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CES / Consumer Electronics Show / Las Vegas Convention Center / Technology / → All Tags

CES 2012: The Sh*t We Saw

Yesterday we threw out our observations on the tech behemoth that is CES. Jelly bean refrigerators and beating on the monorail is all fun and games but not really what we went in search of at the event. We wanted gamechangers. Wowsers. Gadgets that provoke tech envy. Instead we found smartphones, tablets, thinner laptopzzzzzzz, plastic phone cases, leather phone cases, phone cases that were batteries, headphonezzzzzz, and Radio Shack-like popup shops.

Then again, there are plenty of tech-focused websites with backstage access to the really cool stuff. That leaves the odd, unexpected, and interesting for us to report. Oh, and we'll try to picture uses for some of them in Vegas to keep the bosses happy.

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CES / Consumer Electronics Show / Las Vegas Convention Center / Venetian / → All Tags

Need To Know Observations For The CES Virgin

CES is still going strong for another day or so but we're back at VegasChatter headquarters for the moment nursing our tech hangover and soaking our weary feet. As we sort through the freebies and brochures, here are this CES-virgin's thoughts on 2012's AVN-less geek porn.

Traffic

To avoid the traffic and parking nightmares we expected at the LVCC, our CES adventure started at the Venetian. Once we quickly got bored there, we took the shuttle over to the real main event at LVCC. Shuttles apparently aren't immune to traffic, so we watched hundreds of badged CES-goers pass us both ways on the street as we putted along.

Lots of up and down, down and back
With CES booths setup in Venetian meeting rooms across four floors (instead of the Sands Convention Center for some reason), techies got lots of practice in the art of escalatoring up a floor, walking down the hallway to reach the next escalator, lather, rinse repeat.

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CES / Consumer Electronics Show / Las Vegas Convention Center / Venetian / Tiesto / Wynn / Twitter / → All Tags

With No AVNs, How To Still Get A Charge Out Of CES

CES 2012 officially gets underway tomorrow although attendees have already been checking in for sneak peeks, previews, and leaks. Welcome, techies! Two years ago, one VegasChatter member broke their CES-cherry, last year it was another's turn, and now the honor falls to this writer. What do we have our eyes peeled for this year?

Surprises
3D TVs, tablets, bigger and better yet thinner laptops have been all the rage the past couple CES installments, a pattern likely to (zzzzzz) continue. What will pop the wow factor in Vegas this year? Can TVs get smarter? Will we care enough to shake an e-reader like a Polaroid picture? Could Microsoft actually convince us to trade in our iPhones? Will it be technology that's the 2012 story at all or celebrity appearances that are the most exciting news? Personally, we're hoping to hear "Dennis Rodman, 50 Cent, and Justin Bieber walk into a bar Olympic Gardens..."

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CES / Consumer Electronics Show / Circus Circus / The Orleans / The Plaza / → All Tags

No Need to Ask Siri, Here's Where To Find Cheap(ish) Rooms In Vegas For CES

If you still don't have a room for CES, but are too busy gathering intel on Intel, Googling deets about Google TV, and wondering how you can get the new iHomes in your home first -- you needn't fear. We have fired up our rapidly aging 2010 MacBook Pro and dutifully done it for you in between catching up on news like someone breaking into Mike Tyson's room at The Cosmo.

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AVN / CES / The Palms / Pearl Theatre / Sands Expo Center / Las Vegas Convention Center / Porn / Geeks / → All Tags

Uh Oh, AVN Separates From CES

In somewhat surprising and sad news, the AVN Expo and Awards decoupled their dates in Las Vegas from CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in 2012.

As previously announced CES is set for January 10-13 and will take place, again, at Sands Expo Center and Las Vegas Convention Center, while the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo and the AVN Awards will now be a week later January 18–21 and will move to The Palms. The AVN Awards will be Saturday, January 21 at the Pearl Theater.

One of our favorite things about attending CES this year was watching the awkward interaction (mostly non-interaction) between tech nerds and those in Vegas for the AVN convention. While there may be some overlap with the conventioneers at home, there wasn't much in public and that was fun to watch. Being Las Vegas, there's always a convention in town. Next year, the AVN Expo and Awards will overlap with the SHOT show a.k.a. the hunting show.

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Blackjack / CES / G2E / Planet Hollywood / Technology / → All Tags

Planet Hollywood Makes Staying Off The Grid More Difficult With i-Table

We love new stuff. Earlier this year, we went to CES to see what new tech things we might see in casinos soon. The show wasn't geared towards casinos, but we found a few things. We also went to G2E and previewed a few things that we knew we'd see sooner or later on The Strip.

Now, local TV news personality Calvert Colins has found the blackjack i-Tables at Planet Hollywood. Evidently, the table has been there since August, but we've never seen it in our numerous trips.

The i-Tables seem pretty cool as they are meant to make life easier for both the player and the casino. Blackjack is already fairly simple but now you don't have to worry about hand signals or chips. All moves are made on the table using a touch screen. Of course, most of the benefits are with the casino as the i-table is said to increase the amount of hands by at least 30%. So, with the house having the edge in general, players can expect to lose more money.

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CES / Slot Machines / Gambling / Aria / Crystals / The Cosmopolitan / → All Tags

CES Predictions: What's Next In The Casinos

While at CES last week, we saw lots of toys that we want for our home, but we also thought about what we will be seeing in the casinos, sooner and later. Here are our three favorite things in order of how soon we'll likely see them in the hotels we love.

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Dispatch From CES: Toys, Lady Gaga, Crappy Cell Service and Lots of Walking

We stopped in to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) yesterday to see what new technology we can expect to see in the future in our fave casinos and hotels. And also to gawk at the famous people hanging around.

We found A+ celebrities like Lady Gaga hanging out at the Polaroid booth and lots of tech wet dreams like indoor GPS! But lest we bore you with a bunch of text, here are our off-the-cuff reactions:

THE CROWD
HUGE! We're talking 120,000 people spread across the Venetian, Hilton and Las Vegas Convention Center looking at over 20,000 new electronic toys. By comparison this was easily twice the size of G2E, which we attended last year. In fact, this was the largest CES in history with attendance over 10 percent higher than last year.

THE VIBE
Everyone's attitude was exuberant when things started with the press days on Tuesday afternoon, but things changed by Friday when walking through the Las Vegas Convention Center had begun to take its toll. We were warned to expect nine miles of walking a day and we got it!

THE LAYOUT
The convention was spread among the entire convention center (north, central, south halls and outside) and parts of The Venetian. If there was a space to rent it would be rented. There were sections for everything broken down to the smallest segment such as iPod accessories, which was way bigger than we could have imagined. Everything was organized well, in general - TV's to the left, international products to the right, mobile upstairs, etc.

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VegasChatter Contests / Virgin America / CES / → All Tags

UPDATED: Find The Only Virgin Left In Vegas (and Win Two Tickets on Virgin America)

UPDATE, 1.7.10 3:04pm EST: Sorry folks, we're getting numerous complaints about the inability to send photos, tweets, status updates because the networks are so overloaded in an already struggling environment. (Big casinos and convention halls have never been kind to cellphones.) We are closing this contest, effective now. Sorry, we know it sucks. But the good news is, we still have these tickets to give away and we're gonna come up with an even better way to win 'em later this month. There is still hope for virgins of all kinds!

It's no secret that we love virgins here at VegasChatter, so much so that we want you to get all touchy-feely with a different kind of virgin while you're in town this week--Virgin America.

Starting now, you can win two main cabin round-trip tickets on Virgin America simply by spotting VegasChatter at CES.

Here's how it works: VegasChatter's very own virgin East Coast Gambler (@EastCoastGamblr) will be on the CES floor today and tomorrow, wearing a VegasChatter logo on his person somewhere. He will even be attending some parties tonight and tomorrow. Here's what our logo looks like:

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Conventions / CES / AVN / Porn Stars / TAO / Venetian / YouTube / → All Tags

I'd Like To Put My i Into Your Pad (Or, Welcome CES and AVN Attendees!)

Ahhh, it's that time of year. Man bags, overloaded cell sites and porn. What could be better?

Sex and toys. Who would have ever thunk to put them together? Oh, well. We're just glad someone did.

CES (the Consumer Electronics Show for those non-tech geeks) and the hey-that's-our-demographic-too tag-along show, AVN's (Adult Video News) Adult Entertainment Expo, fire-up (and off) today in Vegas.

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Conventions / CES / Adult Entertainment Expo / → All Tags

What Went Down At CES and the Porn Expo

We're not laughing at this pic. Honest.

So the dust has settled, the bedrooms have been vacated and the blow up dolls are being removed form the Convention Center – CES and the Adult Entertainment Expo are no more, and we’ll have to look elsewhere for hard partying geeks and fake boobs thrusting into our personal space.* Time for a post-coital analysis of how things went down.

The triumphs of CES focused mainly on the 3D revolution and other neat products like the Pop Box. The fallout? Slightly more amusing. One missing tooth, one broken “unbreakable” phone, and many people’s dignity.

And looks like the geekery, erm, rubbed off on the porn folk too, because they were all about 3-D, apps, and (seriously) sexbots. Wild Wendy? Frigid Farrah? For $9000? We may just have expunged them from our memory by the time next year rolls around.

Meanwhile, roaming the Strip we saw plenty of partied out techies but not as many slutty starlets as we were expecting. Could there be some correlation between those two facts?

* “Elsewhere” basically meaning the Hard Rock.

[Photo: The Tech Chronicles]

Live From CES / CES / Twitter / The Hangover / Drinking / → All Tags

The Geeks are Recreating The Hangover At CES

Somewhere on the Strip, this was happening this morning

We always knew geeks like to let their hair down, but partying to Hangover proportions? We’re impressed. The Twittersphere was awash this morning with CES attendees logging the parties they’d been to but the one that really caught our eye came from @jpuopolo.

He started yesterday off well tweeting about “booth babes” and “cool tech”. Then he told us he was off to the CNET party at the Palms. At 2am he tweeted that “Trying to behave in Vegas is like trying to keep a fat kid away from a smartie”.

Looks like he ate the smartie. Because at 8am he made the following announcement:

I totally just lost a tooth in Vegas during a CNET party for CES - I totally feel like a character out of the Hangover

Dear Jpuopolo, we have no idea who you are, apart from that you come from Toronto, but you are officially our favourite CES attendee. And if you send us a toothless pic, we’ll give you another smartie.

[Photo: All Movie Photo]