The Terrace Room at the Roosevelt Hotel.

I just got home from the jam-packed DigitalLife Press preview conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown and I thought I'd share a few quick thoughts and then get to the most fun part of the night: the schwag bag. The conference consisted of 46 exhibits from companies big and small. The big sectors were accessories, Internet media (IPTV, VOD, file sharing and storing) and gadgets. Over the next couple of days I'll go over some of the exhibits that left an impression on me, good or bad, and a few trends I noticed at the convention. I will say one thing right now, if the press preview is any indication, the actual conference in October is going to be a mad house. There were a couple of exhibits which I could barely get a glimpse at due to the crowds, and the room was packed to the gills with reporters (Insert "open bar" joke here).

And without further delay, the schwag bag and its contents:

1. The DigitalLife bag: Probably big enough for a laptop, but not padded.
2. Mini Robopet from Wow Wee: "A Fusion of Technology and Personality." Basically a wind up toy that walks. Wow Wee had full-sized reptilian robots on display. I didn't get a close look.
3. Retractable AV Cable from Pacific Rim Technologies: An iPod accessory (This is a theme from the night that I'll talk about in detail tomorrow)
4. Cell-phone shaped notepad from dotPhoto: Basically another online photo storage, print purchasing site.
5. Insert listing products from Pacific Rim Technologies.
6. Squeezable stress doll shaped like a telephone from NetZero: Surprisingly, NetZero was the only VoIP display, a free computer-based VoIP service with unlimited computer-to-computer calling, and 10 minutes of real phone calls.
7. Luggage ID tag from Spy Gear: A company that makes spy cameras and puts them on remote control cars etc.
8. Capped pen, black from Vongo: A subscription movie download service.
9. Clickable pen, black from Humax: A television hardware company who has an exciting (at least to me) new flat screen TV with an integrated DirecTV receiver.
10. Sticker and key chain from Alienware: A very high-end computer maker.
11. 6 gigabyte portable USB hard drive from Seagate: Definitely the best of the schwag. Seagate had several external hard drives on display.
12. Post-it notepad from Multiply.com: Online storage of and community for "your blog, photos, videos, music, and more."
13. Cleverly packaged t-shirt from Vongo.
14. Clip-on earphones (with pink and orange interchangeable pads) from Altec Lansing: A company that had a variety of iPod accessories on display from headphones to boom boxes.

So there you have it, I don't have an iPod so I've already spread the iPod accessories out among my friends, given the t-shirt to my fiancé and loaded the pictures I took at the conference onto the portable hard drive so I can write more posts tomorrow at work. So stay tuned. — Brian Ward

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