CES is Nerdvana for many gadget freaks like me. I love following the general coverage, figuring out what all the cool new gadgets for the upcoming year is going to be, and also trying to spot trends into what the next IT thing is going to be. But also working for a startup company (Hillcrest Labs) in the Consumer Electronics space adds an extra dimension to the gadget watching, as I try and find all the press/blogger coverage of what we are showing at CES. So how do I do all this and still manage to get my work done? Web 2.0 to the rescue.

CES is a huge show. You couldn’t possibly imagine how extremely large it is. For this very reason, mainstream media is forced to only cover a small portion of it. Even organizations like PC Magazine and CNET for which this is their bread and butter, are not really flexible enough to give complete coverage to the show.

That is where the bloggers come in. Since they are really rather niche organizations, they can go in depth and cover whatever interests them. They don’t have to appeal to the more mass audience that the aforementioned places have to also cater to. For the purposes of CES, there are 3 blogs that have people at CES doing daily (sometimes live!) reports. Engadget, Gizmodo, and The Lost Remote. The first two are doing a lot of coverage, since their niche is rather large: Anything gadget. The Lost Remote deals specifically with TV stuff, so they post less frequently and really only concentrate on TV things. So I scan these blogs (making use of RSS and Bloglines) a couple of times a day.

Now the Web 2.0 coverage is not limited to just those blogs! You want to see pictures, lots of pictures, and nothing but pictures from the show floor? Check out the CES 2006 tag at flickr.com (RSS version). Lots of people photoblogging from the show floor. 1.5 days into the show (and only one day with the exhibition floor open) and already up to nearly 4000 photos. That’s pretty hard to follow as a traditional RSS feed. So I installed Slickr and told it to pull all the images from flickr.com that matched the “ces” tag and show that as my screen-saver. So I can still see all the great photos, just in a much more manageable manner.

And if just reading 3 blogs weren’t enough coverage for you, you can then use Technorati and find all the blogs tagged with “ces” (RSS). This will get any and all blog posts (including this one) that people have tagged as being related to ces (currently, 994 blog posts and counting).

All this stuff and I haven’t even touched on the podcasts. I know Engadget is doing a daily podcast from the show and I’m sure there are other podcasts doing it as well. But I do have other things to do in my life, so I haven’t checked in with any of the podcasting coverage.

If you follow all this advice and still find yourself yearning for more coverage, then I would save your pennies for CES 2007 and book your hotel room early and get yourself to the show. Because that is the only way you can get better coverage (but at least at home you don’t have to worry about the Toilets of CES).

Tags: ces, flickr, gadgets, podcast, slickr, technorati, web 2.0 // Comments (0) // Trackbacks (0)

It is July and we are in store for 3 weeks of outstanding cycling from France as Lance Armstrong tries to win his 7th Tour de France. I know I’m blogging about this a little late (we are already 1 week in to Le Tour), but there is still plenty of action to be seen and plenty of stages to watch Lance ride to victory.

Luckily for us Americans, OLN does a great job of covering Le Tour on TV. Each stage of the tour is broadcast 3 times during the day, live in the morning, and delayed in the afternoon and in prime time. They have a first rate group of commentators, that are both entertaining and wildly knowledgeable. I especially love the dry humor of the two “play-by-play” announcers. But honestly, they have the hardest commentator job out there. The video feed for the race is fully controlled by the French, so Phil and Paul never have any idea of what shot they are going to cut to next. Are they going to go in for a close-up of Lance? Or maybe a helicopter shot of the breakaway? Or maybe even a scenic view of the church in the town they are passing through? Phil and Paul are always on their feet and always ready with a quick quip about what is going on.

Given my choice, I prefer to watch the live showing on OLN, even if I still watch it tape delayed on my Tivo. Why? Because it feels like European coverage to me. Nothing but the sport, with only a few jumps to more “in-depth reporting”. But even the in-depth reporting is interesting, covering things like the riders diet, special details about their bikes, and even the equipment in the team car. Some people may enjoy the extended reporting in the afternoon and evening. Since they have more production time in between the end of the race and the later airings, they can put more into it. This include in-depth interviews with famous people at the race, Lance, Sheryl Crow, etc. But I feel that they take away from the race to add this extra coverage, and the race is really what I’m interested in.

This year is the first year that I’ve seen some more tech-savvy coverage of Le Tour. Apparently Lance (in conjunction with Sirius Satellite Radio) is doing daily in-depth interviews. They were kind enough to make them into podcasts, for those of us into podcasting. Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France Podcast.

In addition, there are a number of people blogging about Le Tour. There is a listing of Tour bloggers, but I wanted to point out one in particular. Alex Trautwig’s Blog is notable for three reasons:

1. He provides excellent coverage of Le Tour.
2. He is the son of OLN announcer Al Trautwig. (i.e. he knows his stuff)
3. He is only 14!

Alex is going to make an excellent reporter when he grows up, and I am looking forward to hearing more from him on this years Tour de France.

Oh yeah, before I sign off: Go Lance!

Tags: cycling, podcast, tour de france, web 2.0 // Comments (0) // Trackbacks (0)

No sooner had I blogged requesting Audible .com to use podcasting technology, then they announce that they will start doing it! Should I request Apple to start randomly giving me stock next? How about free Tivo’s for everyone?

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I usually don’t like to cover technology that has already been covered by the New York Times. By the time the Times gets around to covering technology, it is no longer breaking news but rather old news. But I’m going to make an exception here and cover something that made the Times about 6 months ago. I took a look into it shortly after the Times covered it, but didn’t keep up with it until now. Podcasting.

Podcasting is just like blogging, but done with audio files. Just like a Blog allows you to publish whatever you want just like a magazine, podcasting allows you to run your own radio station. With just a little bit of equipment (basically a computer and a microphone) and some basic web knowledge, you can setup your own podcasting channel. And even the web knowledge part is being reduced by services like FeedBurner who make it easy.

With a podcast feed, you have two options to get your next episode. You can either remember their publication schedule, or you can use some software and RSS to get your feed for you. If you remember from my post on RSS, you can take a guess at how I get my episode. I use a program called Ipodder (free!) that runs twice a day to check for new podcasts for me. When it finds a new one if downloads it and registers it with Itunes (it can also register it with Windows Media Player if you don’t have/like Itunes). When I sync my iPod the next time, the new episode magically appears on it.

Now don’t expect a podcast from me or Margaret any time soon. I have enough problems finding time to blog, much less creating the time it takes to record, edit, and mix a podcast episode. But I will recommend some of the ones that I listen to (or have listened to).

Probably the most popular podcast is the Dawn and Drew Show. They are really just a married couple (about my age) who talk about things in their life. But be warned: this isn’t Ward and June Cleaver talking and the FCC isn’t involved, so it sometimes get a bit raunchy and Dawn can be a potty mouth at times. But they are laugh-out-loud funny.

Now the person considered the father of podcasting is Adam Curry. He has his show “Daily Source Code” that broadcasts daily. He is really pushing the envelope here with his podcasting setup. I’ve heard him broadcast from the middle of the Atlantic at 37000 feet. He’s got a wireless setup so he can broadcast from his kitchen with his wife and kid. He recently did a broadcast from behind the wheel on his way home (which I wouldn’t recommend doing on your own).

In addition to the ones I’ve mentioned here, there are all kinds of other ones that you may be interested. You can find a directory of podcasts here, or you can just go to ipodder.org to read all about it.

Tags: ipod, podcast // Comments (0) // Trackbacks (0)