By Evan Ackerman

Bill Gates has given the CES opening keynote 11 times, counting this one. His talks are, to put it mildly, popular. I thought I’d play it safe and head over to the Palazzo Ballroom at the Venetian around 3:30pm for the 6:30 keynote. When I got there, the press line extended down the length of the ballroom. And when I thought I’d reached the end, it turned the corner and continued down the width. And then it wrapped around the hallway and kept right on going. Let me emphasize that this was the press only (read: VIP) line, three hours before Bill was set to go on. I got to know my linemates quite well, and they provided a lot of helpful advice to a CES virgin.

Find out if I actually made it into the keynote, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Evan Ackerman

So, I arrived in Las Vegas at about 1pm today. I got to the hotel and thought, “I’ll just go pick up my badge, and then come back to my room and get organized.” It is now 11pm, and I just got back. But don’t worry… Vegas or not, there was plenty of pain and suffering involved, and I’ve been working hard to find the latest, coolest stuff to show you. But first, a little bit about CES itself.

CES is very press friendly, probably because there are somewhere between one and two bazillion journalists here. There are press lounges, press food, press backpacks, press wifi, press parties… The list goes on. It’s not at all surprising, then, that I ended up running into a few fellow bloggers. I was surrounded by the staff of Shiny Shiny in the blogger lounge (but was too scared to actually introduce myself), and also met some nice guys from Gizmodo and Engadget.

So where’d those 10 hours go? There were a few press conferences in the afternoon, but the big events both took place in the evening: Bill Gates’ keynote address, and Pepcom, which is a sort of mini-CES exhibition. Give me a minute or two to get myself together, and I’ll bring you up to speed on what went down Sunday night.

[ CES ]