A Wider Net

I fell in love with this little (and I mean - little) gadget today. It’s a Personal Travel Assistant(TM) (yep, it’s trademarked - how did that make it through the trademark office?) It’s a Garmin Nuvi.
Like most portable GPS navigators, you can bring it everywhere and it helps you find places with spoken turn-by-turn directions. What makes it cool is that it’s think and slick and does and a TON more. Let’s say you use the directory to find a place you want to go - it lists the phone number, and using a wireless blue-tooth connection to your phone, you can have it call the place for you. You can speak to the other end using the device like a speaker phone or pick up your handset and take over. It also features an MP3 player, an audio book reader, a photo viewer, and the ability to receive traffic update signals in your area. It has language translation, currency conversion and so on and so on. It’s just awesome, and it fits in your coat pocket. *drool*

Pricey at $600-900 depending on the features and size you buy, but if you travel a ton, aren’t you worth it?

Today was mostly a travel day. That means I spent something like 12 hours being treated like either cattle or cargo. Here’s the breakdown:

5:30 AM - Cargo - 90 min ride to airport
7:00 AM - Cattle - 30 minute curbside check-in line
7:40 AM - Cattle - 15 minute boarding process on Southwest
8:00 AM - Cargo - 6 hours of flying into the wind, middle seat, full flight, no movie.
2:00 PM - Cattle - 10 minutes of trams and aisles enroute to baggage
2:30 PM - Cargo - 20 minute Cab ride through CES traffic to hotel
3:00 PM - Cattle - 30 minute Check-in at hotel
4:00 PM - Cargo - 30 minute ENDLESS cab ride to convention center
4:30 PM - Cargo - 45 minute EVEN MORE ENDLESS shuttle bus ride to the OTHER side of the convention center where registration actually was.
9:15 PM - Cargo - 30 minute shuttle bus back to hotel.

The folks at CES were infuriating - giving multiple different answers to simple questions like “where is registration?” and “If it’s in this building, why, again, do I have to wait for a bus?”

I also spent more than should be allowed on bottled water. At TF Green Airport in Rhode Island, a bottle, which must be bought after the security check-ins (to foil the much-feared water bombers) sells for $19.20/gallon. At the hotel, it’s running a mere $12.80/gallon. Not gasoline, jet fuel, or free-range methanol - WATER.

Oh, did I mention that CES doesn’t have a show guide? Well, to be honest - it does, but everything isn’t included in the show guide. You also need the inch-thick 10lb show directory, a half-dozen map/guides, and an on-site chirporactor to re-allign your bulging disks from carrying them and trying to reading them at the same time.

I also went to a MyCES kiosk and tried to print my planning pages from the BD Metrics-powered information and networking system. I was successful at printing them but oddly, fairly unsuccessful at finding the highlighted booths among the mazes of exhibits. Some turned out to be closed-door meeting rooms. What’s up with that? So far, the trip planning system has been a bust. Hours put in to searching through endless exhibitors and waiting for the screens to refresh, only to end up with stacks of papers with more cryptic treasure maps than Davey Jones ever saw. For a show with over 1.7 MILLION net square feet, I wish it was easier to navigate.

Speaking of navigation - my favorite moment of misdirection was in the a Philips booth. After admiring a few new Plasma screens with their patented Ambilight technology, I asked for some help, and after a few questions I learned that all the plasma screens were just wall decorations. I was in the Philips Surge Suppressor booth. The Philips booths with the plasma screens is in another building entirely. Woops.

I love gadget shows, and I did see a lot of cool stuff today - more to come…

Fresh of the airplane, I noticed this 8-foot-tall heap of photos off to the far end of the baggage claim. Poor location aside, I love brute force displays like this. The message? Lose your laptop, (or any computer), with 8 yrs of digital photos on it, and you lose that part of your life. Maxtor, apparently, can help save it (presumably with some kind of slick backup system.)

Nice heap.

Update 1-9

Here’s a shot of the CD heap mentioned by the nice person who commented:

CES starts tonight with Bill Gate’s keynote, which you can catch here.

I also recommend Engadget’s “CES-optimized” section of their blog site, Gizmodo’s CES-tagged coverage, and CNET.

Robert Scoble observed that Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk regularly (and publicly) posts his personal photos on his competitor’s website, Flickr. The question is - is it better to acknowledge that you like and use your competitors products, or to stay loyal to your own products, at least in view of the public?

I remember when Saturn launched - they were forced to drive their competitors cars, but I don’t think they had a forum available to them where they could say that they actually liked them. But the fact that they were openly trying out the competition instead of having to drive their own vehicles was refreshing and made us believe that they may actually learn how to beat the foreign car makers. When Saturn initially launched, they featured the most progressive American car design in years.
These days our patience for corporate dishonesty and forced product loyalty is pretty much worn out. I certainly appreciate an executive who can openly recognize the strengths of their competitor, even to the point of using their products.

But one comment on Robert’s post brought up an interesting point - if the product isn’t meeting the executive’s needs, why doesn’t he improve his product? And does that send a message that their product is inferior? I used to know a guy who worked at Burger King who refused to eat there, dragging me to other joints - and for years that made me wary of eating at Burger King. Reverse brand loyalty is obviously a bad thing, too.
The thing I like about this Zooomr story is that Thomas uses both products personally, and by admitting it we learn he is personally engaged in the industry, aware of his competition and his own products strengths and weaknesses, and big enough to say so.

David Polinchock has posted some interesting 2007 predictions, most of which I agree with.
I wouldn’t have mentioned Second Life in there, as I suspect this round of 3D virtual worlds (does anyone remember Active Worlds?) has peaked and is on it’s way out.

I love the concept of retail spaces being reconfigured to be as easy to navigate as their online spaces. I wonder how many retailers understand just how important this is going to be to Gen Y. But how do you do it?  Online sites have several advantages to B&M. Most notably, they can place products in the front of the store that are relevant to the buyer’s history.  Also, you can get from department to department with a click, and find products just by clicking on their category or brand. Most stores seem to make navigation by brand to an elite few anchor brands.

I suppose some of this is solved by smart digital signage. Now that you can place a 7-10″ digital sign on a clothing rack for cheap, there’s no excuse for not having it labeled with “what’s on the rack”. RFID will make that even more intelligent, indicating what’s on the rack, and if it’s in your size.

And for that customizable homepage - how about a variation of the Mobil Speedpass? An RFID tag on your keychain (don’t you already have a chainload of store tags already?) that allows sensors to recognize you, and cause signage to highlight products of interest to you as you pass by. Think: “Dockers are on sale and in stock in your size in the following colors”. I don’t know - maybe that sounds a little creepy, but as long as it doesn’t slip any personal information to the person next to you by spouting “oversized depends are in stock in your favorite hello kitty pattern” - then I could get used to it.

The other aspects that retailers may glean from the web?  User ratings, third-party reviews, and price comparisons. In keeping with David’s first comment about authenticity, retail stores may want to start to recognize that buyers are increasingly more influenced by what their peers have to say, than what the part-time holiday help store clerk has to say.

Welcome to 2007. If you’re a gadget freak like I am, then you know what New Year’s brings: CES. Next week Las Vegas will enjoy the return of $600 basic hotel rooms as 100,000 people descend on the Consumer Electronics Show. I’ll be heading out there for a few days followed by a hop to San Francisco for MacWorld. I plan to bring you some exciting new ideas for marketing, events, and communications from both events.

Until then, here’s a partial wishlist for 2007 (feel free to add your own):

For email marketing: An effective way to target users with Amazon-front-page-precision, and a way for us readers to sift through the clutter in a similar fashion. Not all email marketing is unwanted.

For webcasting: Games that make live webcasts fun to attend and the content more memorable. Since the technology exists, I guess the real wish is that it becomes mainstream. I love webcasting as a communication medium, but they can use a shot of adrenaline.

For events: Digg.com in the real world. There are hundreds or thousands of people at an event. I’d like to see technology implemented to leverage all those opinions and eyeballs to help me find the stuff worthy of walking to/sitting through/playing with. Help us get more out of each moment before, during, and after an event.

For event staging: Seatback video. If bargain airliners and your average minivan can have seatback video, why can’t events? Someone needs to make a touchscreen-backed chair for events. People could play pre-show trivia, establishing a measurement baseline while entertaining people who showed up on time. These screens could provide superior readability (to the inevitably overly-detailed PowerPoint slides), note-taking, and forwarding to their home email. They can even view a timeline with an “Estimated time of arrival (at the end)”. Oh, and cupholders, please.

For Site Surveys: A digital camera that takes a picture of a room and somehow calculates how many attendees will actually attend if the event is held there.

For kiosks: Force-feedback, like the systems we saw at Innovation Day, so you can tell that the kiosk isn’t ignoring you in order to produce videos for “America’s Most Frustrated ATM Users”. Automatic screen cleaners.

For SWAG: Things that are useful and fun, that support continuous communications. Example: A digital picture frame that they can load up with shots of their freakish Goldendoodles, that can also receive product slide shows via the internet. Or a keychain MP3 player/LED Flashlight/Voice Recorder that comes with opt-in software to automatically receive podcasts from the giver of the gadget.

For Websites: an EASY button that instantly re-arranges a website to look correct in whatever browser I’m using, with the content I’m after right on top.

For Press Releases: Blogs.