I have several times gone on a trip over the years only to come down sick while traveling.  Traveling while sick is nothing that I would wish on anyone.  So there is a bit of an irony that I came down with a nasty virus this week and was too sick to travel to Austin for the SXSW Interactive Media conference.

SXSW – South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival in Austin | Maven Mapper’s Information

I’m disappointed because I will not get to see a number of people and companies and attend some great learning sessions, but at the same time I am somewhat relieved that I did not become sick after departing for Austin.  Plus, I am also somewhat relieved that I am not there to be ‘that guy’ that accidentally passes on a virus to everyone they meet through all the hand shaking and stuff.

So in general, I wish everyone that is going a great and healthy time.  I do wish I could be there, and honestly I won’t miss lugging all that trade show material around from bouncing light up balls to bic pens with company logos to USB drives that I’ll never use, because I really only need one anyway.

This evening (well its actually 2 am) I’m working on putting together my schedule and travel plans for SXSW in Austin Texas next month.  I have never been to SXSW nor to Austin, although I did live in San Angelo Texas for about a half year when I was going to intelligence analyst and cryptography school back in the early 90’s.  That seems like aeons ago, and it is amazing how much I have changed since then so I can only imagine how much Austin must be different today.  SXSW is a film, music and interactive media festival and conference.

No Stranger to Film and Music Festivals

These days I am more heavily involved in interactive media than I am in either music or film.  Never the less, I did live in Savannah, Georgia for several years and I am no stranger to film and music festivals having run a bar on River Street in that music festival happy town.   In fact, my wife’s alma mater, is the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and they will be an exhibitor at the show.  They are renowned in part for their animation and graphic design programs and they are growing into one of the largest art schools in the world (I think they are like 2nd or 3rd now with schools in Savannah, Atlanta and France.)

Forest Gump (the bench scene) was filmed behind my apartment while I lived in Savannah, and my wife working for River Street Sweets helped make the actual box of chocolates.  Chocolate covered rice crispy treats so that Tom Hanks wouldn’t get to sick if he had to eat them in multiple takes.

If you haven’t read the real Forest Gump book by Winston Groom, you are missing out on one crazy and very funny book.  The movie is to the book what cool aid is to a pitcher of daiquiris.

Hunting Down an Entertainment Industry Evolution

I’m going for the People and the continuance of a Zeitgeist build that seems to be tracking through several forms of New Social Media that includes video, music, blogging, social media, networks, consumer electronics and coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show definitely includes virtual reality!

I was stunned and amazed at the progress that virtual reality technologies have made in the last 12 months.  Attending CES in 2008, was like stepping into a Neil Stephenson novel and finding a functional world on a cusp of overtaking the real world.

I am keyed up to talk to many old friends from recent blog and podcast expo shows, and I am very eager to see how these areas cross paths in a setting like Austin with an extended community of music and film people and industries adding to the mix.

Fun Fact – the bench in that scene does not sit in that location in that particular square.  They moved it to get a better view of the monument in the back and for lighting purposes.

Biking It!

I think I am going to try and rent a bike for the convention to get around Austin, as opposed to renting a car.  It sounds a lot more fun.  I walked most of CES in Las Vegas.  I’ve done cabs, and I’ve done limousines(more limos than cabs) and I’ve done rental cars.  You just don’t get the feel of a town when you are in a cab or limo or rental car.  Walking and biking it sounds a lot more practical and fun and hopefully might be better for meeting people as well. 

I’m not going to Austin to talk to the cab drivers. I’m going there to talk to the people at the show!  In a situation like this, I think you have to live by the tenet of

What would Iggy Pop do?

No I don’t mean slicing your self up on stage in a half naked state of delirium, but just generally being there, being cool, and creating something expressive that connects with people.  I’ll skip the broken glass and go for everything else.  Note to self, load up my MP3 player with some Iggy Pop music for the ride.

If the travel plans come together, I will hopefully arrive Friday night on the 8th to attend the sessions Saturday through Tuesday on the 12th, flying out Tuesday night.  So that will be 4 days and 4 nights in Austin.

Lugging the Studio Around

I took close to 30 pounds of gear to Las Vegas for CES.  Heading to Austin it will probably be just over that as I will not only take my camera but probably the mobile components of my podcast studio as well.

I usually hump most of that gear on my back.  One thing that I learned in the Army years ago is that humping stuff in a back pack doesn’t really make you stronger, just makes your muscles more knotted up and dense.  It builds stamina.  I’m not excited about that part of things, but hey its nothing that a good soak in a hot tub and some drinks can’t fix.

Will You Be There?

If you are in the Austin area or planning on attending the conference between the 9th and 12th (its a 10 day event) let me know, drop me a comment or email or something.  Love to connect up with any readers, friends, acquaintances or people pushing the envelope in different directions.

I arrived home yesterday from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  I flew the Red Eye home (upgraded ) I found a large number of technologies converging around the concept of an improved user interface to the computer.  This for me was the most important aspect of the show and seemed to signal the direction of technology going into the next 2-4 years.

One of those interface improvements included a search engine that had a mind mapping interface capability (among several other views and tools).  I’m going to be covering these technologies and the impact and usefulness of these interfaces over the next few weeks and want to set everyone up for the topic.  After seeing what the show offered, I believe that this will be an extremely important transition in computing, possibly as important as the introduction of the mouse or even the color monitor.  Regardless, I think that these new interfaces will be nothing less than extraordinary.

In the meantime, after traveling for a week (and all the pre-travel prep), I have several mundane things to take care of this weekend including transferring and renewing my license tags, and finding a new insurance broker for my home owners insurance. 

Plus, if I have time, I am going to reboot this blog and with a new theme as this one is feeling a good bit stale these days. 

Several months back I was using a number of

typing test programs to attempt to measure just how fast Dragon NaturallySpeaking could capture my words.  I had forgotten about it, however I had cranked up to speed on Dragon NaturallySpeaking and decreased the accuracy.

There is actually a slider tool within the options that enables you to do this.  Over the last couple of months I seem to have noticed a slight degradation of my quality and had chalked it up to my laptop getting old or something.  But I came across a tip to adjust the speed and accuracy settings with a slider bar and after making the correction I’m seeing a very big improvement in my accuracy.

When I’m composing words for things that are right, I don’t necessarily need to be able to speak at 160 words per minute, but I do need to be accurate and so I just slid down one notch and I’ve seen a huge improvement.

Here’s how you can do the same thing:

1. Go to your tools menu
2. then you’ll need to select the options item
3. next you’ll need to pick the miscellaneous tab
4. Halfway down the window you will see the option that offers up speed versus accuracy
1. 
5. choose the level that best suits your needs, if you need things to be a little more accurate I’d advise moving one notch at a time and trying it out, and the same goes for trying to get a faster response. 
6. Once you’ve made your selection hit apply and then the okay button and you’re done!

Maven’s in Las Vegas

Next month I will be traveling to Las Vegas for BlogWorld, bloggers from all over the country will be turning out for this particular trade show, which is actually combined release three possibly for different trade shows in the one big trade show.This time around I won’t be staying at Paris Las Vegas, but instead I’ll be splitting my timeat two different hotels, tonight at the Stratosphere and two nights at the Hilton an even balance of economic savings and convenient location.

If you happen to be planning to make the trip to blog world, please feel free to drop me a line, I’d be happy to meet with you at the show.

This week when I attended the Consumer Electronics Show, myself and several people at the show had a group epiphany about High Definition television as  we watched a HD TV at the Samsung booth. 

The HD TV on display (one of several dozen) was playing The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (aka Narnia for those that haven’t read the book).  I was standing next to a buyer from a retailer.  As I watched the pivotal battle scene at the end, I noticed that the makeup on the characters looked ludicrously fake.  Many of the characters looked like they had just walked in from trick-or-treating to cameo in the battle scene.

These were not extras or animated characters but supporting role type characters.  The HD TV provided such clear definition that you could see that the makeup was very fake.  The blurred line between fiction and reality had been removed and the reality pretending to be fiction was revealed. 

I started speaking about it with the buyer and he and a couple other viewers commented as well that the Movie Industry would need to up their game to keep up with the technology.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the Movie and TV industry would have to get better, but TV manufacturers, distributors and retailers might experience some pain as well.

After all who wants to spend several thousand dollars on a TV only to have a film revealed as a cheap looking fake.  There is no fun in watching a magic act if you can see the slight of hand in every move transmitted in vivid detail as it happens and the same goes for HD TV and the movies and shows they play.  It is an incredible medium for watching reality from sports to nature shows, but staged events and movies are more closely being revealed for the fakes that they are. 

The puppet masters are going to have to find a new method for guiding a puppet without any visible strings.

There was a great gadget at CES this year that really showed how convergence could bring out the inner super geek in attendees.  It was the R2-D2 DVD Projector from Nikko Home Electronics, a specialist in RC Cars and vehicles.

This is a very functional little droid.  It offers a built in projector that displays an image right out of R2-D2’s eye socket.  Instead of a semi transparent, holographic image, this projector instead provides a more terrestrial flat image on a wall or a projection screen.  The display image can range from 24 inches to 80 inches.

But that’s not all, this droid also packs a CD/DVD player that will play music or a video through that projector. 

You can control your droid with a remote control shaped liked the millennium falcon even with a pop out/slide out keypad.

And not even the rebel alliance can get by without making their droids compatible with an iPod.  So R2-D2 has a little docking bay that hides or pops out of the belly of the unit so that you can play your iTunes or even see the video display of MP4 videos through the projector.

Now this isn’t just some shaped like a robot type of device that you might see in Radio Shack, this little guy is actually pretty functional.  The remote control can make R2go forward, backwards, right turn, left turn and pivot turns and the head of the unit (with the projector) can swivel 90 degrees to the right and 180 degrees to the left.

The unit plays 11 different random R2-D2 sound effects, and one of the effects plays each time a compartment opens.  The device even has a memory card reader that will let you project images with the unit anywhere in the house.  When I say anywhere that includes the ceiling as R2 can recline his legs so that the projector will point at the ceiling at a 65 degree angle.

R2 has a built in 20 watt stereo system and an Fm wireless audio transmitter as well.

It looks like a toy and is a lot of fun, but really you getting a lot of functional electronics components converged into your Star Wars fantasy gadget for just $2500 (which isn’t too much more than a decent projector in the first place)

This week I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada otherwise known as CES 2007.  By most accounts the show was a success.  The show has grown to cover the entire Las Vegas Nevada convention center, spread to the Hilton and this year spread to include most of the Sands Convention Center as well.

This year CES saw 2,700 exhibitors showing their goods, services and hot new products to a record number of 140,000 attendees visiting the show.

However, the hottest new product of the convention proved to be no show as it was on display in MacWorld in San Francisco under the heatedly contested name of iPhone.  Apple unveiled the iPhone at MacWorld and largely stole some of the thunder from CES, not to mention embroiling Apple in a trademark dispute over a name they do not own.

Cisco does own the trademark and had released a product called the iPhone just a few days before both shows.  (Read more about the iPhone from Linksys a subsidiary of Cisco under The iPhone iBluff from Apple.)

Despite the absence of Apple’s iPhone from CES there were many noteworthy products and services that we have gathered information on and will initiate coverage on here at Maven Mapper’s Information.  History in the consumer electronics field has shown that the hottest products are not the only product.  We will labor to provide you with some of the other products that could make an even larger contribution to your life than another cell phone might or might not provide.

As I finalized my travel plans for CES this week, it became abundantly clear to me that many of the travel sites from Orbits to Travelocity to Expedia can be a big pain.

Many times, I saw what might have been a good deal.  But not knowing the hotel or its area had no idea if I was going into a denizen of debauchery or into a world class hotel.

Now I have stayed at some of the finest hotels that Vegas has to offer, but this year, my budget is a little lighter and I rarely get much use out of the hotel room anyway.  I just need a safe place to sleep and keep my stuff secure.

I found a unique site that focuses on providing reviews of Las Vegas Hotels.  The cool thing about the site is that they put the hotels in summary form on the front page so you can look at all the hotels at the same time and get the 1 through 5 star view.  From there you can click in further and get more information about the hotel.

Sometimes displaying information successfully just requires a simple layout that fits on one page!

If you are looking for reviews on Las Vegas Casinos, you should check out Las-Vegas.Cruzino.com. Here’s a quick shot of what I’m talking about as far as their user friendly layout is concerned.

Just a simple little Web 2.0 arrangement!

We’re also proud to add Las-Vegas.Cruzino.com to our list of sponsors!

I will be covering the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2007) in Las Vegas next week.  As the Editor in Chief of Maven Mapper’s Information and President of Softduit Partners, I look forward to traveling to the show and reviewing products and meeting with many of my old acquaintances, friends and fellow bloggers attending the show as well.

I will bring you some early reports out of the show and maybe a few sneak peak pictures or videos.  But our focus will be to release more in depth reviews following CES next week.  We are not looking to be the first blog out of the shoot to show a picture of a new gadget, but we do hope to analyze and understand how that gadget might truly become useful for all of us.  In some cases, we will also explore the concept products that are not ready for prime time yet, but have interesting potential.

Anyone interested in meeting at the show can contact us through normal means or utilize the CES Personal Planner services.

Well the season is almost upon us, not Christmas or New Years but tech show season.  The Consumer Electronics Show and MacWorld are coming up right after the lesser holidays of Christmas and New Year’s and that means lots of gifts and toys for geeky visitors that haven’t been naughty.

Of course I’m talking about all those great promotion products that are given out at the trade shows.  Getting good foot traffic is sometimes as simple as giving away the good stuff.

Odds are most companies will get their existing client base or partners to visit them at the show, but to get exposure to new customers and partners a little branding bling sometimes can go a long ways.  For that you need some good stuff for a trade show giveaway. 

Now you want to make sure that its something that people will use and remember in a positve way.  It should have your logo or brand or theme involved and hopefully it will bring a smile to their face for years to come.

Popular favorites are typically  backpacks and bags with wheels to hold all the other stuff.  If you are looking for advertising at the show itself, nothing works better than giving out the best backpack wheeled or not so that everyone will carry the rest of their stuff in your bag throughout the show.

After that the gift that seems to keep on giving is memory cards.  Flash memory is always useful, and its a great way to convey your product details, trial software and much much more.  Everytime someone plugs a usb card into their computer they might then think about your company and products.  Those are excellent reminders that you can capitalize on at a tradeshow.

And don’t forget the toys!  There’s alwasys something that everyone wants to play with at the show, whether its a ball, or putty or lazer beem pointers or something!