But are they bright and beautiful?

Sharp unveiled its new gargantuan 108 inch flat panel LCD screen at this week’s International Consumer Electronics Show. The company states they have increased the frame speed and enhanced the way LCD screens show rapid movement, making them smoother. Improving the moving image quality gives LCDs the ability to compete with plasma TVs in the flat screen market. Sharp’s 108 inch screen beats out Samsung’s 102 inch behemoth offering last year.

And at the other end of the scale, Verizon Wireless is betting that consumers will watch TV on a tiny screen and is introducing TV for cellphones. Cellphones already are being widely used as cameras and for recording video. LG and Samsung are producing new phones capable of receiving TV broadcasts. Verizon has not revealed how much the new broadcast service will cost.

170,000 residents of the state of Wisconsin are being notified that their tax forms were mailed out with their social security numbers visible on the front.

State officials are now in a mad scramble to try to get as many of the forms back as possible before they are delivered to mailboxes.

The “computer error” leaves many residents open to possible identity theft as officials fear the numbers could be lifted from the forms by identity thieves who could then use the social security numbers to set up credit accounts.

Often victims of identity theft don’t know about these new accounts until they start to receive bills on the accounts opened by the thieves.

Beause it’s an extended weekend with the national day of mourning for President Ford following New Year’s Day, officials hope to recover any forms before they are processed through the post office.

Ford has announced that its small car, the Focus, will be revised and upgraded for 2008. Designed initially for Europe, the model has not been completely re-designed for America before and the idea is that, by offering more features for less money, sales will take off again after sliding recently.

The small car segment of the US market has not been a money earner for manufacturers in the past but the hope is that increasing gas prices will re-vitalize sales of cars like the Focus. Ford have not been doing well recently and are looking for ways to improve their position.

Having had experience of the Focus, I must admit to a wry smile and the thought that any improvement to it would be a step in the right direction. Just do a search for problems with it and see what you come up with…

As I have mentioned before, the IRS offers taxpayers with an income of less than $50,000 (increasing to $52,000 for 2007) the option to file their taxes online for free.

The tax services offered through Free File are provided by third party tax preparers such as H&R Block. These tax preparers have offered refund anticipation loans along with the tax filing but the IRS says it will prohibit those loans in the future.

Refund Anticipation Loans, or RALs, offer taxpayers a way to get their refund money faster but there are high interest charges and fees that are deducted from the refund, thus lowering the final refund the taxpayer receives. The attraction of getting that refund in a few days has cost low-income taxpayers millions of dollars in fees and the IRS wants to put an end to it.

The IRS says it is going to ban the marketing of refund anticipation loans to taxpayers who use the “Free File” online filing system.