The winner of The Last Gadget Standing contest will be crowned at CES, 10:30 a.m. PST, Jan. 9, in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Room N255. Finalists are the Lioness vibrator, MedWand Solutions’ MedWand, Thinker-Tinker’s Octobo, CubiOs' WowCube, Tivic Health’s ClearUP Sinus Pain Relief, the Phyn smart water assistant, Flic’s Flic 2 Smart Button, Tink Digital’s DoodleMatic mobile game maker and Waverly Labs’ Ambassador interpreter. Voting is taking place online and via audience participation at the CES event.

Ivanka Trump, adviser to President Donald Trump, will be part of a CES 2020 keynote discussion, “The Path to the Future of Work,” on Jan. 7, at 2 p.m. in the Venetian Palazzo Ballroom, CTA said Monday. Trump and CTA CEO Gary Shapiro are to discuss employer-led strategies to re-skill workers, create apprenticeships and develop K-12 STEM education programs, CTA said. Shapiro cited Trump’s role as a business leader and entrepreneur, saying she’s “an advocate for creating family-sustaining jobs through workforce development, education and skills training.”

Six startups won CTA’s “climate change innovators” contest and will exhibit at CES in the Eureka Park pavilion, said the association Thursday. CTA holds the contest annually “to highlight technology’s ability to combat climate change” by cutting worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, it said. The winners show how tech “is creating new opportunities and improving existing efforts across the world to reduce our impact on the environment,” it said.

New Street’s Blair Levin clarifies the documents that could help prove states' case are those first being discussed in court and not previously filed as part of FCC or DOJ review of T-Mobile buying Sprint (see 1912100029).

The Consumer Product Safety Commission changed criteria for categorizing tip-overs for televisions, furniture and appliances, reflecting declines in TV-only related incidents. Estimated injuries involving TVs declined significantly, with furniture-related tip-overs the "new primary focus," CPSC reported Tuesday, warning parents and caregivers about safety practices in mounting or placing new TVs, furniture and appliances in the home. Between 2000 and 2018, 459 tip-over-related deaths were reported involving those 17 years old and younger, the agency said; 93 percent involved children 5 and younger. In 55 percent of the fatalities, the child was crushed by the weight of the set, furniture or appliance. Previously, the main focus of the tip-over report was incidents involving TVs because they caused more severe injuries and more deaths than furniture alone, the commission said. The number of television-only emergency department-related tip-over injuries for all ages fell from 16,800 in 2009 to 4,300 in 2018, due largely to a decline in tip-overs involving TVs, it said. “Generally, if furniture falls holding a TV or appliance, then the appliance is also going to fall.” Tip-over incidents typically occur when children climb onto, fall against or pull themselves up on furniture, and in some cases, TVs placed atop furniture tip and cause traumatic and sometimes fatal injuries, it said. TV counts also include flat-screen sets and computer monitors. Of the annual average 5,500 TV tip-over injuries 2016-18, just over 1 percent were computer monitors.

The Zigbee Alliance updated its branding and certification measures to make it easy to identify Green Power devices that will integrate with a Zigbee system, it said Tuesday. Green Power is a battery-less feature for smart networks in hotels, factories, retail space and office buildings that's said to offer building executives, commercial installers, and integrators a reliable and proven open industry solution based on the Zigbee Pro network specification. It enables wireless devices to be powered using energy-harvesting methods with limited or no batteries, reducing the need for regular battery replacement, it said.

Samsung is noticeably absent from the CES news conference list on the Media Days schedule that CTA released Thursday. Samsung for years occupied the 2 p.m. slot at Mandalay Bay the day before CES opens. Advanced Micro Devices will hold a CES 2020 news conference in that slot on Monday, Jan. 6, said the schedule. We’re told Samsung will put all its CES publicity apples into the keynote that Samsung Consumer Electronics CEO Hyun-Suk Kim gives at 6:30 that evening in the Venetian’s Palazzo Ballroom. Kim’s keynote “will present the company’s vision for revolutionizing the consumer lifestyle,” said CTA. Procter & Gamble, a first-time exhibitor at CES 2019 to showcase “breakthrough technology” in everyday home and personal-care products (see 1901060002), plans a Jan. 5 news conference in the same 2 p.m. time slot as last show. It conflicts with a UHD Alliance news conference scheduled for the same hour. UHDA is expected to provide updates on the Filmmaker Mode initiative it debuted in August to render TV movie-watching as the creators intended (see 1908270001).

Giving members discounted access to each other’s training courses is the “first stage” of a collaborative agreement between SMPTE and IABM, the international association for broadcast and media technology suppliers, to “share knowledge and expertise,” said the groups Monday. The “knowledge exchange” makes “a great deal of sense” for both organizations, they said. "IABM's strength is in business knowledge and research, while SMPTE brings expertise in standards-based technologies.”

Amendments to the FTC’s energy-labeling rule will make yellow EnergyGuide labels “easier to use” when the changes take effect Black Friday, said a notice in Wednesday’s Federal Register. TVs fall under the scope of the rule, but virtually all changes apply to major appliances and lighting products. Amendments include format changes “to make it easier to identify the labeling requirements applicable to specific products,” it said. They also remove “obsolete references” to goods no longer in production, with “minor corrections” in the label to “eliminate unnecessary cross references,” it said.

Philips withdrew from the UHD Alliance, the association told DOJ and the FTC in simultaneous “written notifications” Oct. 15, per a notice in Tuesday’s Federal Register from Suzanne Morris, chief of the Premerger and Division Statistics Unit in Justice’s Antitrust Division. The change-of-membership notifications are required to extend UHDA members antitrust protections under the 1993 National Cooperative Research and Production Act, said Morris. HiSilicon Technologies also withdrew from UHDA, while Westinghouse Electronics joined, she said. UHDA President Mike Fidler confirmed Philips departed, but deferred to the company for comment. "I can tell you that the work with the UHD Alliance continues with TP Vision covering the key Phillips products that are being developed for UHD," emailed Fidler Tuesday. TP Vision is licensed to make and market Philips-branded TVs in most world markets outside North America, where Funai, which is not a UHDA member, holds the Philips-brand rights. “As the UHDA activity is focused from a hardware perspective on TV manufacturers, we decided the best representation for the global Philips TV brand would be TP Vision," emailed Philips spokesperson Marty Gordon. Meanwhile, IEEE has "initiated" 500 new standards and revised 360 existing ones, the group told DOJ and FTC in NCRPA notifications Sept. 10. That's according to Morris in a separate, unrelated DOJ notice to be published in Wednesday's Federal Register.