Time for another Last Gadget Standing face-off! On the surface, Google and Samsung’s Nexus S and Barnes & Noble’s Nookcolor don’t have all that much in common—after all, one is a smartphone and one is a “reader’s tablet.” But they’re both based on the same operating system, Google’s Android, and that makes them distant cousins, at least.

I’ve reviewed and (mostly) enjoyed both of them–they’re both worthy Last Gadget Standing semi-finalists. Now it’s time for you to weigh in.

Now that we’ve identified our semi-finalists for the Last Gadget Standing event at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show, we’d like your input on some of the contenders. There aren’t any direct competitors among them–many of the products, in fact, are pretty darn unique.

We do, however, have two Windows portables. There’s Acer’s Iconia, which ditches a physical keyboard in favor of a second screen that can display information or serve as a ten-finger multitouch keyboard. And there’s Asus’s U36Jc, which looks far more conventional than the Iconia but packs components–an Intel i5 CPU and discrete Nvidia graphics–which you might not expect to find in a thin-and-light laptop with a 13″ display.

Two interesting-but-very-different machines. Your take, please:

Believe me, picking products that epitomize emerging technologies at CES ain’t easy. Come to think of it, even getting a cab isn’t easy at CES. But we Last Gadget Standing judges have spent the last few weeks sorting through a fabulous selection of products. I figure our judges have each easily seen at least a couple of hundred new products this year year alone. And when they get a little jaded or overstimulated we turn to you for crowdsourced intelligence.

We’ve choose eighteen products we think you should keep your eye on. (We also have more products–including ones from Fujitsu, Intel, Nvidia, and other companies–that we can’t even talk about until January 5th, when the press day at CES begins.)

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Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Barnes & Noble Nookcolor

Price: $249

The simplest way to describe 2009′s first-generation Nook e-reader was to say it was a lot like an Amazon Kindle. The easiest way to describe the new Nookcolor is that it’s several things that a Kindle is not. This Android-based gizmo has a color touchscreen, giving it a richer interface and the ability to handle magazines and kids’ books much better than the Kindle. And the backlit screen is perfectly legible in dim lighting which renders the Kindle’s display invisible. (Of course, it also saps the Nook’s battery far more rapidly: The Nook gets eight hours on a charge, while the Kindle can run for weeks.)

The Nookcolor isn’t a full-blown Android tablet–B&N calls it a “reader’s tablet,” and hasn’t given it access to the Android Market app store. But the company is launching a third-party app store of its own early next year. And if it catches on, the Nookcolor could be an intriguing alternative to much pricier Android tablets such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Asus U36Jc-A1

Price: $999

The computing world is awash in powerful laptops. There are also more and more thin-and-light notebooks with 13″ screens. But 13″ thin-and-lights that are truly powerful? They’re still a rare breed. That’s what makes the Asus U36Jc-A1 intriguing: It looks like a typical 13-incher that emphasizes portability over potency, but it packs a standard-voltage Intel Core i5 CPU and Nvidia G310M discrete graphics. It also has Nvidia’s Optimus technology, which lets the system switch between the G310M and integrated graphics on the fly for better battery life–Asus says it can run up to nine hours on a charge.

The U36Jc-A1 has an aluminum-magnesium alloy shell, is .76″ thick, and weighs 3.4 pounds. Asus says it’ll go on sale on January 17th.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Mobile Captions Service

Price: free with phone service

When phones became smartphones, they sprouted a new feature: sizable screens. Consumer Cellular, a nationwide wireless phone company that offers service to AARP members, is taking advantage of that fact to provide a useful service: closed captions for phone conversations.

Mobile Captions Service lets the deaf and hard of hearing see a typed transcript of a phone conversation in real time as it’s going on. The captions are created by live operators on the fly based on a technology called Voice Carry Over (VCO) and are provided through a partnership with Hamilton Relay Service; the service is currently available on one phone, the Nokia E5 and is available in eight states and the District of Columbia.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: DryCorp DryCASE

Price: $39.99

Dry bags, which outdoors types use to protect delicate gear, are notoriously bad at letting you grab a shot or answer a phone before it’s too late.  The DryCASE–from a company that also makes waterproof devices for the medical industry, such as bandage covers–is a transparent bag that allows use of a phone or camera while keeping it dry and clean. You pump out all the air with the included hand pump and the bag vacuum-seals around the contents, leaving them waterproof. The air-tight seal guarantees that the contents of the bag will stay dry even when submerged 100 feet underwater.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Fujifilm Real 3D W3

Price: $499.99

I’m not sure if the world is ready to start taking photos in 3D, but Fujifilm sure came up with an attractive was to do it. The FinePix Real 3D W3 digital camera is the first compact consumer 3D digital camera capable of capturing both 3D still images and HD 3D movies at 720P resolution, thanks to its dual-CCD, dual lens system. You can view 3D photos and movies on the W3’s autostereoscopic widescreen display–no glasses required–and the HDMI output port lets you connect the camera to 3D TVs. Other features include Advanced 2D Mode, which takes advantage of the dual CCD/dual lens system to capture two different 2D images at the same time–zoom and wide angle, for instance, or two different sensitivity settings.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Google Nexus S

Price: $529 (unlocked)

Hey, I forgot to mention: I reviewed Google and Samsung’s Nexus S smartphone for TIME.com. (Executive summary: best Android phone I’ve seen, nice hardware, the latest and greatest version of Android in uncontaminated form–but the OS still needs more polish.)

With the iPhone, you can be reasonably confident that there will be only one new model a year–and that the current model will be the best available iOS phone. (Of course, if the iPhone lands on Verizon soon, decisions will get trickier.) With Android, things move far more quickly–there are 172 available Android handsets so far (as of last week). And a whole bunch of handsets have had the honor of being the best single Android phone to date, usually for very brief periods. To me, the Nexus S is the current best single Android phone to date–but I’m not making any bets on how long it’ll hold the title.

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: VitalLink

Price: $4.99 a month

For many older adults, increasing frailty, limited mobility and the trend for younger families to relocate towards employment opportunities (and away from their aging parents) contribute to social isolation. And isolation has been found to have an effect on overall health.

VitalLink provides an innovative and intuitive Internet-based solution to help overcome these challenges. By creating a friendly shell that runs on a touch-screen Windows PC, company has made it simple for an elderly person to use a PC, including making video calls, cycling through family photos, watching video, reading news (in any size type), playing games, and even watching Netflix movies. In fact, for many users, VitalLink could be an all-in-one communication and entertainment center.