Photos of the month - January 2008

King of Apple cool, tech execs rock out, spaceships and much more...

Bill Gates gave his last speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in which he offered his predictions for 2008 and had a musical moment with ex Guns 'n' Rose guitarist Slash.

A video was played showing Gates asking various celebrities for a job. His encounter with rock band U2's Bono didn't see him recruited...

Check out what Gates had to say in his speech.

Picture credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET News.com

And talking of CES, we brought together some of the stars from this year's consumer tech extravaganza including Microsoft's Surface technology and this projector resembling Star Wars' R2D2.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Picture credit: Sarah Tew/CNET Networks

Later in the month, Apple held its annual Macworld 2008 show in San Francisco where Steve Jobs unveiled the super thin Macbook Air that he's holding here.

Picture credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks

Some of the other highlights of Macworld included Belkin using live samba music to demonstrate its portable iPod tuner (above).

See what other gadgets were on show.

Picture credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks

silicon.com took a trip to Heidelberg in Germany for a behind the scenes look at NEC's R&D labs. Among the things on show was a system which warns drivers of oncoming obstacles. One of the receivers is shown here.

Take a peek at what else NEC is developing.

Picture credit: Tim Ferguson

Following Bill Gates' appearance at CES with Slash, we took a look at other embarrassing musical moments involving tech execs.

Here's Intel chairman, Craig Barrett, enjoying a sing-along with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler.

Get your cringe-ometers at the ready.

Picture credit: Intel

Sir Richard Branson unveiled the latest vehicle with which he hopes Virgin Galactic can make space tourism a viable pastime.

Here's the pilot of SpaceShipOne, Brian Binnie, in the simulator for the Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, which was unveiled in New York.

Picture credit: Thierry Boccon-Gibod, courtesy of Virgin Galactic

Following Macworld, silicon.com took a look at Apple's 10 most memorable products from the past 30 years. As you can see with this PowerBook 100 from 1991, it's not just about iPods and iPhones.

What would you rank as your Apple king of cool?

Picture credit: Creative Commons licence

Plans for super-fast broadband have taken an interesting turn, with H2O networks using the sewer system for its fibre optic cables.

This shows how the cabling is fed through waste water ducts. The smelly broadband should provide speeds of up to 100Mbps.

See more from the sewers here.

Picture credit: H2O Networks

192.com launched its Super Zoom online map application which allows you to view central London from a height of 10 storeys.

This shows one of the famous towers of Tower Bridge. Check out some more of London's sites - from St Paul's Cathedral to the Millennium Bridge - up close.

Picture credit: 192.com

silicon.com looked back at the history of one of the cornerstones of computing and the modern world: the transistor.

This shows the three Bell Labs scientists who invented the transistor: John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley.

Learn more about the history of the transistor here.

Picture credit: LSI Corporation

And finally, T-Mobile launched its MDA Touch Plus - a rebranded HTV Touch Dual smart phone - this month.

Take a closer look at this potential iPhone rival.

Picture credit: T-Mobile