CES

iPod / iPhone CES pavilion sells out in record time, quadruples to include Mac products — goodbye, Macworld?

admin — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:44:03 +0000

Damn, it hasn’t even been a month since Apple’s final Macworld Expo appearance, and it already looks like the show’s in trouble — the CEA just announced that its iPod / iPhone-centric iLounge Pavilion sold out just a week after being announced, and that it’s quadrupling in size to include Mac-specific products and retailers as well. That means there’s going to be 18,000 square feet of CES solely dedicated to the Apple ecosystem, and without the draw of an Apple product announcement to bring the press to Macworld, it’s going to be pretty tough for it to attract the top-tier companies and product launches it needs to survive in the face of the CES juggernaut. We’ll see how this plays out — we’ve got a feeling next year’s Macworld is going to be dramatically different.

P.S.- Regardless of what happens, we still think it’s really unlikely that Apple itself comes to CES — why would it ever want to share the spotlight?

2010 INTERNATIONAL CES iLOUNGE PAVILION SELLS OUT IN RECORD TIME; SPACE QUADRUPLED TO ACCOMMODATE CUSTOMER DEMAND

2010 CES iLounge Pavilion to Feature Largest Display of iPod, iPhone and Mac Technologies in Show History
Arlington, Va., January 29, 2009 – The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)® today announced that the iLounge® Pavilion, a unified iPod®, Phone® and Mac® exhibition area at the 2010 International CES®, has quadrupled in size since its official launch last week. The iLounge Pavilion, co-sponsored by CEA and iLounge.com, will feature manufacturers and retailers of iPod and iPhone accessories, related products and services, and based on requests from vendors, will now grow to include leading Mac developers and retailers as well. Owned and produced by CEA, the 2010 International CES, the world’s largest tradeshow for consumer technology, is scheduled for January 7-10, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“We have received an incredible response from companies interested in exhibiting in the iLounge Pavilion at the 2010 International CES,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president, events and conferences, CEA. “In fact, the original space allocated for the pavilion sold out in less than one week – a CES show record – and we’ve quadrupled the space to accommodate the overwhelming demand. This exciting new CES Pavilion brings momentum to the consumer technology industry and reinforces the International CES as the global hub for the latest innovative technologies.”

“Leading Apple developers and retailers are excited to have such an outstanding stage at the 2010 International CES,” said Jeremy Horwitz, editor-in-chief, iLounge. “Whether they’re showing off iPod accessories, iPhone applications, or the latest and coolest new Mac products, they know that they’ll find the world’s largest audience at this great new pavilion.”

The iLounge Pavilion, originally floored with 4,000 net square feet of exhibit space which sold out in the first week following the launch, has increased to 18,000 net square feet. Exhibiting companies in the 2010 CES iLounge Pavilion, which will be housed in the Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 2, include Griffin Technology, Mobis Technology, Pro Clip USA, Scosche, Incase Designs, Incipio Technologies, iSkin and GelaSkins.

About CEA:
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $172 billion U.S. consumer electronics industry. More than 2,200 companies enjoy the benefits of CEA membership, including legislative advocacy, market research, technical training and education, industry promotion and the fostering of business and strategic relationships. CEA also sponsors and manages the International CES – Where Entertainment, Technology and Business Converge. All profits from CES are reinvested into CEA’s industry services. Find CEA online at www.CE.org.

Emo Labs concocts its own invisible speaker technology

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:00:25 +0000

Emo Labs didn’t stir up too much commotion while CES was going on, but apparently it did have a tiny presence in Vegas. The crew at Technologizer was able to listen to a sneak preview of the startup’s Edge Motion technology, and if the demo is indicative of the end result, we could be onto something special. Much like NXT’s SoundVu tech that seemed to fizzle out about as quickly as it hit the scene in 2005, this system creates a so-called invisible speaker by “using arrays of motors to wiggle the edges of a clear membrane.” Gurus at the company are hoping to have it integrated into panels of TVs by the end of this year, though it’ll be a bit longer before the same can happen on space-constrained laptops.

Win a bag of CES swag!

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:29:34 +0000

CES may be fading into memory, but the bags of swag we somehow magnetized at the show are still quite present in our lives. Want a little piece of the proceedings to be delivered to your doorstep? Well here’s your chance. Every year we get bombarded with various pieces of gear that we can’t really hang on to for moral, ethical, and religious reasons. But while our Herculean ability to resist free junk is notable, we don’t just let this sweet honeywine go to waste… we send it out to you, our lovable readers. Just follow the instructions below, and win one of the three (3) satchels of joy we have to give. Good luck!

Note: Three separate winners will be chosen from comments. Just think of how good your odds are!

The rules:

Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but shameless flattery or embarrassing childhood memories are cool too.
You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
Winner will be chosen randomly. The winners will receive one (1) of three (3) bags filled with totally awesome CES swag. Approximate value is incalculable.
Entries can be submitted until Monday, January 26th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Full rules can be found here.

CES 2010 to feature iPod / iPhone-centric iLounge Pavilion

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:29:33 +0000

Although IDG is still planning on holding a Apple-less Macworld Expo next year, it’s going to have to start fighting some pretty big competition for exhibitors — the CEA and iLounge.com just announced that CES 2010 will feature an iPod and iPhone-oriented iLounge Pavilion, dedicated to accessories for Apple’s handheld devices. That matches up nicely with rumors that the CEA is making a push for more Apple-focused products at next year’s show, and while we wouldn’t ever expect Apple itself to show up at CES, we can definitely see Macworld fading into irrelevance as companies jump ship for a show guaranteed to attract a ton of attention with or without a Stevie J. / Philly Shills keynote. We’ll see how it plays out over the next year — for right now we’re stoked to know that all the iPod docks at CES will be in one, focused location, allowing us to more or less ignore it just like we do the CES North Hall.

Reminder: win a bag of CES swag!

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:29:32 +0000

Look, we fully understand how easy it is to forget all about last week after a hard fought weekend, so we’re just letting you know that there’s around 24 hours left to cast your name into the hat. What hat, you ask? The hat from which three winners will be chosen to take home a single bag* of CES miscellany and paraphernalia. Head on over and leave a comment!

*Pictured bag is not to scale, nor is it representative of what the winning bag will actually look like.

Win a bag of CES swag!

admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:16:34 +0000

Note: Three separate winners will be chosen from comments. Just think of how good your odds are!

The rules:

Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but shameless flattery or embarrassing childhood memories are cool too.
You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
Winner will be chosen randomly. The winners will receive one (1) of three (3) bags filled with totally awesome CES swag. Approximate value is incalculable.
Entries can be submitted until Monday, January 26th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Full rules can be found here.

Sapient’s touchscreen Coke machine brings pop into the 21st century

admin — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:40:09 +0000

Man, it just isn’t fair — we keep seeing all these kick-ass new vending machines, but when we want a can of Mr. Pibb or RC Cola we’re stuck feeding quarters into something that looks like it was last serviced whenever Pac-Man Fever went storming up the charts. Then again, that’s probably what we get for spending all our time in pool halls and bowling alleys. If you’re lucky enough to head to one of the 190-plus (and growing!) malls owned by the Simon Property Group sometime in the not too distant future, you just might have the pleasure of getting your cold, satisfying beverage from one of the new-fashioned touch screen Coke machines from Sapient. The screen is pretty much the entire front of the machine, and the interface is simple (as you’d expect), but pretty cool nonetheless — select your pop bottle, spin it around, take a look at the ingredients, and vend — quasi-Minority Report-style. “Futuretistic,” no? This thing takes cash and plastic, and it should be out in the US soon enough — readers in Europe and the UK will have to wait until sometime in 2010 to get in on the action. Video after the break.

Gallery: Touchscreen Coke Machine

[Thanks, Trent]

Sony shows off flexible OLED Walkman concepts on video

admin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:59:29 +0000

Looks like Sony Insider caught some footage of those flexible OLED Walkmans in action during a CES promo video hidden away in the booth. Looks like a pretty sweet riff on the Cover Flow-esque interface that’s due to arrive on the NWZ-X1000, but there’s not much else to go on — let’s hope Sony’s spending more time getting the X1000 ready to leave that impenetrable glass housing than it is mocking up videos of fantasy tech. Video after the break!

Blaupunkt shows off miRoamer-powered internet car radios

admin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:59:29 +0000

We’ll be honest: apart from the ridiculous custom cars and the Viliv S7, we pretty much avoided the car audio-oriented North Hall at CES this year — which means we sadly didn’t get any facetime with Blaupunkt’s miRoamer-powered TravelPilot New Jersey 600i internet car stereo. (Apparently double-DIN is big in the Jerz.) The prototype head unit connects to a cellphone over Bluetooth to access the internet, and uses the miRoamer service to stream “tens of thousands” of stations on the service — which the company estimates will consume about 2GB of data a month, so you’d better hope your data plan doesn’t cap you off or charge you for overages. The radio is expected to arrive in the second half of the year for $399, which isn’t bad, but doesn’t do much good for the squares like us who never swap out their car stereos — which is probably why miRoamer is targeting 2010 for placement in OEM head units. One more pic of the single-DIN sized “Hamburg” model after the break.

More details on D-Link’s upcoming 7-inch SideStage USB monitor

admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:36:06 +0000

We swung by D-Link’s booth at CES to check out its upcoming SideStage USB-powered monitor, hoping to see the thing in action and get some more details ahead of its release. What we found was quite familiar looking, to say the least. D-Link was disappointingly just demoing a Nanovision, but was quick to point out this would not be the product destined for a full US release sometime this summer. That new display will still be produced by Nanovision, but will be modified to better suit our market, graced with a different logo, and cheaper, too. No firm price yet, but the company is targeting sub-$100, which sounds good to us.