I checked out NextFest at the Jacob Javits Center with zak, Jon and Chung. NextFest is a huge convention sponsored by wired magazine that puts on display all the cool and upcoming gadgets and technology that major companies and small ones are preparing to unveil.

When we got there in the late afternoon, we were greeted by a line that must've been a thousand people long and perhaps eight or nine rows deep. While we were waiting on line, zak decided he should go to the will call booth and try to get a ticket that he was promised from the web site. He had done a promotion where, if you give wired magazine 10 of your friend's e-mail addresses, they will reward you with a free ticket. Wired had not actually mailed him the ticket, so he wanted to see if he could get a free one by mentioning the promotion. Five minutes later he came back and said, "you guys have to do this." So, one by one we all approached the will call booth, said that "I did this promotion on the web site and I'm here for my free ticket," and without checking our names against any list, we all got free tickets. Additionally, there were people coming around with clipboards giving out free subscriptions to wired magazine, all you had to do was fill out your address. So an event that would have cost each of us $20 instead rewarded us with a one-year magazine subscription. We felt pretty good walking in.

My initial response to NextFest was not very good. For a convention that supposedly housed the most futuristic amazing products of the 21st century, how was it that there were a thousand people waiting on line to get to four ticket booths? In their vision of how the world will work in the next 10 to 15 years, could the creators of this convention simply have implemented an efficient way of selling tickets to a lot of people? so that wasn't very impressive.

But my main reaction is pretty simple -- half of the stuff we saw was basically stuff that was already unavailable. Maybe some of this was not available in stores, but it certainly wasn't stuff we hadn't seen before. One glaring example would be wind turbines. The other half of the products fell into the category of "crap that has absolutely no use in the real world." Actually there were a lot of pretty cool products, such as stuff from NASA or the Virgin Atlantic demonstration. Many of GE’s innovations were great, but not particularly interesting. Stuff that was dumb… there were many examples.

First, a game called brainball, where two people sit at either end of a table wearing hokey headbands and stare at a little ball in the middle of the table. Their headbands measure their brain wave activity and the calmer the player is, the more the ball rolls towards him. Wow, this sounds like a truly exciting game, certainly 21st-century. The caption says "stay mellow to stay in control, score and win." I think that's exactly what we need in gaming today.

Then there were a bunch of odd robots. One robot is the humanlike Actroid, a Japanese girl who moves around and says things. Then there was an odd plastic robot with Einstein for a head. That also kind of moved around and kind of did things, but not really. I wasn't very impressive and it didn't seem like it had all that much use other than having a robot walk around a cocktail party and have people say "wow that robot looks a lot like Einstein." Then there was the robotics competition which was basically soccer for a bunch of remote controlled boxes with wheels that sort of hit each other and threw little Nerf balls around. The game had a small Astroturf arena like a football field, and seemed like it was going to be really exciting. None of us could immediately figure out what the rules of the game was since these kids, stationed behind Plexiglas at either side of the field, just threw the Nerf balls at the other end over the Plexiglas. It was very bizarre and not immediately obvious what the goal of the game was, so we left. What was interesting is that they were all high school students and they had built the robots themselves. That was cool. But they were predictably the nerdiest group of people imaginable!

Probably the silliest thing I saw was a robot that looked like it belonged on an automobile assembly line. Spinning records. Yes, it was this huge machine that could swivel around and do things with pinpoint precision, and all it did was pick up one of the 10 records that surrounded it, bring it over to a record player needle, and spin it. There were two of these machines and they "duked it out," spinning crappy vinyl records and scratching discs. First of all, you definitely don't need a robot to make terrible music. Second of all, didn't jukeboxes pretty much do this in the 60s? And didn't they require a lot less space and could spin a lot more records? Not impressive.

The other funny robot was a pink, life-size partner for ballroom dancing, complete with a flowing dress. But the funniest thing about her was her little Mickey Mouse ears. WTF?

Some of the sillier products included the “sun trap handbag,” a women's handbag with a solar panel on the side that had lights that line the bottom of it so girls who apparently packed too much shit in their bags can actually find stuff in the dark. My problem with this, which I explained to Chung who is very fashionable and knows what women would buy, was that women's handbags serve absolutely no useful purpose except that they are an accessory, a piece of fashion that they wear just like anything else. My guess is that, judging from the way girls buy handbags, an ugly handbag with a gimmick on the side probably won't sell. Personally, I like the idea, but I don't buy handbags. I also don't pack so much shit that I can't find my keys inside my bag.

Then there was the “hug shirt.” Two lovers who are far away can still touch each other by wearing shirts that are connected to Bluetooth mobile phones and have heat and pressure sensors built in. When you hug yourself, it sends a signal to your mate and applies heat and pressure to wherever it is you're hugging. I'm sorry, but this just seems like the stupidest idea I've ever heard. What are you going to do, walk around wearing the shirt all the time? Why doesn’t your significant other just call you and say "okay I'm hugging you, go squeeze yourself.” And it seems the options are pretty limited with a hug shirt -- you can either hug, or I suppose if you are the more abusive boyfriend, you could squeeze your arm or pull on your shoulder or something like that. Actually, that would be pretty amusing, abusive dudes hitting themselves. Maybe next year.

Of course there were tons of nerds and everyone was drinking the super caffeinated Coca-Cola drink, BLAK. Also, one of the coolest products would have to be the Blackberry Pearl that is coming out soon. This thing can play video, audio, take video, record audio, oh yeah and its a fully functional Blackberry that is the size of a RAZR. Sweet!