It’s January. That means that it’s once again time for the Consumer Electronics Show and MacWorld, two high-profile conventions that together will cover almost anything to do with computing and gadgetry.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been organized on an annual and semi-annual basis since 1967, which would make this year’s iteration the 40th anniversary. In accordance with the new tradition, CES will once again be held in the lively city of Las Vegas; more specifically, in the gigantic Las Vegas Convention Center, which features well over three million square feet of showroom floor space. In the past, CES has been used to debut some landmark products and services, like the Compact Disc, Nintendo Entertainment System, DVD, HDTV, and everyone’s favorite: Pong.

The convention will run from Monday, January 8th, to Thursday, January 11th. The event kick-off, however, will be held on Sunday, and will consist of several pre-show keynote presentations from industry gaints, like Bill Gates. Other notable keynotes will be by Motorola’s chairman/CEO Ed Zander, Robert Iger from Walt Disney, and Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, Inc.

This upcoming week will also be the week of MacWorld, an Apple only convention for anyone, anything and everything Mac. The first MacWorld has held back in 1985, in the Brooks Hall in San Francisco. In 1993, the convention moved to the Moscone Center, which allowed for more floor space. The high-light of the event has always been the keynote presentation from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Some of the most well-known product announcements, such as that of the original iMac, as well as that of iTunes, have been made at MacWorld.

Like CES, MacWorld will last several days and start on Monday, January 8th. Some of the rumors suggest that Jobs might be announcing the device that was formally known as the iPhone, but we’ll just have to wait and see…