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"  LAS VEGAS \u2014 This was my first visit to the Consumer Electronics Show, but I&amp;#039;ve been to trade shows before: After arriving and registering I immediately took care of the important things\u2014first, find the restrooms. Second, figure out where to get coffee. Third, check Internet access: Uh oh. There&amp;#039;s no free wifi at the Sands Conference Center, where today&amp;#039;s events are taking place, just an incredibly overpriced house wifi connection (how overpriced? A two day connection is $399! That&amp;#039;s how overpriced.) Oh, well, I&amp;#039;ve got a Verizon EVDO card\u2014which, unfortunately, doesn&amp;#039;t work in the conference rooms, buried as they are inside a huge building. The press room&amp;#039;s Ethernet connections were all full, and there was a long line, so I&amp;#039;m sitting on the floor by a window in the Mezzanine where I can get a good signal. So much for liveblogging the presentations.  That&amp;#039;s probably just as well. Today is &amp;quot;Press Day,&amp;quot; which basically means a series of press conferences by one manucfacturer after another. Each features a long line\u2014the bigger or more interesting the manufaturer, the longer\u2014followed by a dog-and-pony show in which the company explains why it&amp;#039;s going to revolutionize things and make a lot of money in 2007. There are then (sometimes) some questions, and when it&amp;#039;s over people stampede to the front to snap pictures of the products\u2014at least, if the manufacturer is lucky. It&amp;#039;s all journalists, all covering the same thing, so the effect is kind of like the rampaging paparazzi in The Right Stuff, only dressed in modern geekwear instead of 1960 suits and hats. Then it&amp;#039;s another stampede to get in line for the next session, where people stand around grumbling and sharing gossip until it&amp;#039;s time to go in. I&amp;#039;ve felt sort of sorry for the presenters, making a pitch that&amp;#039;s very important to their companies and their careers to a pack of people who are simultaneously jaded and overwhelmed. At the presentations I&amp;#039;ve attended so far (details to follow) the style of presentation has been pretty low-key, with none of the grandiosity that I understand has marked previous years. That&amp;#039;s in keeping with the products, which so far are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Besides wi-fi, another place where technology is failing has to do with business cards. When I registered, they gave me an &amp;quot;electronic business card&amp;quot; that I was supposed to swipe as I entered each session, giving the company a record of who attended. So far nobody&amp;#039;s asked me to swipe; instead, they&amp;#039;ve got big bowls in which they&amp;#039;re collecting... paper business cards. I&amp;#039;ve said it before, but as an information storage and delivery device, paper still has a lot to offer. Even here, apparently. \u2014Glenn Reynolds Click here for all of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds&amp;#039; blogging for Popular Mechanics from CES. Plus, sign up for daily e-mail updates from Las Vegas.    Essential to getting a good press turnout: Free food. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a1188/4209996/>