01-12-2013
07:56 PM
216 Loves
Well, the 2013 International CES has officially closed its doors, marking the end of the largest show to date. The TRG team is heading home to Atlanta, and we're actually heading home right now! I'm writing this from 40,000 feet in the air onboard a Southwest 737-700 using their fantastic Wi-Fi service! But, I digress. This year's show was gigantic (and I mean GIGANTIC)! To let you get a scale about how big the show is, this year, the show covered over 1.93 million net square feet of space (that's over 393 basketball courts, you know!), larger than last year's 1.86 million net square feet. The show took place in not only the Las Vegas Convention Center (of which they start setting up in the middle of November!), but also in the LVH (Las Vegas Hotel Hospitality Suites), the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, the Venetian, and also a lot of off-site activities happening at most of the major hotels/casinos (like Caesar's Palace, Bellagio, Paris, Wynn/Encore, Luxor, etc.). Now for some fun facts: CEA recycles over 75% of the waste from CES (that makes them the World's Most Innovative Green Initiative!). Walking the carpeted aisles of the 2013 International CES is the equivalent of Michael Phelps swimming over 483 laps. If we go by that logic, I'm a super-star swimmer! More than 20,000 products were launched at this year's CES! The 2013 International CES had over 150,000 attendees. That's a LOT of bodies (especially considering that the first CES only had 17,500 attendees). 150 nations (over 77% of the world's nations) had representatives at CES this year, truly making the show an "international" show. There were over 5,000 registered members of the media this year (that's more than double the amount of press at the Super Bowl. I guess you could call this the Super Bowl of Technology?). The show was open for 33 hours, and that doesn't include Press Day. (Trust us, we know how long the show was open. Our sleeping patterns don't appreciate it). CES is an incredible show, and working with Southwest on this awesome adventure just made it even better. In the coming days, we'll share with you our favorite travel-related gadgets from this year's show. If you're interested in a more diverse range of technology while covered at the show, feel free to check out The Real Geeks as we have a lot of coverage and we're going to come out with ANOTHER Top 10 (we're, like, doing a Top 20) of what we saw on the show, but with broader topics. I would like to thank Southwest for being our presenting sponsor this year. They took a chance on us and we hope that we've done them proud with the content that we've pushed out, as well as content that we are yet to push out.
... View more
01-11-2013
03:10 PM
262 Loves
We've been combing the halls at CES 2013 looking for new gadgets to help weary travellers and have found one that definitely warrants a mention.
Every year more than 20 million bags get lost by flyers (although hardly any on Southwest *wink, wink*) and travellers have no way of tracking their own bags....until now. We found a device called the Trakdot that will allow flyers to find their bag at any time. The Trakdot is a small battery powered device that you drop in your bag and it uses a built in GSM chip that allows the user to track the bags location on their phone. The Trakdot will cost $50 for the device and will have a $13 yearly fee for the service that will alert you of your bags location via SMS (that's text messaging for you non geeks out there). Sounds like a steal to us to know where your bags are! The Trakdot will be available in April. It's the last day of CES and we'll be scouring the floor again today for more fun gadgets and will be bringing you our top 10 travel tech finds of CES in the coming days! DISCLAIMER: Products endorsed in this post reflect the opinions of The Real Geeks Team, but do not reflect Southwest Airlines.
... View more
Greetings Southwest Nuts!
We’re The Real Geeks, a technology blog...but our friends call us TRG. For a few years now, we’ve been dishing out daily tech news and product reviews to our readers, and now, our good friends at Southwest have given us the opportunity to share our experiences from the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show to you right here on Nuts About Southwest!
The International CES is the world’s largest trade show, and covers everything from smartphone cases to jet engines (Hear that, Southwest?). For you, we’ll be focusing on showcasing the cream of the crop when it comes to travel technology, in order to make your next excursion a little bit more comfortable...and maybe even fun! Fun is never a bad thing.
We’re going to be hanging out on the show floor from January 7-11, and during our time at the show, we’ll be letting you know whenever we find a travel gadget that’s too good to miss. We’ll also be documenting our overall experience at the show, because we’re going to have way too much fun to keep it to ourselves!
Even though the show ends on Friday, January 11th, the fun doesn’t stop there-- we’ll be hanging out on Nuts About Southwest for a few more days to bring you our Top 10 Travel Technology picks from the show. We’re also going to write a very poignant, tear-jerking summary of our trip to Sin City. Okay, so maybe it won’t exactly induce sobs of sentimentality, but you get the picture.
If you’re interested in a broader scope of the tech industry, be sure to follow us over on our website, http://therealgeeks.com, where we’ll be keeping tabs on the latest and greatest from the technosphere (yes, it’s word).
We’d like to extend a huge “thank you” to Southwest for letting us crash their blog, and for helping us out on our way to the show. You guys are groovy!
Cheers,
The TRG Team
... View more