CES 2010 is now over. I spent a week in Las Vegas and then took a road trip through Death Valley and the Pacific coast line to San Francisco. Two days of networking in the bay area and I'm now waiting for a flight to begin the long journey back home in Switzerland.

CES was big. Definitely a major recovery over last year, when the show literally crashed down. You could see this from the hotel room rates, which skyrocketed for the CES show dates. You could also see this from the taxi lines - it was nearly impossible to get a cab to more around the city. Since the convention was hosted in the Las Vegas Convention Center off the Strip, and most events where in the Strip resorts, much of the time was spent trying to figure out how to get from A to B.

The show floor was very packed. The Las Vegas Convention Center is huge, one of the largest in the US, but still the show somehow managed to attract enough people to get seriously congested at times. I didn't attend CES for the show floor so this wasn't a major issue for me, fortunately. I did walk through the main halls, but that was enough!

Two things were above others in CES this year: 3D TV and social media, interestingly. Pretty much every major electronics manufacturer was showcasing 3D TV sets with large screens and 3D glasses. I find this quite absurd, given that the technology is surely not going to make a major splash in homes in 2010, probably not in 2011 either. I can see why these companies want to offer a motivation for people to upgrade their 3-year old HDTV sets, but I just don't see it happening with the amount and quality of content that is available.

Social media on the other hand, makes perfect sense. It would probably be a little too much to have your microwave send a tweet when the food is hot, but it'll be great to have more social media embedded in home electronics like cameras or TV sets. Skype in a TV? I'm all for it!

I took a whole lot of photos during the trip that I will be posting soon. Some (not CES related yet) are already available at www.xihalife.com/photos/by/jani/

I also have a Google Nexus One phone in my hands now and will post a review after I've used it for a few more days. The initial impressions are quite positive, but the real test will be back home when I can actually get the 3G data connection without the fear of high roaming costs!

I've arrived to Las Vegas, attending some pre-CES events and having a ton of interesting meetings. CES this year appears to be bigger than in the past years. Las Vegas has probably 10k new hotel rooms compared to earlier years but still everyone is getting quite sold out. The hotel room prices are going through the roof during the show, which in a way is an indication of something good. It means we indeed may be past the worst and expect a good deal of economic recovery this year!



When a lot of companies are coming to the market with new exciting gadgets, it means they believe they can sell them. This sign of optimism is the first thing we see, but it'll start fueling increased hiring as these companies need to ramp up production, the retail channels will start filling up with new items, and so on.

Just yesterday XIHA participated in the Startup Debut event hosted by SocialRadius at the Foundation Room at the floor top of the magnificent Mandalay Bay resort. We talked about the multilingual chat system, which was officially announced today (www.marketwire.com/press-release/Xiha-Ltd-1098029.html) A lot of people at the event were really excited about the system and in fact one of them even applied for a job at XIHA as a result!

I've met with many interesting people already and things are getting even hotter tomorrow when the show floor opens!

Google today announced the long-awaited "Google Phone", titled Nexus One. The tech specs are impressive: 480 x 800 high resolution display, 1GHz processor, 3D graphics, etc. I have ordered the device and expect to receive it in a few days so I will refrain from commenting it until I've actually tried it out, but the early buzz is very promising.

This could finally be the device that gives Apple the run for their money. Up until today every device that's tried to dethrone iPhone has failed miserably but everything points so far to Google having a very solid offering, with a smart way of doing business by selling the device unlocked.

The largest event in the electronic entertainment is the annual CES - Consumer Electronics Show. I will be covering the show on the spot with reports on what is going on from the point of view of social media, and our company, XIHA Life, will also make some exciting announcements in Las Vegas.

This year promises to be quite exciting - the new Google Nexus One is expected to be announced and Apple will probably not announce its tabled but it's now a matter of weeks when we will hear from them. The economy has started to bounce back which means more and more companies are announcing gadgets.

CES will be huge, and there is a ton of content to write about so if anyone of you is interested in something specific, please keep sending comments and I will try my best to locate the gadget you're interested in!

Whoah... I really didn't expect the Web 2.0 industry to be in such a dire state as the Web 2.0 Expo seems to indicate. There's not many people here, and there's absolutely no money around. No major sponsors other than Microsoft and IBM, and I think it's a little questionable as to what they actually did to "sponsor" the show.

As far as I can see, the actual expo floor only has Microsoft and IBM (and of course O'Reilly) booths, plus a few tables on the side from small companies. The expo has been combined with larger Interop expo, to give an illusion that there's a large expo hall but a quick look through the floor reveals only one corner has anything to do with web.

Actually I think Microsoft and IBM got some type of package deals for being on the show floor... the lunch today is "sponsored" by Microsoft and the "goodie bag" was otherwise empty but it had a preview disc of Windows 7. Yay! I will see how my Mac likes it.

Speaking of sponsored lunch by the way, I am not sure if they should have put their name out there. It's the same dry piece of bread, a cookie and an apple as yesterday's non-sponsored lunch and I think it gives the visitors rather a bad impression of the sponsoring company. As in "If Microsoft sponsored this lunch, I will buy a Mac"... though I of course don't have that decision to make anyway.

Anyhow, some of the sessions have been interesting and the keynotes were yesterday rather entertaining, so it's not all bad. The conference itself it OK so far, just the state of the industry surrounding it makes me a little worried...

Here's couple photos from the Javits Center... will post more photos and videos later along with commentary!

In this blog I'll be playing a role of citizen journalist and reporting, mostly using video, from a trip to New York and later Silicon Valley.

So, I took a 8.5 hour flight from Zürich to New York and made my way to Times Square without any major incidents... staying at Westin, which is supposedly a Web 2.0 Expo "headquarters" hotel. I have yet to see anyone else from the expo at the hotel, but it's early so things could change.

To kick off the video blogging, here's a little video from around Times Square.. enjoy!