Here is the first podcast from the exhibition floor at CES, originally recorded last Thursday. Andy and I barely scratch the service as you can imagine. That being said, here are some of our random conversations with vendors as we cruised through the trade show floor. We spend a good few minutes on the Treo 700. Good stuff, download below:

Download MP3 12.7 megs, 27:45

Show Links:

Serious Magic
Cliphanger
Palm - Treo 700
Eton Radio
MSI Computers
Samsung

Enjoy! There will be another podcast posted focusing on our discussions with home theatre vendors, as we check out the latest in plasmas, HDTV and projection televisions. Feel free to comment away.

I am finally back in Baltimore! I left home at 4:30 am last Wednesday and headed to CES in Las Vegas, and then made the trek to Chapel Hill, NC on Friday so I could attend PodcasterCon. Saturday was spent with some of the coolest people I have ever met, and then finally early this morning, I caught a flight home. What a week! Absolutely nothing short of awesome! (thats my original clutch word).

Plenty to come on CES, I will be posting 2 podcasts in the next day or two highlighting the sights and sounds of the exhibition floor. We spoke with a bunch of different companies, and the conversations we had will be summed up in the next couple of shows. The Verizon Wireless podcasts are in post-production as well, look out for them on the VZW page, and please subscribe to the feed if your interested in checking them out.

With all of the excitement surrounding CES, and finally after attending it for the first time, I think I agree with some folks who say the show is really TOO big. They could easily split this event up into 3 key conferences and sell them out solid. Logistically speaking, it would also be so much kinder and gentler on the city’s transportation industry (we had no chance of getting a cab after the trade show floor closed unless we wanted to wait hours, so we walked to the Wynn and stood on a 20 min line there). That being said, CES is a high energy event with lots of interesting people, in the middle of Las Vegas, definitely a good time.

PodcasterCon was really really cool. I had never attended an event that was planned in the “unconference” format before, a totally organic approach to a gathering, one that involves all of the attendees. A format that allows the actual participants to actually create sessions on subjects they want to discuss, and whatever happens, happens. No lectures, etc just one moderator (or sometimes two) and a lot of participation from the attending group. I was able to move around and bounce around a little bit and check out the various sessions. I also had a chance to sit down and record a podcast interview with Ryan Irelan of Podcast Free America, and Brian Russell the organizer of PodcasterCon 2006, both will also be posted here.

David Warlick ran a very interesting session titled “Podcasting as a Teaching / Learning Strategy” - I was impressed to say the least, Dave ran this session like a pro. Almost every single person was participating. Even thought this is a subject I was genuinely interested in, I had just planned on dropping in and listening for a while. However, after about 20 minutes, Dave requested people with podcasting equipment to raise their hands, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of recording a session with about 10 people discussing how to attract funding for enabling podcasting for educational initatives. Dave posts about the experience here, and also mentions our rapid linking and cross-posting of media from the event within minutes of it actually happening. That was pretty cool Dave, lots of synapes firing there. This session was truly a “session.”

The open session hour was really cool as well. Ryan Irelan ran an informative session on “Podcasting for Everyone”, enlightenting a group of aspiring podcasters, and I also attended Gene from Hometown Tales’ session on “Video Podcasting.” All very good stuff! Shortly after that, PodcasterCon ended and we all headed to the Internationalist Bookstore to receive a complimentary copy of “Podcasting Hacks” by Jack Herrington, courteousy of O’Reilly.

To top the day off, a group of us went out to the Carolina Brewery where we enjoyed plenty of fine brew and good eats. We had a great conversation and new friendships were formed. The crew consisted of:

Ryan Irelan (Podcast Free America)
Dave Johnson (Blogging Roller) - look out for his new book on RSS and Atom Feeds.
Josh Staiger (joshstaiger.org)
Derrick Oien (Intercasting Corp, Rabble)
Dave Chekan (Libsyn)
The other Dave (Libsyn)
Hoopes (Libsyn)
Chris MacDonald (indiefeed)
Rob Greenlee (Melodeo, Mobilcast)
Will R (Concerned Citizen)

Great meeting all of you! I am looking forward to connecting with everyone again. Definitely good times.

After this 5 day travel run, its really great to be back home. Have a good one, peace out.

Chatting about podcasting in education

Originally uploaded by David Warlick.

Dave Warlick is leading a VERY interactive discussion on “Podcasting as a Teaching / Learning Strategy” He asked who had recording gear ready to go, then asked people to break out into groups to discuss specific topics. The group I was in was discussing “How do we attract funding & attention of administrators” The entire session had a working wiki page which you can find here. Very cool stuff.

I have never been to Chapel Hill, NC before, but I can tell you I am digging it already. I checked in at the Hampton Inn, and cruised out with Ryan Irelan for a great feast at 411 in downtown. Excellent food and great conversation. I also just checked out the PodcasterCon blog and saw that 286 people have registered to attend. Very nice! Looking forward to it, but right now I am looking forward to the 7 hours of sleep I may get for the first time in 3 days Peace out.

Typing from 35k feet on a flight from Las Vegas to Raleigh-Durham, I am on my way to PodcasterCon. Vegas was insane! CES is UNBELIEVEABLE, I could have definitely used another 2-3 days to get through the entire conference, but more importantly the Verizon Wireless V Cast Music announcement and events were excellent. Upon arrival we were furnished with brand new fully activated LG 8100’s with the V-Cast service and beta versions of the V-Cast Music service live and ready to go. Also accompanied by the phones were 1 gig SD cards for tuneage storage. I won’t harp about it too much because there will be a full fledge podcast devoted exclusively to V Cast Music coming very soon. That being said, I am addicted already Simply put, it rocks. Andy and I, by the end of yesterday, had probably downloaded over 50 tunes on our phones, which then can be played on the slick new LG 8100’s we were using, with either headphones or external speakers on the phones. The ED-VO network is super fast for downloads - most tunes came down within a minute directly to the phone. So needless to say,We pretty much had tunes going all day yesterday. With all of the content we picked up at CES I will be posting another podcast or two here shortly, that will cover our journey through the 1.6 million square ft of exhibition space.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to hitting Raleigh later tonight. I am going to be hooking up with Ryan Irelan who is spearheading a very cool site called Podcast Free America, and also hosts his weekly podcast Elements. Ryan and I have been chatting via email and I am looking forward to hooking up and talking shop with him.

PodcasterCon is tomorrow at UNC and I am really looking forward to meeting other podcast minded people! Drop me a line if your around the Hampton Inn the next few days. See you in the am!

Back in action, the first podcast of 2006! This will indeed be a podcast filled week. This weeks first podcast comes from 35,000 ft,in the 15th row of flight 1224. Andy Mueller and I discuss our travels to Vegas for CES, our long conversation with former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Andy’s drive for sports betting, and my future trek to PodcasterCon. Check it out.

Download MP3 7 megs, 15:53

Show Links:

CES
Verizon Wireless
John Ashcroft
Hard Rock Cafe & Casino
Rose Bowl

More podcasts on the way!

We are here! After a gruelish flight that began at 6am in Baltimore, and ended in some lost luggage courteousy of Delta Airlines, we are finally in Las Vegas. We are chilling now at the Hard Rock, and waiting to knock out some interviews with the folks from Samsung. Then its time for some eats, and a cruise up the strip. Early call tomorrow am! Big stuff coming with Verizon Wireless.

Andy and I recorded a podcast on the flight out - I will post our “flightcast” next

Dharmesh Shah co-founder of HubSpot a new startup based in Cambridge, MA has some interesting thoughts on the popular social networking site LinkedIn. Specifically, why he thinks Google or Yahoo should buy them.

I think LinkedIn is missing a major, major opportunity. It seems they are experiencing all the downsides of a “Web 2.0” company (primarily the lack of a defined revenue model) without truly exploiting some of the “upside” (leveraging the network and becoming a “platform” provider)

I couldn’t agree with him more. I have been an avid user of LinkedIn for years, and have thought the same thing, that something just isn’t being taken advantage of here with the power of the network. I meet alot of people, have a small but growing network on their platform, but have yet to extract any true value perse. That is also the case for many folks that I know who also use the service.

If Google were to buy LinkedIn and rollout an API, we’d see really cool applications much like the ones developers are deploying using Google Maps.

Check out Dharmesh’s post and check out his thinking on the subject, he has some really interesting points on the possibilites of a LinkedIn API and what a company like Google could do with it.

Creating “search” mechanisms that are limited to the data within my network. So, when I do a search on Google, if there are people related somehow to the items I’m searching on, they would show up as “sublinks” in my search results. So, when I search on CRM and Siebel shows up in the list, wouldn’t it be powerful to have the three “closest” people within my network that are related to Siebel to show up in my list? Then, I could click on these people and navigate to the LinkedIn profile for these people.

Good stuff, thanks for sharing Dharmesh!

I’ve gone back and forth several times on whether or not I am going to make the trek to PodcasterCon. Since I missed the Portable Media Expo in November, I promised myself I would hit the next podcast related event. When I first read about PodcasterCon, I thought it sounded like a very cool and interesting event to attend. I still think thats the case, so despite my insane travel schedule this week for CES, I have decided to make the trek to Chapel Hill, NC to attend PodcasterCon 2006.

I will be looking forward to meeting everyone who is in attendance. It looks a couple hundred people will be showing up, which is a great turn out for a first time event with a “unconference” format. Drop me a line if your going to be there. I am sure there will be some interesting gatherings surrounding the event. Lets hook up if you will be there.

See you Saturday

Happy New Year to everyone! Thanks to everyone for reading, and hopefully 2006 brings about good things for us all. I had a wonderfully mellow NYE with Mrs. C. We kicked back at the house, popped open a bottle of Billecart-Salmon Brut Rose, wrote out some of our goals for 06 on the whiteboard, and listened to some old podcasts that we both recorded together on Jan 1-9th in 2005 that never made it to the “feedosphere.” We proceeded to laugh our asses off for a good hour. In hindsight, we were freaking hilarious, maybe we will fire the mic back up and get the “Tree and Greg” show online at some point

Afterwards, we cooked up a killer Italian meal and waited for midnight to come around. We were SUPER psyched to find out that we get a perfect view of the Baltimore Inner Harbor fireworks display from our new rooftop deck! Baltimore City threw down again, they do some of the best fireworks displays I have seen. Thats right, our tax dollars at work! We weren’t sure if we would get the view, so now it looks like its July 4th at our house next year!

To my own amazement, I made it out for the first set of The Bridge “Sunrise Show” at The 8x10 Nightclub right down the street. They started playing around 2:30am and wrapped up the first set around 4:15, I was done. Needless to say, I slept in today, and I am still not sure how I pulled that one off

So here is to 2006, may the best be yet to come! Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and safe new year. Now its time to gear up for a big week, kicking off 2006, lots to get caught up with after the lull of the past few weeks, then its right off to CES in Vegas early Wednesday am.