Windows Experience Blog : Media Center Express Bus

CES 2008 Round-up & Wrap-up

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:14:00 GMT

Now that CES 2008 has officially ended, I wanted to take a moment to do a round-up and wrap up post on CES coverage both here and from others.

Featured Community members did some coverage on their sites of CES this year. Josh Phillips from Windows Connected has Day 1 and Day 2 write-ups of his experience online. The folks from Neowin shot some excellent videos of Microsoft Surface. And Jason Dunn has a post up on his experience riding the Media Center Express CES Bus from San Francisco to Las Vegas as well as CES in general. It was also great meeting up with John Obeto, Michael Reyes from HardwareGeeks, Ash Nallwalla and Brad Wardell from Stardock. And special thanks to Robert McLaws from Windows-Now for spending a great deal of time on the Media Center Express CES Bus setting up a fantastic Windows Media Center experience.

Speaking of the Media Center Express CES Bus, blogger Robert Scoble shot a piece for Donny Duetsch's show on CNBC on the bus with a group of other bloggers. Here is a video of some of the bloggers on the bus introducing themselves (including me!). Scoble questioned Bug Labs CEO Peter Semmelhack. You can read about Scoble's experience shooting the segment here. Bug Labs won CNET's "Best of CES" Award this year for Emerging Technologies. Check out the list of "Best of CES" awards for specific categories. You'll also take notice that one of the "Fashion PCs" being showcased by Microsoft at CES this year - the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 - won CNET's "Best of CES" award for Computers and Hardware. The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is a pretty slick laptop.

For information on the announcements made from Microsoft at CES this year head on over to Microsoft's CES Virtual Pressroom.

Channel 10 did extensive video coverage this year of CES. You can check out all their CES coverage here. Channel 10's Nic Fillingham shot a tour of the Microsoft Product Pavilion. JP Wollersheim, Senior Product Manager for Windows Live, demoed some digital photo features in Windows Live. Awesome stuff.

I've uploaded the final photos from CES I shot to Flickr using Windows Live Photo Gallery. You can check out my photo set here. I've got some great shots up from the Microsoft Product Pavilion. Here are a few of my favorites:

Lots more pictures here!

I posted about the Fashion PCs being showcased at CES earlier last week asking which of these PCs you would like to hear more about. I don't know about you but I really like that HP Blackbird ;-)

While the CES excitement is over... we've got some pretty exciting things coming up post-CES I think you will enjoy. Stay tuned!

Media Center Express Bus Schedule and where to hop on!

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:45:00 GMT

To catch the Media Center Express CES Bus from the BlogHaus at the Bellagio, all you need to do is head out the front doors to the taxi area. The Bus will be in this vicinity. You will be able to catch it there. I've taken photos to show where folks need to go to catch the bus from the BlogHaus:

1. Head out the front doors of the Bellagio heading out to the taxi area.

2. You will see lion statues where people are lining up to catch taxis.

3. The bus will pull in where the taxis pull in and be in this general area to pick folks up.

Please DO NOT go down the escalators to the Bellagio Tour Bus area. The Media Center Express CES Bus will not be picking up folks from this area.

(DO NOT go here)

January 7^th:
12.15PM - Departure from Bellagio to Sands Hotel (for 1PM arrival).
3:00PM - Depart Sands Expo for LVCC. Drop off only.
5:00PM - Depart Bellagio to the Wynn Hotel (ShowStoppers event)
8.30PM - Depart Wynn Hotel to the Bellagio.

As time permits, go back to Wynn Hotel for pick ups, drive back (drop off) to Bellagio Hotel

January 8^th:
2:15PM - At Planet Hollywood - TabletPC event.
5:00PM - Depart to Atomic Testing Museum (drop off).
5:45PM - Pick up at Bellagio to drive to Atomic Testing Museum.
7:30PM - Atomic Testing Museum to Bellagio Hotel. Several runs from Atomic Testing Museum back to Bellagio.

January 9^th:
10:30AM - Bellagio to the Las Vegas Convention Center.
12:00PM - Las Vegas Convention Center to the Bellagio.
3:00PM - Las Vegas Convention Center back to the Bellagio.
6:00PM - Bellagio to a location TBD, parked there until 8.30PM return to Bellagio

January 10^th:
9:00AM - Bellagio Pick-up
10:30AM - Bellagio Pick-up

After each pickup the bus will proceed to the Las Vegas Convention Center

January 11^th:
10:30A Load bus and return to Palo Alto

You can follow the CES BlogHaus via Twitter for any updates to the schedule that may occur (and we'll post follow-ups too!)

And here are addresses to the locations mentioned above:

Atomic Testing Museum
755 E Flamingo Rd
Las Vegas, NV 89119

Bellagio Las Vegas
3600 S. Las Vegas Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89109

The Wynn Las Vegas
3131 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89109

The Sands Expo and Convention Center
201 Sands Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89169

Las Vegas Convention Center
305 Convention Center Dr, Las Vegas, NV

More updates soon!

Update from Las Vegas – CES 2008 begins!

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:36:00 GMT

Wow what a day! This morning started off real early for Nick and I as we headed over to the Las Vegas Convention Center (where CES is taking place) to do an early walk-through of the Microsoft Product Pavilion with several of our Featured Community members and MVPs. There, we were able to preview some of the new and exciting PCs coming this year like Lenovo's new IdeaPad laptops and the ASUS Lamborghini VX3. Folks from the Certified for Windows Vista Team were on hand to discuss new devices coming like the Samsung SPF-83V Digital Picture Frame. Many of HP's new products were also there for us to check out. I am really excited for these new and upcoming "Fashion" PCs.

Microsoft's Aaron Coldiron was on hand at the Microsoft Product Pavilion giving us demos of many of the Windows Live applications and services including Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger. Aaron demonstrated how he was able to take photos with his Windows Mobile phone and quickly upload them to his Windows Live Space. Great demo!

On our way out, we were fortunate to get a sneak peak at Channel 10's exclusive interview with Bill Gates. This is his last year doing the CES keynote as he transitions out of being a Microsoft employee full time to working full time at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Also: Channel 10 also did a very neat interview with Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division. Robbie discusses quite a few thinks like the Xbox 360, Zune, and Windows Mobile but also what we can expect in regards to the "Connected Entertainment" experience coming in 2008. Check it out.

Next we stopped by to check out the Media Center Express (aka the CES Bus). Microsoft partnered with PodTech is providing a bus for CES offering transportation to and from the Las Vegas Convention Center.

We will have more details on the Media Center Express CES Bus to share in the very near future. Look for a post from Nick.

Tomorrow will be another exciting day. You can follow me on Twitter (trying to update as much as possible) and I've set up a set on Flickr for CES 2008 - all photos being taken with my Certified for Windows Vista Canon PowerShot SD750 and uploaded to Flickr using Windows Live Photo Gallery.