What we are up against at CES and a few apps to Help

We are fast approaching one of our favorite events, the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. Many of your favorite blog and news sources will be in attendance doing what we can to provide you as much coverage as a person can do on the floor. To give the average individual an idea of what we are up against. lets take a look at a few numbers from last year.

Snapshot: 2011 International CES AttendeesÂ

Exhibits-only Attendees: 89,776
Exhibitors: 48,776
Conference Session Attendees: 2,877
Press: 5,849
Bloggers: 672
Industry Analysts: 1,060
Speakers: 529
Total: 149,529

In case your jaw just dropped, you might want to pick it up real quick so it can drop again. We also need to mention size. Although a good chunk of the whole CES experience is based at the LVCC, there are also meet ups at various hotels and venues around the Vegas strip at all hours of the day and night. I have no idea what the true number would be including other locations and events, but the LVCC houses 2,182,167 sq ft of justÂ exhibitorÂ and meeting space. That is roughly 38 NFL Football fields end zones included. That is a lot of walking to get to the good for everyone. It is an experience you can’t imagine unless you have been there. No amount of pictures will ever do theÂ magnitudeÂ of the event any justice.

Now that the general reader is up to speed on size let talk a little shop. There are a number of issues that face any news source or blog. One of course is coverage. How can we cover as much of the event as possible without missing something important. The answer to that one is simple. You can’t Not unless you have a team of a couple hundred people all doing different booths and events. For a site like ours, most of our interests are specialized to Android. That doesn’t mean we aren’t tech orientated people to and want to see more, there just isn’t enough time in 4 days to do it. So if you are expecting us to all see the same things and share with you all, it just won’t happen. If you guys have something specific in mind you want us to check out, shoot us an email or a comment and we will see what we can do.

The other issue of course besides time and human limitations that we all face, is the amount of gear that we will be backing around. Many of us will be packing around laptops, cameras, video cameras, phones, business cards, chargers, tablets and various other accessories to keep us going. Along with a lot of energy drinks. The last thing we need to do is add more wait to our load. I have spent the last couple of weeks looking for the best solutions to lighten our loads and found a few apps that I think will benefit most CES attendees as well as general real world people who visit large conferences often.

One such app that I will be running for the event is called CamScanner -Phone PDF Creator.

It does just like it says. ItÂ essentiallyÂ turns your phone into a document scanner. You can scan a document by taking a photo of it, save it as a PDF file and share it via Google Docs, Box, Dropbox, Email, SMS or any other sharing method. With so many booths andÂ informationalÂ meetings handing out full-pageÂ fliersÂ loaded with info, this is going to be a great tool to keep theÂ informationÂ digital and the loose papers out of your bag. I am certain you will see images of such fliers land here on the site in many posts to help save us time and give you ALL the details at once. The app is free with advertisements and watermarks all your scans. So spending the $4.99 on the License will be worth the expense.

Another app that I found that I believe will be invaluable to have around, is CamCard.

You won’t see us sharing any business cards we pick up while we are there, but any attendee knows that they will walk away with a few hundred cards before the week is over. Nothing is more frustrating than searching the stack of cards for someone you want to get in touch with only to not find it. This app provides the solution. Short term and long-term. Again, you simply take a picture of the card and the app willÂ analyzeÂ it and fill in all the contact info for you to your device and store the cards image with it. It has many other features built into it like double-sided card image, recognizes 12Â languagesÂ and searches and invites new scans to your LinkedIn network. The lite version only offers 10 cards the first week and 2 every week after that. Where as the paid version is unlimited of course but will set you back $6.99 for the US only version and $11.99 for international recognition.

Next is a series of apps by Sony Digital Network Applications, Inc.Â First one is Frame Grabber –

We all know that we will want to use our high quality camcorders to get the best possible footage of demonstrations, devices and anything else we can snag on video. It is not always going to be that easy to set up a tripod or pull it from a bag for a quicky at a booth. Many of us will rely on our current phones to take quick videos for YouTube uploading and sharing toÂ associatesÂ to post or upload for us. We always need to have as many still images as possible also. This application allows for both. Pop out your phone and take a video at all times, then open the app and select the exact frame you want as a still image and save it. Now you can save that classic moment from a video or that critical transition on a demo device for everyone to see without worrying about delay in your camera. There is no trial or lite version of this app, but at $2.99 for the paid version it is well worth your money to never miss an important moment.

The last app by SDNA that I know we will also be using is called Video Trimmer.

This is another great mobile tool that any video sharing lover should have on their device regardless. The app is simple and straight forward. Often when you start recording a video the good stuff doesn’t happen for a 30 seconds or a minute or even longer into the video. On the opposite side, you often record longer than you need to and nothing happened. This app simply lets you place a marker at the appropriate start time and end time and cut the video to what you need to show. This willÂ alleviateÂ a ton of useless video, as well as save space and upload time. No one wants to watch you standing there for 30 seconds to get to the good stuff, or suffer another minute with nothing left to see.

I am certain there are many other s out there. I will be beaten if I don’t mention the official CES 2012 app. But since I was shooting for CESÂ attendeesÂ and real world applications, I won’t go into detail about that app. If you are going, you already have it and use it all the time. For everyone else out there. Check out some of those apps if you feel so inclined. They can really benefit the life of an average user and the professionals around the globe. Good luck to all that attend CES this year and we hope to see you out there.

Below I linked to the market for each app above for easy reference. If any of you guys out there have any other recommendations, please let us know.

2012 International CES

Source: LVCC & CESWeb