore or his staff. It was a truly jarring bit of news. I’ve been attending tech trade shows for a couple of decades, and can’t remember a single other keynote that the media wasn’t invited to attend.

But it’s not just as a courtesy that we press people are normally let into such speeches–media coverage is one of the primary reasons why they exist. It’s impossible, for instance, to imagine a scenario in which Steve Jobs keynotes at Macworld Expo or Bill Gates ones at CES were anything but publicity extravaganzas designed to attract as much media attention as possible.

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The cellphone is the world’s most ubiquitous computer. The four billion cellphones in use around the globe carry personal information, provide access to the Web and are being used more and more to navigate the real world. And as cellphones change how we live, computer scientists say, they are also changing how we think about information.

It has been 25 years since the desktop, with its files and folders, was introduced as a way to think about what went on inside a personal computer. The World Wide Web brought other ways of imagining the flow of data. With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map.

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The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem announced six new members at the Consumer Electronics Show, taking one more (small) step toward its goal of creating a standard way for consumers to acquire movies and other types of entertainment online. With the additions of two major consumer-electronics makers (Panasonic and Samsung), the initiative now has the support of five of the largest TV manufacturers, six Hollywood studios, five powerhouse tech companies, and an assortment of players in other segments of the industry’s value chain.

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The bears on Palm (PALM) continue to cave after a furious rally in the stock following the company’s announcement of its “new newness,” the Palm Web OS and the Palm Pre handset.

Yesterday, the stock was upgraded by former Palm bears at Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. This morning, UBS analyst Maynard Um made a similar move, raising his rating to Neutral from Sell, and upping his price target to $6.50 from $1.35. “The Palm Pre generated significant buzz at CES, surprised us to the upside and breathed new life into Palm’s stagnant portfolio,” he wrote in a research note. “Though the company still has challenges ahead, it’s clear the winds now appear to have shifted in its favor.”

Um raised his EPS estimate for the May 2010 fiscal year to positive 48 cents from a loss of 52 cents. His revenue forecast for the year jumps to $1.68 billion, from $1 billion.

Um also set a short-term Buy rating on the stock ahead of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February; he thinks the company will announced a 3G version of the phone, as well as potentially a carrier.

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When the popularity of Barack Obama meets the popularity of iPod speaker docks, you get…an Obama iPod speaker dock.

But Taiwan-based Ozaki, the company behind the dancing President-elect, didn’t stop there. The Obama dock is part of its iMini line, which fuses the technology of an iPod dock, radio, alarm and speakers–and fuzzy fabric.

If there isn’t music playing for the Obama doll to wobble to and fro to, then a microphone picks up ambient noise, and Obama dock will start dancing on its own. The demo model Obama sported a “Change” T-shirt and played a video of will.i.am, a noted Obama supporter.

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Broadcom (BRCM) has developed a new chip that will allow cellphone manufacturers to offer HD video cameras in their handsets. In an interview Friday with Tech Trader Daily, Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor said the chip will be available later this year, with large volumes shipping in 2010. McGregor said one handset maker was displaying a prototype phone using the chip privately at the show, but he declined to identify the manufacturer. McGregor said the first version of the chip will produce video at 720p resolution–full HD at 1080p or 1080i will be in the next-generation chip, which he says is “not that far away.” McGregor says the chip will be able to shoot six hours of video on an average cellphone battery.

Broadcom, like many chip companies at the show, was displaying its wares in a private display area. But on Friday afternoon the spacious booth was bustling with visitors. Broadcom had some interesting technologies on display:

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Reed Hastings is prowling CES for deals. Already, in the past year, the CEO of DVD rental service Netflix Inc. has cut at least a half-dozen partnerships with consumer electronics makers to make a Netflix service that streams movies and television shows over the Internet watchable on television sets via game consoles, digital video recorders and other gadgets.

This week at CES, Netflix announced Korea’s LG Electronics will let viewers tune into the Netflix service through an upcoming line of HDTVs. A Netflix deal also announced this week with another television maker, Vizio, could be even more interesting because some of those sets will be able to get onto the Internet wirelessly, a technology that will make it much easier to get online than sets with only wired Internet connections.

“I think it will double or triple the percentage of people who have those devices and hook them up to the Internet,” Hastings said, over a cup of gelato at a café in the Venetian hotel.

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I’m back at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater, where Anne Sweeney, head of Disney’s (DIS) ABC Television networks is about to take to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show. Consumer Electronics Association head Gary Shapiro comes on stage to introduce Sweeney. He plays a video showing snippets of ABC shows (”Ugly Betty,” etc.)

The Summary: Sweeney made several references to Apple (AAPL) and Intel (INTC), touting the importance of their products for promoting new ways to consume content. She hinted at possibly tying in the seasonal finale of “Lost” this year with an Intel-developed software widget on interactive television. There was a lot of paying respect to the consumer, and no news whatsoever, or any new data on interactive media. Oh, well.

3:08: Our definition of media will change again. Winners will be determined by quality, functionality they bring to consumers. It’s no longer about being first, but about being the best. Focus on how consumers use media today and how they will use it tomorrow.

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Do you like your documents shredded with a cross cut or micro cut? Here’s a hint: Shredders using the micro cut make the smallest cut, which slashes documents into such small pieces that it provides “maximum” security, while the cross cut shreds documents to provide just “enhanced” security.

In this era of corporate malfeasance, office supply retailer Staples, the official shredder supplier for the CES room, is touting the its latest line of high-tech shredders at the CES trade show.

We at the Digits blog didn’t know shredders could come with so much built-in technology. Staples is showcasing some shredders with V-Track, a blade technology that centers the paper as it shreds, which prevents paper jams.

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Well, take a deep breath: the tech sector starts off the new year with a bang this week, with the Steve Jobs-less Macworld in San Francisco and the Bill Gates-less CES coming up in Las Vegas. I’ll be at Moscone West for the Macworld keynote by Apple (AAPL) marketing exec Phil Schiller Tuesday morning; later in the week, Tiernan Ray and I will be covering all the news from CES. Meanwhile, here are some tidbits from the weekend’s papers:

The U.S. government is running out of cash for its program to subsidize the costs of digital television boxes, according to an AP story in Saturday’s San Francisco Chronicle.

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When I was reporting from CES in Las Vegas last January, one of the more interesting technology experiences I had was away from the show floor, back in my hotel room. After a long night and little sleep, I decided to watch a little television; apparently this is common in Vegas, as my budget hotel considered a 42-inch plasma TV to be normal furnishing for a room that omitted a couch and a comfortable chair.

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A Gizmodo writer has been banned from CES for a prank. But when I see some fellow press damning us for the joke, I feel sorry for them: When did journalists become the protectors of corporations? When did this industry, defined by pranksters like Woz, get so serious and in-the-pocket of big business? This is totally pathetic.

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When Marco Boerries and David Filo joined Jerry Yang on the stage of the Las Vegas Hilton Theater to show off new launches and upcoming concepts, the audience at their feet included most of Yahoo’s top management–among them Jeff Weiner, whom we last heard from here after he shook up the Yahoo Media Group. Weiner seemed a little taken aback by my comparison of Yang’s presentation with the one Terry Semel gave in 2006, particularly with how many elements of the strategy–for instance, Go, the three-screen approach to connecting–were still in place albeit evolving.

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