Tripod Home | New | TriTeca | Work/Money | Politics/Community | Living/Travel | Planet T | Daily Scoop
Comdex was a big event in the world of hardware and software, and since
that world is the world of Ware/Howz... here's Ethan's report. Ethan is actually our Veep of Business and Development, not even a straight tech guy... But, since he calls himself a geek here, I won't deny him the title.
Vegas and geeks don't make a logical matchup. Geeks aren't real big gamblers --
most of us are too good at math to harbor the illusion that we're going to
make any money at the baccarat table. And evidently, geeks are lousy tippers. So none of the cabbies were shedding any tears when they dropped us off at the airport.
This was my first Comdex -- traditionally, it's not a big show for the
Internet industry. ("Traditional", in the 2-year-old Net industry, means
"what we did last year"). But since everyone from Lotus to Leon's RAM Shack
released a line of Internet products this year, I made the supreme
sacrifice of trading Massachusetts slush for three days of palm trees and
polo shirts. Somebody had to do it.
Two things that surprised me about Comdex. It's really big. And it's pretty
damn dull.
Given just how many companies were on display, you'd think there would have
been some excitement -- new technologies, radical discoveries, revolutionary
breakthroughs. Nope. No revolutions. Not even an itty-bitty little paradigm
shift.
Not to say that there weren't incremental changes. Altavista, legendary for
wasting money in the absence of a revenue model, one-upped themselves by
hiring a blimp to fly over the show. Netscape furthered their image as
unresponsive and unsupportive of developers by failing to staff their booth
with a single person who understood their future plans for Javascript.
Microsoft, already legendary for producing huge, monolithic,
incomprehensible software packages, produced a huge, monolithic and
incomprehensible pavilion. I think they might have been trying to promote
Active X, but the five people I spoke to couldn't tell me whether we'd ever
see it on Macintosh or UNIX. And Apple, which already owns the market in
inept business plans, cemented their authority by introducing a new product
for the educational market based on the Newton operating system. Evidently,
they weren't failing quickly enough and needed to introduce their weakest
product to their strongest market.
Seriously, there was improvement, but little excitement. Flat panel
monitors are bigger, brighter, less massive... but still ludicrously
expensive. DVD is here, but the only applications so far seem to be movies
dubbed in half a dozen different languages, with your choice of language
each time you play the film -- which is useful if you spoke Japanese last
week but only respond to Spanish today. Cable modems will be very cool, whenever local cable systems offer Internet services. And there are
wearable Pentium PCs about the size of a paperback book ... for all of us
rendering animation as we walk down the street.
The truth is, nobody comes to Comdex, or any other trade show, to look at
the exhibits. We all come to talk. Think about it -- most industry folks
spend eight to twelve hours a day staring at a computer screen,
periodically cursing out our desktop machines, but otherwise silent. We
come home to spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends who don't want to talk
tech, or more likely, to a housepet who may be deeply interested in the
intricacies of C++ programming but who lacks the vocal ability to prove it.
Suddenly we're all surrounded by people who can speak intelligently about
MPEG compression. And geeks get downright congenial. I was at the blackjack
table, splitting a pair of aces when I noticed a clean-cut nerd four seats
away. "UNIX weenie," he snapped, smiling, as I picked up a ten and a jack.
"NT wanker," I retorted, and we headed over to the roulette wheel to talk
about the applications of chaos theory to casino gambling.
Everywhere I went for three days, someone wanted to talk shop. I hope Kara, Tripod's resident PR guru, will forgive me for not accepting an invitation for an "interview" with a woman wearing a fringed t-shirt that read "Excitement!" and rattlesnake skin boots. She assured me she was a reporter for Interactive Week. And then invited me to join her in her car, waiting outside. I decided that caution was the better part of valor, and headed for the airport as quickly as possible. There I proceeded to get very drunk. With a very nice project manager from Lotus working on the Domino project. In Vegas on Comdex, sometimes there's just no avoiding camaraderie.
|
|
 PERSONAL CHAT
Federal Judge Says Export Restrictions Unconstitutional on Encryption Programs
For more of today's headlines, check out The Daily Scoop.
Suck Hotwired ZD Net CNET
Mac Tools Windows Tools
Introduction to HTML Wade 's WWW Tutorials HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language The Bare Bones Guide to HTML
Sun's Guide to Web Style
Microsoft Internet Explorer Real Audio Player Adobe Acrobat Reader Shockwave Access Providers |
|||||||
Map | Search | Help | Send Us Comments
