{"id":1664,"date":"2011-04-18T17:51:37","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T17:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2012-02-19T22:51:47","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T22:51:47","slug":"gadget-show-live-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1664","title":{"rendered":"Gadget Show Live 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Wednesday, Grace and I went up to the NEC in Birmingham for Gadget Show Live<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object> <\/p>\n

photos from our visit on flickr<\/a><\/p>\n

In short, we both loved it. <\/p>\n

We were there from when doors opened at 9am, nearly until they closed at 6pm. Anything that can keep a six-year-old interesting and entertained for over eight hours of walking around is pretty impressive. <\/p>\n

I’ve been to a few trade shows before, and so was expecting stands pushing freebies and schwag. I didn’t see any. That’s not a complaint: it meant we didn’t have to carry stuff around all day, and really – how many more branded USB keys do I need?<\/p>\n

What we did get was lots of chances to try stuff out. A theme for nearly all the stands we saw was “hands-on” – lots of live demos, toys and gadgets to try. <\/p>\n

Some of it was stuff I’d heard of or read about before – whether that was games systems like the XBox Kinect or the Nintendo 3DS, or tablets like the Motorola Xoom. <\/p>\n

But that was still cool – because reading about the Kinect and actually playing for yourself are very different. Actually trying out a variety of Android tablets gives you a better idea of what they’re like than reading the specs. Playing a few 3D games on the 3DS gives you an idea of what the 3D effect is like (wow, the AR games are cool) in a way that a review can’t. <\/p>\n

Knowing that you can do fun graphics stuff with pen tablets is one thing, seeing what someone can do with a photo of you<\/a> is another. <\/p>\n

There were a few surprises for me – such as the Android phone from LG with the 3D screen, which was a bit bizarre. Or the NeuroSky headset, which had some fun demo apps – we’ve used the Emotiv headset at work, but I didn’t know much about their competitors. <\/p>\n

On the whole, though – it’s a show about gadgets you can buy today, rather than future tech. <\/p>\n

And plenty of time to try things out for yourself. Grace got to try out a neat kids Razor bike with two castors for back wheels (making it easy to slide the back out as you skid around corners) while I got to go on a Segway and TP Scoot bike. <\/p>\n

There were areas dedicated to gadgets for kids – Grace loved the stands from VTech and Leapfrog, both of which had a ton of cool electronic toys and games out to try. (In fact, in general – as a day out for kids, it’s pretty good. It’s a very child-friendly venue, and lots of stuff for kids to do and play with). <\/p>\n

There were also areas with games for grown-ups… which I didn’t get to look at. I’m assuming games of death, gore, and destruction were the theme there. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Lots of gadgets, lots of chances to try stuff out – it was huge, with more than enough to keep us occupied for a day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Wednesday, Grace and I went up to the NEC in Birmingham for Gadget Show Live. photos from our visit on flickr<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[328,9],"tags":[483],"class_list":["post-1664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids","category-misc","tag-gsl2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}