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)