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The 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES®), the world’s largest tradeshow for consumer technology, wrapped up over the weekend in Las Vegas. Anything and everything new for the Web was there. Gadgets for the geeks in all of us. True, attendance was a smaller this year – but the event still attracted 2,700 exhibitors, including 300 new technology companies.

So, as your Uncle Fred always liked to say, what’s the one big thing that happened there? What themes and trends and might-be-someday-soon’s really got everyone’s attention? Hard to say. There was a lot of buzz and PR-speak about “personalization meets content” technology and the “automobile’s convergence with consumer electronics” (don’t yawn just yet).

But it livened up a bit with product debuts early in the show that included a wireless wristwatch phone from LG with video chat and text messaging capabilities and from NETGEAR, which introduced an Internet TV player and a 3G Mobile Broadband router. Web TV, a product not quite ready for primetime only a few years ago, was again in the spotlight this year according to The Rebirth of “Web TV” from Sarah Perez in ReadWriteWeb. And blogger Tech-Evangelist was especially interested in the 3D Home Theater Technology at 2009 Consumer Electronics Show.

In the show’s Think Big Picture category, the SuperSession “What Will They Think of Next? Consumer Technology in 2025,” experts predicted a world without wires, stressing the importance of wireless networks, the advances of 3D technology and content, and how the everyday consumer device will be Internet-enabled. CNET’s Next Big Thing SuperSession announced “the cloud” would be the next big thing in consumer technology, focusing on three aspects of connecting to and experiencing “cloud” devices, services and connectivity.

The human side of technology came through loud and clear, too, with the growing attention paid to green computing trends. Also in his keynote address, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett outlined the recent initiative to collect and recycle more than 150,000 computers from seven states. In addition, he shared a number of technology initiatives that are key in advancing economic development in emerging parts of the world: providing access to inexpensive technology, connectivity and content.

And those gadgets we were promised? For the second year in a row, Eye-Fi won the most online votes in the ninth annual Last Gadget Standing SuperSession sponsored by NetShelter. The Eye-Fi video card allows users to wirelessly upload videos, and even share videos in real time, over the Internet. Other live demos came from Bug Labs, ClickFree, HeartMath, Pure Digital, LiveScribe, MSI, Motorola, T-Mobile and WowWee.