Once a year over 100,000 tech enthusiast, entrepreneurs and large corporations converge in the fastest growing and most wild city in the world – Las Vegas. Generally what happens there stays there, but I’m here to give you the inside scoop on one of the largest technology conventions ever.
From TVs, to cameras to gizmos and gadgets of every shape and color imaginable, I’m going to start with the topic I’m most passionate about, cars. Every year (this was my 5th CES) I always start off in the North Hall which houses all most of the major speaker and automobile companies showing off their latest improvements by doing what they do best, pimping out cars!
The sound systems on most of them are not street legal and are only allowed to be turned on once an hour for health reasons. Sadly this rule was implemented two years ago when attendees started to complain of hearing problems because the bass literally shakes every cell in your body, which I personally enjoy.
A common theme every year is to build the biggest and baddest TV’s possible. This year’s winner (I’m the judge) was the Ultra High Def 152” HD Plasma TV which is 16 times the pixel resolution of a regular HD TV if you can believe it. The other major innovation, which was debuted this year to some criticism, was the 3D TV. It sounds great in theory that you can now experience 3D on your own personal TV but the draw back is that you need to wear the glasses to see it. And as always there was the OLED TV, which makes your flat screen look obese at only 1/8” an inch thick.
For all of you who have a Kindle, Nook or any other eReader, there is a new kid in town called the Skiff. Recently debuted this weekend exclusively at CES, a spin off of Hearst to try and saving the dwindling publishing industry, it boasts a large 11.2” e-ink touchscreen. I had the distinct pleasure of attending the launch party and got my hands on one of these bad boys to take it for a ride. It was very responsive, intuitive and easy to use but may be to little to late for an industry that could really use an upper.
There are also a lot of surprises at every turn that you literally just need to stumble upon. For instance this video of HoloAD’s new product which had a pretty big crowd around it is pretty impressive.
But the biggest surprise was when I turned around and saw a man giving a presentation and soon realized that it wasn’t just any man but Guy Kawasaki. He was talking about a new social media company, which is right up his alley. My first time seeing him in person and hopefully not the last.
To end this in style, I want to end it with a few pictures of myself with some hott booth babes! Sadly there were less this year, than any other year. Luckily the AVN convention was going on at the same time.
For those of you who have not been able to attend, I urge you to try harder and go next year. This is something that everyone should experience no matter were your passions lie. There are a lot of opportunities waiting to be seized with all the biggest players in the game all conveniently in one place.
Start preparing for CES 2011 today! What tech do you want to see? If you could invent anything, what would it be and why?
