The Digital Life Trade Floor

Living A Digital Life: A Report From The Digital Life Convetion October 14th-17th 2004 Jacob Javitz Center By Omar Jon Ajluni Life is digital. Music is digital. Photos are digital. TV, video games, magazines, all digital and their accessibility and convenience just been made that much better. This year’s Digital Life conference and trade show, held at the Jacob Javits Center in NY from Oct. 14-17th, was the exhibit to reveal the most promising products scheduled to hit the market for this holiday season and beyond.

Do not misunderstand the purpose of this conference and trade show. Digital Life is more than just products. In fact, it was more of a glimpse into the future of one’s own living room than a chain of sales pitches. America Online created a mock house with several rooms to exhibit their latest internet optimizing ideas and offers. I had the pleasure of viewing the Jets/49ers game at Intel’s demonstration theater with a plasma TV and 7.1 speaker surround sound. I also got to see their entertainment PC in action, which allows you to record simultaneous TV broadcasts onto PVR, keep a digital media collection, and play PC video games.

When I first walked onto the trade floor, the Google lab was on my left, and Microsoft’s Digital Theater was on my right. The Google station was colorful, themed with giant, motorized cranes that could pick up oversized foam blocks. Their computer stations and representatives were pushing Google’s online shopping service called Froogle. The advanced way in which the Google search engine can crawl through the web makes it the most powerful and useful digital tool on the internet. Though just a search engine, Google’s power seemed almost overwhelming as they were located right at the entrance and exit to the show. Microsoft, just next door, featured workshops on maximizing your online digital music experience, digitally preserving and sharing your memories, protecting your digital lifestyle, and much more. There was another digital theater used for demonstrations sponsored by Digital Life, but it was in the far back corner of the trade floor, and seemed to attract less attention than its Microsoft counterpart.

Some of the smaller satellite and cable TV companies had Jets fans, like myself, relaxing on leather couches watching flat screens of varying sizes while their families were busy taking pictures with the Energizer Bunny or a Storm Trooper. Then again, I’m guilty of posing with AOL’s Running Man, but it was just too classic a moment to pass up.

Robert C. Crooke, VP of the Desktop Platforms Group of Intel gave his windy, stuttering presentation to a half interested audience who were vastly more compelled by blue painted percussionists, but he did get across one important point. Intel, with years of experience in developing new digital technology, is really trying to centralize your media and make it easy for you to play, watch, listen, or store whatever media you want. Its universality is still a few years away, though its introduction this holiday season will set a pace for the future of digital evolution. And more importantly, I got to be one of the first to see Tony Hawk’s Underground 2.

Many people go to the Digital Life convention for the video games, and rightfully so. Independent gaming companies like Vivendi Universal, Activision, and Nintendo were demonstrating some of their new games, though some of the largest attractions weren’t new games, but really popular old games. Dance Dance Revolution competition attracted a large crowd with a $1000 cash prize for the winner, and I had a chance to get in on an informal Super Smash Brothers tournament. It just goes to show that great games never die.

Just past Google’s childish foam block construction lab was a space station of Xbox’s connected to back-to-back flat screens. Early on the first day of the convention, as a catered member of the press, I got to check out all the new games for this holiday before the masses had a chance to attack, though there was nothing really revolutionary on the rise.

Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 looked to be, yet again, another major success. My favorite little add-on in this game is a little meter that pops up when you fall off your board. You get a couple seconds to smash the buttons as hard and fast as you can. If you get the meter up, you reach “Freak out,” at which point you may just throw your skateboard at an innocent bystander. Nice touch to an already well conceived game.

A Gamer Gets A Sneak Preview In The Nintendo SUV, Outfitted With 10 GameCube Systems.

Nintendo had their pimped SUV set up with Gamecube consoles in the trunk, in the side windows, and hooked up to fold down flat screens in the back seat. They were exhibiting Metroid Prime 2, Donkey Konga, Spiderman 2, and Soul Caliber, among others. Donkey Konga looks to be a fun button-timing musical rhythm game. It also features to bongo controller, which actually lets you use hand percussion to play. The bongos have microphones to sense your hand taps AND your hand claps, which play an important role in the musical game. This looks to be Nintendo’s staple character stab at a DDR/PaRappa the Rapper type game. Reviews have shown it to be fun, and I thought it was cool, but who knows if it will actually catch on. Personally, I would much rather play a quality Rareware Donkey Kong adventure.

I got a chance to look at some of Xbox’s upcoming titles as well including a new Conker’s adventure game as well as Vivendi’s Fight Club (based on the book and movie). Another interesting Vivendi release is a game called Men of Valor, a Vietnam War first-person shooter taking place in 2015. I was desperately looking for a Halo 2 demo, but I was told that no one was letting that cat out of the bag. Instead, I got a Halo 2 trailer on a big screen TV.

Xbox had a huge stake in this year’s Digital Life conference with practically hundreds of gaming systems everywhere the eye could see, whereas Nintendo only had their Xzibit approved SUV, and the Sony PS2 was no where to be found. Sports games were well represented by ESPN and Electronic Arts, though Microsoft Game Studios was boasting war games, adventure games, sci-fi shooters, racing games, and martial arts fighting games. With Acclaim recently going belly up, the independent gaming companies are looking to score with fresh ideas, but it’s getting harder and harder to do. I’m looking forward to the new Metroid (Nintendo), Viewtiful Joe 2 (Capcom, a Japanese company that wasn’t at DL), Halo 2 (Microsoft), and the Journey to the Wild Divine (Independent), which is a meditative adventure using the gamer’s biofeedback as a controller. (see our Digital Life product reviews for more detailed information).

Digital photography is taking America by storm, and Digital Life hosted a number of companies looking to enhance the user friendly digi-photo experience. Some have estimated that it will only be two or three years before we give up on hard film completely. There were many products and programs being pitched to help custom organize and display your vast digital photo collection. One product was simply a picture frame with a screen that projected a slide show of a digital photo album. I could imagine futuristic homes having just 3 picture frames, all of them just slowly fading through thousands of pictures.

Another company is trying to digitize your kids. The colorfully striped Hip-E computer is a PC designed for teenagers, and their booth on the trade floor was the only one to host guest DJs. The computer includes a small, wireless flash drive that is completely compatible with the desktop platform for portable music, photos, documents and more. The Hip-E experience is customized to the younger demographic with all the necessary elements of a standard PC, from 2GB of memory and 120GB of hard drive space to a 17” flat screen and DVD player/CD burner. Soon enough, they’ll have a PC that can customize itself to your growing child. It will slowly change as its adolescent user gets older. It’s not so far away, is it?

Year in and year out, Digital Life is going to reveal a wide array of products, programs, and ideas that will become part of every day activities. We think music, photography, gaming, and television are slowly becoming digital, when in reality, they are doing so faster than ever before. By next year, exhibitors will have made much greater advances than they have in the past year. From iPod competitors to meditative gaming, from digital photo frames to entertainment media PCs, digital life will be even more consolidated and simple with each coming year.