Afterwards we hit up the Wired Magazine's Tech Happy Hour and mingled with many of the industry's up and comer's. Free food & beverages were served until a fire broke out in the dining area. It was crazy and exciting at the same time. TheDroidGuy was there briefly for promos and had like 5 devices on his beltclip like an Android Batman utilty belt. I met a web developer named Christian that works for Lingo24: a web translation service. Lingo24 was founded as an online translation company by Oxford University languages graduate Christian Arno, from his parents' Aberdeen home in September 2001. The company was named as the best e-business start-up in Scotland in 2002 and Arno won the Shell LiveWire ?Young Entrepreneur of the year' competition in 2003. He was also a finalist in the Scotsman Entrepreneur of the year Award at the National Business Awards for Scotland, 2009. Christian was awesome to chit chat with. He had lost his voice earlier in the day from doing interviews and was very nice.
After my girlfriend showed up we got some free swag like Wired Magazines, Leica brochures + twitter offers to win, raffles for MacBook PROs, iPhones, Starbucks gift cards, Starbucks mugs, and of course free photo ops with many Wired magazine editors.
The highlight of the evening was the gdgt Austin live event. We got there about 15 minutes early and we couldn't have had better luck. We were about 50 people deep into the crowd. In about 15 minutes the crowd turned into a line of over 500 around the block corner to corner. Sonos was in the crowd providing solar charges to iOS devices and Android devices. Seagate was handing out bouncy balls with leds inside them and local Austin vendors were handing out popchips (an all-natural chip like you've never tasted before. We don't fry it. We don't bake it. We take the finest ingredients, apply heat and pressure (no oil, mind you), and pop! It's a popchip.) My friend said they were good. He had the sour cream and onion flavor. I wasn't too hungry after the Wired event so I gave him my bag.
We waited in line for like 25 minutes talking tech to some of the others in line. One had no idea that Sprint's 4G ( WiMax ) was the same technology Clear uses. After introducing myself and presenting some facts about Sprint 4G vs AT&T "faux G" technology they were very nice and eager to find out about the upcoming CTIA events.
The front door at the gdgt live event had a goodie bag waiting for us with either sticker packs or a t-shirt. I went with the white screen print on black cotton tee. Free swag! We hit up the industry tables which had many amazing demos set up. Buffalo Wireless was unveiling their new Cloud Server/ NAS systems. To easily understand, a NAS can be thought of as a hard drive or multiple hard drives for your entire network rather than for just one computer. Roku was unveiling new integrated channels on their new set tops. Blackberry had Playbook demos. HTC had a Thunderbolt on display but was not live, unfortunately.
The Gazelle staff was very friendly and gave us a great demo of their website. Gazelle is a reCommerce service that helps you sell and recycle your used electronics. Whether you want to sell a cell phone, laptop, or any other of the more than 250,000 products they accept, Gazelle can help. Once received, your used cell phones and other used electronics are inspected to make sure their condition matches your evaluation. Then they send your payment. The process takes about a week once they receive your box. They offer amazing pay options too: PayPal, Money Orders, Amazon Gift cards, Walmart cards, and more.
The highlight of the evening was the On Live demo. OnLive is a cloud computing, gaming-on-demand medium: the games are synchronized, rendered, and stored on remote servers and delivered via the Internet. At the demo, OnLive announced the OnLive Game Service will be integrated into new VIZIO VIA Plus TVs, and VIZIO's new line of VIA Blu-ray players, Android tablets and smartphones.
The OnLive service has been demonstrated on smartphones such as the iPhone, and tablet computers such as the iPad. Steve Perlman has also suggested that the underlying electronics and compression chip could be integrated into set-top boxes and other consumer electronics. The OnLive viewer for the iPad was released December 7, 2010. OnLive also confirmed the details of its PlayPack flat-rate payment plan bundle with the purchase of Assasin's Creed: Brotherhood. With this option players pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to "recent, classic and indie titles" in the OnLive library, which is expected to exclude the newest releases. PlayPack is currently available for owners of the OnLive Game System or to anyone who has purchased a game from Onlive as a free beta period until the plan officially launches in January 2011. The OnLive PlayPack is priced at $9.99/month and will allow players to play over 40 different games whenever they wish. There will be more games available in the future as OnLive adds them to their library. I saw demos of Assassin's Creed, HomeFront, Battlefield, Dirt 2, and many more. Did I mention they gave me one to test out and blog about? SWEET!
Thank you to:
@onlivegames
@onlivefans_com
@onlivecommunity
@gazelle_com
@westerndigital
Jay from Buffalo Wireless
Lance from @htc
Christian @lingo24chr
@chadharlan
@wiredmag for the swag!
@leica_camera
@ruby_red711
@fotografopoetic
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