LIVEdigitally

This booth was made just for me. I turned off WiFi in the house when my wife was pregnant with our son, and have been known to give rants about how cell phones are the cigarettes of our day. This booth is dedicated to gadgets that tell you whether your cell phone gives off too much radiation, your house is too close to an electro-magnetic field (EMF), and even rating the UV if you’re outside. I also love the fact that this booth’s signage is made on hand-written 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper. Check out how well my relic of a phone (Treo 600) does against Jeremy’s skinit’ed LG VX6100.

For those of you who get a little inspired to learn more about cell phone radiation: CNet has a chart on cell phone radiation levels, the US FDA has a report, TechDirt finds that 20 minutes of a cell phone equals one year of Wifi exposure, and there is a cell phone safety blog you can read.

This was the tenth time Bill gave the keynote address at CES, but the first time I’d ever had the chance to go watch in person. Frankly, the 3 hours we spent just sitting in lines was enough of a disincentive to do it again next year, especially since the event was so well covered by others. Also, as Richard MacManus’ tag cloud shows, the content at the keynote was fairly, well, predictable. As a plus, I got to spend a lot of that time (and much of Monday as well) talking with Ron Dave Winer. Here’s a quick video of the line(s) of folks waiting to enter, then actually pouring into the auditorium.

All my pictures from the keynote are on Flickr.

We entered the theater at 5:30pm, Bill didn’t go on until 6:30. This left us with two entertainment options:

or

Ugh.
While watching the keynote itself, I was impressed with the quality of Vista. I’d seen much of the demos before (again, go here to find more detailed coverage), but this one just came across a little more polished than in the past. Interestingly though, I felt the event fell short. Not because there weren’t any famous people. Not because one of the demonstrators actually asked us to give him some applause. More because I just felt that Vista is finally at the level the OS is supposed to be. It’s not more than what it could be. It’s not a vision of the future, it’s a vision of today.

That’s a lot less than I’d expect from a visionary.

You can buy a three foot HDMI cable for $10 or $100. But it’s all digital, right? So does it really make a difference? I did a quick interview with a booth staffer from Ethereal at CES, and while not everything he says is 100% right, it’s still pretty useful.

psst – in case you don’t feel like watching the video, the answer is pretty much “yes”.

While I was at CES last week, one of my readers, Rex Thomas posted a comment here on the blog, voicing his lousy experience trying to get into CES this year. From his comment, it sounds like Rex had a very lousy time, and received poor information and advice from numerous people. I feel bad for Rex, and thought, as a member of “the industry” that I’d take a stab at an explanation. As a disclaimer here, I am not going to try to justify the poor communication/notifications on the CES Web site, which should absolutely be crystal clear for others like Rex.

First of all, it is a trade show, and by definition, that implies it’s for members of the specified trade. Unlike a Car Show or Boat Show, which are really expositions, it’s an event for people in an industry. The Fancy Food Show, for example, is similarly not open to the public, nor are most events of a similar nature. It just so happens to be named Consumer electronics show, since the industry itself is dubber Consumer Electronics.

Second, the show’s pretty crowded as it is, with over 140,000 people registered this year. If we were to assume it’s all by the book, that’s 140,000 consumer electronics employees, buyers, press/media, and other affiliated people. Again, that’s a lot of people! If there were no restrictions, that could easily double within a couple of years, and I don’t know how the city nor the convention could handle the traffic!

Third, consider the fact that until the past few years the primary goal of the event was retail sales and relationships. The show’s history was about introducing new consumer electronics products to retailers, and selling products. In the past few years, more and more media coverage has upped the profile of the show to the point where virtually anyone even connected to consumer technology has an awareness of “CES” and knows at least a bit about it. The event has absolutely transcended its humble origins, and today encompasses much more than just selling consumer electronics to retailers!

Finally, take the sum of the points above. There are a lot of people there, most of which have specific jobs to do. Both retailers and press have to get to as many relevant booths as they can. Booth staff need to demo and talk for hours on-end to as many of their target customers or media attendees as possible. If all the people who need to be there to do their job had to navigate around anyone and everyone who felt like coming to Vegas that week, they simply wouldn’t be able to get their jobs done. This is probably the key reason to restrict attendance to industry folks.

I know it seems like it’s a lot of fun, and in many ways it is fun. But it’s a lot of work for a lot of people. The people who work for consumer electronics companies tend to work through all of December just to prepare for the show, whether they are getting demos ready or designing and building booths or simply planning the logistics for staffers. Media and analysts also typically spend weeks just figuring out their calendars for the 4-day nerdapalooza. December is not a pleasant month for those of us in the consumer electronics industry!

So Rex, and others out there who think it’s unfair or should be changed, I hope this helps clarify a bit of why it’s technically a closed event. In the meantime, there are several events which are in fact open to the general public. CeBIT in Germany every March, as well as Digital Life in NYC in October, are both open for anyone to attend (I’d pick Digital Life over CeBIT any time).

iPod docks are popular. And why not? They get all your iPod music onto your existing stereo or play it back via internal speakers. Makes perfect sense. We’ve reviewed them before, and will review them again. The team from Keyspan Digital (they make those cool PC remotes) thinks they have a better docking station than anyone else, and in this video we let them do their pitch for their Tuneview dock.