Mike Temporale
01-27-2008, 05:30 PM
While CES may have been a couple weeks ago, I haven't had the chance to post about my experiences yet. It was a great event and it provided me with plenty of opportunities to meet and talk with different companies and site owners. So, with the "better late than never" thought, I give you My CES 1.0 - part 1. :-) <br /><br />I arrived in Las Vegas late in the evening on Saturday (the 5th of January), just 22 days after my last visit to the city. And that's not a bad thing either. Vegas is always a fun place to go visit - be it for vacation or work. Given the time change and my late arrival, I simply checked into my hotel and called it a night. Let the adventure wait until I had some sleep. <br /><br />The fun and excitement started on Sunday as we (Steve Hughes, Eric Hicks, Johan van Mierlo, and Jason Dunn) started to make our way to the Samsung press event in the Sands Expo Center. We had all pre-registered for the press event. We arrived 15 minutes before the event was scheduled to start and the line up was crazy long. It went down the hall, around the corner and then around the other corner. Of course, this doesn't mean much if you don't know how long the hall is. So trust me when I say it was LONG and this was the line for press that had pre-registered. There was another line just as long on the other side of the conference room for people who had not registered. However that line wasn't moving very fast because each person had to prove credentials and register prior to getting in. The good news is that our line was moving - not fast, but moving. Before long we had rounded both corners and were about 50 feet from the entrance when the line stopped moving. Samsung representatives made their way down the line letting everyone know that they are full and can not allow anymore people into the room. As you can well imagine, this didn't go over well with a number of people. What's the point in pre-registration if you register too many people?! This didn't leave me feeling very happy about Samsung. Even the 1GB MP3 Player they handed out didn't take the sting away. I'm just plain disappointed that they would do something so stupid. I can understand that they might not have expected everyone to show so they could over book a little. But this wasn't a "little". There was a large amount of people still waiting to get in. It was a disappointing start to the show.<div style="page-break-after: always;"><span style="display: none;"> </span></div><br />Next up was the Digital Experience show over at Caesars Palace. This was no disappointment - all the top companies in one room. As I made my way through the floor I talked with representatives from Fujitsu, Sling Media, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericson, Palm, Canon, Nikon, HP, and more. It was a great chance to make contact. <br /><br />The Samsung rep that I talked with promised that we will still see a Windows Mobile 6 update for the original BlackJack and that it would be released in the not too distant future. I have to be honest, I didn't believe her and I told her so. There has been too many promised release dates for me to post yet another promise. As we all learned from the front page post the other day, they finally managed to release the update. Hat's off to Samsung on finally getting it out the door. <br /><br />I talked with Sony Ericson about Windows Mobile and when I could expect a SE WinMo device. They didn't seem too impressed with my questions. I did compliment them on the design and style packed into each of their devices, but it didn't seem to make much difference. ;-) <br /><br />HP had a lot of different products on display and it took me 3 or 4 attempts before I found the Windows Mobile person. I wanted to learn more about what they might have been thinking when they released the 510 device. (For those that don't recall, this was that voice command Smartphone that shipped with a low resolution screen and a small memory footprint.) She was nice enough to explain that the device was aimed at executives that don't need high res and are looking for a business class device. I think it's fair to say that Apple has shown the world that style does matter, even for people who you think might not care about it. She also informed me that HP had no immediate plans for a follow up device, but there will be something at some point in the future. However, most devices are going to focus on the touch screen for the foreseeable future. <br /><br />This touch screen centric focus was also carried over to the folks at Palm. They couldn't understand why I didn't want a touch screen. They didn't even have the 500v Smartphone on display. To their defence, it's not available in North America, but I would have thought they could still show it off. <br /><br />I came across a company by the name of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ceiva.com/">Ceiva</a>, who was displaying a number of visually stunning digital picture frames. The highlight of these frames was a 19 inch model that would pull pictures off a local network share. This is exactly what I've been looking for. It's the perfect size for hanging on a wall and with it's network aware aspect, you don't have to worry about connecting the frame to your computer on a regular basis just to update the pictures. <br /><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.juicecaster.com/">JuiceCaster</a> was another pleasant surprise at the show. They offer a pretty slick mobile application that runs on a large selection of mobile devices and allows you to automatically upload pictures and videos to their site. From there it can be instantly shared to your facebook or flickr accounts. And yes, they even support Windows Mobile devices. <br /><br />Another noteworthy company was <a target="_blank" href="http://www.griffintechnology.com/">Griffin Technology</a>. They had a number of cool car accessories on display, including a pretty neat dual USB AC adapter. Making it much easier for me to charge my Smartphone and Zune at the same time. You know, sometimes it's the simple things that make a world of difference. Griffin's products were clean and simple in design, yet very functional. <br /><br />That rounds out part 1 of my CES trip. Stay tuned - there's still more to come!