I have been going to consumer electronics trade shows for over a decade (anyone remember Comdex?), but I had never attended the Toy Fair in New York city until this past week. I thought it was about time that I checked it out and now I want to share with you a few of the more interesting products that caught my eye while I was there.

Most of the images in this article can be clicked in order to see the full size versions.

Building and construction toys always grab my attention. I had never heard of Uberstix and UberArc building sets from Patch Products.

They offer kits to build a steampunk style monorail and Empire State Building. The architectural series kits use full-sale authentic blueprints. The builder even applies for a building permit online that shows the seismic and wind loads for the proposed UberArc building location.

I have to get my hands on a set of these FridgiGears from Can You Imagine.

It’s a set of 20 magnetic gears that you can arrange anyway you like on a metallic surface such as a refrigerator. There is one large gear that is powered by 2AA and rotates when you tap it, causing the other mated gears to turn too.

How about a Vertibot Climb@Tron window walking robot from BSW Toys? It’s a 2 AAA battery powered robot that climbs up and down windows mirrors and other smooth surfaces. Yeah, I don’t want one either… Moving right along…

There were a bazillion and one dolls, action figures and stuffed animals at the Toy Fair. My eyes glazed over on all of them except for the display from Hansa.

These large and extremely lifelike ‘toys’ come with a hefty price tag. Try searching Amazon for Hansa and you’ll see what I mean.

Back to more construction toys with Space Chips.

They were basically thin flexible plastic disks that could be combined to create the interesting shapes that you see here. Unfortunately, I can’t find a website or any mention of them online. I don’t think the booth had any literature either. That was one problem with the Toy Fair, there were lots of people displaying products that were just there looking for buyers.

When I saw this toy, I had to stop and find out what it was. It’s called the Brainstring puzzle from Recent Toys. It’s a polycarbonate cube with 12 multi-colored elastic bands that can be twisted and untangled. The main goal of the game is to switch the outside button colors, without creating a knot inside.

I’m a sucker for yo-yos even though I have never been good at them. Yomega had a cool display with some colorful offerings.

I was treated to a demo of their Power Brain XP with the patent pending smart switch. When turned on, the smart switch activates a clutch system that will automatically return the yo-yo to your hand. Turn it off and it becomes a regular yo-yo.

Kids love bugs and other little remote controlled thingies. Desk Pets include the GoBot that jumps/hops at a touch of a button, SkitterBot moves forward, backwards, turns left and turns right and stops, and TrekBot is a hubless wheeled robot that is controlled by a unique patent pending 5 button USB remote controller/charger. Trekbot moves forward, backwards, turns left, turns right and stops, as well as does headstands and flips.

Each one is controlled by a combination USB charger / controller.

Right about this time, I got a text message from gadgeteer team member Jackie Cheng. Jackie lives in NJ and we made plans to meet for the first time at the show. It’s always fun to finally meet someone face to face that you’ve been emailing for awhile. We ended up walking around for a couple hours, checking out the rest of the show.

The Be Amazing Toys booth had a lot of interesting science type toys. We’ve all seen the Diet Coke and Mentos videos on YouTube right? Now you can make your own 25′ Coke geyser with the Geyser Tube. It gives you an easy way to deposit a whole stack of mentos candies at once.

They even demonstrated it without spraying everyone with diet coke.

The Grow Snow powder was very cool too. Pun intended

For a demonstration, a thimble full of white power was poured into our cupped hands and then a little water was poured over it. Within a couple of seconds, the powder expanded into a soft snow like substance 100 times its original size. It wasn’t cold, but warm. But, as the water evaporated, the ‘snow’ because cool to the touch.

I had posted a small news blurb about Hexbug Nanos not too long ago, so I was interested in seeing what they were like in real life. They are actually pretty cool. More so than what I thought they would be.

They even have little habitat sets that you can build mazes for them to navigate.

Remember the Rubik’s Cube? It’s hard to believe that it is 30 years old this year! Now there’s a brand new version called the Rubik’s Slide.

This new version is battery operated and will keep you busy with over 10,000 different puzzles. The object of each puzzle is to rearrange the pattern of lights by shifting and twisting until they match the solution for that puzzle. I was able to play with a demo unit for a few minutes and I’d probably buy one.

The Talkatoo booth had clip-on charms and necklaces that I think would be eye catching for younger kids or teenage girls.

They have one button that you press to record your message and another button to play it back. Kind of pricey though at around $18 each.

Yay, more building toys! OLLO sets are sort of like LEGO, but focused on robotics. The also kind of remind me of my Dad’s Erector set that I played with as a kid.

Next up was the Bioloid booth, another robotics construction set reminiscent of iSobot.

These are hardcore robotics kits, with servos, controllers and sensors. I love little robot toys, but not the kind you have to program.

The Beamz Interactive Music System was most interesting product that I saw at the Toy Fair, and the funny thing is that I wouldn’t consider it a toy at all. It’s an electronic musical instrument that uses laser beams. You know if it uses lasers, that it has to be cool!

The instrument is shaped like the letter W, with laser beams that shine across each opening. By using your hands to break the beams, you play music. I wanted to start moon walking when he started playing along with Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean.

From lasers to LEDs, the Hi-Tec Art booth had some modern day Lite-Brite products. They offer large US and world maps that you can stick colored LEDs into. This booth caught Jackie’s attention more than mine. He had ideas to use this type of product to create signs for his computer store.

They also offer 8 x 11 and 4 x 5 kits that you can use to make your own designs with LEDs and glowing artwire.

I think that people that enjoy board games with a group of friends might be interested in the CUBE timer from DGT. At the end of a player’s turn, the CUBE is passed on to the next player by turning the color of the next player to the top. This stops the time of the last player and auto-starts the timing of the new player. It seems like a neat gadget for games of up to 6 players.

There were many products to see at the Toy Fair, but these are the few that caught my eye in the time that I spent there. After we had seen all the booths, Jackie took me to the Free Sony Wonder Technology Lab and the the RCS Experience store across the street. We also got a chance to try out Sony’s 3D TVs, which were really cool after I figured out that the 3D glasses had to be turned on in order to work I’m not sure how comfortable they would be for an extended period of time for someone like me that would have to wear them over an existing pair of glasses though.

My trip to NYC was short but fun. I always love visiting there. I got to see some cool toys, got to meet Jackie, walked around in China Town, had some great steamed dumplings at Joe’s Shanghai Restaurant, had some good comfort food at the Tick Tock Diner and rode the NYC subway for the first time. One thing I didn’t do this time was go to the Apple store on 5th Ave. Oh well, there’s always next time.

Filed in categories: Articles, Geek Toys, Kid Gadgets

Tagged: Trip Report

Toy Fair 2010 Trip Report originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 21, 2010 at 9:35 pm.

Every year right after the holidays, it’s time for two trade shows that most gadgeteers look forward to either attending or reading about. These are The Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld. I’ve attended CES many times in the past, but this year I wanted to do something different… So, I decided to attend my very first Macworld in San Francisco, California. It’s about time, considering that I made the hop to OS X over two years ago.

I ended up getting some great accommodations at the Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel.

I found the room to be spacious and clean.

Although I didn’t plan to watch much TV while on my trip, I appreciated the nice flat screen.

Check out the view from my room. The building in the center of the picture is the Metreon. Right behind it is the Moscone Center where Macworld Conference and Expo is held. I was within super easy walking distance. Nice!

My only complaint about the Westin was their wifi. It was worse than dialup speeds… and no, I’m not exaggerating. Disappointing since it costs $15 a day…

The expo was held in the West and South halls. As a veteran of CES and its millions of square footage of exhibits, I wasn’t sure what to expect with Macworld. So I laced up my New Balance sneaks, grabbed my camera and trotted over to the South hall after having ‘listened’ to Steve Jobs’ keynote on my laptop in the hotel.

Nope, I wasn’t lucky enough to score a ticket to the keynote. That’s fine though, I hate standing in line for stuff and I was pretty much first in line to get onto the floor as soon as the exhibits opened.

I did fear for my life a little with everyone piling up to get into the exhibit area. Once the let everyone in, I headed straight for the Right side of the room to begin my exploration.

My first stop was the Comply booth. They sell soft foam replacement tips for earbuds and Whoomp! earbud enhancers.

Do you remember Griffin’s EarJams, the little snap on caps that turned stock iPod earbuds into in-the-ear style buds? Whoomps are similar, but with flexible plastic instead of rigid, and soft foam buds instead of rubber buds. They also sound a lot better than the EarJams from what I recall of them.

Next up was the eMedia booth. They were demoing a software title that helps kids learn to play guitar. But, when I learned that the software didn’t interface with the instrument, I quickly lost interest and moved on…

…to the Kensington booth. Besides their wireless Ci70 desktop set and Ci75 notebook mouse that I have already reviewed, they were also showing their latest SlimBlade mice and keyboard. These mice have little track balls in them similar to Apple’s Mighty mouse. I use the Ci75 notebook mouse for travel and really like it, but I’m anxious to try one of these SlimBlade mice soon too.

booq’s booth (say that 3 times fast…) was kinda creepy with Black mannequins sporting gear bags ;o) They were showing their latest Boa Slimcase bags that Dave just reviewed.

h2oAudio were displaying some very cool looking waterproof iPod cases. I have to say that these look way better than the ones Otterbox offers. Sorry Otterbox…

They have actual buttons instead of a membrane that you press through.

I was happy to meet the folks from Sena. I’ve dealt with them for years and it was nice to meet them in person.

They had some great looking iPhone cases on display. I’ll be posting a review of some of them in the next week or two, so stay tuned.

There were many companies showing off laptop bags at the show like this booth from Mary Beth Designs. It’s always nice to see gear / laptop bags that cater to women.

Griffin was in attendance with iPod accessories like this new version of the iTrip.

Another company that I was happy to meet in person was Matias. They were showing off their iFold and folding keyboard.

The iFold is a collapsable laptop stand this is available now

The folding keyboard is due out soon. It’s USB and when folded is only 10.08” x 5” x 1.18”.

I purposely did not seek out the Apple area right away as I knew it would be completely mobbed with people trying to get a look at the new Macbook Air. Of course by the time I got around to where it was being displayed, it was still swamped.

I want several Macbook Airs hanging from my ceiling please.

Dang these babies are thin!

There was a long table with many, many Macbook Airs for people to try. I shoved my way into the mob so that I could get a look close up. I have to say wow. Seeing it in person is better than just looking at these pictures. The display is so bright and crisp that I didn’t even think that they were real working notebooks at first.

The trackpad is significantly larger on this new notebook. The size allows for gesture use. You’re all familiar with the pinch and spread gestures on the iPhone to shrink and grow images and text? Well, you can use these same gestures now on the Macbook Air. Very cool.

I own a Macbook Pro, so I’m not familiar with the new style keyboard that Macbooks and now the Macbook Air use. I wasn’t able to really test it there at the show, but I keep hearing how people really like it. I will say that the backlight feature is pretty sweet.

Itty bitty magsafe power cord.

Pop open earphone jack, USB port and proprietary micro DVI jack.

I’m hearing as many people praising this new laptop as those dissing it. I have to say that after lugging around my Macbook Pro through the airport, I would welcome something so thin and light weight. For me, I don’t care that it doesn’t have a removable battery or a built in ethernet jack. I know that many people like to have a spare battery, but this isn’t important to me since I don’t typically find myself on flights longer than 4-5hrs at a time. Regarding the ethernet jack, I can’t remember the last time I used mine… wifi all the way baby ) Will I be buying one? Yeah probably at some point…

Next up was the XtremeMac booth…

Oh look, they have a new X2Luna iPod clock radio. I reviewed their previous version and found it to be one of my favorite products in this category.

Their Tango Studio speaker looked nice as well. One cool feature is that the LED display shines through the speaker material. It stays lit for a few seconds whenever a setting is changed, and then fades to Black.

The Tango X2 has the same display feature.

More laptop bags. These are from (I think…) STM. I don’t see these particular bags on their website though.

At this point my eyes were starting to glaze over as I was getting a bit bored of all the laptop bags, iPod / iPhone cases and iPod speakers everyone was showing. But as I turned the corner, my eyes instantly brightened when I saw Axiotron’s booth for the Modbook.

They had a couple devices on display so that people could try them out. I was surprised that I didn’t have to actually touch the stylus to the display in order to write on it.

I even got the opportunity to talk to the man that builds the Modbooks…

They had an artist giving a demonstration using the Modbook and Photoshop.

Creative was showing off their XDock HD iPod video dock.

They had it showing Mission Impossible III on a flat screen TV and I have to say it looked really sharp. Too bad it’s not available until sometime this Spring.

The ZIVIO Bluetooth headset from Joby caught my eye as I walked past their booth.

The interesting thing about the ZIVIO is that it has a telescoping microphone that extends from the body of the headset. As you extend the microphone, it adjusts the gain accordingly.

When I was looking at the laptop bags in the STM booth, one of the guys there had asked if I had seen the really cool office chair that was being demoed somewhere on the floor. So, when I saw the booth with a banner with Swing Seat emblazoned on it, I stopped for a closer look. As soon as someone vacated one, I tested it myself. The seat and back both pivot up/down, back and forth as you move or adjust your position. It was kind of odd, but at the same time quite comfortable. I still haven’t purchased a new office chair for gadgeteer hq, so I might have to look into one of these…

These little pop open x-mini iPod speakers are cute and sounded surprisingly good.

I was happy to see the folks from audioengine at the show. Their A5 speakers remain my favorites.

I almost started drooling when I saw that they are going to offer the A5′s in bamboo. Nice!

At this point, I realized that I had seen all the booths. I think I might have set a record as it only took me about 4 hours to do the whole show. Wow, compare that to 2-3 days for CES (and even then you don’t see EVERYTHING), I was sure that I had to have missed a bunch! So I grabbed my handy guide book with the floor plans and exhibitor’s listing and carefully checked to see if I had skipped anything important. Nope, I had seen it all…

Near the door was the pzizz booth. I had reviewed one of their handheld nap personal Life Coach devices, but they were also showing these wacky looking nap pod things. They are called Metro Naps. I don’t know if I could fall asleep in one of those things. I’d be thinking that there were people outside pointing and laughing at the goober (me) inside. ;o)

I found Macworld to be quite a bit less stressful than CES. Of course that’s because it’s much smaller. But that said, I wasn’t really blown away by anything at the show. I would have loved to see more unique accessories and gadgets. As it were, there were too many iPhone cases, speakers and laptop bags for my taste. There was only a very short list of things that made my gadget senses tingle. The Macbook Air was one of them, along with the Modbook, ZIVIO Bluetooth headset and Audioengine bamboo speakers. If I hadn’t come to San Francisco to spend a few days doing other things, then I would have been somewhat disappointed. I’m not sure I’ll return in 2009, but I do know I’ll definitely make the trip west again at some point to attend this show.

For those of you that attended, what were you favorite things?

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Macworld Expo 2008 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 22, 2008 at 10:05 pm.

Read Part 1 and Part 2

Tuesday

My 750v is really getting on my nerves. If you remember (and read yesterday’s report…), I’ve been having a few issues with it this trip. Well this morning the alarm I had set to wake me at 7am didn’t go off. [ I thought Microsoft fixed the problem with alarms not firing. If I can’t count on a smartphone to help me keep the appointments that I set, then I really don’t want to be using that particular smartphone. So, I think I’ll be looking elsewhere soon. iPhone maybe? ;o) I need something sooner than 6 months out though.

After I woke up (1hr late!), I was soon out the door and on a shuttle bus back to the convention center. My first stop was back at the Central hall to finish what I had missed the day before.

I wonder if this gaming chair from Pyramat is any better than the HoMedics iCush I recently reviewed?

The advantage of this product is that you don’t have to set it inside another chair to use it.

The Universal Electronics booth had all kinds of remotes on display. I really need to check out one of their high end remotes for my own home theater components at home.

Next up, I had to run back over to the South Hall where I had a meeting with Dynamism. Douglas brought along 2 bags filled with toys to show me.

The first item he handed me was the new Flybook VM. The main feature of this slim Core Duo laptop is the unique display.

It is easily adjustable to almost any viewing angle. The only thing it doesn’t do is fold down completely flat to turn into a tablet.

Next up was the Kohjinsha SA1F00 ultra portable.

As you can see, it does have a display that can rotate and fold down flat. It doesn’t have a touch screen though…

Here’s the Vega UMPC. The display and size were equally nice.

Doug also had the Sony UX90. This is different from the UX50 that they sent me last summer to review. This one has a 32GB Solid State hard drive. I was impressed by the system speed launching applications.

The next item that Doug pulled out of his magic bag of gadgets was the Panasonic HDC-SD1. This little guy has 3 CCDs, a Leica lens and saves to SD cards. At $1600.00 it is pretty expensive, but it does come with a 4gb SDHC card )

The Panasonic Wordsgear was an interesting eBook reader. About the size of a paperback book, it has a good display (5.6″ SVGA high resolution (1024×600 211ppi) display and can play movies and music and photos.

I especially liked the page turning mechanism located along the left edge. It was a rubbery pad that you just flick your finger up and down to turn the page of the ebook that you happen to be reading.

Last but not least, he showed me some cutesy solar powered desk toys. The little FlipFlap plant is similar to the Potan Poton that I reviewed from Brando, but this one doesn’t require any water to power it though.

After my meeting with Doug of Dynamism, I trekked over to the North Hall to check out all the fancy cars and car audio gadgets. I’m not really into this particular genre of products, but I you guys would enjoy some pretty car pics, so here you go!

Now that’s a pretty truck!

Hmmm, why do I need an LCD in the car door?

Another shiny car.

And another…

And yet another…

Blue is always nice.

This one wasn’t shiny. The paint job reminded me of a coat of primer. Very Batman-ish.

Retro techno.

LCD displays gone mad!

Ok, that’s enough cars. After a while in this hall, you felt like your brain was going to shake out of your head due to the bass rumbling in all the car speakers!

Weenies getting a free foot and back massages. I’m walking around on a bum ankle, you don’t see me getting any special treatment! ;o)

As I was trying to find my way back out of the hall, I spotted Honda’s large Azimo stage. I had never seen the Azimo robot in the flesh before, so I stuck around for the next show to start.

Pretty soon, the area around the stage was packed with people.

Then Azimo walked out and greeted the audience. Look, he (she?) is waving at me!

There was also a host on stage with the robot, that interacted with Azimo to give the demo. The weirdest thing was hearing Azimo speak. It has a almost creepy (to me at least) female voice. Azimo doesn’t look like a girl to me. Does it to you?

See Asimo in action…

Click on image to play the QuickTime video (2min 44sec,
5.5mb). The video is encoded in the H.264 codec. You will need the latest version of
Quicktime to view it.
VLC is another free viewer.

After the Azimo demo, I grabbed a cheeseburger, chips and a diet Pepsi. Then I wandered around for a few minutes before calling it a day. Goodbye CES showroom floors! I will probably see you again next year.

I grabbed a bunch of freebie magazines on the way out.

I took a taxi back to my hotel room and immediately started surfing for Mac World news from Steve Job’s keynote speech earlier in the day. I was pretty floored when I saw the picture of the iPhone. I almost brought tears to my eyes, it is that pretty. I wish we didn’t have to wait 6 months before getting some hands-on time though.

A couple hours later I headed over to the MGM for a dinner meeting with Palm. The dinner was held at a great Mexican restaurant called Diegos. I sat next to the engineer who was over the 750v and 750, so I was able to tell him my current gripes about my own 750v. He was surprised about the network time not updating. I was ‘happy’ when Dieter Bohn of TreoCentral.com who was sitting next to me, told me that he had the same problem when he arrived here. Yay, it’s not just me!

The dinner was primarily a meet and greet kind of affair. I was surprised that they didn’t ask us for comments or opinions on their products. I did come away with one useful tidbit though. I learned a nifty little trick so that you can turn it off while in an app, so that when you turn it back on, it will power up in that app. As is, if you press the red end call/power button, it will go to the Today screen and then you have to press it again to turn off the phone. So everytime you turn the phone on, it’s at the Today screen. The trick is to press the Option button and then the power button. That will turn off and lock the device into that app. Great tip!

Around 10pm I left MGM and headed back to my hotel where I worked on this article and then turned in for the night. My time here in Las Vegas is almost over. I fly home tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon. It was a good time this year! I saw some interesting products, met some interesting people and caught up with some old friends. Hope everyone enjoyed the report!

Read Part 1 and Part 2

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 Trip Report (Day 3) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 10, 2007 at 8:00 am.

Read Part 1 and Part 3

Monday

Before we get into the report for the day, I wanted to answer a question about the gear I brought with me on the trip. I am a light packer. Probably too light. I almost always find myself wishing I had remembered to bring along X or Y.

For this trip I bought:

My brand new 15″ MacBook Pro with glossy screen
ThinkOutside Bluetooth mouse
Treo 750v
Seidio retractable charge / sync cable for the Treo
Brand new Fujifilm Finepix F30 digital camera
Brando 55 in 1 card reader
2nd gen iPod Shuffle

Yup, that’s it and that’s all. Oh wait, I forgot to mention that I am carrying all my electronic stuff in a freebie gear bag that I guess was sent to me because I’m on the press list for CES. A couple weeks before the event it showed up in the mail with a card that says enjoy CES. It has AMD silkscreened on the front, but it’s actually a Vertical 2.0 bag from Oakley. It’s a really nice gear bag and has replaced my old faithful Sundog vertical bag that I’ve been toting around when I travel. The best part is that my new Macbook Pro fits in it perfectly! )

I want to digress for just a few more sentences… I was reminded yesterday why I can never fully love Windows Mobile. My plane lands. I turn the phone back on in my Treo 750v. I notice it does not set the current time. I double check that I have the option for it to set the time with regards to the current network. I press the reset button. No luck. I have to go in and manually set the time. When I do this, it warns me that my appointments will change to match the new time zone. Fine, that’s what I want them to do. But guess what? the appointment times DON’T change. So now all my CES mtg times are all screwed up and I have to go in and fix them by hand. Can you say ARGH!?

And now back to the show… With a quick shower, and an equally quick gobble of a trailmix nutbar (because when I called for room service, they told me breakfast was backed up for 90mins – ack), I was out the door and down to the lobby to wait on the free shuttle service to the convention center. The wait was only a few minutes, so within no time at all I was dropped off at the South Hall. My first destination was to the Press Room to get my badge holder and free press gear bag.

This year it is an Orange backpack. The cool thing about it is that the front part unzips to create a smaller horizontal shoulder bag. Nifty.

I then proceeded into the sea of people heading for the South Hall. Like all of the halls in this convention center, they are massive in size. When you first walk through the doorway, you know you’ll never see everything there is to see there. It’s even hard to decide which way to tackle it. Start from the Right? Left? Straight down the middle? I don’t even remember how I decided to start browsing, but the first product I saw was a unique one!

A motorized inflatable pool lounger from Excalibur Electronics.

You know you want one! ;o)

Next booth that caught my eye (now I kinda wish it hadn’t…) was for Eton.

They had a whole line of retro (at least they look retro to me) looking radios with built in hand cranks. Here you see the FR300, which is an AM/FM/TV and NOAA weather radio. It also has an LED flashlight on the front and can charge your cellphone. You never need to worry that you have charged batteries because the hand crank will provide power. The folks at the booth even gave me one to take with me.

And then it happened… I turned around to start browsing again and stepped off their booth platform that was raised by about 3 inches off the floor and turned my ankle. Can you say OUCHY? ( But in true Julie style, I just kept right on walking with nary a whimper… although it did hurt like a $#%@. What a way to start the day!

As long as I kept walking, my ankle was tender, but sturdy. So I kept going…

How would you like this person’s job? I’m not quite sure what the heck it is supposed to be, but I just had to get a picture anyway ;o)

The show room floors were littered with companies displaying Bluetooth headsets in all manner of sizes and styles. The one you see below looked much sexier in person.

This headset is from an Australian company called BlueAnt. It’s the Z9 and it’s is the winner of this year’s CES 2007 Innovations Design and Engineering Award. It has 2 microphones and 2 ring tones to differentiate between known and unknown callers. It’s not available yet, but will be in March.

The product you see in the image above caught my attention next. Wouldn’t it have yours? I had no idea what it was. Maybe a automatic bucking bull for kids? The booth was pretty much void of pamphlets and booth droids, so I took at look at one of their other products to find a website address or company name, which I think is Strong Idea. The website by that same name doesn’t appear to be the same company… So if anyone can tell me what this product is, I’d be happy to hear about it. )

Next up were some tabletop HD radios. I’ve been interested in learning more about HD radio. I’m not sure there are many stations in my area that I could pick up though.

These particular radios were from Cambridge Soundworks.

Moving right along, I ran into the massive Creative booth area. They had stations setup with their popular ZEN audio players, and they were also showing off this new larger format media player that you see below:

This is the ZEN Vision W. Pretty. Pretty big. How many of you out there have a media player this size that you use all the time? Personally, it’s a bit too large for me to want to carry around. Very nice display though. Hey Mark, they are playing your fave show! )

Check this out… In a Creative display case, there is an iPod! Creative is actually creating iPod accessories. It’s part of their X-Fi solutions. They way I understand it, X-Fi puts part of the sine wave back into compressed music to make it sound better. The dock you see above plays the music from your iPod, but makes it sound a whole lot better.

Now it’s time for a couple pretty showroom floor pix!

People, people everywhere!

Mmmmm Purple! Let’s go see what Nokia has to show off, shall we?

It’s their new wireless tablet, the N800. It looks a whole lot nicer than the 770, that’s for sure. I wish it was also a quad band phone though. At least it can use Bluetooth phone as a modem.

This little tri-band slider music phone (5200) was pretty fun to play with. Until I can have 80gb built into my phone, I probably will never use my phone to play music. I’d also be afraid that I’d run the batteries down listening to tunes all day and not have enough juice left to make necessary calls.

Anyone out there into treasure hunting? Ok, time for a Julie moment… My new fave TV show is Cash and Treasures on the Travel channel. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. I have a metal detector, but it’s got to be at least 20yrs old… The Garrett booth was showing a new model that is very inexpensive, but has features that some higher models have.

The Ace 150 sells for $179.95. I have an itch to buy one of these, book a trip to Florida and spend a week combing beaches )

The next booth I stopped at was Otterbox’s booth. We’ve reviewed some of their products before (stay tuned later this week for Meredyth’s review of their new Treo case…). Their latest case to be available soon is for the Blackberry.

This case is built like a tank!

Speaking of a tank, look at this thing! It’s the VersaLaser. You may have seen their ads in PC Magazine before.

This is a big ‘printer’ that prints and cuts with a laser. And it can print on just about anything.

The blocks above are wooden with carved out printed letters. The black and white image next to them on the right is a marble tile that has had a picture carved into its surface. Very cool! Too bad it’s very expensive. But if you have almost 10k, you too can print on anything!

Like mobile phone accessories, ipod accessories and large TVs, there were lots of flash drives floating around. I couldn’t help but smile at these Disney branded drives. Too bad they weren’t giving them away. I would have scored major points with my boss at my day job as she’s a big Mickey fan. )

Speaking of large TVs and other types of displays, they were absolutely everywhere when I moved from the South Hall to the Central Hall. The Kodak booth had their whole back wall mounted with digital photo frames.

You know, I never have decorated my remodeled home office. Maybe I should use digital frames…

Or LCD TVs!

Or better yet, the world’s largest LCD TV. At 108″, this TV from Sharp was beyond yummy!

You know what else is yummy? Free lunches! As a member of the press, we receive coupons for a free lunch every day of the show. So at 11:30, I took my hungry little bod over to the press area to stand in line for the free grub. In previous years, we were fed a nice hot lunch. This year it was a cold boxed lunch. The one I picked up had a turkey and cheese sub, an apple, some kind of crumbly dessert bar and potato salad. It wasn’t anything to rave about, but it was free and it gave me the chance to sit down and recharge for a bit. I also had a nice conversation with a guy about Tivo and Netflix. You know I’ve never tried Netflix, but I think I just might sign up soon. Is it just me, or have the premium movie channels on DirecTV been really lame lately?

After lunch, I continued my tour of the Central Hall. I made a stop at the Sanyo booth to check out their handheld camcorders.

Their new little VPC-CA6 Xacti is weather proof and can support 4GB SDHC memory cards.

It’s even more compact that then Xacti VPC-HD1 that I reviewed earlier this year.

Speaking of which, here’s their new model of the HD1. The HD2. I need to find out if the HD2 is any better with regards to shooting in low light (indoors). If it is, I’m definitely upgrading to it. I love my little HD1.

At this point my ankle was starting to bother me, so I decided to get a taxi back to the hotel, work on this article and rest up before party #2: ShowStoppers.

After I got back to my hotel room, I kicked off my shoes, and started sorting through all the things I had stuffed into the freebie press backpack.

Here’s the loot from my travels through the North and Central Halls (I’m not completely done with the Central Hall). I’m being pretty picky with which booths I’m stopping at this year, so my accumulation of loot will probably end up being less than previous years.

After a couple hours working on this article, chatting, emailing and making phone calls, I decided to order in some food. Mmmmmm, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns and wheat toast. My missing breakfast from this morning ;o) Hey what’s up with the fact that you can’t seem to find a Diet Coke in this town? It’s all Pepsi, all the time. Phooey.

A quick look at the time told me that I better make way over to the Wynn for ShowStoppers.

Love their lobby….

After a long hike to the back of the building where the ballrooms were located, I finally found the party and quickly grabbed my name badge and headed to the entrance.

As soon as I walked though the door, a guy grabbed me, asked if I had my phone with me and when I said yes, he grabbed it and put a furry Koala bear Fun Friends case on it (see last picture in this article). Hahaha, does anyone really use these types of cases with their phones? Come on, fess up? Someone has to be buying these things, but I wanna know who?

Want to learn to play piano? I was given a demo of Piano Wizard; a software / hardware package that uses color and a video game concept to help teach kids how to play the piano without learning musical notation first. The software works with a Mac too!

Remember WowWee, the company that bought you RoboSapien?

Their latest product is an Elvis head. No, I’m not kidding. I’m not sure who would actually want an animated, singing Elvis head, but if you’re such a person, you must be really happy right now! ;o)

There seemed to be more software / service type displays at ShowStoppers. I walked by most of them because we don’t really focus on that sort of thing at The Gadgeteer…

That said, I did stop at Boonty’s booth which was demoing a new FREE social gaming site at Cafe.com. The games looked liked they might be fun, and hey, they are free!

The folks from HobbyTron were there with the PicooZ and some other R/C controlled gadgets.

Oh boy, look at their new helicopter. Yes, it’s much bigger than the PicooZ, but still very cool.

This particular model can go up/down, forward/backwards, and left/right. I asked them to give me a demo and they happily complied.

Up, up and away! This looks like a fun toy. They said they would send me a sample to review after the show.

Get a load of this product. At first I thought it was some sort of exercise device. But how many geeks exercise? ;o) It’s for video games. It’s called the Dream Machine Simcon and apparently it gives you a whole new sense of realism while you play games. Two problems though… 1. Where do you put it when you’re not playing games? 2. The price: $1399. Ouchy!

And now let’s go from games to music…

The next booth was demoing the LightSnake. This is a USB -> Guitar cable that makes it super easy to record your music to a PC/Mac. With the cable, you don’t need a pre-amp.

They were also showing a new Podcasting kit as well.

If you have problems with blind spots in your vehicle, or want to see what’s going on in the backseat or behind your car, then these products from Magna were pretty interesting.

I especially liked the slide out video mirrors like the one on the top right.

Oh look, here’s an actual exercise device for geeks…

It’s the uSurf from Brookstone. It’s a motorized ‘surf’ board that you can use to do all kinds of exercises. When you plug it in, it will start to move in different directions, so you have to tighten your core muscles to keep your balance.

That’s a rundown of the more interesting products that I saw today at both the main CES show and ShowStoppers.

I came back to my room with a nice collection of swag. I love the little Tivo guy. )

Tomorrow is my last day here in Vegas, so check back to read my final installment!

Read Part 1 and Part 3

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 Trip Report (Day 2) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 9, 2007 at 8:00 am.

Read Part 2 and Part 3

No sooner has the wrapping paper from Santa’s presents to all good little gadgeteer boys and girls been shredded, that a new slew of goodies is unveiled for them to drool over. That’s right, it’s time for the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. I made the trip out to the mecca of all things gadgety and will be bringing you all the yummy details as the show unfolds.

Sunday

The alarm clock woke me up at 5:30am EST and after a shower and finalization of my packing, I was in the car and on the way to the airport. One hour later, boarding pass in hand, egg McMuffin and Diet Coke in my belly, I settled in to wait for my flight to board.

The flight from Indy to Vegas wasn’t too bad except that I was in the very last row of the plane and was stuck between two very large guys. I felt like a Julie sandwich. If that wasn’t bad enough, one of the guys was a sneezer and the other one was a snorer. Despite those hardships, I survived and arrived on time in Las Vegas. After I retrieved my bags, I was herded like a Holstein into the Taxi waiting corral. Luckily it only took about 15mins to run through the loops and after a quickish cab ride, I arrived safe and sound at my hotel.

I’m staying at Bally’s this year. I’ve never stayed at this hotel, and so far it seems nice enough. Check out my room…

Nice and spacious.

With an extra table…

And back in the corner, there is a computer desk with a retractable Ethernet cable. Too bad they charge you for internet service. $11.99 / 24hrs.

Even the bathroom is nice )

At this point I was starving, so decided to explore the casino floor and get some food. I had a couple of hours to kill before CES Party #1: Digital Experience anyway. In true Vegas tradition, I opted for an all-you-can-eat buffet: The Big Kitchen. It was actually quite good. Not huge like some of the buffets at other big hotels that I’ve had in previous years, but good food. The Macaroni and Cheese brought back childhood memories of the way my Grandma used to make it. Good stuff!

On the way back from eating, I decided to sit down at one of the slot machines and try my luck. I’ll admit that I’m *not* a gambler. Typically $25 is my limit when I visit Vegas. Yeah, pretty lame huh? This time I was even more frugal… I stuck in a $5 and started pressing the buttons. Immediately I was up $7. Wow! Then I was down to $2. Then back up to $9 and back down to $3. Once I got back up to $10, I cashed out. I was quite surprised to see a ticket come of the machine instead of tokens. No more tokens? How sad…

It was about time for the Digital Experience party to start, so I headed outside to walk over to Caesar’s Palace. The cool thing about Vegas is that there are special overhead foot bridges and motorized sidewalks that span over the busy roads to connect the hotels.

A few minutes later I walked into Caesar’s Palace. It still amazes me how over the top the hotels are in this town. Check out the huge fountain that greets you as soon as you walk in the door.

I made my way through the casino and towards the pool area. On the way, I don’t know what came over me, but I sat down at another slot machine and fed in another $5. I didn’t like this game at all, it wasn’t a simple slot machine and I after a few minute, I wanted to just lose my 5 bucks and get myself to the gadget show. But just when I thought I had lost everything, I pushed the button and won back all my money again… plus 25 cents. Wheeeee ;o) Hey, I’m up $5.25 total so far. Can you tell that it doesn’t take much to make me happy? ;o)

Ok, time for business… Some more walking bought me to the party.

It’s a pirate theme… arrrrrrrrrrr

I got my badge, picked up a nice canvas tote bag to hold all the press releases and swag that I would be picking up, and headed towards the exhibitors area. Darn it! Wouldn’t you know they were serving free food here. Oh well. Here’s some info on the products that looked new and interesting…

The first booth that caught my eye was DLO’s (Digital Lifestyle Outfitters). They were showing a new iPod speaker systems called the iBoom. It’s a travel system with a built in clock that comes in White and Black. I really liked the Blue backlight. I’ve been promised a sample after the show, so I’ll have a review in the near future.

My eyes also zeroed in on the PowerBug which is a small AC charging adapter for the 2nd gen iPod Shuffle. They actually gave me one of these to take with me, so review soon!

I then turned around and almost thought I saw Johnny Depp. False alarm, just a look-alike in a pirate suit. He was a good sport and let me take his picture.

Next up was a product from Fujitsu called the ScanSnap. It’s basically a color scanner that can scan 18 page per minute. Who cares you might be thinking… Well what makes this scanner cool is the fact that it scans in duplex. In other words, it scans both sides of the page. No flipping required. Nice huh? I thought so too.

Then I came to the Interlink Electronics booth. They were displaying the Onyx Remote.

The Onyx is a wireless (2.4GHz) presentation remote that has a built in laser pointer and clock. But the best thing about this product in my opinion is the shape of the leather covered module which allows it to fit naturally and comfortably in your hand.

The folks from ifrogz where there with their highly customizable iPod cases. Since the last time I took a look at their products, they have some out with even more. They even have new iPod shuffle holder wrist bands. Fun stuff.

I almost walked by the next booth without stopping. At first glance, they were displaying several digital photo frames. I’ve reviewed several such products over the years, and while nice, they haven’t been the type of product to make my heart beat faster. I stopped for a closer look at one of their larger frames. I almost thought it it wasn’t a digital frame at all, but that it was just for display and had a printed static image on it. Then the image changed and I was really blown away.

The company is Pandigital and their 10″ digital frame is fantastic. I’ve never seen such a bright, smooth, picture from a digital frame. It also has a 6 in 1 card reader built in and according to the president of the company, scheduling and other time related features. All I can say is that I really want one of these frames. The 10″ is supposed to be approximately $250 when it becomes available the middle of February.

Another booth, another iPod accessory! This time it’s iLuv with their new line up of speakers incorporating what they are calling BluePin technology.

BluePin allows you to wirelessly share personal music content from any MP3 player, laptop or mobile phone that is equipped with Bluetooth.

I joked with the guys manning the booth telling them that iLuv hasn’t shown The Gadgeteer any love because they never respond to my emails requesting to review their products. We’ll see if they do now )

I know you’re going to think that all I am interested in is iPod related products… because here are some more. This time from Altec Lansing.

Hey look, they even make speakers for the Zune! But the system on the right caught my eye first. It’s the M812, which is a wireless speaker system.

The inMotion iMV712 looked equally yummy with it’s 8.5 inch color display for watching iPod video content.

I’m saving the best for last… OQO was there with their next gen ultra mobile PC. Remember when I reviewed their first model? Well this one has an answer to all my complaints.

The Model 02 looks super sexy with its shiny black case. It reminds me of the Sony PSP in a way. Besides outward appearances, it’s now powered by a 1.5GHz processor, has built in EVDO with Sprint, a better keyboard, better track stick and the screen is spongy any more. Yay! Now if only it ran Mac OS X! ;o) Just kidding… (not really)…

The Digital Experience show was a good time. It wasn’t huge compared to what I’m going to see on the regular show floors the next 2 days, but it was a nice lead in. My 2 fave products of the night were the digital frames from Pandigital and the OQO.

Here’s a shot of the booty I came back with… Nothing super exciting, but a nice haul for 1hr of walking around. And now I’m off to bed as it’s 2:19am my time. More tomorrow!

Read Part 2 and Part 3

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 Trip Report (Day 1) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 8, 2007 at 8:00 am.

This year, Microsoft changed things up and decided to hold two Mobius events back to back. The first one was held in Thailand, and the second one here in the US. Typically, the events here in the US have always been held in Seattle, WA., near Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters. But this year they opted for Boston, MA. Lucky for me, I was invited to the Boston event. This meant a short 2hr flight, instead of 4-5 hours to Seattle.

My travel day was less stressful than usual because I was able to talk my Dad into driving me to the airport, so that I wouldn’t have to leave my car parked in long term parking for several days. I had to bribe him with gadgets though… I let him borrow my iPod nano and I gave him an early birthday present of a Huntlight Flashlight. So with gadgets in hand, he picked me up at the house and then dropped me off at the airport.

The flight from Indianapolis to Boston was super fast. Unlike poor Judie who had attended the Thailand event. Before I knew it, I was being ushered into a town car and was on my way to the very nice Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge.

The large comfortable room was a kaleidoscope of patterns and textures.

Like any good Gadgeteer, the first thing I did was unpack my Powerbook and connect to the free WiFi to pull down all my mail and check the site. Check it out, the hotel uses cable turtles ) I don’t know why this struck me as cool, but it did!

After a quick email fix, I called Tong Zhang of MobileTechReview.com. We had made prior plans to hook up before the evening’s meet and greet festivities. I hadn’t seen Tong in over a year, so I was looking forward to catching up with her. I went down to her room and we chatted for a couple hours. She had actually brought the Cingular 3125 (Star Trek) for me to play with for a couple of days. I was impressed with the size, feel and screen.

When it was time for the meet and greet, I ran back up to my room to get the DualCor cPC and then Tong and I went down to the hotel lounge and started meeting the other invitees. The best part of Mobius is meeting the people that run the websites that you visit every day (or multiple times a day if you’re surf obsessed like I am!). There were lots of familiar faces, but also new ones such as James Kendrick of jkOnTheRun and Susi Weaser of ShinyShiny.

Derek Snyder who had just returned from the Thailand event, came bearing gadgets! I was very interested in fondling the Treo 750 (Middle right side) and HTC Excalibur (Middle) phones. The new Treo feels so much smaller than my 650, even though it really isn’t. I really wanted to shove it in my pocket and disappear into the night! The Excalibur is also nice, but I’ve yet to become a fan of the Windows Mobile Smartphone OS. I feel like my hands are tied if I can’t tap the display with a stylus ;o)

I tried to give James and Tong a demo of the DualCor cPC device, but pressing the power button only resulted in the Blue LED lighting up and nothing else. You’ve heard the saying “The lights are on, but no one is home”? That’s pretty much how it felt. I tried to use the stock stylus to press the reset button but guess what? The tip didn’t fit. Neither did Tong’s Treo 700p stylus. Finally a discarded toothpick from a bacon wrapped scallop did the trick!

Later everyone headed outside to take part in a manly game of Toss-the-phone. The object was to see who could throw an old phone the farthest, with the top 3 receiving well earned prizes.

Rafe Blandford of allaboutsymbian.com won the grand prize of a Samsung i320, Matt Miller of geek.com won the 2nd place prize of an iRiver Clix and now I can’t remember who won 3rd place. Sorry! Not long after, I turned in for the night. On the way out, we were given a small Roadwired Pod gear pouch with a Mobius logo metal tag attached.

Day 1

The next morning, we all met bright and early for hearty breakfast in the meeting rooms of the hotel.

I was seated in between my old friend James McCarthy of gadgetme.com and new friend Michael Oryl of MobileBurn. The other attendees:

Derek Snyder, Microsoft
John Starkweather, Microsoft
Michael Gartenberg, Juniper Kagen Research
Cord Campbell, Qusers.com
Michael Ducker, Treo Central
Shane Chiang, PPCSG
Rich Brome, Phonescoop
Dan Hanntula, Pocket PC Magazine
Ryan Block, Engadget
Peter Rojas, Engadget
James Kendrick, JK on the Run
Matt Miller, ZDnet
Reggie Supildo, 1SRC
Rafe Blandford, All About Symbian
Arne Hess, theunwired.net
Nick White, Microsoft
Leigh Geary, Cool Smart Phone
Steve Sande, Gizmo Ranch
Micheal Jerz, My-Symbian.com
Paul O’Brien, Modaco
Susi Weaser, Shiny Shiny
Mike Temporale,Smartphone Thoughts
Tong Zhang, Mobile Tech Review
Chris Leckness, Aximsite

After breakfast, John Starkweather kicked off the event by welcoming all of us and reminding us just what the Mobius group stands for:

Mobius is about a never ending conversation. A group devoted to following and reporting topics and news related to mobile devices and consumer electronics.

Each of us then got up in front of the group to introduce ourselves and give a short demo on a device that we had with us. No, I didn’t try for demo #2 with the DualCor ;o) I played it safe with my good ol’Treo 650!

Things got truly underway when Derek Synder of Microsoft gave us a Windows Mobile update. He showed us some whiz bang power toys, a demo of Windows Mobile Live (which now has tabs for chats!), Xbox Live (hopefully out next year), Hurricane Tracker software, a Tony Hawk Skater Pro game on both a Dell x51v and a Motorola Q, and a Medical program that played videos of patient’s medical procedures.

Up next was Nick White of Microsoft. He gave a demo on Vista (that’s the next version of the Windows operating system, for those of you that live under a rock…). The new OS has quite a bit of yummy eye candy, and what looks to be a better photo app than Apple’s iPhoto. He also talked about a new search engine that sounds remarkably like Apple’s Spotlight. Hope it’s FASTER than Spotlight! Once Nick completed his presentation, he passed out Release Candidate CDs of Vista for all of us. Darn, I don’t have a Windows computer to test it out… and no, I don’t think I want to put it on my iMac ;o)

One of our own, Rafe Blandford (allaboutsymbian.com), gave a great presentation about… Symbian! It was a good overview of how Symbian is doing globally. 82.8 million phones as of 2006… WOW! Great job Rafe!

Jim Morrison, CEO of i-Mate gave us all a chuckle when he explained that the JAQ device was created to be an UGLY device on purpose. Supposedly, so no one would want to steal it if you took it to the pub. Hmmmmmmm, I still think he may have been pulling our legs on that one…

Sling Media who we had seen at last year’s Mobius, was back with 3 new devices. The Slingbox tuner for basic analog cable, that allows you to split the coax cable coming into your house. The Slingbox A/V, which is designed for set top box users (TIVO, DVR, Satellite receiver, etc.) has composite and s-video inputs. Both will be $179.99.

Then there is the Slingbox Pro, that has inputs and outputs galore (coax, composite, svideo, connector that allows you connect an HD device). Although the Pro does not stream HD, it does allow the signal to come into the Slingbox. The price will be $249.99 (dongle for HD $49.95).

ComVu was up as the last presenter of the day, with a very cool demo of streaming video from your phone. This is a video blogger’s dream! Really impressive…

All of us then boarded a bus and went down to the Boston harbor to take a little jaunt on the 137ft Roseway Schooner.

We had to stand around for a short time before we were allowed to board the board. John used this time to pass around some dramamine for those that might get sea sick.

I would have liked to hang out here at the harbor for hours!

All aboard! < - Or do they just say that for trains?

Left: Derek Synder of Microsoft talking to Ryan Block of Engadget and Micheal Gartenburg of Jupiter. Right: Susi Weaser of Shiny Shiny, with Tong Zhang of Mobiletechreview.

Now the Roseway is a sailboat, so we (I say that like I actually helped… ;o) had to hoist the sails with some hearty heaving and hoing!

Rich Brome of phonescoop.com, Dan Hanttula of pocketpcmag.com, and Peter Rojas of Engadget are giving it all they’ve got!

Yay! They did it!

The trip was about 3hrs round trip and it was quite enjoyable. Tong and I talked to Susi about how she got started at Shiny Shiny, and Rich Brome, Cord Campbell of Qusers.com and I spent some time talking shop about running websites.

The company was good and the food was also good! The crew served great clam chowder, which was very welcome, due to the fact that I was FREEZING! It was just a bit nippy out there on the water with the wind blowing.

View as we headed back into the harbor.

Day 2

The final day of Mobius started out with another great breakfast, which was quickly followed up with a presentation by
Wes Salmon of Microsoft (formerly pdabuzz). Wes gave us a demo of some of the new features that may be included in Crossbow (the code name
for the next version of Windows Mobile). Although Microsoft did not require us to sign an non disclosure agreement, we were
asked not to discuss any specifics with this new version. I will say that a some of the grumbles and gripes with the current
version of WM have been addressed in the next version.

Next up was Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter. Michael shared lots of statistics with us and initiated an interesting discussion on the definition of the term ‘smartphone’. What makes a phone a smartphone? The Motorola Razr can be used as a PIM, programs can be installed in memory, and you can surf with it. So why don’t we consider it a smartphone? Makes you hmmmmmmmm, doesn’t it?
<>/p>

Horace Luke of Microsoft was the last presenter. He gave us a demo of some exciting new features of Photon, a future version of Windows Mobile. All I can say is “I WANT THIS NOW!”…

After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was spent working on the Mobius Project. We were split into 3 groups. Business User, Social
User and Practical User. Each group’s task was to come up with an uber device. I was part of the Practical User group, along with
James Kendrick, Steve Sande, Michael Temporale, Rafe Blandford, Peter Rojas and Michael Oryl. It might sound like an easy task to
do, but we had a heck of a time trying to pick one idea. All of the information from the 3 groups will be taken back to Horace’s
group at Microsoft, and drawn up. The great part is that they are really interested in our ideas.

The day ended too quickly, and before long I was parked at Logan airport waiting for my flight back to Indy. I tried to use my Treo 650
as a Bluetooth modem for my Powerbook, but was not successful. Although I could pair the two, the service did not show up to allow
me to use it as a modem. Then for some odd reason, Logan’s WiFi provider would not take my credit card info… so I had to just
use the Treo to surf, chat and email.

On the flight home, I sat next to a guy that uses his Treo 650 to receive status emails from nuclear power plants that he manages.
Interesting stuff!

I’m sure you’re all wondering what types of goodies Microsoft handed out to us this year… So here’s the list:

Samsung i320 Smartphone (too bad for me that it’s tri-band and I need 850mhz… sniff!)
Samsung WEP200 Bluetooth Headset
Motorola O Rokr MP3 sunglasses
Ultimate Ears Super.FI earphones
Roadwired Pod gear bag
Treocentral Leather Treo 700 case
Mobius branded sunscreen, lip balm and eye glass cleaning cloth
Stuffbak Loss protection kit
Windows Vista Release Candidate CD
Cell mate car dash no slip mat
Knee Defender

This year’s Mobius was a good one. I enjoyed meeting several new members and catching up with everyone else. I came away from this event with renewed inspiration for all things mobile!

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Mobius Boston 2006 Trip Report originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 2, 2006 at 5:58 pm.

Julie’s comments are in Black, Judie’s are in Blue and italicized.

Mobius 2005 was held at the
Edgewater Inn in Seattle, Washington this year, and other than a jaunt to race go-karts
at Champs on the second evening, we were predominantly on the 3rd floor of the hotel most of the time.
The first night kicked off with a meet and greet held downstairs in the Forest
Room. Here you can see Lisa Gade,
Julie and Joel Evans.

Like previous Mobius events, no one really knows until they arrive, just who else has been invited. Although a large
percentage of the guests this time were old timers, we were happy to see some new faces as well. 22 people were
invited this year. The guests represented the following sites:

The Gadgeteer
Mobile Tech Review
Howard’s Forums
Geek.com
Smartphone Thoughts
Treo Central
Brighthand
Mobileburn
PocketNow
Engadget
Unwired
Clintonfitch.com
Phonescoop
PDA France
PPCSG.com
Threegmobile

Around the room were arranged all sorts of older and current Pocket PC, PPC
phones and Smartphones. I got to finally hold and fool with an HTC Universal,
also known as the
JasJar, and I got to finally handle an
HP Jornada 928 –
the Pocket PC phone I had lusted over in 2002. Since they were not easily
available over here, I never even got to see one in real life. It brings a tear
to your eye, doesn’t it?

I was curious to see the GSM version of Judie’s phone; the HTC Wizard. Too bad that the CPU is half the speed of the 6700, or I’d be tempted to buy one. That said, I found the 6700 to be more sluggish than my Treo 650. But, I did like the bigger screen and larger keyboard. WiFi too!

Picture taken by Shane Chiang of PPCSG.com

Besides just standing around talking gadgets and phones, there was an Xbox 360 set up in one corner of the room. At one point Judie and I saw that there was no one playing with it, so we sat down and tried to play Project Gotham Racing 3. Wow, the graphics on the 360 are great. Too bad we really sucked at the game ;o) I think I spent more time pinned against the guard rail, than racing!

The guy we are all listening to is John Starkweather with Microsoft. He just
got done thanking us for coming and told us to be sure to pick up our new phones
on the way out that night. John also pulled me to the side and told me that he
wouldn’t mind loaning me a JasJar so that I could write a review on it. So maybe
in January I can get started on that.

Hold up – did he say new phones? Hey now!

FYI: John was the person responsible for organizing and leading Mobius this year. Thanks John!

The freebie phone that was given to each attendee was an unlocked i-Mate SP5m, already loaded with software, a 128MB mini-SD card, all of the attendees’ info and our schedule for the upcoming days -very
nice.

I was a little worried that it would be a European version of this phone without 850MHz, but was happy to find that it’s actually a quad band and does work in my town.

The next day we met on the third floor and after eating breakfast we got set
up for the upcoming day. Julie and I sat at the head of the table, which only
seemed right. ;0)

I was directly behind the water pitcher, and Julie was to my left.

The day started out with Ford Davidson presenting a retrospective of mobile
phones – all the way from the old Motorola Dino to these prime examples of
telephonic computer wizardry…

…starting with the
IBM Simon, the
first Smart Phone – ever!

You mean smart brick!

The Motorola
Envoy – I wanted one of these so badly when it came out!

Same here! Weren’t those things super expensive? That’s probably why I never had one ;o)

…and a

Motorola StarTAC with the
clip
on organizer  – I did have one of these! Ah, memory lane…

Would you all believe that my Dad STILL carries a StarTac? He loves that thing because the battery stays charged forever when you don’t make many calls.

…which brought us to the latest Windows Mobile 5 and a sneak peak at the
new Treo 700w.
It’s not quite ready, but will soon be debuting, and it appears to be a pretty
sweet addition to the popular Treo line.

I am VERY interested in this phone. I guess it’s because of all the phones I keep trying, I keep coming back to the Treo 650. I really like the form factor and keyboard size. I just wonder how snappy the 700w will be? I don’t like a sluggish PDA and definitely don’t want a sluggish phone!

Peter Bernard showed us a bunch of

Portable Media Center devices that we weren’t allowed to photograph. so
that’s all I’m going to say about that.

For now I’m quite happy with my Video iPod. It fits in my pocket and although it has a very small screen, it is gorgeous and easy on my eyes. I have yet to develop much interest in the portable media center devices. I guess I’d rather just have an iPAQ 4700, which has a big screen and can do way more than just play movies and music. Of course the iPAQ doesn’t have a 20-60gb hard drive either…

Next, Andre Vrignaud presented us with an in-depth look at the
X-Box 360…and by the time it ended I
was drooling. I’ll wait until next year to get one though, maybe they’ll
actually be available for retail at that time.

It’s a very good thing that I don’t have access to low latency broadband. Because if I could have DSL or Cable, I’d be an Xbox Online junkie for sure. The way the 360 builds a robust sense of community is very appealing to me.

Jeremy Toeman with Sling Media came
in to tell us about their new Sling Box. What a cool premise – through this box
you can watch your TV from anywhere in the world, either on a laptop
computer or a Pocket PC phone like my PPC-6700. This demo was way cooler than
any other "watch TV from your mobile phone" demo I have ever seen…by far!

Jeremy promised to send all the attendees a Sling Box. I’m very excited to try it out. Not sure how well it will work with my Direcway satellite, but I’m willing to give it a shot!

The following presentation about Industry Trends that was obviously recycled
from a previous presentation to people who know all of the industry buzzwords
went right over my head, and my eyes glazed over as drool escaped the corner of
my mouth. Okay – it wasn’t quite that bad…(yes it was!)

I think my brain turned off during that talk, because I only remember the acronym IMS and that’s it. I don’t recall what it even stands for…

Ending the day was a discussion by Peter Wengert about

Windows Automotive. I was interested to hear about a sub-$10,000 vehicle
being introduced in Japan which is computer enabled and completely media ready.
Cool stuff!

He also had a tricked out Hummer with a plasma TV in the back. 3 lucky Mobians got to ride to the evening event in it.

That was the last presentation for the day, so we headed to Champs for a
catered dinner and an evening of go-kart racing where I proceeded to "represent"
since Julie and Lisa didn’t race. ;0)

While Judie was embracing her inner Tony Stewart or Jeff Gordon, Lisa and I got to get up close and personal with the new Motorola Q. I wasn’t overly impressed. The screen seemed smallish and the keyboard cramped. Peter Rojas of Engadget had one of iRiver’s tiny U10 media player that he was showing off. Cool concept, which they came with more storage capacity though.

After the races, John brought out the box
of PDAs from the previous night, and said if any of us wanted some of these
relics we could have them…! Guess which PDA I literally snatched from
the pile? That’s right – the Jornada 928! I even managed to snag one for Julie.

It needs a new power cord and a good cleaning – but isn’t it beautiful?

I got my hands on an old Samsung i600 too.

The next day kicked off with a very interesting speech by Michael Gartenberg
with Jupiter Research Group, regarding how cell-phones have become an almost
invisible item – meaning that similar to their wallet and keys, people don’t
count it when they consider how many items they are packing.

Michael was very entertaining to listen too. I particularly enjoyed the part where he wanted to get people’s ideas on what makes a device caress-able. Is it shine, curves, both? Something else?

Horace Luke presented an amazing demonstration of Photon, a future version of
Windows Mobile. This update is still several years away, but it would appear
that we will be in for a multi-media treat once it finally appears. And that’s
about all I am allowed to say about that.

I for one am very excited if what little bit we were privy to see, actually becomes a reality in a few years. I don’t want to wait that long for it though…

The next presentation was by Paul Pierce and Jason Gordon of Motorola. Paul
was actually on the team that designed the

Motorola Q, which was interesting to finally see in the flesh…

I didn’t much like the keyboard, because the keys felt "plasticy" and very
stiff. Otherwise, the Q is a cool phone, if a bit wide.

This one isn’t for me. It just doesn’t feel like a phone in my hand. I think I’d rather have a Blackberry…

We got to handle the next RAZR…and me likey. Make it a WM5
Smartphone, and I would buy one today.

I must be the only person who doesn’t love the Razr. Whenever I see it, I just think “Beam me up Scotty!”

This is the new

PEBL, which because of its comfortable shape and black rubbery coat just
feels good. If I could get this black paint on my PPC-6700, I would be one
happy camper!

The interior is similar to the RAZR, in that it is a metal keypad with a
distinctive design.

We also got to handle the shiny finish PEBL, which was a total fingerprint
magnet.

Here’s a better shot of its interior…

The PEBL is really slick – but it is no Smartphone.

Nope, it’s not a Smartphone, but the display was really nice and it just felt great in your hand. I also loved how you could press the top and it would spring open. I would actually carry this as my phone because it would fit perfectly in my front jeans pocket.

Also passed around was the
A910,
which although it had a beautiful screen came across as downright clunky after
handling all of those other sleek metallic phones.

The next order of business was to break into workgroups and design the
perfect mobile phone. My group consisted of
Ryan Block, Matt Miller
(palmsolo) and myself, and was moderated by Derek Snyder. We were to discuss
what discussed hardware would be desirable in four different levels of mobile
phones, which we did with great gusto.

My group was moderated by Wes Salmon (from PDA Buzz fame) and had the task of coming up with the best software feature set. There were two other groups which talked about services for phones and … I’m drawing a blank on the last group…
In the end, the groups had to present their ideas in front of the whole group and then vote on them. Hopefully Microsoft will actually use some of this info…

The final session was a discussion on the future of Mobius, and once it
adjourned we were told to pick up our gift from under the Christmas tree – which
turned out to be a pair of Motorola Bluetooth enabled Oakley RAZR sunglasses.

Julie and I then proceeded to the Edgewater Inn’s restaurant,

Six Seven, to have a fabulous meal of Alder Planked Salmon with Sweet Corn
Sauce, Seared Mushrooms and Truffle Oil – YUM! Thanks for treating,
Julie! :0)

You are very welcome. ) I didn’t have the mushrooms though… I *hate* mushrooms. I subbed for garlic mashed potatoes ;o) After dinner, we went to Judie’s room and gabbed about the event for a couple hours. I then went back to my room to get some sleep since I had to get up at 5:30am. YUCK.

The next day brought a four hours delayed flight home for me, due to the
backup caused by the foul weather in Dallas. Ah well, I eventually made it home
safely.

Luckily, I was only late 1hr due to the rerouting of flights through Chicago O’Hare, caused by the accident at Chicago Midway the previous day.

As always, Mobius was a fun time. I enjoyed catching up with Judie and Lisa Gade, as well as meeting new people. It’s a shame there aren’t more small events like this that can bring like minded people together.

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Mobius 2005 Trip Report originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 12, 2005 at 3:56 pm.

Julie’s comments are in Black, Judie’s are
in Blue and italicized.

Read Part 1
here
and Part 2 here.

Friday

Julie and I overslept! I could swear that the alarm
clock was set correctly, but it’s possible that neither of us even heard it when
it went off. In any case, by around 9:30 we were dressed and ready to grab
something quick  for breakfast.

It’s not like we HAD to be anywhere at any specific time, so we weren’t
stressing over it.

This had to be one of the coldest and most nastiest
days either of us have ever experienced in Las Vegas, as we soon found when we
were about to walk out to the bus queue. Since we knew we would have to wait
outside for up to 30 minutes for the next shuttle, we decided instead to take a
cab. I am not sure if you can really tell by this picture – but this was the
Luxor’s cab queue. The outdoor portion anyway! Inside, the line was a good 40
yards long! It took about 45 minutes for us to get in the cab – but at least we
were somewhat warm and definitely dry.

It was pouring down rain and probably 40 degrees. Judie was shivering like
crazy. I wasn’t really all that cold, as we Hoosiers are used to a little chill
in the air ;o)

Once we got to the Convention Center, Julie indulged
me and agreed to check out the vehicles on display in the North Hall. I love
shiny cars with loud stereos – and there were plenty of those to be seen. Check
out this crazy modified Magnum with the Lamborghini doors. You can just see the
DVD screen in its dash…

I’m really not a car person as evidenced by the fact that I drive a 1991 GMC
Sonoma pickup that is starting to look a little ratty. I am hoping to get
something new or new to me this spring. Definitely not a Magnum though.

Julie and I were laughing at this little vehicle –
it is either a poor man’s HUMMER or it is an urban assault golf cart!

Some of the restored classic cars displayed were to
die for – this one in particular…

Ok, now this is MY type of car!

I didn’t quite know what to make of this
Pepto-Bismol pink HUMMER H2 with the fake Louis Vuitton pink Murakami Cherry
Blossom fabric and suede trim. It was pretty atrocious…I like the screen in
the sun-visor, though. Who needs a mirror when you can watch a DVD instead?

Ok, I want to know who the heck really watches DVDs in a vehicle besides
children in the backseat? These vehicles had displays everywhere one could
possibly be installed. It was nutty. I guess it was just a matter of we can,
so therefore we shall…

This rear view mirror has a screen built into its
left side. I believe that it is for a rear camera for these crazily raised
trucks – so you can make sure you don’t back up over a normal sized vehicle!
I’ll bet there are those who are running a DVD feed through them, though.

Okay, you know it is time to quit watching DVDs so
much when you have screens installed in your ski boat!

Insanity!!!

Ooooh, here is my dream car. What does it have to do
with gadgets you ask?

Look – it has an iPod Velcro’d to the dash -Ha!
Doesn’t that seem a bit sacrilege, though? Ummm, yeah ;o)

Same with this bright yellow Ferrari…

You would think they could at least install a cradle
to hold that yellow skinned iPod! ;0)

Here are a couple more tricked out classics that
caught Julie’s and my eye…

The good ol’days gone high tech!

I need this crazy Harley truck for the ranch – I
like how it has the matching 4-wheeler. ;0)

I’ll take the 4 wheeler, you can have the truck. I could do some damage with
it on the trails in my woods.

This gorgeous classic truck was made into a
roadster. The engine was beautiful, but what really made the truck "something
else" was the crocodile horn back trim on the seats – that can’t be very
comfortable!

Who cares about comfort when you have a car that looks like that!

Obviously this truck was never meant to be actually
driven anywhere, but it really caught our eye on the showroom floor.

Back to gadgets! Yay, bout time!

This
Audiovox
headrest DVD player was very cool because it is totally self contained. The DVD
pops into the top and then the watcher can plug headphones into the front jack.
Now if you have two kids who ride in the back of your car that can’t ever agree
on what to watch, they can each watch their own thing. Kids today are just
spoiled rotten, huh?! ;0)

Why when I was a kid all we could do on trips was to play "I spy with my
little eye" and we LIKED it!

Pioneer had a booth set up with their sponsored
driver Danica Patrick’s
Indy Car.

In case you wanted to see an example of how crowded
the floor was in this area…we were packed like sardines in a can!

To say that this show was crowded would be an understatement. There’s nothing
quite as joyous as walking around with thousands of other people as they jostle,
bump, stop, and sometimes even fart as you are trying to make your way to the
next vendor. We must really love our gadgets to do this every year ;o)

Soon, we grew tired of looking at cars, and so we
moved to the home audio and video section. Never had I seen so many plasma and
HD screens in one place. Not that I own one or anything (yet!), but they almost
seemed passé when there were so many together in one place.

We walked by these unusual speakers. Though they
would not go with either Julie’s or my home decor, they definitely had a fun
"pod" look which I liked.

We saw quite a few gorgeous wooden speakers that I would love to have in my
basement living room.

The THX booth had
a home theater set up which I would be quite happy owning – those speakers and
subwoofer managed to rumble the floor in a very satisfying manner.

These huge
Earthquake speakers
seemed to combine the best of wood speakers with the plastic pod design of the
speakers pictures above.

Hidden amongst all of the sound products was a mini
DVD player. This seems to be the antithesis of the new digital media players
that are out. Note the itty bitty screen and the bulky plastic body? Yuck. Plus
you have to buy the specialized DVDs. Granted this device seems to be mainly
aimed at kids, and it probably has a low price point, but I would be happier
teaching my kid how to rip their own DVDs that they already own, then showing
them how to transfer them to a memory card to play on a Pocket PC or other
portable media device…but then, that’s just me. :0P

I don’t recall what the price point was for the unit or the discs. I agree
that this is another one of those products that will probably never see the
light of day at your local Wal-Mart or Target stores. The thing is that the
entire unit looked almost big enough to play full sized DVDs… So go figure.

The next booth had yet another little media player thingy that of course we
don’t recall the name of. Are you getting the impression that everything was
starting to go in one eye and out the other by this point?

This was a really neat idea – biometric door locks!
I already have a touchpad lock on my back door, but this beast is pretty enough
to install on the front of the house. It looks like it will either accept a
fingerprint or a button code – pretty cool!

I wonder how well it works when your hands are freezing cold or even wet? I
don’t have much experience (can you say NONE) when it comes to products such as
these. I would like to know if they run on batteries or if they are electric. If
electric, what happens in the event of a storm and power loss?
Ours takes batteries but has a key for when the batteries
die.

For some reason, these pastel laptop speakers
tickled me…probably because even they weren’t enough to soften the harsh
black of that laptop. Maybe it needs some of the
Wrist Rugs that Julie
and I picked up at last year’s CES! ;0)

By this time, Julie and I were completely "over"
fighting the crowds and we were just about walked out. The foul weather outside
and the fact that it had actually snowed that afternoon – even though briefly –
made us ready to head back to the hotel a bit earlier than usual.

At least we lucked out and didn’t have wait for the shuttle for longer than
5mins or so. Our bus driver was a little… shall I say… different.
Judie and I sat right behind her and kept looking at each other when she would
say something wacko. At one point she asked the passengers if we wanted to go
for a drink somewhere. She wanted us all to go see the
Chippendale’s dancers with her…as if! :0P

As you can see in these pictures, the weather
outside was nasty. What you can’t feel is how cold it was! Thankfully, we
were able to quickly catch a shuttle bus back.

As we were leaving, we passed the new TRAM station
across the street from the convention center. Right now there are only a couple
of hotels that are actually hooked to it – but hopefully in a couple more years
it will actually reach the hotels on the strip.

Actually, I believe the tram stopped at Mandalay Bay which if I’m not
completely insane, is next to the Luxor. So we could have given it a spin…
Maybe next time. Oooh, I missed that. If that’s the
case, then we should have tried it. :0)

After we had arrived back at the Luxor, we got a
call from Dan Parsons, one of our guest reviewers who also happens to own the
company that hosts our site. He was in town
for the show and wanted to meet. Since we had
already made plans to eat at the Cheesecake Factory at Caesar’s, he agreed to
meet us there.

While we were waiting for them to arrive, Judie and I remembered that we had
not yet completed one of our traditional CES rituals… gambling $20! So off we
went to find a lonely slot machine in dire need of our money. I have to say that
I think we each lost our money in record time this year. I don’t think it took
more than 20mins max. We did have slightly better luck when I bet $10 on black
at the roulette wheel for my friend Ryan. We won that spin, but then lost the
next $10 on a duplicate spin. Oh well…

Once Dan and his girlfriend Kara had arrived, we watched the
animated Atlantis show as we waited for our seats…pure cheese!

The pictures don’t do the show justice as there were shooting flames and
plumes of water. Whee!

After a delicious meal punctuated with lots of
laughter and freely given information from one of the smartest
computer-guys I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, we all headed back to the
Luxor so that Dan could take a look at the elusive Sony PSP, which Julie had
forgotten to bring along to dinner. I didn’t think that Dan was going to want to give it
up – but I told him that he would have to fight me for it. ;0)

He mastered the Ridge Racer game quite quickly, although it took a few
minutes to figure out how to get past the dorky pre game as none of us speak
Japanese.

Julie and I were surprised when we realized that it
was almost 11:00 and we both had time-sucking flights ahead of us the next
morning. So, it was lights out and good night!

This year’s CES was similar to those of previous years in that it is always
fun to look forward to, but then only too soon becomes a blur of lights, sounds,
huddled masses, taxi lines, tired shoulders and feet. We came, we saw, we
survived. Until next year…

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2005 Article Day 3 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 13, 2005 at 12:00 am.

Julie’s comments are in Black, Judie’s are
in Blue and italicized.

Read Part 1
here
and Part 3 here.

Thursday

We started the day with a rib sticking Luxor buffet breakfast. We had to gear
up for a full day of walking didn’t we? Actually their buffet was pretty darn
good. Once we finished, we found the complementary shuttle bus pick up and were
lucky enough to walk out only 5 minutes or so before the bus arrived to take us
to the convention center.

Yes, we were very lucky because it was pretty chilly
outside! At least it wasn’t raining, though…not today, anyway!

We got off the shuttle a bit too early, and found
that we were at the wrong South end of the humongous convention center. A brisk
walk got us to the correct entrance and up to the Press area.

Our first task was to check in to the press registration area to get our
credentials.

Right after getting our cards and neck pouches (the
ultimate non-cool accessory), we turned in our coupon for a free CES Press bag.
The picture below shows the stacks that they had waiting to be claimed.

This process was relatively quick and painless and soon we were loaded down
with a very nice CES embroidered shoulder bag. Just the item we would need to
schlep around our swag and product materials.

For the last couple of years we have gotten
backpacks that could also roll, but this year we got a nice shoulder bag with
all sorts of pockets and a padded area for a laptop. After loading it down a bit
with brochures and things, we started to really miss the rolling bags of
previous years.

We had hoped to be able to check email before hitting the show floor, but a
quick look in the computer room showed that all the computers were occupied. So
we decided to grab a soda, sit down and go through our new bags.

They had come pre-loaded with brochures, pads of
paper, and other small items for our perusal. Shortly thereafter, we decided it was time to hit the showroom floor, so off we
went to punish our feet.

One of the first unusual things that we saw was a
poor guy having to walk around in a SanDisk SD Card costume. We decided to
pretend we were at Disney, and get our pictures taken with him.

He should have been passing out free 2gb card samples! ;o)

The following picture is a public service
announcement: Men, when you’re at a trade show and they have an air guitar
contest, you should not enter, because some other attendee may take a
picture of you being ridiculous and post it on their web site for all to see.
Seriously, what happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas! Ha! ;0)

Oregon
Scientific always has neat weather gadgets, and this year was more of the
same. This indoor weather station includes a

portable weather radio. Just what you need when a tornado is coming and you
are hiding in the cellar!

I really like their products. A few years ago I bought 4 of their atomic
clock / wireless temperature monitors for Christmas presents. Everyone I gave
them to is still using them. 

Following the wet theme that I mentioned in part
one, we began to see the first of many water resistant products, like this
camera by…

Ummmm Judie, it’s the "Pentio" That’s the Pentax OptioWP for all you
normal people… ;o)

These pictures are here to represent the plethora
of mini-flash drives Julie and I would encounter throughout the day. Seriously,
we saw so many that it was just mind-boggling. Some were straight-up data
receptacles, and some were also mini-MP3 players. It got to a point where Julie
and I had to wonder out loud how these type companies can stay in business, when
there is so much competition – some backed by big name companies. Most of the
ones that we saw were from companies that we had never heard of, and will likely
never hear of again.

The ones above were wrapped in leather. I think we saw some with rhinestones
too. Crazy really!

We found the
Gizmondo, and though Julie played with it for a moment, it didn’t do
anything for me. Why? Because I had already played with the
PSP that she had brought to Vegas
for me to see! <drool>

The Gizmondo feels pretty solid. Not sure how well it’s going to do in the
same market as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP though… I don’t hold out much
hope.

Digital content media players were everywhere, like
this new PQI mPack. This player actually
looks pretty sweet – as evidenced by its
specs page.

Benq had a huge
booth of various items. One of the more interesting things that they had one
display was this odd little mobile phone/MP3 player, the Z2.

Could you picture yourself actually using this phone to talk to someone?
Uhhh, No.

For those of you that like to go snorkeling while
listening to music…cue the Jaws theme!

Julie busted me while I was registering to win a
flat screen TV. I have a feeling that by entering "online product reviewer" as
my occupation, I may have killed my chances of winning. I should have entered
"rancher." ;0)

This was a pretty cool product that we stumbled
across – the LensPen. Julie and I have a
huge pet peeve with fingerprints and dust on our screens. This product comes in
various sizes to tackle jobs large or small, but the gist of it is that it uses
carbon blacking to remove finger grease and dust, making the screen once again
pristine – as when new. Sometimes it is the simplest products that really
impressed you, but both of us walked away from that booth glad that we had found
it! I want their largest size, the
VidiMax for my TV and
computer screens!

They also had versions specifically designed to clean camera lenses. I passed
them off to Bill to try out on his camera. It’s always nice to come across a
product that is different or new.

How would you like to lay down while playing
videogames, on a mat with built in speakers and vibration effects (from
"rumbling bass). Well, you can with the
Pyramat! This mat is also aimed at people who just want to relax and listen
to music…

Somehow I don’t think I’d be able to relax all that well with a thumping
speaker in the pillow.

I’ll be reviewing a similar product soon, but
evidently there are a couple of companies that are putting out fashionable
MP3 watches.
These are from Aigo.

We stumbled into the large Xavix booth where they were displaying a small
docking station that connected to your TV. Different packages are available such
as bowling, golf, tennis and baseball.

I can hear you now, "Why do we need yet another
video game console?" Well, I admit that I was thinking that too. What makes
Xavix different is that you actually have to get involved in the game by moving
and actually being in the game. Most of the games are fitness / sports oriented
at this time, but I bet that some of you RPG players might see some future
possibilities after seeing these pictures.

Games appear on the TV screen and you interact with them using the included wireless
tennis racket, golf club, bowling ball etc.

Okay, so you have to have a television in front of
you and then you have to actually "do" the sport. Here is a booth -lady
bowling…

Now imagine if you were in front of a screen like
this and instead of boxing like this guy, you were swinging a wireless sword or
other weapon that got your character into the game in a way like never before. I
don’t think that Xavix is planning on releasing any games like that, but it
would be cool…don’t you think?

I was actually pretty impressed with the reaction time of the boxer vs. the
screen refresh. The game kept up with his moves pretty easily. I think your idea
of a RPG hack/slash game for this product is excellent!
Yah, you’d just need a really large and clear area
to play!

I can see this incarnation of the game selling
really well with executives that live for the golf course. This duffer doesn’t
look too pleased with his swing results…

We kept noticing life-size cutouts of Jackie Chan and then learned that he
was going to be there to promote a fitness product.

Of course we couldn’t miss
seeing him in person, so we camped out at a nearby table and waited for the
press event. Soon we were smooshed into a small area with too many other people
as we listened to him describe the product and then demonstrate it for us. Wow,
that guy is in good shape!

With our mighty press badges, we were able to get
right up front.

After his speech about his new Xavix fitness game,
Jackie went on to demonstrate how to use the footpad and follow along with his
onscreen character’s moves.

The free press luncheon was next on our agenda. We lucked out and didn’t have
to stand in line very long at all before we were filling our plates with chicken
and rice. Not too bad for free food.

Once we had finished, we got back on the floor and
began to wander through the booths again. I believe that it was in the Nikon
booth where we found this mock-up village. It was set up so that you could test
the zooming features on various cameras. I am sure that some of our professional
photographers (yes, I mean you, Bill) have probably seen something like
this before, but I thought it was pretty nifty.

As mentioned before, Sirius and XM had large displays promoting their wares.
The new Xact Sirius caught both Judie’s and my eye.

As if their cool new portable Sirius devices weren’t
enough, Xact was also giving
away a couple of Sirius custom-fitted Vespas. Yes, I entered that give-away,
too!

I’d really like to try one of the portable units. I’m wondering how well the
antenna really works though. Since they are still pretty large, I’m not sure if
I’ll be packing one in my pocket anytime soon. That said, I’ve been enjoying my
XM radio more than my iPod lately <shudder>.

Ha! To think that you used to think I was crazy for
saying I didn’t need a digital music player since I had satellite radio! Of
course, now you are telling me the same thing about Replay and Tivo. I guess I
will have to get one…one day! But I digress…

Actually, the whole Xact booth impressed me. A lot
of their items looked really unique and clever, like their

home phones and the tiny

telephone headset pictured on the right.

These Xact

WristLinx communicators looked pretty cool – too bad they aren’t mobile
phones.

You still have a Dick Tracy watch fetish don’t you?
I do! ;0)

Nearby, Sirius was doing a live broadcast of Maxim
Radio. Maybe you caught the show that day…two vapid models were talking about
how "down-to-earth" Carmen Elektra is, but totally dissing Lindsey Lohan as a
"trashy party girl." Oh, you missed that show? No big loss. :0P

Memorex had a
couple of cute little orange shaped MP3 players on display. The "rind"
supposedly slides back to reveal the ports and / or card slots. I guess it is a
fun design, but I would not want one.

Not sure how well it would fit in a pocket. You can’t tell by the picture,
but the rubber rind is actually orange in color.

GPX had a couple
of imaginative booth displays…

For the teenager that has everything but an
MP3 player  – mouthy CD cases. <rolling eyes>

Thunderbird products are a great combination of
retro styling with modern function. I liked the mini-fridge with the built-in
clock, and the iPod radio was a fun idea, too. We thought at first that the iPod
might slide into the top of the radio, but it looks like it just sits in the
well and broadcasts through the speaker.

If I remember correctly, the Thunderbird brand was a spin-off of the Jeep
brand of products that we looked at during last year’s CES.

How would you like to have a multi-colored LED
display on your alarm clock. I thought this was cute idea – and much more fun
than the standard green.

After looking around a bit more, we decided to take a walk across the street
to quickly check out some of the other smaller buildings.

On our way, we passed a display of
Zap cars. These little two-seaters are
SMART cars that have been Americanized by Zap. They offer 60mpg and SMART-Safe
construction and exchangeable body panels. I think they would be great for
anyone that has a commute to deal with.

I thought these were electric cars, but they are actually powered by
gasoline. They only have a 8.7 gallon tank capacity. But the 60mpg is
incredible.

Inside the pavilions across the street, we were
under whelmed by the offerings. However, there was one booth that caught our
interest. I believe that this is just a screen on which a projected image is
being shined, but it got me thinking about how cool a TV that looked like this
would be. Maybe one day…

Why is it that I think of Star Wars when I see these displays? Obiwan, you’re
my only hope…

Since everything seemed so lame on this side of the
street, we decided to head back over to the main halls of the convention center.
On the way over we couldn’t help but notice the huge Motorola Snow
board exhibit where real snowboarders were flying down the incline packed with
artificial snow.

Back over to the main buildings, we check out the
Wowwee booth. They were showing off the
Robosapien and friends. The dinosaur was
especially cool, as was the new larger robot.

Creative had
booth-bunnies running around in 60s inspired mini-dresses with colorful belts
holding multiple Zen Micro players.

These little Zen players are very compact. I remarked to the PR person in the
booth that the interface was a total iPod rip-off. She didn’t seem to be
offended which was good as I meant it as a compliment.

InClosia had a
booth displaying some of their items that have been created to add real wood,
leather or fabric to items that we use everyday. Julie and I were a little
disappointed that the only iPAQ covers they had were for the 3600 series. :0/

It seemed strange to us that a company would be showing off products for such
an old product. I don’t know about you, but I would be interested in a cover for
my hx4700.

Otterbox had
a booth set up displaying their products in the climate in which they are meant
to be used…

I recently reviewed this exact

portable cooler, so it was fun to see one set up with a thermostat
display…

By this time, we were exhausted. We headed back to
the hotel and in a move that is totally not usual for me, I laid down and
took a two hour nap while Julie surfed on my laptop. Once I woke up and we were
ready to head out again, we decided to catch an
IMAX movie
at the Luxor’s theater. Here you can see us with the 3D glasses on – we look
like bugs, don’t we? ;0)

We saw
The
Haunted Castle. I wish we could have seen the 3D Shark movie that was showing
at a different time. I thought that the Haunted Castle’s story was crap, but the
effects seemed pretty good. I had never seen a 3D IMAX movie, before.

I thought the movie was going to be halfway good at first. The opening scenes
were pretty great as far as computer generated images go. But then they had to
have a stupid animated character follow the hero around. I liked the band that
played in the movie. I’d never heard of Arid before.

We didn’t want to try to balance food, drinks and
talking to vendors once we hit the
ShowStoppers event at the
MGM, so we decided
to eat at the Luxor’s Buffet again. Once again, we were pleasantly surprised by
how good it was.

Once we got to the event, I was surprised by how
nice the food looked – but I am still glad we didn’t eat there. ;0) 

The
Pogo booth featured
their new multimedia device that is made to directly work with
Tivo.

The mediaNOW device also has a built in camera, voice recorder, FM radio and
a 20gb hard drive.

Finally we got to the booth I was really looking
forward to seeing, the OQO. I am
really glad that I got to see this little guy in person. While I love the
small size and the idea of XP in my purse, the screen did not seem as bright as
I would have liked (neither on battery power nor when plugged in), the battery
life is (of course) too low and the lack of any upgradeability makes me think I
should wait for the next build before making the purchase.

I agree that the OQO is impressive for packing all that computer goodness in
such a small footprint. But like you, I don’t find the screen to be bright
enough for my liking.

The next booth was showing off another pocket sized wireless surf/email
device. This one employed Bluetooth to connect to your mobile phone and ISP.
Unfortunately, we can’t remember the name of the company or the product…

This desktop PC looks like a great product for
college students. The keyboard has storage slots built in for syncing and
charging the user’s cellular phone and MP3 player. If you like the idea of
having all of your gear compatible, then this would be the way to go. Yah, and
guess what – we can’t remember the name of this product either! :0P

The
AutoXRay is an OBD and OBDII scanner that though aimed at women, would be
good for anyone that wants to know what is wrong with their car before taking it
in for service.

Judie and I were a little peeved that the booth person automatically assumed
that we didn’t know anything about cars and would need this device. I’m not
saying I DO not anything about cars, but you know what they say about
assuming things…I actually went to mechanic’s
school in 1993, so I probably do know a little bit more about cars than
most men!

Once we were ready to leave, we found that the cab
queue was totally out of hand and it was too cold to stand inactive in the same
spot for long. I asked Julie if she was game for just walking back to the Luxor,
as I figured we would get there in the same amount of time or less! I am glad we
took the hike, as it was the only real Las Vegas Strip walking we would do…

I didn’t mind the walk at all. It could have been a bit warmer out, but it
wasn’t bad. It was pretty cool seeing all the lights from the casinos.

We walked across two raised pedestrian bridges, and
took night shots from the bridge between the MGM and New York, New York.

Once back to the Luxor, I discovered that I was
hungry again! I tell you, I can be a bottomless pit sometimes. :0P So Julie sat
with me in the Luxor’s cafe as I enjoyed a most excellent Philly cheese steak.
Just to give you an example of how beat I was: when the waitress brought
my Diet Pepsi with the lime in it, I added a couple of packets of Sweet’nLow to
the mixture! I was so tired that I had forgotten I ordered DP, and I
thought I had ordered an iced tea! It wasn’t until the volcanic reaction began
that I realized what I had done. At least Julie and I got a good laugh out of
it, and the very nice waitress didn’t mind swapping my drink out for a fresh
one.

I tried to talk her into doing it again, but unfortunately, her drink didn’t
have enough fizz for the chemical reaction. After we finished playing Ms.
Wizards, we headed back to the room to rest our feet, go through our
Showstoppers loot and get some sleep. We had one day left before returning home.

Part 3 here.

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2005 Article Day 2 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 12, 2005 at 12:00 am.

Julie’s comments are in Black, Judie’s are
in Blue and italicized.

When most people are still trying to recover from holiday season festivities,
the first week of January is the time to take a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada to
check out the Mecca for all gadgeteer’s:  the
Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This show
which began in 1967, is the show in which many new products were first debuted.
Products such as the VCR, CD, DVD and Plasma TV.

This is the show where retailers and other industry
insiders get their first look at the newest offerings by established consumer
electronics companies. It is also a place where smaller manufacturers can bring
prototype products to gauge interest or look for financial backing. Everybody is
there to see what the "next big thing" will be, to make their best deals and to
place their orders.

This year the show played host to attendees from more than 110 countries who
could visit over 2,500 exhibits encompassing over 1.4 million square feet of
floor space. Can you say humongous?

Every year Julie and I leave for Vegas expecting CES
to be a large show, and we never leave disappointed. However, we were to soon
find out that it is possible for a show to be too big…

Wednesday

I really hate travel days, they just feel like an enormous time suck. This
trip was worse than most as I had to get up at about 3am in order to get out the
door by 4:30am for a 7am flight. The 1hr drive to the airport was not fun as it
was pouring cats and dogs.

I was fortunate that my flight wasn’t leaving until
11, but that meant I wouldn’t be in Las Vegas until almost four – Julie was
supposed to be in Vegas much earlier.

The actual flight took off on time, but 1hr before we were to land in Las
Vegas, the captain came on and said we had to land in Denver, Colorado due to visibility
problems in LV. So we land and it’s snowing like crazy in Denver. I think it
snowed an inch in the hour or so that we sitting there on the plane. After they
de-iced us, we were back in the air and finally landed in LV 3hrs late. I had
been all worried that I was going to be bored waiting for Judie because my
flight was supposed to get into LV at 8am. As it turned out, I didn’t get to the
hotel until after 1pm. Judie arrived around 5pm.

I would have been to the hotel much earlier,
but for the cab queue from hell! I kid you not, the line was snaked
around the sidewalk so many times that it was mind-boggling. Add to that the
fact that it was cold outside, and by the time I finally got into the cab – over
an hour after my flight had landed – I was a 5’10" popsicle! Little did I know
that that cab queue was a taste of much of our CES stay would be like – waiting
in line and shivering.

Our first CES event of the trip was the Digital Experience show at the
Bellagio hotel. We had missed this show last
year, so we were both looking forward to attending it this time around.
These smaller shows outside of the main convention center are special events
that are typically just for the press/media people. In a way, they are actually
a lot more fun than the main show because they are not as crowded.

These shows are also much more directly targeted to
specific interests. When we signed up for CES we have to specify a list of items
that we were interested in. Since consumer electronics covers everything from
car stereos and speakers to microwave ovens that scan a food items bar code to
know its cook-time to the racks that hold the servers that host a website, it
helps that these shows narrow things down a bit.

The theme for Digital Experience was "Alien
Invasion," so we had to walk through a thematic arch with booth bunnies dressed
as aliens who were handing out Mardi Gras beads that included the spaceship
theme. Julie and I did not get any of the beads, nor did we carry a
blow-up alien doll, nor did we pick up a stuffed bean bag alien. But we did get
tons of other swag… ;0)

What Judie is not telling you is that the first words out of her mouth when
she saw the beads were "I want some of those!".

Woooo – Mardi Gras beads! ;0)

Actually, I wouldn’t have minded a green alien blow up doll for myself ;o)

Once in the hall, there were tables set up all over
on which various vendors were showing their wares. One of the first tables we
came to was Toshiba’s. Amazingly enough, on display was a tiny 4GB hard drive.
The PR told us that as early as this year, PDAs might be sporting these drives,
but she would not give up any specifics! Well, we already know about the
Zaurus
SL-C3000 and its built- in 4GB hard drive, but what I want to know is when
we will be seeing this type of built-in memory in our Palms and Pocket PCs?

My guess is that we’ll finally see these little drives in our PDAs when
battery life gets way better.

We also got to see the new

iPAQ h2000 series, which features a built-in flip-lid, ala the
HP Jornada 548,
circa 2000.

It also features the biometric fingerprint scanner. I wonder if this one
works any better than the one on the old
5400 series iPAQs?
The size of the h2000 is nice, but I think I’ll stick with my
hx4700 for
the time being. Me too!

Targus had a
table featuring their new signature line of laptop bags, focused on the female
buyer…

Although bags like these are something I’d never personally be interested in,
I am thrilled that techno-savvy females can now garner accessories and even
devices that appeal to their sense of style.

Sanyo had a colorful table with their new
video-phone, the MM7400, on display. Hey – what do you know? I have Sprint
service in my town…but in all honesty I  prefer to take my digital videos
with my camera, not my phone. More on that, later!

Imation’s table had their new scratch-proof CDs on
display, but what really caught Julie’s and my interest was their
Lifemix line of
cards. These are cards that are made specifically to hold a CD of burned images,
music, files, or whatever the sender desires. The cards are themed for occasions
like Holidays, Birthdays, New Baby, Anniversaries, Weddings, etc. I thought this
was a great idea.

It is a very cool idea for the crafty person in your family. I know people
that have a tradition of creating CD photo albums and calendars for their
relatives, this product would make those gifts even more special.

We soon came to a table where a group of people were
handing out $2 bills and these red boxes. Even though Julie and I are quite used
to swag by now, it is not every day when someone hands us cash to stop and look
at their booth. It turns out that Shopzilla
is a new service in the vein of

CNET’s Shopper.com  or
PriceGrabber. Inside the red box was a desk clock and a calculator – hey
that’s a little bit better swag than the typical pen or clip!

Right! Their goodies definitely were a caliber above most of the vendors
there.

I was pleasantly surprised to come across the

Epson Photo Fine P2000, as this is a product I would really like to review.

All of these media players (and trust me, we saw bazillions of them…) are
cool, but truthfully, they don’t get my heart racing as I already have a device
that can play video, music, view pictures and do a heckuvalot more. It’s called
the HP hx4700 iPAQ.

Well, I am looking at the fact that this particular
device would be a 40GB receptacle for media files while on the road. It supports
Compact Flash and SD memory cards
as well as MS/SM/MMC/XD if you use a CF adaptor.

At the series of Microsoft tables, we finally saw a
Motorola MPx in
person. The phone is really pretty cool – but of course it does me a fat lot of
good in San Angelo, the home of "no GSM service." :0P

I had seen the MPx at the last Mobius event in December. It’s ok I suppose.
But, the keyboard is too funky for my liking.

The next Vendor was Sonos. They have an
interesting product that distributes music throughout your house by way of
toaster sized boxes called ZonePlayers. They don’t use WiFi, but instead they
use a wireless mesh network to stream music. The whole setup is pretty spendy
though…

When we came to the Sony tables, I half expected to
see a display of Sony digital Walkmen like my
NW-HD1.
But instead we got to see the newest
Aibos, the third
generation

ERS-7M2/W and ERS-7M2/B. These guys are way more lifelike and
fun than the
ERS-210 Julie and I reviewed back in 2001. My how time flies…

We also saw the new

Sony V Series TV-PC. This PC has a 200 or 250GB hard drive, perfect to hold
all of the TV shows that can be record directly to it, because this PC is also a
17" or 20" flat screen television. Me likey!

Me too! Gorgeous display! The thing is that it is not running Windows XP
Media Center. The Sony media interface actually looks more interesting than
Microsoft’s.

The Fossil booth’s PR guy was wearing something that
Julie and I had never thought we would see in real life – the

Fossil Palm PDA watch that was supposed to come out over two years ago. The
PR guy assured us that they were really available now and that they had been
worth the wait. I just checked the web site, and sure enough – they are, for
$249. While I could see wearing one when I was totally geeking out, this PDA
watch is quite large and I doubt I would want to wear it every day. With that
said, I was actually quite impressed with the impromptu demo he gave us. There
is also a less expensive Abacus version available, but I don’t think it looks as
good…surprise, surprise. ;0)

The watch runs Palm OS V4.x. It has a touch screen and yes, you can install
applications just like you would a ‘real’ Palm OS PDAs. I actually might be
dweebie enough to wear one of those!

In what would turn out to be a reoccurring theme, we
saw our first consumer electronic that was displayed in a wet environment. The
amphibious

Pentax Optio WP. I’ll tell you before Julie busts me on it that I called it a "Pentio"
several times that night. For some reason I decided that name was easier than
saying Pentax Optio.

Judie has her own language. She’s a linguist savant. ;o)

The next booth caught Judie’s eye first.

Only because I am always on the lookout for cool
iPod accessories for Julie to review. :0)

She nudged me and pointed to a table
filled with all kinds of nifty iPod paraphernalia.
Digital Lifestyle Outfiters A.K.A. DLO
had a cool display with products such as iPod FM transmitters, cases and even an
iPod/iPod Mini 20 watts per channel boombox called the iBoom.

How would you like to watch TV on your mobile phone?
Nah, me neither. But if you change your mind then you should look at
mobiTV,
carried on the Sprint PCS network.

Although the concept was interesting, when we walked away from the booth, we
both turned to each other and said "too choppy"… This will be a cool service
when transfer speeds increase significantly.

Look, a little Rio MP3 player. Judie and I are now jaded with players as my
fave is still the iPod, and she loves her NetWalkman. Truthfully, I took a look
at her NetWalkman, and it’s really a beauty! Tinier then what I had imagined. I
would actually be tempted to jump to it.

Look, a table full of
Blackberries! YUM!

And then we came upon the iRiver booth
with their media players and audio players. I think I prefer the iPod’s touch
wheel to their touch channel thingy…

Archos was there showing their products.
This was the first time that Judie had a chance to see their little Gmini 400
(background left image).

This looked like a pretty cool all in one
Sirius portable unit. The suction cup
attaches to your vehicle’s windshield and the everything is self contained and
will transmit to your FM radio. The player can be removed and brought inside for
docking.

This wouldn’t be the first time we were to see satellite radio devices during
this trip. I wish I had one of each! What I liked about this particular model
was that it had a up/down lever instead of a dial to scroll through stations.

I guess laptop bags for women are turning into a big
market, but nothing I saw was really scratching my itch. This one is remarkable
only because it managed to rip off the style of a toile and leather Hermes
Birkin. I wouldn’t carry it, though.

Again, not my style ;o)

The device below is for those who want to enjoy SMS without
having to type their messages on a mobile phone’s keyboard.

Somehow failed to get info on that product so we don’t even remember the
name. Sorry…I guess you can tell we weren’t super
impressed. ;0)

After we were done with the booths in the Digital
Experience Show, Julie and I decided we were hungry! No, we did not eat any of
the food that was offered in the show because we have found that it is about
impossible to shake hands and speak to people when you are holding much more
than a glass of diet coke in one hand and a brochure in the other. After walking
around and looking at the menus on some of the Bellagio’s restaurants, we
decided to give one a try. But then we were told that without a reservation it
wasn’t happening, at least not that busy night. We ducked into the Caffe
Bellagio, where I enjoyed a Thai Chicken wrap and Julie had the Asian Chicken
Salad.

I was hoping that the salad would be similar to AppleBee’s Oriental Chicken
Salad, but no such luck. The chicken was cold ( Oh well, we would have better
food later…

After the days events, we were bushed, so we soon
returned to the room

Continue on to part Part 2.

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2005 Article Day 1 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 11, 2005 at 12:00 am.

Judie’s comments are in Black, Julie’s are
in Blue and italicized.

After such a lame tradeshow experience at
TECHXNY / PC Expo,
Julie and I were really looking forward to returning to the
Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
in Las Vegas. The last time we attended, in
2002, we were both quite impressed
with not only the number of vendors, but also the number of attendees. Let’s
face it – you can have the greatest show on earth, but if no one is there to see
it, then the show won’t go on…

CES is always a great time, mainly because it’s in
Vegas. If you like to eat, like to spend money, and love to people watch, Vegas
is the place to be. Like Judie said, after the let down of PC Expo, we were
ready to be inundated with gadgets, and gizmos.

After much anticipation, the date finally arrived and Julie and I were about
to jet across the country to Las Vegas.

Wednesday:

For once, I didn’t have to get up insanely early for a first flight out in
the morning. In fact, I didn’t have to be to be at the airport until 10am! I had
a quick lay over in Dallas, and was in Las Vegas without incident at 3pm.

I didn’t have to be in Indy until 2pm and I had a
direct flight to Vegas, which is always nice.

Shortly after deplaning, I got a call from Julie that she was waiting for me
in the Baggage Claim area, and that she was at the #2 carrousel. This sounded
great, as I was headed to #1. Once I got there, I didn’t worry that I couldn’t
see her at the neighboring conveyor belt. I began gathering my bags and called
to see where she was.

As I was waiting for my bags to come out, I kept
looking over towards the #1 area to see if I could see her. It took forever for
my bags to come out, and during the time, we kept calling each other to ask if
either could see the other.

Julie and I were starting to wonder what the heck was up, but then decided
that there must be several different terminals involved. Would you believe that
in all the times we have met each other in Vegas for shows, we have always ended
up arriving  and leaving from the same terminal! So we had just assumed
there was only one…we should have known better!

Yeah, after we kept calling each other asking "what
do you see?" and realized we were either not at the same airport, or something
was wacko, I went over and asked a security person if there was another baggage
claim area. It was then that I found out that there were two terminals. Can you
say doh! So I went outside and hopped on a shuttle to the other terminal.

Once I finally saw Julie coming through the door, we were finally able to get
in the very short line for a quick shuttle ride to our hotel, this time the
Excalibur. Of course, we had
wasted almost an hour between our terminal shenanigans and the shuttle ride, so
by the time we got to the hotel to check in, it was almost 5pm. Julie had not
yet received her PRESS badge, so we decided to grab something quick to eat and
then head over to the convention center.

Judie and I had used the same exact information in
our registration applications, but for some reason they declined my application
and then they lost it. By the time I got everything straightened out, it was too
late to mail my badge to me.

Shuttles were running until 6pm, so we were in luck. We caught the last bus
and got off at the South hall with the one other passenger. Once inside, Julie
got registered and we both picked up our press bags (sponsored by Toshiba) and
scanned the aisles of press releases and info that were already set up.

This year the press bags were my favorite color,
green. )

Afterwards, we noticed that the computer room was somewhat empty, so we
decided to take the opportunity to jump on the internet and check our email.
Little did we know that this would be our last opportunity to do so for the rest
of the trip!

Excalibur didn’t have high speed access, and Judie
didn’t have MSN or AOL installed on her Fuji, so we remained unconnected the
rest of the trip.

One cool thing we noticed was that the

Dell 4600C computers we were using in the press room were the same model as
the two that Steve and I had just ordered for our home office. I had not seen
the 4600C in person yet, so I was pleasantly surprised with the small size of
the tower.

I taught Judie how to use telnet and pine to check
her email on our server. It was way faster and easier than using a web based
client.

After we had our fill of email (mostly SPAM!), we started exploring. One of
the beautiful things about having a Press badge is that you get access to just
about anywhere you would like to go, without a hassle. Before we entered the
first showroom, Julie and I made a quick pit stop at a beaming station to get
the latest vendor booth list…

The application beamed to my HP2215 actually worked
this year. Not that I really used it that much. But hey, I could if I needed to.

Then we took a look at the mayhem that precedes the show. Forklifts, boxes,
sweaty guys huffing heavy objects and other guys that get paid to point. Here
you can see the Microsoft Direct booth with the SPOT watch display. Julie and I
were looking forward to our appointment the next day where we would learn more
about them.

It’s amazing how unfinished the floor looked at 8pm
that evening, when it was due to open to the public at 10am the next morning.
There sure are a lot of man hours and flitting around that makes a show like
this all come together. It would be interesting to know just how many people
were involved in the whole thing.

We eventually started to get thirsty, so we headed over to the Hilton hotel,
which is next door to the convention center (a friendly
security guard that moved to Vegas way back in 1929 gave us directions).
On our way, we were stopped by Scott Hynd and two of his
LobeMan co-workers. We chatted for a bit,
and he was nice enough to give us a sample of the new
LobeMan FM Radio
earpiece. More on that, later.

During the whole trip, Judie and I were stopped by
various people that happened to see our name tags. We received several "I love
your site" accolades, which made us feel like mini celebs.

We had honestly planned on going to the Digital Experience Show, but by now
it was almost 8pm (the DE show started at 7pm), and we were tired! So instead,
we caught one of the shuttles bussing people back from the keynote. Once we got
back to the hotel, we took time to go through all of the materials we had picked
up in the press room.

About this time, we realized that we would have neither internet access nor a
good cell phone signal in our third floor room. Since the  view from our window
was of the side of the next building, I figured we were in poor area for any
kind of transmission. Julie suggested I give the LobeMan a try, and I was
pleasantly surprised to find out that it got a great signal in our cave –
clearly picking up quite a few Vegas stations, including one that played the
alternative rock that I like. After wearing the LobeMan for over half an hour, I
was surprised that it had never started bugging my ear and that I was actually
enjoying wearing the thing.

I tried it on too and also found it to be more
comfortable that I thought it would be.

Not much later, we called it a night and crashed.

Thursday:

We awoke at 7am, which felt really early, and after getting ready
decided that the buffet downstairs made the most sense for breakfast. Since we
didn’t have a safe in our room, and since my entire life is still on my laptop,
I wanted to store it in the hotel’s safe. Once we got downstairs, I learned that
all one is allowed to store in the Excalibur’s safe is money and jewelry. Oddly
enough, the Bell Desk is where hotel guests are supposed to leave their
electronics. So we trekked over there and I checked my Fujitsu.

I found it unusual that our rooms didn’t have a safe
in them… I can’t remember the last hotel that I stayed in that didn’t have
one.

If you were in line at the buffet, maybe you noticed us. We were the total
geeks with our Press bags trailing behind us as we went through the line. We
weren’t the only ones doing this, but we decided that the next day we would
leave the bags in the room until after we had eaten.

Yeah, it was slightly difficult to jungle the bag
handle and a humungous plate of food as we walked down the serving line.

After all the safety precautions taken for my computer, I totally freaked out
when I realized that I had left my engagement/wedding ring and the diamond ring
I wear on my right hand lying on the counter in our bathroom upstairs! Julie and
I raced up the elevator to our room, and I thought I would throw up when I
realized that the room had already been cleaned! It wasn’t that long ago that I
had read
about Michelle Branch staying at the Aladdin and how she had her laptop, iPod,
cell phone and other personal items stolen. Never mind the fact that the rapper
Nelly had had one million dollars worth of jewelry stolen from his room
in the same hotel. Can you blame me if I was completely paranoid?! As I looked
in the bathroom, I breathed a sigh of relief seeing my two rings lying there
untouched. I know it pays to be careful, but this experience totally restored my
faith in the hotel service industry.

Julie and I headed down the elevators again, and then got in a l-o-n-g line
that was forming in the rear rotunda. Soon, the shuttle bus arrived and we were
on our way.

We were definitely ready to start the day and see
some gadgets!

Once we got to the convention center, it was obvious that the calm we had
seen the night before was the quiet before the storm. There were people
everywhere, and it was just insane!

As we entered the Central hall for our 10:00 meeting with Jeep, some girl
handed us a VIP pass to get in to Real‘s 3rd
Eye Blind concert Friday night at the Harley Davidson Cafe. Figuring that there
were way more passes being handed out than there would be room for attendees,
Julie and I just pocketed the laminated passes. At the time, we hadn’t yet heard
that Jewell and Santana would also be playing at invitation only vendor concerts
while we were there. Heck, in the Sirius booth alone there were quite a few
music acts,
never mind the
minor
celebrities that were scattered around the convention center in various
booths. I am mentioning this because I just want you, our readers, to get an
idea of the kind of money being spent at this show.

From the advertising to the entertainment to the
construction, millions had to have been spent on this show… Just to give you
an idea of some of the sillier things that money was spent on, there were people
dressed in blue suits and dark sunglasses that walked through the aisles handing
out blue business cards that said "Get Connected" on one side (in various
languages) and had the Bluetooth logo on the other.

As we arrived for our Jeep meeting, we greeted Brian Murphy. He showed us
some of the new items that will be coming out from the Jeep line of consumer
products.

Julie and I both thought this was a cool product, a "stop-light" for your
garage. With a price point of around $30 – $40, this one will make a great gift for
anyone you know that regularly parks in the garage and is worried about
misjudging the wall.

How about a cooler with a built in radio?

Can you say tailgate party?!

This power station looks like a great safety tool to keep in your auto’s
trunk. You plug it in at home until it is fully charged, and it will hold the
charge while stored, until you need it to "jump" your car’s dead battery, shine
a light, or whatever. According to Brian, this Power
Station can hold a charge for weeks.

Before you start thinking that all of Jeep’s products look ruggedized, here
is an offering from their new line of executive gifts…

What is this one?

I don’t recall, but it looks cool! ;o)

I guess I am behind the times, but I can honestly say that I have never felt
a need to sing Karaoke (unless you count singing along with the radio)..

For those that want to shine a light on the subject while they listen to
their "tunes"…

Jeep seemed to have added lights to quite a few of
their products…

Brian’s favorite, a heavy duty portable radio… It
had pretty decent sound for such a small device.

After our meeting, we ambled back over towards the South hall. Believe it or
not, we were already hungry again. RCA was kind enough to be sponsoring a free press
luncheon Thursday through Friday, so we got in line. Here is what it looked like
as we left – cattle call!

While the food was actually quite good, the seating
situation was very very cramped.

As we were leaving the luncheon, we ran into the comedian, Gallagher. He was
holding his trademark slice of watermelon (natch).

Julie and I decided that we were going to knock out the South and North halls
in one day. Perhaps we were being a bit ambitious, but it was growing very
obvious that this was the largest CES ever, and that we were going to be hard
pressed to see everything.

As we entered the South hall and started to take in some of the booths, we
came across Griffin Technologies, makers
of the Parental Control Key, which I
thought looked very interesting. Expect a review in the near future.

The Parental Control Key is a small USB drive like
device that when plugged into a PC, will allow a parent to restrict applications, files,
and internet usage.

An aisle or so over, we came across ICP
Solar. Here we found a familiar logo in a
futuristic
application: a solar powered SCOTTeVEST.
Imagine being able to power your gear while you wear your jacket – not a bad
idea – especially if you are outside much of the day. The jacket looked much
better on the form than it did the model, no offense to the model. She was so
tiny that the jacket looked like an oversized trench coat on her petite
frame.

Maybe a male model would have been a better…unless Scott is going to add
XX Small to the available sizes?

In addition to the panels sewn into the jacket, a
small charger module that you connect your devices to is included.

We were also shown a backpack that uses the same solar technology to charge
portable electronics – I can think of at least one teenager that would love to
be able to charge her CD player’s batteries while wearing her backpack…

We also got a look at the new
SCOTTeVEST
TEC Sport Jacket on the company’s founder and CEO, Scott Jordan. I think
that that this worsted wool jacket will be a huge success for the
company, as it is a logical next step.

The only suggestion that I have, based on less than five minutes spent
looking at Scott wearing it, is that I think a slightly heavier weight jacket
might be in order if the wearer is going to load it as heavily as I suspect
Scott’s was.

Killing time until our next meeting, Julie and I explored the booths and
saw…
What has to be the world’s smallest PCs.

The Latte P4 mini PC from
Saint Song Corp.
can have up to a 3.06Gz processor and 2GB of RAM. WOW!

Otter’s booth, featuring the Armor 3600
I recently reviewed…

Julie seemed taken by all of the different mini MP3 players we kept
seeing…think this one was imitating her beloved iPod a bit?

They were everywhere, and in all shapes and sizes.
You’re right, the one above does look like an iPod rip-off. In reality, the
NHD-150D from Nextway co.
is only a 1.5GB player. The player below, also from Nextway, is the 512mb
NMP-612T. The unique feature of this player is the slide out USB connector that
allows you to plug it directly into your PC.

The player above on the right is from iAudio. The
cool thing about it was the color backlight on the LCD. You could choose from
124 different colors, and assign different colors for different playing modes.

I found my dream keyboard. Imagine a keyboard with an SD/MMC,
Memory Stick, and CFI & II card reader built in. Impressive, don’t you think?

The KB Reader
Pro keyboard which includes a USB 2.0 hub, is from
Atech Flash Technology, Inc. The reader
module is even removable.

Julie and I stopped to watch a small robot moving about this booth.

You know, I have to admit that by 2004 I had really hoped that robots would
be more common place, more upright, and definitely more human-like. Maybe not to
the point of those in AI or
Bicentennial Man, but
further along than what we have seen so far. Hopefully in the next 25 years, CES
will begin to include true consumer robots…what a thought. You could order a
Rosie while at the show!

I’d rather have an Andrew (Robin Williams in
Bicentennial Man).

Oregon Scientific
had a great display of their combination weather station and atomic clock
products, including their red

Ferrari design line.

I want this phone…

Oregon Scientific has some very nice products. I’ve
had an atomic clock with a wireless temperature module for a year or so. I’d
love to do a review on a one of their comprehensive weather stations.

This tablet style device is the Pepper Pad from
Pepper Computer, Inc..
It runs a Linux OS, has 256mb of RAM and has built in WiFi.

The folks at
Nite Ize were
displaying their popular flashlights and holders, along with something
unusual… Lighted frisbees.

Timex is still putting out some great
watches. These are some of their new fitness models…

They even have a Speedpass model
for those of you that want to get fuel from Mobile and Exxon stations without pulling out your wallet.

In addition to the billions of MP3 players that we saw on the show floor,
digital cameras seemed to occupy a majority of vendors booths.

Next up, Julie and I had a meeting  to see the
EyeTop, a set of sunglasses
that have a small video screen built into the lower right lens. While the idea
is great for people who are serious about their mobile video applications, I
have to admit that I felt like an extra in a sci-fi movie while wearing them.

I felt like I’d been assimilated by the Borg! ;o)

Since we had a meeting in less than forty-five minutes over in the Central
hall, Julie and I agreed that we were done with the South. We made pretty good
time on our way, so when a DTS rep snagged
us and wanted us to witness the latest in home theater sound, we decided to stay
for the show.

We watched a selection of scenes from
X2,
Pirates of the Caribbean, and a
music video. It sounded great!

They had a room setup as the ultimate home theater.
Decked out with a huge screen, speakers and movie theater style seats, it was
nice just to be able to sit down for a few minutes. The guy seated next to me
must have felt the same way.  Not long after they turned down the lights, he
started to snore!

Next up was our 3:00pm  meeting with Microsoft to see their new Smart
Personal Object Technology (SPOT)
watches.

While we were waiting for the previous meeting to
finish up, I snarfed down  some freebie cookies. At one point I looked up and
saw Ryan Kairer of Palminfocenter.com. We exchanged hellos, and he showed us the
SPOT watch on his wrist. Soon after, we were ushered into our meeting.

After a quick overview of what the watches could do, Julie and I were hooked!
These watches are able to capture customized content such as local, national and
international weather, one way MSN messenger messages, breaking and headline
news as well as sports information. Even though I am probably in the minority, I
fell in love with the Dick Tracy watch.

I really like your style of watch, I just didn’t
care for the cartoon watch faces.

Julie liked the square model shown on the left…

Although we both were sure that we’d be unable to
receive coverage where we live, we still each wanted to buy one. We were told
that they were available there in Las Vegas at the Fossil store in the Aladdin
shops. We knew where we’d be going the next day!

After our last meeting of the day, Julie and I ventured to the North hall to
peruse the autos showcasing automobile audio visual products…

I thought I had seen it all, until I saw the paint job on this H2…

"I bought a pretty cool wagon and we call it a woody
Surf City, here we come…"

Julie and I enjoyed a game of "Spot the Mini," which was easy to play seeing
as this cute car was a favorite of many of the vendors. I wouldn’t have believed
you could get 20" wheels on one – until I saw this car. I would imagine that the
first rut this Mini hits will take out the wheel well. That is – if the stereo
thumping doesn’t cause the back end to bottom out first.

More Minis with crazy paint schemes and stereos…

This car defied all explanation. Somewhere, some one is very proud of it. I,
on the other hand, was left shaking my head and wondering, "Why?"

Do people actually drive these things, or just look
at them? ;o)

One of the nicest looking Toyota Supras I have ever seen…

We even saw the famous Pepsi truck from the
Pepsi Vanilla commercial…

Of all the cars we saw, this was Julie’s favorite…

Right.  It didn’t have an insane paint job, it was
just a nice shiny truck )

By this time, we were just about walked out. Julie and I took the shuttle
back to our hotel and freshened up, then went to eat dinner before our next
event. Since we were tired and didn’t want to walk very far – much less take a
cab anywhere, we settled on
Sir Galahad’s Pub. I
have to admit, I didn’t know what to expect when we entered the restaurant. The
whole castle and medieval thing was starting to grate on me, but the menu was
reasonably priced and the offerings looked edible. Turns out the prime rib was
actually quite good. Never mind that the delicious house salad was served in
giant proportions with a tasty bread basket; we could have easily filled up on
the appetizers alone…

I agree, the salad was fantastic (except when I
accidentally ate an olive).   I’d never had prime rib before and it was yummy!

After dinner we caught a cab to the
Venetian to attend Showstoppers, a small party showcasing fifty or so
different product vendors.

Shortly after we arrived at the hotel, my cell phone
started ringing. It was Lisa Gade of
PDA Buyer’s Guide.
She asked if we’d arrived yet. We made our way to the Grand Ballrooms and met
her and Tong Zhang.   After visiting for a little while, Judie and I started
making our way around the room looking at the various vendors.

Wherify was
displaying their tiny new
GPS
Universal Locator.

We were given a demo of the $99 media player from
Zvue. At that
price, I was sure it was going to be a flimsy device. I was totally wrong.

Sony’s third generation Aibo, the

ERS-7  is the most amazing robot dog that we have seen to date. Take a look
at its

features.

After an hour or so, Julie decided that we had seen enough for one day. After
standing in a cab queue for an entertaining half hour behind
Lazlow, we finally got back to the hotel and
crashed.

Friday:

The alarm went off at 7am and I think we both groaned at the same time. This
was going to be our last day at the show and I don’t know about Judie, but I was
feeling overwhelmed at what was left to see and do.

Definitely! Even though we had knocked out the North and South halls, there
was still the massive Central hall, as well as the Silver hall – which was
basically a huge tent erected across the street from the convention center.
There was also a model home with the latest in home automation and
computerization set up in that area. It was starting to stress me out, just
thinking about how we were going to make time to see everything.

Not ones to whine and
complain (ok, maybe we did a little…), we got up, got ready, and headed down
to the breakfast buffet! Which brings up a question… Who the heck eats lemon
pie or chocolate cake for breakfast? I swear, the buffet at the Excalibur had a
whole dessert bar open. Can you say eck?

Not that that stopped people from helping themselves. I guess they were going
to get their $10′s worth!

After eating our fill of eggs, grits, bacon and other fat free food, we went
back up to the room to get our bags and then back downstairs to hop on the
shuttle to the convention center.

The plan for this day was to visit the Silver and
Central hall Exhibits. Silver was an entire exhibit area outside and across from
the convention center in a large white tent. We were looking forward to
perusing this area for offbeat and unusual products.

Actually, the first plan was to wait in the line at Starbucks for 20minutes
and get my morning caffeine!

As we were walking across the street, Judie
excitedly pointed out two blue Mini Coopers with Netscape logos driving down the
street. We each dived for our cameras and were able to snap a few shots. We
really should have counted all the Minis that we saw on this trip! )

Speaking of Netscape – I never did get one of those fab commuter mugs they
were handing out at their booth! Actually, we never even found that
booth…but I digress…

After we entered the tent, one of the first interesting products that we
happened upon was the Wildseed /

Smartskin booth. They were
demonstrating a cool looking phone that is able to change its ring tones, screen
styles, video clips, pictures, and games by snapping on a new cover. The covers
have a smart chip embedded in the spine that includes all the information
necessary to totally transform your phone into something that matches your
style.

The phones themselves were quite cool – with a built in camera and all of the
other features people expect in a GSM/GPRS phone. The skin gimmick really set
this phone apart from any I had ever seen, though.

They had covers that could convert your phone into a Hello Kitty phone, or
into a KORN phone. Kids are going to love this product which is slated for
availability in the spring of this year.

Not just kids, I bet. They had a good supply of covers/themes already
available. I think it would be too fun to be able to change your phone’s
personality on a whim.

As we were walking away from the Smartskin booth, we turned to see something
completely different and unexpected! This company creates complex self playing musical
instrument groups.

Ragtime Automated Music can make anything from a simple player piano to a
wagon with hundreds of automated instruments all playing without human
intervention. No more one-man-band, this is a no-man-band!
☺

The iBiz booth was a busy one. They had
their laser keyboard setup for demos. Most PDA fans have seen pictures or heard
about this wild new Virtual keyboard that allows you to type onto a full-size
keyboard which is shone on a flat surface. It’s pretty difficult to see the
keyboard shining on the table in the picture below, but in reality it is easy to
see.

If the lighting hadn’t been so bright in the room, coupled with the camera’s
flash, the red keyboard would have stood out much better…

When I sat down to give it a try, I could barely type with it. For me it just
felt too awkward not to have actual keys to press. The iBiz people told us that
this keyboard is best for hunt and peck style typists.

Like me – the four finger typist.

Next to the iBiz area was an exhibit from
Synosphere. They were showing a product
called the Blue Dock. Designed for Pocket PCs and Palm PDAs, this small docking
station allows your PDA to, in effect, become your only PC!

There are a lot of mobile warriors that have been using their PDAs as a
laptop replacement. This product takes that idea a huge step forward!

The dock includes 2
USB ports for a keyboard and mouse, 1 SVGA port for a monitor and an Ethernet
port. Pop in your PDA, and badaa boom baada bing, you can see and interact with
everything on a full-size monitor. I think this a very cool concept, one
which I will most happily adopt when PDAs have at least 20GBs of RAM and even
faster processors. Being able to carry ALL my email and our entire website in my
pocket for easy access would really be a dream come true for me!

Definitely! He really only showed us the spreadsheet application, and the
today screen. I would love to see Pocket PC and Palm games on a computer
monitor, though, as well as all of the other PDA applications that we can’t live
without.

Every mouse deserves a nice mouse pad right? How about a Persian style, or an
Oriental style MouseRug? Available in a
wide variety of styles and colors, these thin mats are a funky way to decorate
your cube at work or your desk at home. This same company also had WristRugs
and CoasterRugs. The WristRugs were smaller and thinner variations of the
MouseRugs, with adhesive backing. They can be cut down to size and stuck to the
wrist rest area of a notebook computer.

Our next stop was at the egrips.com booth.
We stopped and chatted with the CEO for a moment, and then Julie
snapped him holding their product on a mobile phone…

Then we came upon our new friends at the LobeMan exhibit. The LobeMan is a
nifty little light weight radio that hangs on your ear like a Jabra handsfree
mic/earphone. It is inexpensive and can be personalized with a variety of snap
on covers. Judie was impressed by this little gadget and plans a review in the
near future.

Next we visited the Ram Mounting Systems booth. If you
are looking for a way to mount all kinds of
devices to the interior of a car, this is the place to check out.

Judie freaked out when we came to the Visart booth which had the most awesome
looking thin desktop picture frame style LCD screens on display. They had built
in card readers that supported SM, SD, CF, MMC, MS, MS Pro and IBM Microdrives.

I really liked the smooth way that the frames would scroll through the
pictures. I think it would be too cool if an outside camera could be hooked up
to one of these frames. You could have unobtrusive surveillance that fits into
any decor.

Another "what’s this doing at CES" booth that we came across was a juicer
and food processor
exhibit from Dong A Oscar Co. They had a
whole assembly line going with pasta makers and juice extractors. I’ll have a
carrot juice with a side of wheat grass please ;o)

They offered Julie and I a sip, but I quickly showed the man my Starbucks
cup. He was like, "coffee is no good for you!" I replied with, "but it tastes
good!" The orange carrot juice muck they were making did absolutely nothing for
me. I did like how the pasta maker was cranking out the fresh noodles, though…

As soon as  we walked around the corner and I saw the HomePod from
Xsense
Connectivity, Inc., I was like oooooooh, nifty! This product is a wireless
(802.11b or wired ethernet) network music player that supports MP3, WMA, AAC,
WAV and internet radio. It was obvious to us that the name and general design
was totally iPod inspired. We learned about a couple of interesting features
regarding the HomePod, including the fact that it has digital coaxial and
optical SPDIF ports.

Julie was shocked when I wasn’t more interested in this product, but since my
house is already wired with a central stereo system, I didn’t think that this
would be something I would use. Later, I began to wonder if it was something I
could utilize to stream my online Sirius broadcasts through, which could then be
patched into the central stereo system. Hmmmm…

When I saw this next product, the first thing that popped into my mind was
the magical talking flute in the old Saturday morning show called H.R.
Puffinstuff (am I showing my age here?). Much to my utter disappointment,
this was not a magical talking flute at all, but the StikAx. It’s a sort of musical instrument /
music mixer that interfaces via USB with your PC, to allow you to play and capture music. Small sound snippets are assigned to
the individual buttons so that you can play the stick like an instrument.

If I understood correctly, you hold one of these in each hand. Looking like a
pair of futuristic game controls, you start and stop audio with one hand while
controlling video with the other. Software on the computer shows you progress and allows almost infinite editing. You can create some imaginative
videos with this tool – and the price point was really reasonable.

A quick look at our watches told us that we had to hurry back to the South
Hall for another freebie press luncheon.

Cattle call, more like…

After we gobbled our food, we hurried over to the Central Hall to meet with
the folks at the Car Chip booth. Allow me to complain for a moment to the folks
that set up the booth numbering system for the various halls? Were you all drunk
when you laid out the floor plans, or what? I think Judie and I wandered up and
down a million aisles for 30 minutes before we found the right booth. The booth
numbers (which were stuck on the floor in front of each of the various booths)
would count up almost to the number we were looking for, and then would
invariably jump 100 or 200 numbers past where we were looking. We were about ready
to give up until Judie finally called our contact and we were given directions. ARGH!

What was the kicker was that we were one aisle over from where we needed to
be. I was about ready to slap the guy or gal that had come up with the asinine
numbering system!

Once we were in the booth, I pulled out the module that had been installed in
my Mini for the last two weeks. Once the data was loaded to the computer screen,
Julie and I got a chuckle at the way you could immediately tell when Steve or I
had been driving the car. Everyone was confused about the four minute lull in a
25 minute trip on the day we had left for the airport, until I explained that
that had been when we went through the drive through at Starbucks. ;0)

After our meeting was finished we fought our way through the throngs of
people to look at various other products and before we knew it, it was time for
our last meeting of the day with the folks at Salton and their
beyond connected
home product line. These products include the iCEBOX CounterTop Kitchen
Entertainment Center, Beyond Microwave and Beyond Home Hub.

I thought the iCEBOX computer was pretty cool with its touch screen, washable
keyboard and remote. With a built in CD/DVD/TV and FM radio, I could see this
product becoming a very popular kitchen appliance.

The Beyond microwave is also something I could see myself using. A built in
bar code reader can be used to scan the codes of various foods to determine
cooking times automatically. Foods not included in its database can be stored
for later use.

It looked so easy that a child could do it – scan the food and hit enter.
Wait a bit, food’s done. Nothing to read, no major programming involved. Simple.

All of the Beyond products can be connected to the hub, which doubles as a
clock radio, and CD player. Using .NET technology, it pulls down personalized
information such as news, weather, stocks and more. It will even tell you if you
forgot to add water to your Beyond Coffee maker. Very cool!

I love the idea of having a alarm clock that tells my coffeemaker when to
start brewing – or of being able to enter my preferences into a website that
talks to my alarm clock.

After we left the Beyond booth, I think both of us were about ‘over it’. The
crowds were insane and our feet were killing us, so we decided it was time to
say goodbye to CES and say hello to shopping!

It wasn’t until we were riding the bus back to the hotel that I read what we
had already suspected: that this CES was the largest ever. The show had covered
over one million square feet, and there had been a record number of vendors. On
the one hand, Julie and I felt like there were still things we needed to
see…on the other hand, by this point we were too worn out to see them. Whether
we had actually done it or not, we felt like we had actually walked a
million miles.

But first we had to wait in line for a shuttle with everyone else that was
ready to call it a day.

We heard several people talking about how overwhelmingly huge the show had
been. Even though it was too big, I think Julie and I would take that any day
over a puny display like we saw in New York.

Oh yeah, you know it!

We took a shuttle back to the hotel, dumped off our bags and then
took a cab to the Aladdin desert passage shops at the Aladdin hotel. Our mission
was to visit the Fossil shop and each buy a SPOT watch.

Julie picked up the Fossil

Square, and I got the

Dick Tracy model. We both signed up for a year’s worth of service, fully
knowing that the watches would most likely not work once we returned home. We
both liked that when we traveled, the watches would keep us connected.

Of course we had to stop and rub the Buddha’s belly
outside the Lucky store for good luck!

After we bought our watches, we stopped at a cafe to drink a Coke (one of the
few we had on the trip because Pepsi seems to own Las Vegas!), and wait for
our watches to update with new info.

You would have thought it was Christmas morning, the way we were squealing as
our watches flashed their welcome messages and began downloading content. Every
time one of us would get a news flash, we would have to read it to the other!
New watch faces even downloaded as we were walking around.

Not long after, we headed back to the Excalibur, packed our bags and went to
sleep.

Saturday:

Judie’s flight was at 6:30am, so she had to be at the airport by 4:30am. Even
though my flight was at 9:30am, I told her I would go with her to the airport
early. Since we would be in different terminals and wouldn’t be able to sit
together during our wait, she talked me out of getting up at 3am to go with
her… I didn’t resist ;o)

Well, it just didn’t make sense for Julie to get up at 3am for a 9:30am
flight!

As I was walking through the hotel’s casino and lobby at 4am, I have to admit
that I was astounded by the number of people that were either just coming in
from a night of partying, or who were still going strong in the casino. I admire
their stamina…especially after the way Julie and I exhausted ourselves on this
trip.

Without incident, I went through the airport check-in, and was soon enjoying
a Cinnabon without icing and a
illy
caffè latte…YUMMY..

Just to show how gnat brained that I can be, I ended up getting to the
airport at 6:30am, and didn’t realize I was there 3hrs early, instead of the
customary 2hrs. ARGH, I could have slept an extra hour. Then my flight was
delayed about 90mins… After what seemed like forever, I made it home to good
old Columbus, IN. As they say, there’s no place like home!

My plane actually arrived about ten minutes early, so when Steve and Sarah
pulled up at our regional airport, I was sitting outside on a bench waiting for
them with my bags gathered nearby. I was so glad to be home – and ready to get
some more sleep!

This year’s CES show was the largest show to date.  There was over 1
million square feet of exhibit space and more exhibitors than in previous
years. Everyone seemed in a good mood, which makes us hopeful that the economy
is really perking up.

Julie and I have decided that no matter what other shows we might check out
during the year, we are going to make CES a yearly event from now on. It has
truly set itself apart from the other shows we have attended. Hopefully next
year we will be ready for its massiveness. Maybe an extra travel day should be
in order!

Side note: Judie only had Starbucks once the entire trip! ACK!
Now wait a minute – I still had several lattes – they just weren’t all
from Starbucks! ☺

Yes, but you would have had more if there had been
as Starbucks ;o)

Until next year, that’s all folks!

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

CES 2004 Trip Report Article originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 16, 2004 at 12:00 am.

Julie’s comments are in BLACK and Judie’s are
in BLUE and italicized

Wednesday

Blue skies, bright sun and mild temperatures greeted us as we began a full
day of New York city sight seeing. We started out among throngs of people,
walking along Times Square. As a person from a small town (Population
35,000-ish), the sheer number of pedestrians never ceased to amaze me. People
watching alone, would make for an interesting past time there.

The closest thing I had experienced that I could
compare such masses of people to, would have to be Mardi Gras; specifically
Bourbon Street. It was just amazing how many people were out. Doesn’t anybody
work?!

As we walked down the street, the first building that caught our attention
was The Great American Chocolate
Company. Just looking in the window made my sweet
tooth ache!

We were very good, though – we only looked in the
window.

Since Julie and I had a 48 hour bus pass, we decided
to get on and see what we had missed by getting off early the day before.

We
relaxed and listened to our guide (different than the day before) as he told us
about the sights. Even though we sat through a good portion of the tour that we
had already seen, we did learn some new things.

It was good hearing another tour guide give his
spiel. We got an older gentleman that had traveled all over the world, but had
lived in New York since the mid 60s. He could even remember when SoHo was
populated with hippies and it was affordable to live there!

When Judie noticed a restaurant on a corner called
Texas Texas, my eyes
wandered over to the opposite corner where I noticed a popcorn store called
Popcorn, Indiana! This was just too funny considering the fact that Judie lives
in Texas, and I live in Indiana. Coincidence? I think not! Well ok, it probably
was. ;o)

One of Julie’s and my highest priorities for this
trip to New York was to visit Ground Zero.

We got off the bus at the closest stop, and walked the few
blocks to the area. Although neither of us really knew what to expect, I think
we both got goose bumps when we first saw the huge 22 acre crater where the twin
towers had once stood. The whole area was enclosed by a tall steel fence that
made picture taking somewhat difficult. Plaques were attached along the fence in
a sort of time line display of the tragedy.

People were lined up along the fence, some taking
pictures, some reading the plaques, and some just looking at the crater, which
is now a busy construction site. Here are some of the pictures we took…

The far right picture is of a skyscraper that was damaged during the attacks
and is still being repaired…

Because the second anniversary of the attacks was
only days before we came, there were many wreaths and flowers still lined up
from the memorial service.

Next, we got back on the tour bus and rode the short distance to Pier 17.

One interesting thing that had happened on the bus as
we rode towards the pier, was that the tour guide pointed out that this was the
Five Points area, which was portrayed in the movie
Gangs of New York. If
you haven’t seen that movie, you might want to check it out. It is amazing
watching how it was in the early days of New York. Even though the movie is
fiction, it is based on facts.

At the Pier, we grabbed a bite to eat in the food court, window shopped in the indoor
mall and snapped a few pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge, the East River, Brooklyn
across the river and several old
ships. We also enjoyed the fishy odor…

We thought that we would take advantage of our free
ferry passes to Ellis Island. To do so, we were told that we would need to walk
for about 10 minutes towards
Battery Park.
Once there, we would find the ferry …

… but unfortunately when we got there, we learned that the last
boat leaving for the island had left at 3:00. It was now 3:45. Oh well… Judie was able to snap
a picture of the statue from the edge of the park…

As we were walking through the park on the way back to
the tour bus stop, we passed the

Bowling Green subway station. Seeing it from three sides, you would never
guess that it wasn’t just an ancient building on the edge of a park..

We got back on the bus again, briefly saw Central Park, and then headed back
to Times Square. Since we had been walking most of the day, we were both
starving. So, our last task of the day was to find some place different
to eat. The cool thing about NYC is the wide variety of restaurants. Like our
visit to Scotland this past spring, having such a selection of foods to try was
one of the best parts of the trip.

It was almost as if we had too much selection,
though. We would see so many different types of food that we had never tried,
that it was hard to make a decision. We would be walking along starving, but not
wanting to settle on just any old thing – we wanted to try something totally
"out there".

We walked up and down the streets trying to find something different. We
passed Italian, Chinese, and American restaurants…

Thai, Brazilian, and Japanese…

But they
didn’t really strike our fancy. As we were walking by one small store front, a
person standing outside caught our attention by handing us a menu. We looked up
to see that it was an Afghan restaurant. The menu listed different types of meat
kabobs, which enticed us enough to give it a try. And wow, are we glad that we
did! The music and decorations in the restaurant created a unique atmosphere
which made us feel like we were even farther from home than NYC.

We started with the Sambossa, which are fried
dumplings filled with seasoned ground beef with a tasty yogurt dipping sauce on the
side. The pastry was flaky and the meat was expertly spiced. These fried dumplings were
delicious!

Judie ordered the Beef Kofta (ground beef marinated in fresh grated spices,
broiled over wood charcoal) and I ordered the Kebab Combo which included
chicken, pork and beef kabobs. Both meals came with Afghan bread and the
yummiest rice that I’d had in a long while. We were both curious about the rice
dish, so we asked our waiter about it. He actually had his brother the chef come
out to talk to us. We learned that he made the dish from scratch using basmati
rice and 16 herbs and spices.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we asked the man
that had handed us our menu to pose for a picture. I told him we were writing a
trip report, and that we would mention the restaurant in it. He said, "You
should have told me, we would have given you the best service!" I laughingly
told him that they had given us the best service. Everyone in

Afghan Kebob House #3 was friendly, the service was good, the prices were
inexpensive, and the food was tasty – what more can you ask for?!

With full bellies and tired feet, we headed back to the hotel, wondering what
the next day would have in store for us.

Thursday

Hurricane Isabel caused Thursday to be breezy and somewhat gloomy. We spent
quite a bit of the day exploring streets and shops that we had missed during the
previous days. This was also the day that we had to do our requisite souvenir
shopping. For me, this consisted of the mandatory mini Statue of Liberty
figurine.

I got Sarah a couple of shirts from the MTV store,
located under the MTV studio…

We decided that we couldn’t leave NYC without seeing a Broadway play.

Julie called the hotel concierge, and was told that
tickets to the popular shows were in the $150+ range. In our ignorance, we
figured that was probably about right, since Vegas shows can run $100+.

Luckily, we
found out that we could stand in line at a
TKTS stand and buy tickets for
half the
original price. So, that’s what we did, stand in line… for two long hours. The
only thing that kept us entertained as we stood there were the Times Square
flashing advertisements on the buildings, and the old man that kept walking up and
down the lines trying to sell umbrellas "$2 now, $5 after it starts to rain…"

The guy in front of us bought an umbrella because he
reasoned that if he did, it would not rain. He was right. we never had any!
While Julie held our place in line, I ran up to the front to see what available
shows were on the marquee. There were so many to choose from – but we figured it
would be fun to see one that had a star that we recognized, whether from the
movies or TV. We created a short list to choose from once we got
to the booth and knew what was still available. We really weren’t that far
back in line because we got there so early. By the time TKTS opened, the line
had looped several times along the sidewalk behind us and to our sides!

Once we got up to the ticket booth, we decided on a musical called
The Boy From
Oz with Hugh Jackman (AKA Wolverine from the X-men movie). We got the tickets
for $51 each. Not bad considering that our hotel box office had wanted $185 for
the same tickets! OUCH!

Now that we were armed with our Broadway tickets, we
were free to go exploring again. Thus began a marathon walk that included the
Rockefeller Center once again, and some of the more famous landmarks in
Manhattan.

The CityMantis electric scooter would
have really come in handy by this time! ;o)

We were awed by the beauty of
St
Patrick’s Cathedral, which is the largest Gothic style cathedral in the
United States. It is just amazing when you consider how a building like this (as
well as many of New York’s skyscrapers, for that matter) was created in a time
when there were no cranes.

If architecture is your thing, NYC can keep you occupied for quite awhile.
The only thing is that you’ll end up with a pain in the neck from constantly
looking up to see the best features of some of the older buildings. One of our
tour guides mentioned that a lot of native New Yorkers don’t even notice some of
the unique carvings and details that the older buildings have.

The
Waldorf
Astoria, featured in movies such as Serendipity, Scent
of a Woman, Coming to America, Maid in Manhattan and many others, is a dirty
looking grey building on the outside. If it weren’t for the touches of gold on
the front, you might be tempted to overlook it – but that would be a shame.
Inside is one of the most opulent hotel interiors I have ever seen. I would have
taken pictures, but I thought that might be a bit gauche – especially since we
weren’t even staying there.

Actually the lobby area of the Waldorf didn’t really do anything for me… I
would have liked to have seen inside the actual rooms though.

The Helmsley
Building is interesting because it appears to be the
end of Park Avenue…until you realize that it is actually straddling two one
way roads – very clever. The gilt trimmed clock on the outside was beautiful,
even if it wasn’t telling the correct time…

We actually thought the Helmsley Building was the front entrance to Grand Central
Terminal for quite
a while. We walked through one tunnel, then back around the other, trying to
find correct way in.

It didn’t help that there were stairs leading down
in the tunnels that went to a subway terminal. We were both thinking, "this
can’t be right!"

When we walked in the front doors, we knew we weren’t in the right
area because there was a security guard stationed there to only allow people with
passes into the building. We finally got our bearings and found the actual
terminal building and went to check it out.

I have always wanted to see
Grand Central Terminal.
Like so many New York locations, I had seen it’s interior
in movies and on TV. When we walked in, I was thinking, "this is more like it!"
The terminal was just beautiful. Evidently massive restorations were done between 1994 and 1998.
New Yorkers can be very proud of the results.

Lunch was at

Cosi, a little soup and sandwich shop on 45th street. Walking into the long,
narrow eatery, the first thing we saw was the open brick oven where they were
cooking the flat bread used to make their sandwiches. After looking at all of
the offerings on the wall, and not knowing what to choose (too many choices!), I
finally asked the woman working the line what she would suggest. She named a
chicken concoction that had a tomato spread, lettuce, chunks of pesto infused
chicken and some sort of sauce. It was heavenly! Julie got a mozzarella cheese
and grilled chicken sandwich. Since each came with two halves, Julie and I
swapped so we could have one of each. Both were very good.

We also had a choice of chips or baby carrots ) We
both took the carrots…

With tired feet, we walked back to the hotel and
chilled out for a couple of hours.

We spent the time packing for our trip home, surfing and catching up on
email. All I can say is, thank goodness for the high speed internet access in
our room! My Fujitsu Lifebook (mini-me) really came in handy during this trip.

For dinner before the show, we decided to have
Italian once again. This time, we tried a tiny little upstairs restaurant called

Puleo’s, which was just a couple doors down from the Imperial Theater, where
our show would be. I had the Veal Marsala, and Julie had the Chicken Parmigana.
Once again, we enjoyed excellent meals.

Is it obvious that we enjoy eating almost as much as we enjoy our gadgets? 
Sometimes I think we should start a food website, what do you all think? ;o)

When we got to the show, we saw that the regular
price for the tickets in the Orchestra section – where we would be sitting – was
$101. We was even more proof that we had  scored a great price on our
tickets! When the show started, we could not believe how
close we were to everything that was happening. We were in Section K, seats 26 &
27, and we were no more than 20 feet from the stage. When Hugh Jackman did his
opening number, it was like we could have almost reached out and touched him
(not that we would have – but still!). The show was unbelievable! Considering
that we saw it on the 3rd night of previews, and it doesn’t even officially open
until October 16, I was expecting a performance that wouldn’t be quite perfect.
If anyone didn’t hit their notes or flubbed their lines, we certainly couldn’t
tell. Everything was just amazing.

I did notice at least a couple times during the show where Hugh laughed at or
with the audience. At one point, his character took off his shirt, and quite a
few female audience members cheered. This didn’t detract from his performance
though, because his character often addressed the audience members as if he was
actually relaying his story to us.

If you have any doubt that Hugh Jackman can
sing or dance, forgettaboutit! For anyone that doesn’t know the story
behind the Boy from Oz, it is about the life and death of Peter Allen, the
Academy Award winning songwriter that wrote such songs as "Don’t Cry Out Loud,"
"I Honestly Love You," and "Arthur’s Theme." He led an extremely interesting
life, and this play did a good job of piecing it together with original Peter
Allen songs. If you get the opportunity to see this show – do not
pass it up! If all Broadway shows are as good as this one, then I will be
returning to New York, if for no other reason than to see more.

I agree that the show was excellent! I love going to plays. There’s just
something about seeing a live performance that makes things all the more
exciting. The play lasted a full 2hrs, so at 10pm, we headed back to the hotel
to finish packing.

This trip wasn’t exactly what we had envisioned, but it turned out to be a
whole lot of fun. Although, we didn’t make any new contacts with vendors at
TECHXNY, we were able to see the sights, eat the foods, watch the people and
soak up the culture that is NYC.

I can’t wait to go back – 2.5 days just wasn’t
enough. I think you could live in New York your entire life and still not see
all of the sights. For those of you that have never been, there are a couple of
stereotypes that New York did and didn’t live up to, at least in my eyes.

I had expected Times Square to be dirty and full of
shady characters, which if you don’t count the street vendors was definitely not
the case. Everything was as clean as any other major city I have ever visited.
Judging by the number of people that were walking around with expensive designer
accessories, no one was afraid of being robbed. There was a definite police
presence, and as Julie and I remarked while we were walking together at dusk one
night, there was never a time when we felt threatened or unsafe.

I mostly expected to see a bunch of kooky people… At least that’s what came
to my mind when I thought about Times Square. I guess we did see a few… the
Naked Cowboy… And then there was the lady that had a baby lamb with diapers on
a leash! That was odd!

I had expected the food to be good, and as you can
tell from our report – I was not disappointed. Every restaurant meal that we had
was wonderful. Julie did tell me that the hot dog she bought from a vender
(after I had already left for the airport) was the worst she had ever had,
though. So unless you know of a specific vendor that has good ones, consider
yourself warned. ;0)

True, but then I got the best hotdog I ever had at the La Guardia airport. It
had a pretzel wrapped around it. YUM.

One last observation was that people seemed
extremely friendly. I had heard that New Yorkers can be brusque, but that was
never the case with the people we spoke to. All in all, this turned out to be a
wonderful trip. We hope that you enjoyed sharing it with us.
☺

Monday
Tuesday

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

TECHXNY / PC Expo with the Gadgeteers – Wednesday & Thursday originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 22, 2003 at 12:00 am.

Julie’s comments are in BLACK and Judie’s are
in BLUE and italicized

Tuesday

Since the TECHXNY exhibits weren’t going to open till 10am, we weren’t going
to break our necks getting up at an insane hour on our 2nd day in New York (not
to mention the fact that we were up past 2am the night before writing the first
installment of this trip report).  So around 9:30, we headed downstairs for
Judie’s standard Starbuck’s latte and to catch the shuttle bus to Javits
Convention Center. A short 10 minute ride later, and we found ourselves walking
into the building ready to traipse up and down aisles of gadgety goodness.

We got our first clue about what was awaiting us at
the Javits Center when we boarded the shuttle bus and there was only one
other person on it…

Like most conventions though, our first task upon arrival was to check in at
the upstairs press registration area to get our badges and check out the
computer area. It was here that we received our second clue that TECHXNY might
not be "all that"… As we were waiting for our badges to be printed, we noticed
through a gap in the sectioned off press area, that there wasn’t ANYONE in
there…

Well, there were maybe 10 guys in dark suits, which
is not what you usually see in a happening event. We are used to having
to fight over vacant computer terminals, passing on the slim pickings of the
vast wasteland of obligatory press kibble, and perusing aisle after aisle of
press releases before hitting the event’s floor. Let’s just say that none of
that applied in this instance. We were starting to make jokes about how PC Expo
might be as lame as the wireless event we had attended in San Jose while Sharp
Event in 2001. But we didn’t really believe that. We just thought maybe
everyone was already on the floor. So we took the escalators down and figured
out our plan if attack.

We began in the far left section of the exhibit floor, which seemed like the
logical place to start. We figured we would work our way to the main exhibit
area from there.

This section appeared to be mainly foreign business exhibit booths, many of
which basically catered to companies wanting to outsource their services. There
was a conference in progress in the back of the room that was being put on by
IBM. Since we saw their large logo hanging from the ceiling in that area, we
thought we would see some actual hardware products. Instead, we found ourselves
in the midst of a seminar on how to outsource your company  being put on by
IBM. We toughed it out, wandering through a bunch of booths that were not
interesting to us in the least. Of course, this was the first section that we
came to, so we weren’t that concerned… yet…

As we left this section, entering the next, we saw a
booth with actual product! At this point, I will admit that it could have been a
less than exciting item and we might have been just as overjoyed to see it. But
in fact, the Case Closed Bags
display was pretty darn cool. They were displaying a selection of cleverly
stylish laptop bags that cater to women that don’t want a boring black bag. Some
of the bags had colorful graphics on their exterior, and some were more
conservative – but all had colorful interiors and contemporary lines. We hope to
be able to get some samples in the near future so we can see if they perform as
well as they look.

While Judie had noticed the laptop bags, I instantly noticed the colorful
iPod cases.

We continued walking past various booths, and noticed a cappuccino and coffee
line being sponsored by AMD. Judie didn’t even attempt to get in the line
because it was so long. In fact, it was the longest line of people we had seen
waiting for anything at the show so far.

I was just fine though. I had just finished a venti
latte, after all!

The next interesting booth that we came upon was from a company named
Neovo, which had beautiful flat screen
monitors on display. They had the best image quality that either of us had seen
before. The company representative explained that their monitors were different
than standard offerings, due to the very strong glass used in their screens
which have a surface hardness of 6. While this number probably doesn’t mean
anything to most people, it will surprise you to learn that steel has a surface
hardness of 6.5.  Wow!  We will be sending out sample request emails
ASAP…

 We continued to walk the floor…and all of a
sudden we found ourselves back in the main open foyer. Julie and I figured that
we had seen everything on that floor – time to head to the meat of the show!
After all, we had read that Palm and Microsoft were exhibiting and we were
hoping to catch a glimpse of something new and different. We walked down the
steps in to the ground floor, but not seeing anyone else milling about, we
became suspicious that we had missed something on the floor we had just vacated.
We climbed up the stairs again, and looked at the show before us. Julie and I
bantered for a moment about whether we had really exited from the section on the
right, or if we had missed it somehow. Figuring anything was possible, we walked
up closer…and then we saw a booth that we had definitely already visited. We
asked a security guard that was checking badges if there was something else that
we had missed. She said, "Nope – that’s it." At which point Julie and I felt our
hearts sink. We decided to give the floor one more go round and as we were
walking in, a gentleman heard us commenting on the pathetic offerings of the
trade show.

He introduced himself as Neal Weiner from Akira Technologies. He lamented
with us and mentioned that four years ago, the trade show had taken up all three
floors of the Javits Center and had even needed a outside pavilion. Then last
year he said that the show had at least used one entire floor. We had to laugh,
when he make the comment, that the biggest line at the show was for coffee. He
followed us back into the show area as we decided to make one more round through
the exhibits to see what we had missed. We were sure we had to have overlooked
something interesting. As we walked along the back edge of the booths, we
peeked behind the draping and saw the vast empty area of unused show floor. It
was a very sad sight.

We did a leisurely walk-through which only confirmed
our earlier findings. As we were walking down an aisle, we heard "Judie, Julie!"
We turned around to see Joel Evans of Geek.com.

Joel agreed with us that this was the poorest excuse
for a trade show ever, but he said that we had missed one product that
would be worth mentioning. It just so happened that it was in the booth we were
standing in front of with him. The product was a teeny-tiny little USB card
scanner; it was so cute it looked like a toy! But the
WorldCard by
Pen Power is actually a very powerful
scanning tool that will read your business cards and enter their information
directly into Outlook. This device was so portable that road-warriors that need
this type of device should not even feel the added weight when they add it to
their gear bags.

After viewing the card reader in this booth, we were done. Totally done. All
the way done. There wasn’t any more. It was done.

Judie and I probably repeated to each other at least 20 times that we
couldn’t believe that this was it! I don’t think we spent a total two hours at
the show, if that – and we even went through twice! As we walked out to catch
the shuttle back to the hotel, we realized that the one day that we had set
aside to see the sights of NYC, had just increased to 2.5 days. We were asking
each other what we wanted to do to fill the time. With only one day to sight
see, we knew we would just hit the high lights such as the Empire State
Building, Ground Zero and if we had time, the Statue of Liberty. Now we had 2.5
days to fill! So we decided to do what had worked for us on our trip to
Edinburgh, Scotland. We would take a bus tour around the city to get our
bearings and a general lay of land. Then we could pick the things we wanted to
investigate further. 

Disclaimer: from here on out, this article is no longer the TECHXNY / PC Expo
trip report article… it is now the how to see New
York City in 2.5 days article. Hey, we can roll with things as they come.
☺

As we were riding back to the hotel and formulating
this plan of action, we were surprised and slightly impressed to see a large
Navy Destroyer docked in the harbor. We didn’t see a sign, but we surmised that
we were looking at the Intrepid Sea-Air
Space Museum. On the deck of the ship, we saw several Tom Cat fighter jets
and a black plane that I at first thought was a Stealth Bomber because it
looked…well, stealthy! Looking at the website, we now know that it is an
A-12 Blackbird
which when first flown in 1962 was the
fastest and highest flying manned aircraft in the world. Evidently, it still is
- even after 30 years!

We looked at some of the visitor information in our hotel room, and decided
to take a city tour with the Gray Line
company. We had seen their red double decker, open top buses tooling around the
streets, and knew that such a bus would offer better picture taking
opportunities. We booked our Classic New York tour at the Port Authority Bus
Terminal.

Our ticket enabled us to take the downtown, uptown, Brooklyn, and night tour
loops during a 48hr period. We also received a ticket to ride the ferry to Ellis
Island to see the Statue of Liberty. Soon, we were seated in the open air
section on the top floor of the bus, with Reggie as our tour guide.

Reggie was a blast as he explained all the sights as we wound our way through
the downtown loop.

Behind Reggie is the Empire State Bldg.

Julie and I behaved like typical tourists and
snapped pictures of everything we saw that looked remotely interesting. Here is
a sampling of some of the sights and buildings that caught our eye…

   
   

From left to right: The Courthouse, the two outer buildings in
the middle picture are both owned by insurance companies – and you wonder why
our premiums are so high, & the Flatiron Bldg.

   

Trump’s new World Tower Bldg. According to Reggie, Bill Gates
bought two multi-million dollar apartments and made them into one gigantic
living space

After three hours on the bus, Julie and I decided to
get off at the Rockefeller Center stop. The courtyard was an explosion of
Japanese pop art, because Takashi Murakami has an exhibit there.
From the Mr. Onion Head statue to the colorful toadstools you could sit on,
Julie and I decided that his
artwork was a cross of Hello Kitty meets the Teletubbies on
hallucinogens. 

Frankly, I think that he is laughing at the people
who like his art, or maybe it is those that don’t like his art – case in
point: the two giant black balloons that he placed in the courtyard in front of
the Rockefeller building. I am not going to say anything else about it, I will
just leave you with this picture…

Otherwise, the Rockefeller Building was beautiful
and the gold statue in the sunken lower level was stunning.

As we turned the corner, we saw the familiar marquee of Radio City Music
Hall. We didn’t see any Rockettes, though…

Less than 10mins later, we were back in Times Square…looking
at some idiot who calls himself the "Naked Cowboy"..

The back of his tighty-whiteys said his stage name…

By this time, we were starving. Luckily for us, we were able to get into
Carmine’s, the restaurant that had been too busy the night before. We decided to
order an appetizer of Calamari to start. As we ordered it, our waitress warned
us that the food there was served family style, which meant very large
portions. We were advised to order one entree and split it between us. The
Calamari arrived before we placed our dinner order. This was a good thing, due
to the fact that the appetizer could have fed a family of 5 easily! It didn’t
take Judie and I long to decide that we were not going to have any room left for
the main course. We couldn’t even finish the appetizer.

Carmines was an awesome place, with a casual
atmosphere. Even though we didn’t order an entree for ourselves, that didn’t
stop us from salivating as we saw the mutant sizes portions the waitstaff were
delivering to their patrons. Case in point, this was our calamari before we tore
into it:

…this was what was left after Julie and I were
full. Yes, the portion was that huge!

May I add that this was easily the best calamari I
have ever had. Those of you that have read all of Julie’s and my trip reports
know how much we love the stuff, and how we usually get it at least once on
every trip – so this is high praise, indeed.

After eating, we headed back to the hotel so that we
wouldn’t miss our new favorite drama, The O.C.
Once again, we are up until all hours writing this report – so we may have to
sleep in again in the morning.

Tomorrow our plans are to finish our bus tour, see Ground Zero, ride the
ferry to Ellis Island to see the Statue of Liberty, and whatever else might
strike our fancy. Hope you are all enjoying the report (even though it is
severely lacking in gadgets) so far!

Monday
Wednesday & Thursday

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

TECHXNY / PC Expo with the Gadgeteers – Tuesday originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 16, 2003 at 12:00 am.

Julie’s comments are in BLACK and Judie’s are
in BLUE and italicized

Last year, Julie and I thought about going to
TECHXNY / PC Expo, but we waited until the last minute then said, "Nah.".
While the week long convention was happening and for some time after it was
over, Julie and I were moaning about how we had missed out.

So this year, we booked our plane tickets six months in advance! We weren’t
going to make the same mistake twice.

Speaking of which, you would think that by booking
my ticket six months in advance, I would have got a price break…but no!
My plane ticket from San Angelo to NYC was over $600! ACK! But I digress…

Of course, we had already been to
CES in January
and were going to
COMDEX in
November.  If we went to every show that we were interested in attending,
we would be broke!

The plan for 2003 was that we would attend TECHXNY /
PC Expo, and now – here we are! Julie and I are going to try something new.
Instead of writing a big long wrap-up after we return, we are going to post
pictures and comments at the end of each day. The plan is that we will attend
the convention Tuesday and Wednesday, and spend Thursday sightseeing.

Neither of us has ever spent any time in New York. Judie drove through the
city (in 1993!), but I’ve never set foot in
it.

So needless to say, we are both excited about taking
a nibble out of the big apple! ☺

Monday

My day started with an 8:30 flight. I got to spend
much of the hour long commute to Dallas playing

Jumble, which is the new PDA game by
Outlook Entertainment,
based on the daily word puzzle that comes in the newspaper.  This version
is much better though, because it’s portable without leaving newsprint stains on
my hands, and I don’t have to wait until the next day to check my answer. This
game has eye-candy graphics and is  an excellent time waster!

Once I got to DFW, I was pleased to find that right
next to my gate were these little internet kiosks where you could plug in your
laptop and surf. Since I had two and a half hours to kill, I parked there and
read an e-Book (The
Vanished Man by Jeffery Deaver) while charging my CLÍE
for the upcoming flight. This was pretty convenient, plus it allowed me to be
anti-social – which is how I usually am in the morning. If you are ever on a
layover at DFW, look for one of these…

My flight to JFK was pretty smooth, which was
surprising considering Hurricane Isabella is supposed to be making her way up
the coast.

I was luckier than Judie, as I didn’t have to leave home for the airport till
12:30pm.  It was a quick uneventful 1hr drive and an equally quick
check-in. You really have to love the self serve kiosks that most airlines now
use.

After getting my gate info, I grabbed some nuggets and a coke from McDonald’s
and settled down to wait the hour till boarding time. Before I knew it, I was
herded into the plane and settled down for a short 1hr and 45min flight. During
the flight, I listened to a new CD that I had ripped of
AudioSlave, and read my current e-book
(A
Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson).

Once I arrived at LaGuardia, I grabbed my bag and headed for a taxi stand.

As I was on my way to the JFK taxi stand, this guy
in a black suit grabbed my bag and tried to get me to go with him to an awaiting
town car. "It’s the same price as the yellow one," he said as I asked him what
it would cost.

"Well how much is that?" I insisted.

"$60." He mumbled.

"Yellow Cab is $35!" I said as I grabbed my bag back
and went to get at the end of the queue. Not even in New York for 30 minutes,
and I had already been spotted as a newbie. puh-leeze!

Judie was supposed to arrive in NYC 1hr ahead of me, so when I called her
mobile phone, I was surprised to hear that she was also in a cab heading toward
the

Marriott Marquis on Broadway.

I have to tell you all about this – because as it
happened, I was in a state of disbelief! While riding to the hotel with my cab
driver, whose name was prominently displayed on his posted license, I could hear
him on his mobile phone calling his credit card company to activate his new
Visa. He not only read his number out loud, he also said the last four digits of
his social security number and gave his home address. Never mind that he was
doing this over a mobile phone – I was sitting in the back seat writing things
down on my CLÍE. For all he knew, I could have been taking down his personal
information. I was stunned by his naiveté.

15 or 20 minutes later, we met up in the lobby of the hotel, checked in and
were on our way up to our room; what seemed like a very small room for $200 a
night. After phone calls to our loved ones, we were ready to go exploring and
get something to eat!

We stopped by the security guards desk and asked
where he liked to eat in the area, and he suggested Carmines, which was just
down the alley from our hotel. Once we got there, however, the 45 minute wait
really put us off. Neither of us had eaten since noon, and our blood sugar
levels were tanked. Not even 20 feet up the sidewalk was a Chinese restaurant
named Ollie’s Noodle Shop and Grill. The people inside looked happy and the
prices looked reasonable. We stepped in…

First we started off with pan fried dumplings and dipping sauce. They were
wonderful!!!! Judie made me use the freaking chopsticks, which I then proceeded
to impale my dumpling with, rather than tweeze. We made short work of that
appetizer, and soon we were happy to see the main course.

I got the rice noodles with pork, and Julie got the
rice noodles with chicken. There were mushrooms, water chestnuts, scallions,
seaweed and various other vegetables stir fried into our dishes. (side note –
when we got back to the room and were working on this article, Julie saw me
write that there were mushrooms in the meals, and she freaked!! Since her
eyes are still not quite 100% after the operations, she had been sitting there
enjoying her meal, never realizing it was loaded with "slimy slug slices" – as
she likes to call them!) I am sitting here rocking with laughter as she keeps
hitting me and saying, "I did not eat mushrooms!" Yes Julie…you did!
☺

Of course, we couldn’t eat it all (…and even less
would have been eaten had Julie known about the mushrooms…) and it
really pained us that we could not take our leftovers with us back to the room.
We were pleasantly surprised by the price of the meal. It was $26, including
tip! Needless to say, we’ll probably be back before the trip is over.

After eating, we walked around the corner and were
amazed by all the flashing lights, lighted news item scripts, and moving
billboards that looked like gigantic plasma screens. It took us a moment to
realize that we were in Times Square! Since the only views either of us has ever
seen of this area were in movies or TV shows, it was almost surreal to realize
that we were actually standing there.

One of the shops that we passed, caught our attention with all of the
electronic gadgets and gizmos in the window display. We thought we might get
lucky and see a Sony CLÍE UX50, since both of ours were delivered to our
respective homes today while we were in transit. Unfortunately, the shop didn’t
have the UX50. It did however, have the Garmin iQue 3600 on the shelf. We asked
one of the many clerks if we could see it, and he handed us the box. When Judie
asked if we could open it to see the actual device, he said no. Gee thanks
buddy… Hopefully, we will be able to see one tomorrow in the Palm booth.

We trekked around for a little while longer, looking
at the various sites and people. Then we figured we ought to head back and put
something together for you all about our day. Tomorrow, we hope to see many
things that we won’t be able to live without…

Tuesday

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

TECHXNY / PC Expo with the Gadgeteers – Monday originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 15, 2003 at 12:00 am.

Julie’s comments are in BLACK and Judie’s are
in BLUE and italicized

A word of warning…this article is long and
has lots of pictures. It is not very gadget related – but it does
describe a good time. We hope you enjoy our trip. ☺

Friday / Saturday
Julie: We left Columbus, Indiana and drove to the Indianapolis International Airport
at 8am. We got on a 2hr flight at 11:30am for Dallas, TX where we met up with Judie
and family.

Judie: We, on the other hand, had a four hour drive
to get from San Angelo to Dallas.

Julie: We had several hours until the flight to London, so we got a bite to
eat and sat around flipping thru Judie’s gossip magazines.

Judie: What can I say? Not only do I have
subscriptions to T3, Handheld Computing, Pocket PC Magazine and Pen Computing –
I also have subscriptions to Star and Us. <blushing furiously>

Julie: The flight to London lasted 9hrs and was probably the most uncomfortable
flight I have ever been on. There just isn’t enough knee room between you and
the seat in front of you.

Judie: Julie and I made a pact that the next long
trip we make, we will book just as far in advance as we did this one, and we
will use some of the substantial savings to upgrade to a "more legroom" class.

Julie: Definitely! First class even had foot rests… ahhhhhh, my kingdom for
a foot rest!…. British Airways does treat their customers very well though, we were
watered and fed several times throughout the flight.

Judie: This is true. We were treated to a better
than average airline meal, the drinks were free, and there was even a "tuck" box
in the rear of the plane when we wanted something sweet or salty to snack on.

Julie:
One cool feature of the flight was the color LCD monitor on the back of each
seat. Through it, you could watch movies and even track the progress of the plane
as time went by. A membrane style remote was in the arm rest of every seat. You
used this to change channels, adjust volume levels and even toggle the overhead
light above your seat.

Judie: The seats we were in had a remote control
like Julie described, but it came out of the seat arm and was attached with a
cord. It also functioned as an in-flight phone – not that I wanted to make any
calls for $5 a minute.

Julie:
I didn’t even notice it was a phone too! Darn! I watched 2 movies on the way to London. The Antwon Fisher Story with Denzel
Washington which was pretty good, and a lame family movie called Touching Wild Horses with
Jane Seymour. Although every passenger was given a set of headphones to use, I
used my brand new Bang & Olufsen A8
earphones. WOW, they are the most comfortable earphones I’ve
ever had. I was able to leave them on almost the entire trip and didn’t even
notice they were there. They have great sound while not isolating you from the
outside.

Judie: I watched The Four Feathers and Special Ops –
which was so bad it put me into a stupor. I used the headphones provided by the
airlines – and after a while, my left ear went numb; I won’t be doing that
again. I am open to suggestions for portable headsets…anyone?

Julie: Ok, so don’t take my word for it that the B&O’s are the most comfortable
ever! <pout>

Judie:  Well, we can’t have matching
everything, now….can we? ☺

Julie: After what seemed like a millennium, we arrived at London Gatwick
early Saturday morning. Unfortunately, we had yet one more flight to take before
reaching our final destination.

Judie: Gatwick was different than other airports I
have experienced for several reasons. The first being that after we were let off
our Boeing 777, and after we had cleared customs, we were let into a communal
area which meant that we had to go through yet another security check-in before
we  could board our second British Airways flight. I thought it would have
been more efficient if they had kept us in a secure area and just allowed us to
board. The other major difference was that our pictures were taken as we checked
in this second time. As we walked to our gate, our faces were compared against
the digital photos in British Airways database at the next checkpoint. We didn’t
have to show our passports again, which I liked. It wasn’t like an American
airport where they want to see your driver’s license and boarding pass at every
point.

Julie: Soon we were loaded onto another plane for a short flight to
Scotland’s Edinburgh airport. By the time we unloaded, and retrieved our
luggage, I think we were all about ready to collapse.

Judie: It was shortly after 10:45am UK time – but it
was 4:44am at home. Jet lag was setting in…but we still had to catch a cab and
get to our Flat.

Julie: Speaking of luggage, I brought along
a great little gadget called the TravelTow. It’s a rugged plastic handle that
you can attach (with two very strong Velcro straps) to the existing handle on
your rolling luggage. The nice thing about it is that it swivels so that you can
hold your arm naturally as you walk with it. I really liked it, and it is now
permanently installed on one of my bags.

Judie: We walked out the baggage claim doors to one
of the more organized cab queues I have ever seen. All these funky little cars
were lined up and we were pleasantly surprised to see that all of us and our
luggage would be able to fit in a single cab.

These cabs look deceptively small on the
outside – but they can hold 5 people with luggage comfortably

Julie:
Due to some advice that we had been given here on the site, Judie and I were
both worried that we wouldn’t be able to all fit in one cab with all our
luggage. Our fears were unfounded though as we had no problems at all piling
into a standard sized cab. Soon we were headed to our rented flat in Edinburgh.

Judie: Riding down the "wrong side of the road" was
an experience in and of itself! Cars were darting in and out from everywhere –
buses were pulling out in front of everyone, and we could quickly see that we
had done the right thing by not renting a car to use in town. Honestly – I am
afraid that if I had been behind the wheel of a car there that I might have
endangered everyone on the road! We would soon find out that as long as we were
in town there really wasn’t any need to have our own car; cabs and buses were
readily available almost everywhere, and walking was almost always an option.

Julie:
When we arrived at the flat, we were happy to see that the lady we were renting from was
already there and had everything ready for us. The flat was very nice! Clean,
bright and well equipped. We were so lucky to find it! If any of you are
thinking of taking a trip to Scotland, you MUST contact
Mandy to check out the
availability of vacant flats. They are so much nicer than staying in a hotel!

Judie: We stayed in the
Grange Flats at 64 Findhorn
Place. This was a Victorian building dating from the late 1800s, and though
completely modernized, our Logan flat retained the quaint charm of the bygone
era. The ceilings were at least 12′ high and there were large windows in each
room – making everything seem open and bright. Radiators and space heaters kept the rooms comfortable
- and believe me, they were needed as it was in the upper 30s outside. Our flat
could have slept 7 to 8 people, but since we had no where near that many with us – we
were quite comfortable. (Oh – if you do contact Mandy, PLEASE tell her we
recommended her flats so that maybe she’ll give us a discount in the future.)

Julie:
Since we had all been up for almost 24hrs, we crashed and took a 2hr nap. Once
we woke up, we were hungry and ready to explore Edinburgh just a bit and find
somewhere to eat. Oh, just for future reference, EDINBURGH is pronounced as
Edin-burrow, and not Edin-berg like an ice berg.

Judie: We also heard that you can also call it
Edin-bruh. I think as long as you say it like you know what you are talking
about, no one will argue with you.

Julie:
We were a little apprehensive about how the food situation might be there.
Several people had mentioned that the food pretty much sucked. Boy, they
couldn’t have been more wrong! The restaurants and food there in Edinburgh were
some of the best that we have ever had the opportunity to visit and eat! And talk about
variety, every block probably had 3-4 different restaurants of different
ethnicities.

Judie: I had not seen such a selection of Indian,
Thai, African, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Lebanese, French, Nepalese, Japanese,
and of course basic fish and chip storefronts in any city other than maybe New
York! This doesn’t even include the little French and Scottish bakeries that
dotted every block. I could tell right away that my fears of having to cook
every meal in the flat’s kitchen were completely unfounded.

Julie: That first night, we were fortunate enough to get into The New Bell
Restaurant
which was only 2 blocks from our flat. It was here that we had our first taste
of Haggis, and we loved it!

Judie: Who would have thought it! I ordered the
Haggis because I figured, "when in Rome," and we all took turns savoring it.
While I am sure that there are places in Scotland where the Haggis is bad (just
as there are places in the US where you don’t order certain food items), we can
highly recommend the New Bell for their fabulous Haggis. We also had ribeye
steaks and assorted desserts. Let me tell you right now that the ignorant
stereotype of UK restaurants’ meat being boiled down to bland rubber does not
hold true in Edinburgh. The meat was tasty and cooked to perfection. One
stereotype that did prove true was the cold and damp weather, and we were
walking – but hey – at least it wasn’t far and we had dressed for it.

Julie: After the meal, we headed back to the flat since it was late and most
shops were closed.

Judie: We were tired anyway, so we figured that if
we went to bed we would escape the worst of the jetlag effect, waking up the
next day ready to explore!

Sunday
Julie:
We all got up bright and early to start our first day of sight seeing. Upon
leaving the flat, we were greeted with a stiff breeze and temps around 40
degrees F. For myself, the weather wasn’t a big problem. This winter in Indiana
has been one of our coldest and snowiest to date. Scotland actually felt warm to
me. I don’t think Judie and family quite felt the same way…

Judie: No – we were freezing! We live in WEST
TEXAS, where we had already been enjoying spring-like weather before this trip.
Even though we knew it was going to be cold and wet in Scotland – knowing and
experiencing firsthand were two different things. Thankfully we had come with
leather jackets, scarves and caps. I definitely needed a pair of gloves, which I
figured I could pick up later.

Julie:
One of our first stops of course was for breakfast. We found a nice little diner
and were treated to tea, and morning rolls with bacon. To translate, it was hot
slices of ham on a warm roll. Yum!

Judie: Slices of ham with butter on them! It
was different, but very good. I also had one of my many Scottish lattes…for
those of you that like to indulge – you will definitely love this city! Almost
every restaurant serves coffee drinks, and if that isn’t enough for you, there
is even a Starbucks on the Royal Mile!

Julie: Soon, we were out the door and heading in the general direction of
Edinburgh Castle. Along the way, we became typical tourists, gawking and
pointing at every interesting building and point of interest. Anyone interested
in old architecture, would be in heaven while visiting Edinburgh.

Judie: We took pictures of everything! One of the
less obvious but very cool features of the buildings on the Royal Mile were
these little alleyways, called closes, that run in between the tall buildings.
Some of them had doorways leading into homes, businesses, or restaurants along
their way; some of the Closes were more like traditional alleys – acting as
strict shortcuts between blocks. Most went up and down steep sets of steps –
showing that the tall buildings we were standing in front of on the Royal Mile
had even more stories than they at first appeared. We would learn more about
that later, when we took the vault tour on Thursday.

Julie: We were also amazed at the fact that we saw almost no large vehicles.
Definitely no Sport Utility Vehicles. Cars were either compact or subcompact in
size.

Judie: The largest personal vehicle I saw was a Jeep
Cherokee. We saw plenty of the new (and old) Mini Coopers, Vauxhall’s (Suzuki’s) and
lots of cool little energy efficient cars made by automobile names you would
recognize – but models that we will probably never see here in the US, which I
think is a shame.

Julie:
Once we reached the Castle, we went on a self guided tour.

Judie: We wandered all around, taking pictures like
the tourists that we were, and we generally were in awe of our surroundings and
several facts: first of all – the age of the castle and the volcanic rock upon
which it was built, secondly – that the castle had been built at all. In case
you have never seen a castle (which was me, before this trip), it is almost
impossible to fathom the amount of labor and craftsmanship that goes into
creating a structure like this. It was massive, beautiful, and more than just a
little bit intimidating. I drug everyone into every castle gift shop hoping for
the perfect souvenir – but in
the end only got a couple little things because I was discovering that the
pictures we were taking were going to be the best souvenirs of all . Here are some
of the shots we took from inside the
castle area…

Julie: I didn’t buy much at all as far as souvenirs on this trip either. I was
more interested in seeing things then shopping. All the shops in Edinburgh were
fun to check out though, and there sure were a LOT of them!

By the time we finished at the Castle, we were ready for lunch. We lucked
out by going into the Scottish Whiskey Museum Restaurant where we had our second
great meal.

Judie: I spent most of the meal (when I wasn’t
savoring my honey-thyme chicken) convincing everyone that we should do the
whiskey tour – even though none of us even gives a fig about whiskey!
But then I wound up changing my mind because I wanted to see what was down the
street. We had the woolen mill across the street, Camera Obscura, and a bunch of
cool churches we would eventually have to explore.

Julie: The Woolen Mill was really cool. You could look down onto all the
looms and even learn a little about the history. The sweaters, blankets and
scarves that were for sale were gorgeous. Expensive though!

Judie: In years past, I was active on the Eldorado
Woolen Mill’s preservation board, which supports one of the last operational
mills in the southwestern United States. I was interested to see that the
machines used in the Scottish mill were almost identical to the Texas machines –
they even looked to be of the same era, late 1800′s to early 1900s.

Julie:
At this point we started the trek back to our flat. On the way back we stopped
into many shops. The city is a shopper’s dream.

Judie: But amazingly enough, we really showed
remarkable restraint and didn’t buy much at all.

Julie:
After we got back to the flat, we started the process of downloading the
pictures that we had taken that day to Judie’s 5GB PCMCIA card. Using her
5455 iPAQ,
Whitney PC card sleeve and
I-O Data Reader we pulled pictures from the Memory
Stick that my Sony DSC-U20 used and CF card that her Canon S320 used. We also used
Pocket Internet Explorer and the built-in viewer to look at some of the
pictures. Jeez, those two apps are painfully slow!

Judie: Well, we started with Pocket Internet
Explorer – which was incredibly slow, and then we used Picture Viewer expecting
to see an improvement in speed…and there was, but not much of one. :0P
Transferring the many pictures, some of them quite large, took a little while. I
wound up just setting my iPAQ on the floor as the pictures moved from card to
card, and we switched between the four channels available to us on British
Television.

Julie:
Using Judie’s NEXcell charger and our voltage converters, we also took turns
charging our digital camera batteries. I love that little NEXcell and want to
get one of my own. I really like the little tune it plays when the batteries are
fully charged. It’s fast too! The charger that came with my U20 took over 8hrs
to charge 2 AAA batteries while the NEXcell took less than 2hrs!

Judie: I actually wound up buying a blue U20 after
admiring Julie’s on the trip, and I can definitely vouch that the NEXcell
charger  is wayyyyyy better than the included Sony version.

Julie:
Speaking of voltage converters, both of us bought one for the trip. Mine is
called the Voltage Valet and came from
Packinglight.com. It came with several different plug
adapters. I used it with my hair dryer and various PDA, camera chargers. It
worked great, although I did notice that when using the hair dryer with it, that
the dryer felt as if it was running slower than it should have.

Judie: We brought a converter from
Magellan. We
had a little bit of a scare when we were charging the iPAQ because the lights
started flashing between red and green on the converter, the charger was warm,
and there was a noticeable burning smell! Of course, neither of us had bothered
to read our chargers’ instructions, but once we did, we found that the switching
lights and the warmth were normal. We just figured the smell was because the
charger was new. This turned out to be the case as it never did that again after
the first night.

Julie:
Most evenings we watched TV there in the flat. No offense to any Scottish people
reading this article, but your TV channels are lame! I think we had 4 to choose
from. I did notice that they allowed the F-word and once we saw a commercial for
toilet paper that showed a bunch of butts! Ha! Supper ended up being
Chinese which wasn’t all that great because we had it delivered to the flat.

Judie: Now that I look back, I don’t know why we
didn’t just make ourselves rest for a while and then go back out, but it’s true – we
ordered in, and that was the last time we made that mistake. With all the great
restaurants right there in our neighborhood, we should have bit the bullet and
gone out. Ah well, we were exhausted. I for one had not done that much walking
in years!

Julie: Me neither! But, I’ll tell you what, it sure makes you sleep good at
night when you’re exercising like that all day.

Monday
Julie:
Another chilly, gloomy morning greeted us as we started out for Waverly Train
Station to see about tickets to Chester, the walled city. As it happened, we
decided not to go due to the expense and time. Instead, we booked ourselves on a
double-decker
Mac Tours tour bus and gave our feet a rest for a little while. As
we rode the streets of Edinburgh, a very nice lady narrated the trip, giving us
interesting information about buildings as we passed by them.

Judie: First we rode the red Mac Tour line, from
which we saw pass by: the John Knox house, the Elephant House where J. K. Rowling
penned the first Harry Potter book, the art school where Sean Connery posed nude
(!!!), the Greyfriar’s Bobby tavern and statue, the Scott monument, Alexander Graham Bell’s home from before he emigrated
to the US, the homes of many more famous, infamous, and literary people whose
names just screamed their history to us. I have to admit that even though I
knew that there were many notable Scotts, this tour just drove it home for
me even more.

We were suitably impressed. In fact, there was so
much history being revealed to us on the bus tour, that Steve and I almost
decided to take the tour again the next day! After we rode the red tour route,
we hopped the blue tour bus, and enjoyed another ride to the Botanical Gardens.
As we were making our way across town, we passed a huge private school that our
guide told us cost £23,000 per year for students to attend. He named several
famous people who had attended, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
James Bond author Ian Fleming. Interestingly enough, he said that Mr. Fleming
had written that James Bond attended the school, too. Then the guide proceeded
to tell us that Sean Connery had also been to the school – but as a milkman! Who
knows if it was true or not, but it sure was fun!

Soon, we arrived at the Botanical Gardens.
We spent about an hour there, marveling at the "glass houses" and their interior
ecosystems and their accompanying plants. They were amazing!

Julie: There was even a jungle room that totally fogged up your glasses when you walked in. It had to have been a hundred degrees in there with 99.9% humidity. For awhile, we forgot all about being cold!

Riding this tour bus was a great way to find ideas for places to visit
further. As a result, I knew I wanted to check out the Scott monument. The tour
lady also told us about Jenners, the
oldest department store in the world. I wanted to get a look inside that store
as well.

The last stop for the bus was at the
Royal Yacht Britannia.

The Royal Yacht, Britannia

So we hopped off and headed into the Ocean Terminal shopping mall for lunch
and a tour. The mall was nothing out of the ordinary, but we did notice that
Scottish stores seemed way more trusting than US stores. One of the electronics
stores had a small table at the opening of the store with a variety of mobile
phones just laying there. Anyone could have just walked by and snatched them up! 
We also went into an Orange store and ogled at all the itty bitty phones that
neither of us could use here in the states <sniff>…

Judie: It hardly seems fair (not that anything ever
is) that in the US we don’t have as excellent of a digital infrastructure as
they do in Great Britain. We want cool phones, too!

Julie:
After lunch, we went on a self-guided tour thru the Royal Yacht Britannia. It
was interesting, but not especially exciting. Although the yacht has only been
retired for a little over 5yrs, the furnishings just seemed old fashioned. Actually, I
believe they were from the 50′s.

Judie:  That sounds about right. I guess this
was the first time I saw things that actually had been used by a living monarch,
and I was just expecting things to be a little bit more ostentatious. We were
told though, that the Queen is actually quite frugal and thrifty, so I guess
that explained it. I did think it was a little bit weird that in the bed
chambers there was a twin size bed for Prince Phillip, a twin size bed for the
Queen, and the only double bed in the history of the boat was the one Prince
Charles had had brought on for his honeymoon with Princess Diana.

Julie: I agree, that was strange about the sleeping situations… But you know
how old married couples can be ;o) I was also surprised to learn that they still
have dinners and events on board the yacht. While we were there, there were
people in the kitchen working. Also, when we walked by the little onboard
canteen area, the man there had fresh chocolate fudge that he let us sample.
Once we were finished with the tour, our feet were tired and we were ready to
head back to the flat for a brief rest before supper.

Judie:  Steve was worn out from all that walking,
so he
wound up staying at the flat while we went to have dinner at DeNiros, which was
an excellent Italian restaurant. By the time we got back, he had caught his
second wind and had gone up the street to get some fish and chips. He still had
room for the tiramisu I brought him, though.

Julie: Steve missed a good meal too! The Bolognese spaghetti was
wonderful. Unfortunately, I was a klutz and somehow managed to break a plate as
we were getting our coats on to leave. The waitresses there didn’t look any too
pleased… They also gave us funny looks when we kept asking for extra ice for
our drinks.

Tuesday
Julie:
Judie’s and my families went our separate ways this day as we all wanted to do some different things.
It was a really crummy morning, with wind and rain. So, we called a cab and had
it drop us off at the Royal Mile which is the heart of everything, so we wouldn’t
have to wear ourselves out walking that far right off the bat.

The first order of business was to book an all day tour for the next day to
the Highlands. We wanted to see the countryside.

The next item on the agenda was to check out
Camera Obscura. We had seen the building the prior day, and knew it was supposed
to be a good photo opportunity. It actually also turned out to be part museum,
and part amusement. After paying our entrance fee and learning that this was
Edinburgh’s oldest attraction (over 150yrs), we were instructed to climb up 6
flights of stairs. This was the real start of Julie’s fitness vacation, let me
tell ya! Anyway, once at the top of the building, we waited for the
demonstration. When it was ready to begin, we all filed into a small room and
gathered around a round white table. The lights were then dimmed and we were
told about the camera that protruded out of the roof of the building. Soon we
began to see the live image of Edinburgh Castle and the streets below us appear on the white table top. After
the demonstration, we made our wait out side to take a few pictures down to the
street below. Unfortunately, it began raining again, so we cut that activity short. On
the way down the 6 flights of stairs, we stopped into various rooms that housed
interesting photographic displays and hands on exhibits. Very cool 3D holograms
were all over the place.

View from Camera Obscura

It was still raining pretty hard, so we decided to duck into a really cool
pub called the Filling Station for lunch. What made this pub so interesting,
were the old gas pumps and car parts that decorated the walls. Their food was
good too!

Once lunch was finished, the weather started looking up, so we thought it
would be a good time to check out the
Scott Monument. 287
claustrophobic steps later, we arrived at the top.

Up, up and away!

Word of warning, if you are a
large person, you might not be able to make it all the way to the top of this
monument as the stairway narrows considerably the farther you climb. We were lucky that we didn’t meet anyone going up or down as it would
have been almost impossible to pass each other. Once we did make it to the top,
the views were fantastic! It was also cold and windy! From there we could see
the Jenners department store below which we had heard about on the bus tour the
previous day. We decided to make that our next stop.

Me in front of Scott Monument, View from on top of the Scott
Monument, and Jenners Department store

After a brief visit in the store, which had a great ‘old store’ feeling but
at the same time had totally modern wares, we headed back outside.

Next stop was St Giles Cathedral.
We had been intrigued by this building due to the top, which looked like a
crown. Built in the 1100′s, this just building oozed history from every stone.
Surprisingly, we learned that it is an living church with an active
congregation. The large pipe organ and beautiful stain glass windows were
breathtaking.

All day, I kept wondering what Judie and family were up too…

Judie: We started out with breakfast at Biblos, a
bar by night but a great coffee house/deli by day. Next, we took a cab to
Holyrood Palace. Our cab driver was something else! He wanted to know where we
were from, and when we said Texas, he said, "Ah – so you are Texicans!"
We loved the term, which believe it or not, we had never heard. Then he started
asking all kids of questions about America, like how much did our gas cost, how
efficient were our cars, etc. etc. He told us that his cab got over 30 MPG,
which I thought was pretty amazing. After a stern warning about how unless we
were totally "into royalty" we should skip the expensive palace tour, he let us
off at the gates.

The minute we walked through, I was so glad we had
come! It had nothing to do with royalty so much, but everything to do with
history and seeing things that were ancient and massive.

We took the tour of the palace marveling at the
sheer size of the rooms, their furnishings, the plaster work on the ceilings,
the antique furniture, everything was just amazing! Unfortunately, we weren’t
allowed to take any pictures from inside the palace. Trust me though, if you
ever find yourself in Edinburgh – take the tour. It lasts about an hour and it
is well worth the time and the expense.

We had a great tour guide that told us many stories
about the former occupants of the castle and the times they lived in. Right
away, Steve, Sarah and I were whispering back and for that we were going to
watch Elizabeth, Rob Roy, and Braveheart as soon as we got home!

When we reached the bedroom of Mary Queen of Scotts,
the tour took a turn for the dramatic and even my daughter Sarah – in all of her
13-year old coolness – got caught up in the moment…The story was how Mary’s
adviser/lover was having dinner with her and two ladies-in-waiting. Her husband
came up the secret passageway by her bed and entered the little room where the
others were gathered. He grabs the lover, and stabs him, then drags him
into the outer room, where he leaves him to bleed to death! It didn’t really
sink in that this was more than a history lesson, until Sarah called me over to
look at a plaque on the wall in the next room which stated that below it was the
place where the body had lain. I told Sarah to look down, and I thought she was
going to come out of her skin when she realized that the ancient wood floor
appeared to be stained where the body had lain! The cost of the tour was
worth the look she had on her face! ;0)

After the palace tour, we explored the adjoining
abbey’s ruins.

We then decided to couple some shopping with our
sight-seeing, and so we headed to Princes Street. We had lunch on the 5th floor
of a department store, and enjoyed a great view of the Scott’s monument across
the street. After lunch, we started a l-o-n-g walking tour that
took us by the Greyfriar’s Bobby tavern…

…and of course – the Elephant House, where Sarah
and
I got our pictures taken next to a sign that told about J. K. Rowling
having written there.

As we were darting into various stores, we actually
ran into Julie and her family! We heard about each other’s days, and agreed to meet back up at
the flat for dinner after a while.

Julie: By then, I was ready to collapse and shortly there after, we hailed a
cab for the flat.

Judie: When we got back, we were once again so exhausted
that we had to take a cab when we left for dinner at Izzi, a Japanese restaurant.

Julie: Which again, had great food! I even ate it entirely with chop sticks
which I’ve never done before. Ha!

Wednesday
Julie:
We got up early to head back to the Royal Mile to catch our van to the
Highlands. We booked with Rabbies Tours,
and I can’t recommend them enough! Our tour guide was
Shelby, and she was awesome! A master story teller, comedian, and even a singer,
she made the whole day a fun and educational experience. The tour we chose was
the Loch Lomond National Park & Stirling Castle tour.

As we made our way out of Edinburgh, Shelby entertained us with the story of
William Wallace (Braveheart). The first stop on the tour was the castle. It was
a beautiful day, blue sky and no wind (yes, we were still in Scotland). As such, we were happy to take an hour to
walk around exploring the castle. According to our tour guide, Stirling Castle
was called the ‘Key of Scotland’ and even more important than Edinburgh Castle
as far as defending the area. This castle had more of a castle look to it too.

An hour later, we were loaded back in the bus and on our way towards the
Highlands. During the ride, Shelby gave us another story, this time of Rob Roy
who was the Robin Hood (sort of) of the area. We stopped in a small town called
Aberfoyle and ate lunch at the Forth Inn. I had the Mince and tatties which
translated into what looked like ground beef in a rich gravy with cooked
carrots. The tatties were potatoes. It was YUMMY!

Once lunch was finished, we were back in the bus and heading farther into the
Highlands and to Loch Lomand. We did make a quick pit stop so that we could meet
Hamish the Hairy Coo. The Hairy Coos are cows that look unlike any cows you see here
in the states! Hamish was a sweetie though and would eat food from your hand…
you just had to watch out for the slobber! Eck!

We bid farewell to Hamish and drove the rest of the way to
Loch Lomand. Loch Lomand is a beautiful lake that inspired a song that I’m sure
99% of you have heard before.

O ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

After everyone finish snapping their pictures, the tour was finished and we
enjoyed the ride back to Edinburgh listening to Scottish music. What a great
day! We loved it so much that we decided that we would do another one.

Judie: This was Steve’s and my first day with just
the two of us in Scotland, so we decided not to waste a moment. As we walked
downtown, we created a massive plan of attack. First, we climbed the Scott’s monument –
which was an experience in and of itself. There were points in the tight spiral
staircase when I thought that I was going to have a claustrophobic fit – and I
am not claustrophobic! Reaching the top was
worth it – the views from up there were simply incredible.

Next, we explored the Princes Street Gardens, which
are basically in the area that was once the moat for the castle. According to
our tour guide, the gardens had once been full of water and dead bodies (!!!) to
keep enemies away from the castle. It was hard to imagine what it must have been
like at that time, because in the present day it is a beautiful, serene park.

No dead bodies here…that we could see!

We lined up with the locals and grabbed some
take-out from the Mark’s and Spencer department store deli, then we sat on a
bench in the park and ate a very tasty lunch. Afterwards, we caught a cab
and headed to the Nelson Monument on the top of Calton Hill.

We climbed to the top of the monument, and I was
happy to see that this spiral staircase was quite a bit wider and more
user-friendly than the one at the Scott’s Monument had been. Once to the top, the views were simply amazing!

After leaving Calton Hill, we ducked into an
ancient cemetery, where we were surprised to see a huge memorial to Abraham
Lincoln. It was dedicated to the Scots that had died during the Civil War and
in the fight for US slaves’ emancipation. This cemetery was one of the most
gorgeous I have ever seen – the tombstones were like something out of a gothic
novel.

Next, we toured the
John Knox
house, which is one of the few (maybe the last) homes left in it’s original
medieval state in Scotland. Now, just in case you
don’t remember your history – I will over-simplify and tell you that John Knox
was a protestant that did not approve of the Catholic Queen Mary in the least.
John Knox was a contemporary of John Calvin, and Knox was the founder of
Presbyterianism in Scotland.

After leaving the Knox house, we were famished and
so we ducked into DeliFrance, where we enjoyed awesome French goodies and
coffees.  After getting our second wind, we caught a cab home and met up
with everyone else.

Dinner was at the Wild Elephant, an excellent Thai
place.

Julie: Yes, yet again, another great meal! That reminds me another
interesting thing about Scottish culture that we should mention. If you’re the
type of person that likes to gulp down your food and then dart out of the restaurant,
you’re going to learn a lesson in patience if you visit Scotland. No one
gets into a hurry there. Meals are a relaxed affair… which is a nice thing as
far as I’m concerned. And another thing that really impressed me, when your
food is served, it is piping hot! Not like here in the states where luke warm is about the best it gets sometimes.

When we got back to the flat, I found out that my
Tungsten|T was deader than a door knob! I’m so glad that I have taken up better
habits and was able to restore everything using BackupMan from
Bits n Bolts. Thanks Mike!

Thursday
Julie:
The previous day was a relaxing day (mostly), so this day was to be another
beat-your-feet-on-the-pavement-day. We started out by having our taxi driver
take us up to Calton Hill where Judie and company had been the previous day.
Unfortunately, there were buses blocking the entrance, so we had to walk up the
to the hill on foot. It wasn’t really that bad, but it got your heart pumping.

Once at the top, there was a great view of the town below. We also climbed
the 187 steps to the top of
Nelson Monument. We
got some pretty good shots of the area. The building with the pillars pictured below is known as the Shame of Edinburgh. It was originally called the National Monument and was meant to be a replica of the Parthenon in Athens. Unfortunately, they ran out of money and never finished it.

Does the Nelson Monument remind you of
anything? It was decided to look like an upside down telescope.

Nelson Monument and view of the Athenian style acropolis from the top

We walked from Calton Hill to Holyrood Palace. Like Judie and Steve, we
found it to be really impressive. The royal family actually lives there 1 week
out of the year. We also got the story about the bloodstain on the floor boards
in the bedroom of Mary Queen of Scots. But, our guide also told us that the
floor had been replaced several times through the years and every time the
‘stain’ had crept back into the wood. Spoooooky!

The Holyrood Abbey ruins there are also very impressive. The history of this
building spans 800 years.

Abbey Ruins

After the tour, we made our way back up the Royal Mile and found a little pub
to have lunch. This was a real old time pub. The locals were eating there. You
think they could tell that we weren’t locals? ;o)

Judie: By this day, Steve and I were nearing our
limits on the amount of walking we could do anymore. Call us wusses, but oh
well. We thought we would take it easy and catch a cab back to the Ocean Mall,
see a movie and have lunch at the Ocean Kitchen again. Once we got to the mall,
we saw that the earliest movies weren’t starting until after 2pm! So instead, we enjoyed
an early lunch at the OK, which left us time to ogle the classic cars
on display in the mall. I could totally picture myself cruising in the vintage
Cobra or Jag we saw there . After a while, we caught a bus back into town, and once again decided to walk
around and explore some of the shops and sites. Amazingly enough, after a while
we found that we were in the vicinity of DeliFrance again – so we had to duck in
for some refreshments.

We were supposed to meet up with Julie and her
family at 3:30 for
the underground vault tour, so we started to head towards the Royal Mile. Since we had a
little bit of time left to kill, we checked out St Giles, a gorgeous
church on the Royal Mile.

We also stepped into the Police Station which had
several interesting items on display – including a card case made from the skin
of one of the first serial killers in Scotland…eeeeeeeeeeeeeew!

Julie: Burke and Hare were their names. They would dig up the graves of
freshly dead people and sell their bodies to the local medical school. Once they
got tired of digging up graves, they just started just killing people instead… less
work that way!

Judie: Shortly
afterwards, we met up with everybody and got ready for the tour. Just in case any of
you have forgotten – it was COLD outside and the wind was blasting and it was
drizzly! We sat on a
bench near the place where the tour was to start…and my teeth were just
chattering away!

Julie: I was actually freezing my buns off this time too! The wind there
really cuts through you!

Judie: About 20
minutes later, the tour group was assembled and we were on our way. It seemed
like it just got colder and colder – and the wind was stronger and
stronger…and I was just about ready to quit the tour and go back
(seriously) when we finally entered an unmarked black door on the side of a
building that took us into the beginning of a section of underground vaults.
What a freaky underground world! If you can imagine a city under a city – rooms
where people lived, worked, and did their thing underground, then you will have
an inkling of what this place was like. In later years, the vaults were used as
storage for wine and beer – since the underground temperatures and conditions
were ideally suited to this purpose.

The vaults were actually the under-supports for the
tall buildings that make up the bridge that composes the Royal Mile. Of
course, when you are standing on the Royal Mile, you would never even realize
that you are actually on a bridge at all, what with the tall buildings on either
side of the road – but you are! It’s amazing!

Julie: It was very cool. It’s too bad that we were too tired and cold to take
one of the ghosts tours.

Judie: After the tour, Steve and I headed back to the flat.
We were cold and wanted to warm up a bit. After resting, Steve and I took a hike
up the block to Pataki, a fabulous Indian restaurant. Steve had never tried
Indian before, but he was game. Afterwards, he said it was one of the best meals
he had ever had in his life! If you knew my husband, then you would know that
that was saying a lot!

Julie: Ha! Every meal that he ate, he said that it was one of the best meals
he’d ever had. Just like you would say that every latte that you drank was the
best ever!

Judie: Now hold up – he would say that various meals
he would eat were the best he had had in Edinburgh – but if you ask him,
he will say that the Indian food at Pataki was one of the best meals of his
life. Big difference. ;0)

Julie: We weren’t up for Indian, so we found a great little place that served a dish
called
Steak and Ale Pie. This was chunks of beef in a beer gravy with a flaky
biscuit-like top over it. Yum, yum, yum!

Friday
Judie: We had finally reached our point of exhaustion.
We decided that since it was our last day and we had seen just about everything
that we wanted to see, and had done everything that we wanted to do – and since
we had already decided that we would be returning one day – we would just take
it easy! We slept late, then walked to Pataki again for Indian food. Yes, we
were hooked! Afterwards, we strolled up and down the block looking at antique
stores.

After a while we went back to the flat and just
chilled. Julie and her family were on another tour, and we were wondering if the
week was starting to catch up with them yet, or if they were doing just fine…

Julie:
We were pretty tired too, but we couldn’t resist taking another tour into the
countryside. I could spend everyday doing things like that! This time, we took
the Highland Waterfalls, Gorges & Whisky tour. Our tour guide for this trip was
Alec. And as luck would have it, our tour guide from the first trip was riding
along.

This time, we were off for a tour of the Famous Grouse (formerly Glenturret
Distillery), the oldest (legal) distillery in Scotland, established in 1775.

On the way, we stopped to see the Forth road bridge and rail bridge. The
bridges which are over 1 mile in length, are parallel to each other. The rail
bridge which looks really modern (at least to me), was actually built in the
1880′s!

Soon we were back on the road and shortly arrived at the distillery. Now, I’m not
really a whiskey drinker, but the tour was informative and fun. I was snapping
pictures along the way and about halfway through, the guide told me that pics
weren’t allowed. Oops! At the end of the tour, we were given a little test to
see how well our sniffers (noses) were for picking out the different tastes that
go into a blended whiskey. Afterwards, we even got to drink a dram! Wow, no
wonder the Scots like this drink. It really warms you up! I think it even made
the side of my throat numb! Ha!

 

Secret pictures of the distillery…shhh…

We ate lunch there and couldn’t resist getting the
Haggis Neeps and Tatties. This time the haggis was a bit different. More
peppery… but good. Neeps translates to cooked turnips. I didn’t get overly
enthusiastic about eating them! Hehehe.

After lunch, we all piled back into the van and made our way to the ‘Birks of
Aberfeldy’. Here, Alec asked if we would all enjoy a wee walk to see the
waterfalls. Of course we said yes. We were wondering why Alec was only in short
sleeves though, and didn’t wear a jacket. It was pretty chilly out. We thought
we was just being macho. About 10 minutes into the walk, we found out why… Alec is
a power walker! Yikes! I think I needed an oxygen tank by the time that wee walk
was finished!

The views of the falls were worth it though! Everything (including the
trees), were moss covered.

Judie: Later in the day, when Julie’s
family got back, we
all went to enjoy one last Scottish meal at the New Bell Restaurant. Once again,
our meals were fabulous!

Saturday
Julie:
Oh boy, we were all up at 3am for the trip back home!

Judie: Our plane was set to leave at 6:30, so
thinking that as in America, we needed to be at the airport two hours in advance
- we got there at 4:30. Well, imagine our surprise when we found that we didn’t
need to be there ’til 45 minutes before the flight! At least we were first in
line, but I sure could have used that extra hour in bed.

The flights home – even though they were longer,
seemed shorter. I watched 8-mile, and fell asleep soon after Analyze That had
started. It
was on this flight that I also saw something that I have never seen before – and
maybe some of you can tell me if you have ever encountered it: the people and
their children that were sitting in front of us would actually clamber like
monkeys over each other to get out of and into their seats! Instead of one
getting out to let the others in and out, the person that wanted to leave or
come back in would just step over them onto the armrests of the seats. Is this
normal?

I was glad to get back to Dallas – even though we
still had a four hour car trip ahead of us – I was looking forward to the
comfortable chairs in our Ford Expedition!

Julie:
They had it a little luckier than we did. We had to take another flight from
Dallas to Indianapolis. Then an hour’s drive home. Needless to say, we were glad
to be back, but wow, what a great trip!

We only took the gadgets with us that we really needed. Living without a
laptop was hard (especially when I got home and had over 1100 emails to wade
through!), but at the same time, this was a real vacation… away from
technology… for the most part. Our main gadgets were our digital cameras. And
I have to say that the tiny Sony DSC U20 served me well!

Judie: Guess where we’re planning to go next year? Africa!

Things We Experienced That We Hadn’t Expected
We saw many people with jeans and white sneakers on – both locals and tourists.
You won’t stand out if you wear them.
The food was wonderful.
Take Away is the same as Take Out, and is about 15% cheaper than dining
in at the restaurant.
The sinks had separate spigots on either end of the bowl. One for hot and one
for cold… and we’re talking scalding hot or freezing cold. No in between.
Make Way signs that look like Yield signs are the same as Stop signs.
Coca Cola there doesn’t taste the same. The ingredients even mention ‘vegetable
extracts’.
The water quality is excellent for drinking right out of the tap – and just
about cold enough, too.
There is not a central water heater in each home – instead each shower had its
own heater that had to be turned on before you got in. You then had to adjust a
dial to pick your temperature – it took a little while before we were able to
keep it from being either scalding hot or freezing cold.
People – even the older ones – are generally very friendly.
Almost nobody in service industries expects a tip.
While it’s not cheap, it is no more expensive to do anything in Edinburgh than
it is in any major US City. That goes for tours, dining out, and grocery
shopping.

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Spring Break Trip to Scotland with the Gadgeteers Article originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 24, 2003 at 12:00 am.

A Spring Break vacation to Scotland! Wow! I knew I’d eventually visit Europe,
but I didn’t know it would happen this soon. With less than 48hrs before my
plane takes off from Indianapolis International Airport to meet up with Judie
and her family in Dallas (yeah, yeah, I know I’m going in the opposite direction
that I need to be going…) I’m getting antsy that I might forget to pack
something important. Actually, I haven’t even started packing yet! Can you say
"procrastination"? ;o) I always thought that people took vacations to escape
stress, but sometimes just the act of preparing for the vacation can be enough
to send a person over the edge! Ok, I may be exaggerating just a touch… ;o)

The goal of this trip is to pack light. To take only what is truly necessary.
I’m cool with that as I usually tend to take only the bare essentials. But this
time, neither Judie or myself are taking our Fujitsu laptops. We both decided to
forego the extra bulk since we didn’t intend to update the site while we’d be
gone. This is a VACATION after all! And since we are going on the vacation
together, we didn’t need a way to stay in touch. Of course we’ll probably have
surfing withdraw and will have to find an internet cafe at least once during the
trip.

Since I knew that this was going to be a sight seeing trip, mucho picture taking
was a priority. After my trip to Sedona
Arizona last fall, I learned to really appreciate tiny digital cameras. I
took a Canon Powershot s110 that did an excellent job image-wise and
battery-wise. Unfortunately, I traded it off not long after coming back from
that trip. My only other digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 990) just seemed too
bulky for this trip as I knew it wouldn’t fit comfortably in a pocket. So, I
began searching for an extremely tiny digicam with at least 2 mega pixels. In
the end, I narrowed my choices down to the Minolta Dimage Xi and the Sony
DSC-U20. I happened to luck out and get a great deal on the Sony via eBay.
Although this camera doesn’t have a zoom, it does take good pictures and is tiny
enough to fit an almost any pocket which is what I was looking for. I’m anxious
to see how well it does on batteries (2 AAA’s).

In order to offload images from the Sony after filling a Memory Stick, I plan to
bring my iPAQ 3800 with Seidio Dual
CF sleeve and CF 4-in-1 adapter from Semson’s
& Co. Using this combination, I can copy images from a memory stick to
Compact flash or the internal SD slot in the iPAQ. Judie is bringing her iPAQ
with 5gb Datapak drive, so if I run out of storage, I can save even more
pictures to that.

Besides the iPAQ, I’ll be bringing my Tungsten T to use as my info and
entertainment device. As my main PDA, it has all my important information
already on it. Like Judie, I’m bringing a keyboard so that I can write notes
about the trip. I’m bringing the Pocketop
Wireless keyboard. I’ve had one for awhile now, but haven’t had a chance to
really put it through its paces. This trip will help with that.

This trip will also be a little different since we have to take the power
differences into consideration. We won’t be able to just plug our AC adapters
and battery chargers into the wall like we’re used to. To combat this problem. I
purchased a 2000W voltage converter with plug adapters from
Packinglight.com. 2000watts sounds
like overkill, but hey, we have to be able to use our hair dryer too! ;o)

I’m also bringing a variety of Seidio adapters and cables so that we can
charge our iPAQs and Tungsten T’s while on the plane. Also to prepare for the 3
LONG flights on Friday, I’m installing some software on my Tungsten that should
be both useful and fun.

Utilities
As a long time computer user, you would think that I have practiced good backup
habits for my PDAs… Actually I am the queen of forgetfulness. If there is a
task that I need to remember to do, you might as well forget it. Even if I set
an alarm for it on my PDA, I’ll just tell myself that I’ll do it ‘in a little
bit’ and never will. But, I know how I am, and I accept it ;o) Even though I
have the memory of a gnat (just ask Judie…), I still know that backups are
important. So, I found the perfect backup program for my Tungsten. BackupMan
from Bits n Bolts. It has a simple
interface that is easy to use and understand. I also really like the schedule
feature. It is super simple to setup and after doing so, you don’t have to
fiddle with it again. I always have a couple backups should I ever need to
restore my device.

Palm Reader with several books is
also a must. I don’t seem to get time to read like I wish I could, so this trip
might help make up for that!

I’m also thinking of reloading Avantgo
with a bunch of content before I leave.

Like Judie, I’m also taking Currency from
Peter Easton. Just wish it would also
tell me what the different coins converted to as well. )

Entertainment
Besides bringing a magazine or two, reading books and watching a movie, I knew
I’d need something else to occupy my mind during the whole day of flights. I
couldn’t go anywhere without Pocket Tunes from
Norm Soft, Inc. I’ll be loading up a
256mb SD card full of MP3s just for the trip. And fresh from eBay, I have a pair
of Bang & Olufsen A8 earphones that
are sound great, are really comfortable and look cool as heck.

A great game that I’ve recently become hooked on is also accompanying me.
Triclops from I/SComplete is a wacky
combination of Tetris, Hmaki, and… ummmm, I dunno. It’s just different, easy
to learn, and fun! Check it out, but don’t blame me once you become hooked!

No long trip would be complete without
Scrabble! It’s fun playing against the computer, or passing it to your
friends to see who can come up with the obscure words.

I also can’t leave out my all time fave
Vexed. This is a simple yet
brain bending puzzle game that will drive you nuts!

If you have some suggestions for some other fun puzzle style games that are I
should definitely take along, let me know!

Well, there you have it. A few gadgets and a few games and we’re on our way to a
week of new sights and adventures! Oh boy, I still need to pack! Hmmmm…. the
flight doesn’t leave till 11:30am Friday. I guess I can do it Friday morning ;o)

Stay tuned for full trip article once we return!

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

What’s Coming With Julie on Spring Break Article originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 5, 2003 at 12:00 am.

By now, most of you have heard that Julie’s and my families are going to
Scotland for Spring Break. While Julie and I intend to do a full write-up on our
experiences after we get back, I thought it would be fun to let you all in on
what I plan on bringing, before I actually get packed.

The biggest consideration I am making in regard to the gear I chose to bring,
is that it has to be versatile and multifunctional. I am packing as light as
possible, and I don’t want to bring along any piece of gear that isn’t
absolutely necessary. In fact, instead of traveling with my monster sized
Halliburton that usually accompanies me everywhere, I am going to do something
unprecedented. I am going to try to fit everything I need for a week in Scotland
inside the Swiss Army

rolling bag I was given at M�bius.
Anything that doesn’t fit in there is going in the corner of my husband’s large
rolling bag that he has promised he’ll save for me. Of course, I’ll also have my
gear bag with me for all of the gadget stuff I’ll need each day.

So why am I traveling in a manner so completely out of character?
After hearing from helpful Gadgeteer readers about the small size of most
European cabs’ trunks, and since the apartment we’ll be staying in has a washer
and dryer (convenient!) – I am going to seriously pursue the art of traveling
light. Can I do it? That remains to be seen – I still have some time before
I actually start packing, but for now – that is the plan.

So here is a peek in my gear bag. If you can think of anything that I may
have missed, particularly in the software area – speak up now! I would hate to
get over there and wish that I had remembered to add something while I still
could…

Hardware

I am actually going to be bringing both my
Palm Tungsten | T as well as my
HP iPAQ 5455. Now before anyone starts
throwing my words back at me about how I said I was traveling light – let me
explain myself…

My reasoning is that the TT will be my daily PDA, loaded with all of the
essential programs that I will need. To complement the TT, and to make up for
the fact that I will not be bringing my

Fujitsu Lifebook (mini-moi), I am bringing a
Stowaway XT keyboard. I figure that this
should be sufficient for all of the detailed notes that I’ll want to take for
the article Julie and I will be writing about our trip.

My iPAQ, on the other hand, will be my media-horse. Julie is bringing her new
Sony camera that uses Memory Sticks. I am bringing a
Canon Powershot
S330 which uses Compact Flash cards and my husband will be carrying a

Olympus C-700 which uses Smart Media. So right there, you can see that we
will have three different types of memory cards that need to be emptied every so
often. I have a 5GB
DataPak that will be perfect for holding all of these picture files as we
collect them. Using my trusty
Whitney iPAQ PC BaqPaq,
I can insert a 4-in-1 media
reader or a CF Reader, move the files to my almost emptied iPAQ (which I did
in preparation for this trip), and then I can remove the reader and insert the
DataPak to transfer over all of the files. As an added bonus, if we happen to be
in any 802.11b enabled areas, I will be able to access the web and check my
e-mail. Perfect! ☺

My cameras, two PDAs, memory cards, their
readers, as well as my wallet and a few other personal items will easily fit in
my Louis Vuitton Nil, which is what I use as a gearbag.

Other Gear

I will also be bringing AA
NEXcell batteries and their
charger to use with the Olympus, as well as all of the necessary chargers for
the two PDAs and the Canon.

Software

The plane ride from Dallas to London Gatwick looks like it will be very
long. Even though much of the flight will be taken up with talking, watching
movies, and sleeping – I would be lost without a few necessary programs on my
Palm. Here are the ones that made the cut…

Time Wasters

PalmReader Pro
No PDA of mine is ever complete without PalmReader Pro. I usually have
quite a few books loaded on my memory card, and I have even more in anticipation
of this trip. I sure am looking forward to devouring them on the plane rides!

Astraware Games
I have a freshly installed protector on my TT just because of these titles –
seriously.

If you ever want to see what separates a premium protector such as the
G2,
WriteSHIELD, or the
Brando Plus from the other,
lesser protectors, then all you have to do is play thirty minutes worth of
Text Twist.
Afterward, take a good look at the damage you will have done to any other
ordinary protector – or heaven forbid – your screen, if you didn’t use a
protector. Here are my current Astraware favorites…

Text Twist is a game where the object is to see how many words you can create from the five letters provided. As long as you can get at least one five letter word, you will be able to advance to the next level. This game is completely addictive, as I mentioned recently in my gear diary.

BookWorm is another word puzzle that is hard to put down. In this game, you have to link at least three letters together to form words. Certain letters will be worth more than others, and you have to use "burning letters before they reach the bottom and set the library on fire." This game is almost as addictive as Text Twist, and even though the graphics are way better – for whatever reason I am stuck on the former.

Insaniquarium is a different type of game than the previous two. In this one, you have an aquarium with fish that you need to feed. As they grow, they start to drop coins, which you can bank to buy more fish or different items that will make your life easier. You also need the money to buy enough "eggs" to advance to the next level. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is some goofy take on the portable pets that were so popular years ago…this is a whole different experience. You have to be quick to tap on the screen – feeding fish, catching coins, and killing aliens.     Once again, don’t say I didn’t warn you if you play any of these games without a screen protector in place!

Casino

I always like to play the slots when I go to Vegas – not that I am any good
at them, of course! I also like to play Black Jack and video poker – but once
again, I get squeamish when real money is involved. I have never understood
Craps, so I don’t even play…but I have given Roulette a go and come away with
a little bit of money in my pocket.  Here is a way that I can play all five
popular Vegas games without losing my life’s savings! The graphics are very well
done, and the game play is exciting!

Utilities

While the games will be great ways to waste my down time, I also have a few
travel essentials loaded on my Palm.

Botzam Backup

Since I will be away from my laptop, and the ability to hot-sync my data – or
recover my data and applications should disaster strike, it was imperative that
I find a way to backup my Tungsten’s contents. Botzam Backup allows me to do
that, and manages to do a few tricks with the backup files in the process. You
can schedule regular backups, you can securely encrypt your backup, and you can
selectively have your files compressed!

Travel Tracker

I have everything I need to know about my trip loaded in TravelTracker…now
if next week will just hurry up and get here!

Currency

Since I would not even presume to do a Dollar to Pound transaction without a
calculator, it should be even easier to do with this program. The buttons are
big enough that I can tap the screen with my finger, and the exchange rates can
be programmed in as needed. I may look like a tourist, but at least I won’t look
unsuspecting!

I just realized that we have exactly seven more days before we leave for
Scotland! Not only do I need to go practice my packing, I also need to make sure
that I have everything that I am going to need ready for the trip. I am sure
that there must be many more programs that would make the flight and time we are
in the UK even better; do any of you have any suggestions?

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

What’s Coming With Judie on Spring Break Article originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 27, 2003 at 12:00 am.

Julie’s comments are in BLACK, Judie’s are in
BLUE and italicized.

Sunday

The last time Judie and I attended COMDEX was the
Spring 2001
show in Chicago. Having never been to a Fall COMDEX, which is supposed to be a
huge show compared to the Spring event, I was very excited!

I was too! What with all the new PDAs and other
devices coming out, I figured we would really see some cool items and
accessories.

Flying from Indy to St. Louis and then from St. Louis to Las Vegas Sunday
afternoon went without a hitch. Both flights arrived 10-15min ahead of time, and
I was only singled out once by the security people. Either things are calming
down, or I’m looking less suspicious lately )

I, on the other hand, was practically strip searched
in San Angelo. Since I had purchased my ticket before I was married, my new name
did not match my ticketed name. Even though Steve ran home to get our marriage
license, I guess I still looked suspicious. I got to watch as both of my bags
were emptied, my personal items were felt up and then repacked. Not fun.

At least my flight was enjoyable. I got to sit next
to Michael Vanover, a Visionary for  IBM. Amazingly enough, that is what
the title on his business card says…and after talking to him during the flight, I can
understand why: the man is a genius. When I grow up, I want his job! ;0)

I met up with Judie at the Las Vegas airport. After grabbing our luggage, we
soon found ourselves waiting in the
taxi line from hell for what seemed like days, but was probably only 30mins or
so.

(This taxi line was soooo long that I had a dream
about it that night – no joke!)

When it was finally our turn, we climbed into a taxi and were quickly on our
way to the Aladdin hotel. Earlier this year, we both attended
CES where we stayed at the Luxor. I
personally enjoyed the Aladdin quite a bit more.

The Aladdin was definitely a much larger and nicer room – of
course, we did pay the $30 extra (per night) to upgrade. Since the Aladdin has a
Starbucks on the second floor,  it is my favorite hotel so far.

Each room actually had an LCD monitor / keyboard with a hook up to the
internet. There was also an Ethernet cable for connecting to an existing
laptop… The only thing that sucked was that they charged $9.95 for DSL internet access
per 24hrs. Since we both had our Fuji’s with us though, we went ahead and
shelled out for the high speed connection on my mini-me.

Yah, Julie and I thought we would be smart and use
one of our dial up accounts instead. But guess what? After the first couple
minutes (which cost something like $1.50), the hotel started charging a dollar
per minute! So there was no easy work-around there!

The only area that I felt the hotel really failed to
deliver was in entertainment. I was
counting on the Aladdin having a good show, like the Luxor had in January.
Instead, we were offered something in the "nasty girls in thongs" variety or the
Society of Seven show. Neither of which appealed to us in the least…

Since it was pretty late, we unpacked our luggage and went to find a place in the hotel
to eat that was NOT a buffet! We settled on Tremezzo, an excellent Italian
restaurant.

Definitely worth visiting when you are at the
Aladdin! We shared the calamari (of course) and Julie got the breaded veal while
I had the surf and turf…YUM. The only problem was that the portions were so
big that we hardly even ate half of what was on our plates!

By the time we finished, we were miserable and decided to explore the hotel a
bit to work off some of the calories. The Aladdin had a full mall inside with
many exclusive (a.k.a. expensive) shops. In the aisles were painted cows…

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Vegas was
doing the "Cows on Parade" exhibit that
I had first seen done in Chicago, back in 2000.

Tired and ready to check email, we headed back to the room. But not before
Judie stopped to get the first of MANY Grande Lattes at Starbucks. We had the
girl behind the counter snap our picture.

Hey, not since Seattle had I had such a great
opportunity to indulge – so I was definitely going to make the most of my
circumstances!

Monday

Monday morning we were up bright and early for a meeting with Sony Ericsson.
We couldn’t leave though till Judie had Latte #2!

Well, Sony was supposed to be treating us to
breakfast. But since I didn’t know what kind of food would be available at the
convention center, I figured I had better at least get some caffeine and dairy
food groups in…turned out to be a good thing, too…

We were then picked up at the hotel and dropped off at the convention center
where we met with two of their representatives at the Starbucks there.

No, I did not order another latte…but we also
didn’t get anything to eat, so I was glad I already had something in my tummy.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to hear our hosts over my belly’s
rumblings!

We crowded around a small table in the back of the store that had a variety
of phones displayed on top. They showed us the T68i which I had briefly played with before.

We also got to play with the T206 (Sony’s only PCS
compatible – but only available in the San Francisco area –
version), the T200, the MCA-25 (my personal favorite) and several others.

They also showed us small snap-on cameras for several of the phones, a very
tiny Bluetooth headset, and a
nifty accessory pack called the "Official 007 Spy Pack". It included a tiny
flashlight that plugged into the bottom of the phone. A camera that could plug
into the phone was also included.

We were really impressed with the P800 PDA/phone. It had a
removable flip down keypad that
revealed a large crisp color screen. It also has a Memory Stick Duo slot on the
side. While Julie and I had seen mockups of this card at CES, this was the first
time we saw one actually being used in a product. This PDA/phone combo includes all the PIM features that a person
might need, along with other
fun apps such as games and video players.

After the meeting was finished, we picked up our press badges and were
quickly on our way to one of the exhibits halls to have a look around until our next
meeting. On our way, Judie stopped at a Blue Fish station to get the COMDEX
guide beamed to her TT. Unfortunately, it didn’t work!

I felt totally ripped off, I wanted my COMDEX guide
on my Tungsten! :0<

One of the first products that we both spotted at about the same time was at the
Nite Ize booth. They had little flashlight stands that looked
kind of silly, but
at the same time I could see a use for them.

I think they would make great stocking stuffers –
and you wouldn’t have to argue with anyone at the office (or at school) about
which flashlight was yours…

Next Judie spotted the Pen Clic Mouse.
It was a mouse like device that you griped like a writing instrument. Not sure if I would personally ever
use something like that. But hey, someone might!

You’re supposed to be able to write with the Pen
Clic, but it looked really bulky and uncomfortable to me.

Our next stop was at the Palm Pavilion. Wow, was it
busy! It was crowded
every time we walked by in the two days that we were there. We got a chance to
see the Tungsten T hard case and the scuba case which were both in displays.

We also saw the leather slim case, which at first
looked really cute and small.

We actually each purchased one at the Palm Store there.

And I have already stopped using mine, after it
caused a disastrous battery drain on the way home…but I digress.

Our next meeting was with Palm. I was very surprised that they started out by
saying that they had read and loved our Tungsten
| T review. They also followed up
by apologizing for my nightmare Palm Store ordering fiasco.

They really did score points with us for that.

They had the Tungsten T and W models on the table to show us. Of course we
were more interested in actually seeing the W model since we’ve both had our own
T’s for a couple weeks. I thought the W was a pretty
good size considering the built in keyboard. The screen was also just as nice as
the T. They made it clear that this device isn’t a cell phone replacement…

Right. Several times they emphasized that the W was
best used for data, and that they figured people would use a separate
mobile phone for voice calls.

We were also shown several accessories that we had yet to see in the flesh.
This included the Veo Photo Traveler SD slot camera, the
Margi Presenter To Go, the Tungsten T hard
case, and something I was MOST interested in: the Real Audio MP3 player.

We begged to have them beam it to us, but
unfortunately they wouldn’t cave in, saying that it was still unfinished. But
when they demoed it, it sounded fine to us! Playback was really good thru the
external speakers that they had the TT hooked up to. I can’t wait to get it when
it becomes available in December!

This was also the first time that Judie and I had a chance to play around
with Bluetooth between two Tungstens. I asked if it might be possible to use a Bluetooth
enabled headset to listen to MP3s with the T. We were told no…

So of course Julie then asked if it would be possible
for someone to hack the headset or write a software driver to enable MP3playback, but the answer was still
"no." Well, we tried!

After a quick sit-on-the-floor-lunch of schwarma pita sandwiches from a Kosher
deli there at the convention center, we headed to another meeting. This time it
was with Sharp to check out the new
Zaurus. I was curious to see if the 5000 series device that I had
reviewed
last year had been improved.

We were pleased when we found that Jason Perlow,
someone we already knew, was
to be our personal "tour guide." He demoed the new SL-5600 and we half jokingly
asked if we would be able to see the new SL-C700, which is as of yet, only
available in Japan. To our surprise, one of the
two that are currently in the United States materialized just for us. WOW…this
little unit was very cool. Almost like a mini Tablet PC.

I would buy one of these devices in a second. The screen was crystal clear
and very bright. In the tablet mode, it really wasn’t much bigger than a typical
Pocket PC. Unfortunately, when I asked if they would be selling them in the US,
the answer was not yes…  (it wasn’t a "no" either,
though) But, they did ask what we thought would be a good
price to charge here would be, so I guess there is hope.

Since we were finished with our meetings for the day, we went back to the exhibit halls to
scout out interesting products. We once again headed back to the Palm Pavilion to finish
looking in that area.

Our first stop was the Rhinoskin booth to see what
their new products were. Even though we knew that we would be having dinner with
Michael, their PR guy the following night, he had invited us to come by and
check everything out beforehand. I was glad we did! Not only do they have a fashionable
low-cost case just for the Palm Zire, there were also new cases for the Tungsten
T, Handspring Treo
and various Sony CLIÉ models.

Next we happened upon the Parallax Inc.
booth that had robot kits using the Basic Stamp programmable module. My friend
David has always been interested in their products, so I snapped a few pictures
and grabbed a catalog for him.

I had never even heard of Basic Stamp (I guess I
have been under a rock or something), but it looked like pretty imaginative
stuff!

Next we happened upon a test track for
Segway Human Transporters! The line was pretty long, so we just watched as
people tentatively tried them out. They really looked like fun! You can even
pre-order them from
Amazon.com for $4950!
(Too bad that isn’t an affiliate link!)

We would have loved to have given the transporter a
try, but the line was almost as bad as the taxi queue at the airport was… so we
had to be content with just watching.

After trudging around for another couple of hours, our feet were tired and we
were starving! So, we decided to call it a day and headed back to the hotel to
dump all the brochures that we had collected, check email and find a place
to eat.

There was no way we could stay at the Aladdin
without eating at PF Chang’s! Once again, we enjoyed a scrumptious meal, feasting
on pot-stickers, spring rolls, mu shu pork, and moo goo gai pan. YUM!

Chinese is my fave! But, once again, we barely ate half of what was brought
to us. We vowed to split entries from then on out so we wouldn’t feel so guilty
for wasting such great food!

As we left the restaurant, Julie and I decided that
it was finally time to gamble. We saw a bank of slot machines with the moniker
"Winning for Dummies." Laughing at that, I decided to play the dollar that my
mother-in-law had given me before I left home. Almost immediately, I won $5! I
played my daughter’s dollar, and almost immediately lost that.

Hoping Judie’s luck would rub off on me, I sat down next to her and fed a
couple dollars into the machine. My $10 won me $12.50! Wooo, we were high
rollers baby!

Julie and I liked the way these machines played, so
we hunkered down to do some serious (at least for us) gambling. We each figured
we were willing to lose $20, so that was our limit. I put in my first $10 and
promptly won $26.50! I was in a state of shock, so I quickly cashed out…then
put in a different $10 bill.

At one point, we took our cups of quarter winnings up to the cashier. When we
headed back to our lucky machines, we found that some other people had nabbed
them! Like dorks, we just waited around till they got tired of us staring at the
back of their heads and left!

Yah, and I think that those people snagged our good
luck, because even though Julie and I managed to make our money last for over
30 minutes while playing the slots – we still managed to lose what we were
playing with. We would go up and down, and every time we
thought we were about to go bust, we would win something! It was great fun, and
as most fun things do, it eventually ended. We felt like we got good value for
our money, though! ;0)

Tired from walking 900 miles in the past 8hrs, we turned in for the night.

We wouldn’t have been so tired if we had had our own
Segways…

Tuesday

Tuesday was spent trying to see all the interesting things that we had missed the
day before. As our last day at the show, we knew we’d have to do fast walking. 
We also had a couple other meetings to fit in as well.

We didn’t even think about leaving the Aladdin until
I had got yet another latte, though…

You are such a freak! Give me a nice cup of tea any day! )
Bleah! ;0)

So anyway, the day got off to a rocky start because
we were supposed to be picked up by Fossil and taken to a meeting room to
discuss their new alliance with Palm and their two new PDA watches.  But
guess what? We totally got stood up! We waited…and waited…and waited. They
never showed. We knew which hotel we were supposed to be meeting in, but we had
no idea in which room we would be, because we were supposed to have been
escorted there. So long story short, we waited 30 minutes and then we said
"forget it." I guess they were teaching us a lesson for
dissing their first PDA watch.
Honest Fossil, the new version looks much better! 

We did find out later that their driver had been waiting for us in a
car outside…while we were (of course) waiting for him in the lobby inside.

So we hopped the last shuttle, and headed over to
the Convention Center.

The first wacky device we spotted was a talking parrot called the PC
Mascot from Mitsumi. When plugged into your
PC, this plastic bird will alert you to new email, read the mail to you, remind
you of your appointments, and also function as a message board where you can
leave a message for other people to listen to.

This would be a great toy for those of you that get
steamy e-mails from your honey. Can’t you just imagine the same voice that
should be saying "Polly want a cracker?" saying "I can’t wait to see you
tonight, Baby?" <snicker>

Our next stop was the Pocket PC area where our friend
Dale Coffing was there
trying to get Palm users to take a chance at trading in their Palm OS devices
for a new Pocket PC. Neither Judie or I decided to risk our beloved Tungsten
T’s! ;o).

If I had had my Palm m505 (the one with the broken
SD slot) with me, then I would have been happy to trade it up for the Dell Axim
that Dale was going to give away!

Here we got a chance to see and hold the new Dell Axim. Personally, I think
the device is too big and too cheap feeling. You can’t beat the price and features
though… It actually reminded us of a Casio E-200 Pocket PC.

Not just in the way that it had both the CF and
SD/MMC slots, but also something about it’s size and metallic coloring.

I just now figured out what the Dell really reminds me of! A
Philips Pronto remote control!

While the Dell PPC didn’t really excite me, the new HP Pocket PCs were another thing entirely. My jaw dropped when I
saw the 1900 series device. It was itsy bitsy and had the most gorgeous screen
I’d seen in a long time! I was in love and wanted to walk off with it.
Unfortunately, both it and the 5000 series devices were tethered to the display.
Phooey!

It was a trick prying both Pocket PCs out of the
people’s hands that were crowded around the display! These units were suh-weet,
and everyone wanted to touch them!

I know! There were people crowding around behind us that I think were getting
pretty annoyed at how long we were hogging them!

The lengths we will go to for our fellow gadgeteers!

The 5000′s looked really nice too, but wow the 1900! Too bad it doesn’t have
a 400mhz ARM processor! )

The 1900 almost looked too skinny to me, I really
liked the looks of the 5000 better. Combining WiFi with Bluetooth, biometric
security, a removable battery, and a FAB screen, this high-end device looks
pretty awesome!

I’ll take one of each!

Yes, please! :0)

After the people behind us almost physically pulled us away from the HP
booth, we resumed our walkabout.

Wandering around, we came across a huge display of
flexible keyboards. Every color, shape, and size that you could imagine was
represented. How do you all feel about this type of keyboard? I have to admit
that I like a harder one, such as the awesome new
Think Outside XT that Julie
and I both have for our Tungsten Ts.

I can see the application for these type of keyboards, like for use in dirty
areas… But, I find it hard to touch type with as much speed as I do a regular
keyboard.

Next we found a different kind of booth.
Remnant Entertainment, a
company that has a new "Massively Multi-Player Online Role-playing Game"
currently in development called Tales of the Unwritten. If you have some
bucks you might want to invest in a start-up, take a look.

The game had an EverQuest type feel to it, but is supposed to have more
things to do other than just hacking and slashing like EQ tends to be.

At this point, I think Judie and I both turned to each other and asked if we
were ‘over’ it and ready to go do something else. In agreement, we grabbed a
taxi and went walking and browsing in a different venue: Caesar’s Palace.

No trip to any major city is complete for me without
a trip to the Louis Vuitton store. Knowing that there was one located in the
Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace just gave us an excuse to waste the afternoon
window shopping and eating. While I didn’t see anything at the Louis Vuitton
store that I couldn’t live without (amazingly enough), we did manage to score
with yet another delicious meal, this time at the
Cheese Cake Factory, one of my
husband’s favorite restaurants. Once again,
Julie and I split the fried calamari, but this time we got smart and also shared
our entree, the pork chops, which came with mashed potatoes.

It was totally yummy! I’d never heard of this restaurant prior to this visit.
Now, I’m excited to know that there is one not far (60miles) from me in
Indianapolis! I’m definitely going to visit again!

After eating, we visited
FAO Schwartz, where we saw a very elaborate
Steiff
display. I picked up a couple of gifts to take home.

We also saw a large display of LEGO there which was really cool! Look, Julie
Tut!

We were just about beat, and since we knew we had to
meet Michael, Sarah & Alan from Rhinoskin for dinner, we decided to go back to
the hotel and rest for a little bit.

And of course, check email! Yes, we are total addicts!

We got to the Venetian a little bit early, because
we weren’t sure where our restaurant,
Postrio, was
located. Entering the hotel, we marveled at the beautiful paintings on the
ceilings and walls.

The hotels in Vegas are just amazing! I’m glad we were able to visit a few
different ones on this trip.

Julie and I peeked at shops along the "grand canal"
and admired some of the items displayed. Of note was the chair carved of wood
that resembled a pair of overalls, a dress carved of wood by the same artist,
and a green glass horse – which I would have loved to have brought home…but
for its 95 thousand dollar price tag! <gasp!>

Does anyone really buy stuff like this? I mean come on!

Julie and I waited in the square while three
musicians played Italian standards. Julie and I were in an exceptionally goofy
mood. We were tempted to ask some of the older men sitting in the square to come
waltz with us, but we figured their wives might object. So instead, we
not-so-discreetly accompanied the musicians with a well-placed "la la la" or
two, or three. I eventually felt a spasm of remorse, so I gave the trio a three
dollar tip for entertaining us so well.

I still wish they should have taken requests… Roll Out the Barrel anyone?
Didn’t we start singing that one, anyway? Right after
we were singing "la la la" to "when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza
pie…that’s amoooooo-re!"

Soon, we saw Michael, Alan and Sarah approaching –
so we headed to Postrio’s entrance.

Once seated, we began what was easily the best meal
yet! Appetizers of foi gras and bacon wrapped scallops led the way. I ordered
the red snapper with asparagus and artichoke ravioli (heaven!) and Julie had the
Jim Dory.

In case you aren’t familiar with Jim Dory (I wasn’t!), it’s a type of white
fish. It was excellent! The whole evening was casual and fun. I really enjoyed
the company.

After three hours of talking back and forth with the
Rhinoskin folks about Palms, Pocket PCs, and other PDAs, we were finally ready
to call it a night.

Wednesday

Wednesday morning, the alarm went off at 5:30am (UGH!). Our flight was at
9:30am, so we had two hours to get ready and to the airport.

Of course, we didn’t leave for the airport until I
got my final latte! ;0)

Perish the thought! You know it!

The great thing about the trip back was that Judie and I were able to share
the same flight to the Dallas airport. We even got seats next to each other. )

This was the first time we have ever been able to do
this, so it was quite nice!

We had breakfast at Ruby’s Diner. They have HUGE egg sandwiches that are to
die for! Which once again, we should have shared, as
there was too much food!

…and Judie also grabbed a box of six freshly baked Cinnibon rolls for her
family to enjoy when she got back home. They are almost
all gone, now…

We parted ways at Dallas and each arrived home 3-4hrs later.

Then began the
process of unpacking, sorting through handouts, magazines, and other press
paraphernalia…and writing this article!

Even though it is being touted as one of the smallest COMDEX events in a long
time, Fall Comdex 2002 was a fun time. We saw some interesting things, had some
great food and met some terrific people. Now we have to figure out which trade
show we’ll check out next!

Filed in categories: Articles

Tagged: Article, Trip Report

Fall COMDEX 2002 Trip Report Article originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 22, 2002 at 12:00 am.

height="180"/>

As many of you will recall, last year Julie and I were invited
to attend "mobius2001-article.html">Mobius, a Microsoft
sponsored event, held in Washington state. This year, Julie was on
vacation in Sedona during the event so I made plans to attend by
myself.

Last year, there were several attendees that brought their
spouses. With that in mind, I figured it would be fun to bring
Steve along so that we could hang out together in the evenings.

Thursday:

Unlike last year’s travel fiasco with Continental, this year I
flew American on Microsoft’s dime (approximately $375) and got
where I needed to be – completely on schedule. While on the plane,
I alternated between reading e-books on my "sony-nr70v-review.html">CLI� and watching a
DVD on my Fujitsu P2110.
Also along for the trip, I had my new Canon s330, my "zayo-review.html">Razor Zayo, all the accompanying power and
sync cables, and various memory cards. I was traveling light!

I had no sooner walked into the baggage terminal at SEA-TAC,
when I spotted a guy holding a card with my name on it and pushing
a luggage cart. We grabbed my one item off the belt and as we were
leaving he introduced himself to me and said that he had figured he
was going to have to wait at least a couple hours before he met me.
I asked why, and found out that there had been some kind of
security breach in one of the other terminals – no one was allowed
to come or go. Thankfully it didn’t affect us, so we loaded into
the waiting Town Car, and were soon on our way.

Chris, my driver, was very accommodating. He asked if I needed
to stop anywhere, but since I was afraid it would make the ride
cost more, I said no. I know that Microsoft was picking up that tab
- about $60 worth – but I can be a tight-wad even when it is not my
money, okay? Chris then told me I had the car for an hour – whether
I used it or not, so I thought why not? We stopped at a local
Starbucks, and I treated us both to a latte. I was interested in
hearing what Chris thought about his job, so he entertained me with
his stories until we pulled up at the hotel.

Once again, Microsoft housed us in the fabulous "http://www.bellevueclub.com/">Bellevue Club Hotel
(approximately $275 a night), and once again I have nothing but
praise for the place. You should seriously consider staying there
if you ever find yourself in the area and want a first-class
experience…but I digress.

I was starving when I arrived, so I ordered room service – the
southwestern quesadillas with corn relish (YUM), and I
settled in to wait for Steve’s arrival, since he had taken a
completely different flight.

One meal, a shower, a nap and Steve’s arrival later, we were
ready to check out the informal reception being held in the Olympic
room. Once there, I was pleased to see several faces I recognized:
Jason Dunn was there
with his wife Ashley, "http://www.flashenabled.com/mobile/">phillip torrone (or
pt, as he is becoming
known to everyone), Ryan
Mock (my buddy from Hawaii),
Joel Evans and
Jeff Kirvin, as
well as "http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/pocketpc/club/default.asp">eric
levine and Beth Goza – our hostess.

eric was kind enough to point out some of the people that I did
not know yet, including Ed
Hardy, Steve Sande (who
also came with his spouse) and "http://www.fiercewireless.com/">Stephen Wellman. I was also
pleasantly surprised to see Wes
Salmon there.

width="287" height="235"/> phillip and eric

width="319" height="233"/> Beth taking pictures of the guests for posterity

eric had the new Casio "http://exilim.casio.com/index.htm">Exilim camera, which was so
tiny it made my new Elph look humongous! This is a "bodytxt">2 Mega Pixel camera that can shoot 30 second mini-movies,
has a LCD display and is about the same size as a credit card.
Very cool! He had it slipped into a credit card wallet – and it
fit. Guess he won’t be leaving home without it. ;0)
"http://www.casio.com/cameras/product.cfm?section=239"> "/assets/exilim.jpg" border="0" width="138" height=
"105"/>

We were treated to an open bar and hors d’oeuvres. Everyone got
a chance to hang out and catch up with each other – a great way to
break the ice and get into the spirit of the weekend. After hanging
out for a while, Steve and I realized how exhausted we were, so we
said our good-byes.

Friday:

I met the other attendees in the hotel lobby bright and early,
where we chatted until eric rounded us all up for the 8:10 bus ride
to Redmond. We loaded up, and I found myself sitting next to
Stephen Wellman, who I learned was from Washington DC. As you can
imagine, the Washington Area "http://www.msnbc.com/news/816566.asp">Sniper was one of the
topics that came up. :0/

Once we arrived at the Microsoft Campus, we were led to the same
classroom that we used last year. Inside, the tables were set up in
a horse-shoe design, with the open area at the front of the room.
In front of each seat was a red Swiss Army brand backpack. Our
nametags were affixed to the backpacks, so we took a few moments to
figure out our seating arrangements. I couldn’t have been happier
when I found that I was seated between Ryan Mock and "http://www.cliesource.com/">Reggie Suplido. I don’t think I
just imagined the big grin on Reggie’s face when I pulled out my
NR70V to take notes. We compared our cases and chatted about the
upcoming NX70 series.

While we got settled in, I took stock of all of the different
websites represented in the room. They were, in alphabetical order:
Brighthand, "http://www.cliesource.com/">CLI� Source,
Club PPC, "http://www.devbuzz.com/">Devbuzz, "http://www.fiercewireless.com">FierceWireless, "http://www.flashenabled.com/mobile/">Flashenabled, The
Gadgeteer, Geek, "http://www.gizmodo.net">Gizmodo, "http://www.howardchui.com/">Howard Chui, "http://www.infosync.no/">InfoSync, "http://chris.pirillo.com/">LockerGnome, "http://www.mysymbian.com/">MySymbian, "http://www.palminfocenter.com">Palm InfoCenter, "http://www.pdalive.com">PDA Live, "http://www.pdabuzz.com">PDA Buzz, "http://www.pdablast.com/">PDA Blast, "http://www.pdantic.com">PDAntic, "http://www.phonescoop.com">PhoneScoop, "http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/">Pocket PC Thoughts, "http://www.thefeature.com/index.jsp">The Feature, "http://www.treocentral.com">Treo Central, "http://www.wirelesssoftwareinfo.com">Wireless Software Info,
Writing on Your
Palm, ZaurusZone. There
was definitely a mix of writers!

width="230" height="233"/>

After grabbing something from the breakfast buffet in the back of the room, we all got ready to listen to Beth’s welcome speech. She thanked us all for coming – scolded those that were already trying to peek in their bags, and told us a little bit about the speakers that we would be hearing that day.

The first of the day’s speakers was James Pratt of the "http://www.datgroup.com/">DAT Group. His topic was “Realizing
Mobile to Market.“ What I got out of the
speech was basically that they were creating a smartphone
application that will allow customers to buy & download
software online, which would then immediately install to their
phones.

Next, we heard from Douglas Beck of "http://www.dig-concepts.com/">Digital Concepts. This guy is
amazing! He is the programmer behind such games as Rocket Elite,
Bust’em and Motocross Stunt Racer. He was showing us how he had
adapted several games so that they could not only be played on
pocket pc (a stylus based device), but also on smartphones (which
do not have touch-screens and must be controlled with a D-pad).

width="189" height="219"/>

Then, we heard from Brad with "http://www.e-beam.com/">eBeam, a company that makes whiteboard sharing solutions. This is a very cool device that suctions to a white board and connects to a PC (via Bluetooth or USB), relaying whatever you happen to write on the whiteboard to the PC or even a Pocket PC. Pretty cool, huh? These should be available in April 2003, and will cost approximately $1,000.

While the next company was busy setting up, Beth demoed "http://www.tombraidertogo.com/tombraider.html">Tomb Raider for
Pocket PC and "http://www.pocketpcmagic.com/nevo/">Nevo, a remote control
application. If you think that Julie and I are bad about owning so
many PDAs, get this: Beth has an iPAQ that has nothing installed on
it but Tomb Raider!

Next up was Viewsonic, a
US company headquartered in Walnut, California. David Feldman (a
Senior manager) was there to show us their new Pocket PC, the
Viewsonic V35. This model should be available around the beginning
of December.

What makes this Pocket PC so interesting is the fact that the
V35 has a brilliant 3.5 TFT screen, runs on an X scale processor,
has 32MB ROM and 64MB RAM, includes and SD/MMC slot, a jog dial,
weighs only 4.2oz, uses a 4-way directional pad, has four
launch buttons, comes with a cradle & sync cable. WHEW! While
it only comes with a 900mah battery, Viewsonic is saying you
should be able to get 8-9 hours battery life. Hmmmm. Not bad for a
PDA that retails for $299.00!

David said that M�bius attendees would be
receiving a Viewsonic when they were available, so you can be
expecting a review from us on this unit when it comes. Here are
some shots of the Viewsonic, as well as comparison shots with my
Zayo – the only Pocket PC I have that compares in such small
size.

width="185" height="272"/> Note the cute trio of birds appliqu�d at the top of the Viewsonic.

width="192" height="275"/> This was not a final consumer version, so the backs may be different when it ships.

width="160" height="193"/> Here you can see that the Zayo is just slightly thinner than the Viewsonic. Otherwise, they are virtually the same, size-wise.

width="274" height="211"/> Side by side comparison: Viewsonic, then Zayo