Stephen’s Silly Talents – Tying a Cherry Stem in a Knot

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2009) in Las Vegas is a big show. Every year I do it, I need at least a few days to recuperate. That means that during whatever downtime we have, we need to rest and have as much fun as possible. One night while Danny Chang, Greg Morgan, Michael Kwan and I we were out having dinner and lounging in one of the swank restaurants inside the Wynn Encore, I decided to show everyone one of my hidden talents…

Ok back to work…

Tackling The KFC Big Bowl Meal…

Well, Michael and I are in Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. If you’ve been following our Twitter Tweets while we’ve been gone, you know we’ve been pretty busy trying to find cool gadgets and other interesting gear at the show. During the last few days, we’ve been having sporadic Internet Access as the Internet in our room at the Wynn Encore has been quite bad. It’s actually the worst type of Internet: It starts up really fast, then hangs forever. Unfortunately, the only time that the press room is open is during show hours, which is also the same time that we were both on the floor roaming and heading to meetings.

Right now, I’m in one of the hallways, trying to poach Internet off the Terrace Point Cafe, which is in the Wynn Encore Hotel. To test the connection, I uploaded this video of me polishing off a KFC Big Bowl Meal. I’ve never had one before so I thought I’d take the plunge during a break at the show.

We’ve got quite a few videos from the show coming up for you on Futurelooks including some good in-depth coverage on some new and innovative products popping up at the show. If you want to find out when that goes live, you can subscribe to our RSS Feed there or you can follow Futurelooks on Twitter, and we’ll tweet when something gets posted.

As for GIZMODO being on the receiving end of some sweet revenge, I haven’t heard of anything related to that as of yet and the show is nearly over. Michael actually noticed that they weren’t even on the list for the Sandisk Rockband 2 Competition, which was won by PC Magazine. Maybe they didn’t want to risk potential retaliation, I don’t know.

Related to that sort of, I was actually mistaken for Brian Lam of GIZMODO by a writer from another gadget blog called OhGizmo as we were checking in at our Hotel. I met Brian the next day in the press room at the Sands and I could sort of see why someone would mix us up as we both have beards and longer hair. Other than that, we really look nothing alike.

We’ve got one more day of meetings tomorrow and then we’ll be off to the Affiliate West Summit taking place at the RIO. Anyhow, I’m going to try to milk this connection for all it’s worth so that’s all for now.

The GIZMODO Kids Are BACK at CES – Opportunity for Revenge?

Remember last year at CES, when the kids at GIZMODO started turning off people’s displays during presentations? The high profile prank put into question the legitimacy of blogging at the show. Something that many bloggers were rightfully upset about because it put their reputations at stake as it was only recently that CES recognized bloggers and began providing accreditation, albeit segregated ones.

Yes, they separated grumpy old journalists from the spawn of Web 2.0, but from my recollection, the amenities and the free box lunches were fairly comparable at both press facilities and the only difference on the badges was a little “blogger” ribbon. The fight still rages on though as many events like the historically snobbish ShowStoppers Event, only recently removed a paragraph on their registration page that compared bloggers to regular people driving race cars, and how just because you drove a race car, does not make you a race car driving, like how just because you blog, does not make you a journalist. Although ShowStoppers is well known for being douches to people they don’t deem worthy, did we really need to give event organizers like them anymore reason to shut the door on bloggers?

What made the prank so controversial was the fact that there was no real apology to CES, companies or staff affected by this behavior. In fact, they seemed fairly proud of what they had done while staff at booths just trying to make a living, were brutally interrupted by having their presentations halted by these shenanigans. Not only is it embarrassing to sit up on stage with blank screens, but before it was made known what the cause of these black outs were, I’m sure that many presenters were visibly shaken off their game and many staff were put under undue stress by their bosses to try to fix a problem that they had nothing to do with. Well, I present to you your opportunity for retribution!

It appears that GIZMODO will be back for CES 2009. I don’t know how, but it probably required shoving quite a few more products down their pants than they are normally used to. For any of you disgruntled booth staff and presenters looking for sweet revenge on the “GIZKIDZ”, you might want to head on over to the Sandisk Booth on January 9th, where between the hours of 4 – 6PM, they will be having a “Battle of the Bloggers” where Gizmodo, CrunchGear, BusinessWeek, Network World, AppScout and more will compete in an epic RockBand 2 battle. I smell an opportunity for poetic justice here. Nothing pisses a kid off more than having their RockBand game disrupted by…oh…I don’t know…a blank screen?

I’m all for a good prank and what not, but when you start messing with people just doing their jobs and trying to make a living, then not try to produce a real apology, that’s just not right. Hopefully, some enterprising group of individuals will make good use of this information, while sparing the men and women just trying to do their jobs on the showfloor. I expect to see pictures and videos