The Electronic Lifestyle - a visit to the 2006 Digital Life Exposition
By Alix Paultre
Held at the Javits Center in New York City from October 12th to the 15th, the DigitalLife 2006 is billed as the only event built around the consumer buzz culture, showcasing leading companies from consumer electronics, digital technology and the video game industries who displayed their latest products, online services and new releases. The SOny booth with the new Playstation 3 was among the hot exhibits on the floor, and was always packed with visitors.
The event established new attendance records in 2005, when over 44,000 people packed the Javits for the three day event. This year’s expanded four day schedule includes an even bigger display of games and gaming equipment, alongside the latest innovations in consumer electronics and home entertainment.
Gaming took center stage at the event, with lots of new games and accessories. Here's the HotSeat gamer chair system. Their line ranges from the HotSeat Solo, designed to play controller based games in complete surround sound; to the HotSeat Racer GT for racing simulation so real, you'll think you are actually on the track; to the HotSeat Flight Sim for training, planning your next flight or simply playing around with everything from a Cessna 172 to a Boeing 747.
There was some fun and games on the floor as various companies tried to lure jaded attendees to drop by their booth. Here we have some dancers at a booth joined by a guy dressed like a frog.
Here are the dancers that were in the Napster Booth. I know they're trying hard to come back, but as much as I like to look at hot women, I'm not sure if burlesque was the best way to promote things. The tie-in was that Napster is eliminating the $1 a song fee to pay, thereby freeing the bills up for use in strip clubs (as far as I could tell).
Then again, cheescake was everywhere, so I can't really fault Napster for wanting to raise above the noise level. Here are some basketball cheerleaders autographing pictures at the LG booth.
Costumed characters walked the floor to promote their wares. Here is Mr & Ms Packman out promoting their debut on smart phones.
Streaming video was everywhere. Vongo was only one of the companies there showing how you could get video streamed anywhere.
A crew from MobiTV walked the floor to point out the convenience of not carrying a TV on your back. I've used MobiTV myself on my Treo 650, and I admit it's a lot more convenient. ;-)
There were also a few press-only functions going on in conjunction with the event where press could get a closer look at the gadgets. Here's a back-stage look for you:
Here's the K-PEX 100 Portable Media Player & Game System that I found at the Kingston stand. It's a coool little device great for carrying short videos and pictures. It can even function as a game system, and comes with two games.
I liked this one. It's a wireless sender from Belkin (it has a receiver base station) that you attach to your iPod so you can carry it in your pocket while listening to it through your stereo system.
Here's one of the new HP portable photo printers. All of the new series have internal batteries so you can give grandma a hard copy of the grandkids' picture at the picnic.
There were a lot of household media servers and networked hard drives for the home. Here are some of the offerings from Netgear.
Palm was out in force at the show both in front of and behind the scenes. Here's the new Treo 750, soon to be out for Verizon, which looks a lot like the new 680 but with more features and memory.
Tivo was out showing their latest devices and services, which includes better parental screening functionality.
Here's a neat waterproof case from H2O Audio for the iPod. It comes in various sizes to accommodate the various models.
