The Consumer Electronics Show is increasingly about media and content, so it’s no surprise that online advertising companies were setting up parties in the parking lot outside the Las Vegas Convention Center. AOL and Microsoft have white tents and Yahoo has a purple one. But the biggest search giant is missing. While Google is not attending CES as an official exhibitor this year, don’t be fooled. It may not have invested in its own booth (it did two years ago when co-founder Larry Page gave a keynote speech), but the company has brought an army of Googlers to Vegas and booked a number of hotel suites on the Strip to conduct its meetings.
by Matt Richtel, Reporter, Bits, The New York Times
Matters turned philosophical here at the Consumer Electronics Show in a discussion with Toshihiro Sakamoto, president and senior managing director of Panasonic AVC Networks. Sakamoto is charming, twinkle-eyed and at least a grade classier than the sell-at-all-costs, run-of-the mill American C.E.O. (And, as my friend Alex Pham of the Los Angeles Times put it, he sure is handsome.)
by Staci D. Kramer, Executive Editor, paidContent.org
Back in the Hilton Theater Monday afternoon for a session with execs from Hollywood–Albert Cheng, EVP-digital media, Disney-ABC Television Group; Dan Fawcett, president, Fox Digital; Tom Lesinski, president, Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment; and four days into the job, Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.
by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Staff Writer, New York Times
CNet Networks, one of the original online media companies, would typically write about all the gossip and speculation at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas. Now, however, the company is likely to be the one talked about.
A consortium of prominent investment funds has amassed a 21% stake in CNet and is seeking to oust the company’s directors and take over a majority of its board, according to people briefed on the proposal.
by Dan Lyons, Blogger, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
As you probably know, the Consumer Electronics Show begins tomorrow in Las Vegas, kicking off with a big keynote by the Beastmaster, where I’m guessing he will talk about all the new ways in which Microsoft hopes to add extra layers of frustration to people’s lives by turning ordinary everyday experiences like making phone calls and watching television into annoying, confusing processes that require you to integrate multiple unreliable and incompatible digital devices into a Frankenstein system that needs a dozen different remote controls (each one bigger and uglier than the others, with a zillion tiny buttons) and which freezes, hangs and crashes without warning. Or something.
OMG, I can hear the fanboys battling already. Here’s a video from last night’s CES 2008 keynote, Bill Gates’s last for the foreseeable future. And I know it’s scripted, edited and contrived, but I’m sold: The man is a cool geek.
by Staci D. Kramer, Executive Editor, paidContent.org
I’m about 20 rows back in the Palazzo Ballroom waiting for Bill Gates to deliver his eighth consecutive pre-CES keynote, but Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has a front-row seat. He’s next to Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, sitting roughly where he was this time last year with MTVN’s Judy McGrath. The keynote–the last for Gates before he moves away from heading Microsoft full-time later this year–has just started…
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