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Not-So-Live at CES 2010

Posted on January 10, 2010 by Jeremy Toeman

En route to Vegas, I got myself completely ready for “liveblogging” CES 2010.  My plan was to walk the show floor, find interesting stuff, and either make a quick video or take a picture and blog.  In order to achieve this goal, I had the following technologies prepped:

  • My Droid Eris.  I was fairly confident that the Verizon network would hold up well during the show, giving me 3G bandwidth when and where I’d need it.  Further, it has a 5MP camera – good enough for CES picture taking. Usefulness: 9/10.
  • Ardica jacket w/Moshi Power Pack. Stage Two is doing some consulting work with Ardica, so they gave me a jacket to use during the show in order to keep my Eris charged (since the battery while doing 3G connectivity drains ridiculously fast). Usefulness: 10/10. And as a bonus it kept me warm outside!
  • Flip minoHD. As my backup to my Droid, I had a Flip ready to make all sorts of interesting videos, just in case. Usefulness:2/10. I only made one video with the Flip, but it did work when I needed it.
  • WpToGo (Android App). Gave me near-perfect mobile access to the WordPress blog. Usefulness: 8/10
  • Ustream Broadcaster (Android App). Gave me live videostreaming directly from the phone. Usefuless: 9/10
  • TwiDroid (Android App). Gave me access to Tweet and monitor Tweets. Usefulness: 9/10

Right now you’re probably thinking “well golly jee, Jeremy, it sure sounds like you were set up as the ultimate mobile blogger. What ever could have gone wrong?”

First, while the network connectivity far outpaced my iPhone friends, it still just wasn’t good enough for really watchable mobile video. My friend “Tivoboy” sent me a note that said “live stream is cool and novel, but vid quality is poor doesn’t make for real viewing or ANY future use.”  After receiving that (4 videos later), I pretty much stopped.  Here’s a sample video:

So, now that I was reduced to still imagery and blogging, I ran into the next hurdle: I’m amazingly slow at typing on my Eris, and CES is really busy.  Every time I took a pic, I wanted to upload and write right away, but in reality I pretty much had to keep moving.  So I decided to keep the major storytelling for after I returned, and used Twitter for any “real-time” updates.  I’ll spend the rest of the week getting all the content online (depending on how much MW2 I end up playing).

Overall I thought it was a pretty decent CES.  Nothing outstanding, but then there really hasn’t been much amazing to see at CES in years anyway.  It’s the fundamental branding problem of the show.  Further, the rapidity at which content was shared by Engadget and others radically diminished the in-person wow factor.  When you already know about the various 3DTV, ultra-slim TVs, netbooks, tablets, e-readers, and everything else that’s being shown, it takes a bit away from the in-person showiness of it all.

I think this is the fundamental challenge to keep the show interesting and excited for the attendees (beyond their busy schedules full of meetings).  By Friday afternoon (day 2) when I was walking the show with Robert Scoble and Rocky, we had already seen everything we wanted to see.  This is compounded by the (and forgive the word) “lemming-ness” of the big players.  Once 3DTV was pre-established to be a hot thing, it became the only thing, and as a result, boring.  You simply can’t get excited by 5 different demos of the same technology (especially not one that many of us just aren’t excited about).

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Posted in Gadgets | Tags: ardica, blogging, ces, CES 2010, conference, consumer electronics show, convention, droid eris, flip, gadgets, mobile, robert scoble, twitter, verizon | 3 Comments
« Live at ces 2010
What I Saw at CES 2010 »

3 thoughts on “Not-So-Live at CES 2010”

  1. tivoboy says:
    January 10, 2010 at 2:33 pm

    Dude, next year I want to go with you and tag team the whole event!! I think to really do “live blogging” well one needs a couple people multi-tasking (scratch that, parallel processing) all the required elements. Stream, Vid Capture, Content Dev, Upload, keep walking, etc.

    I can easily carry 50lb of gear/food (22.7kg for you canuks), can see OVER most people, can do 4-5 tasks in parallel, can type 200 wpm and since I’m basically a walking computer as it is, I can STORE/CACHE your banter in real-time for later transcoding -while you walk on to the next booth! Whadya say, I sleep best on the floor and always carry multiple wifi/wimax dongles wherever I go!

    🙂

    Reply
    • Jeremy Toeman says:
      January 10, 2010 at 7:38 pm

      @tivoboy – sounds good. maybe that’ll be your first blog post? 🙂

      @ricky – yeah, i think that’s about the only way to do it. i used evernote to keep tabs on little things i wanted to write about…

      Reply
  2. Ricky Cadden says:
    January 10, 2010 at 4:45 pm

    I’ve covered a handful of events and tried to blog while exploring, and well, as you discovered, it really just doesn’t work. You either don’t blog at all, or you put up really terrible, useless posts that you end up regretting/fixing later.

    My solution has been to carry a netbook around with me (breaking one of your CES rules, I know) and taking a few minutes every couple of hours to jot down some quick notes/thoughts in a more complete format. Depending on what I can get done then, I’ll either save them as a draft or go ahead and publish them then. Getting more than just a photo or on-device note means I’m more likely to get a fully fleshed out post later on, and it’s less frustrating later when I’m trying to ‘catch up’.

    Reply

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About

Jeremy Toeman is a seasoned Product leader with over 20 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, smart TV and consumer technology. Prior ventures and projects include CNET, Viggle/Dijit/Nextguide, Sling Media, VUDU, Clicker, DivX, Rovi, Mediabolic, Boxee, and many other consumer technology companies. This blog represents his personal opinion and outlook on things.

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