All technology eventually dies. It doesn’t happen overnight, but eventually a smaller, faster, or more powerful version comes along that does a better job solving the same problem.
One piece of dying tech that caught me by surprise with its presence at this year’s CES show was the small CD press kit.
Could someone please explain to me why a company would spend thousands of dollars to come to CES where they get to tell their stories first hand to the press and hand out press kits, only to deliver the press kits in an unusable format?
What percentage of CES writers have Mac computers? My guess is 15%, making around 1 in 7 unable to insert the mini-CD. Now add in other computers with slot loaders and computers without an optical drive. I bet that bumps things up to 1 in 5.
Toss in reporters who are afraid of putting an odd sized (some are shaped like business cards) disk in their CD tray, and I bet things approach 1 in 4.
You just lost 25% of your audience by putting your press kit on an unusable media format.
Here are a few alternatives:
1. Use normal CDs or DVDs
2. Use USB drives (these are reusable, which makes them a giveaway at the same time)
3. Put a link to your press kit on your business card
Personally, I prefer #3. It’s the greenest, I don’t have to carry anything around the show all day, and I’ll surely visit your site anyway if I decide to write about your company.
The bonus for you is that you could track your online press kit visits or downloads.
What is the ultimate video blogging device? Ben reviews two of his almost-favorites from Nokia at their CES booth.
Outside the convention hall BMW and Intel teamed up to bring us WiMax car racing. Two simulators were set up in the LVCC which controlled the cars and sent data back and forth via WiMax. Very cool demo.
We are always interested by wireless power. Fulton is working in the realm of inductive power and spends some time showing off what they have. Not widely available yet, but hopefully we’ll start to see some of this stuff hit the market soon. More info at http://ecoupled.com/
In the Texas Instruments booth they were showing off this R2D2 projector. 1024×768, 1,500:1 contrast ratio and just under $3,000. Available now.
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