Pat Meier-Johnson and Russ Johnson team up for The Connected Traveler Technology Showcase at The New York Times Travel Show

After 25 years of hosting Lunch at Piero’s exclusively for the press, we are now taking tech and travel directly to consumers, travel trade and the media with the brand new Connected Traveler Technology Showcase at The New York Times Travel Show March 2 – 4, 2012 at the Jacob Javits Center, Booth 271.  Amidst 500 exhibitors representing 150 countries, ours is the first and only booth totally dedicated to cool mobile devices, photo gear, apps and new technologies designed to make travel easier, safer and more fun.

Come join Pat Meier-Johnson and Russ Johnson and our great exhibitors including:

Aurasma is the world’s leading augmented reality platform that brings any destination to the palm of your hand:  the real world meets the virtual world. www.aurasma.com

HP is the world’s largest technology company, offering innovative computing products from sleek notebooks to travel-ready accessories for business and leisure travelers alike. www.hp.com

Travel and Tourism: Opening Doors for Your Future is an introduction to a career in travel, available as an e-book for students or on DVD for schools.  www.learntravelandtourism.com

With Looxcie, the first handsfree wear-and-share video cam, travelers can stream live to friends anytime from any location or share clips instantly to social networks. www.looxcie.com

SugarSync is a free service ideal for travelers that enables you to access, sync and share your files across all your computers and devices from anywhere. www.sugarsync.com

TourWrist enables travelers to shoot, view and share their 360º vacation panos with the free TourWrist iOS app and helps travel professionals re-purpose their virtual tour panoramic images on www.TourWrist.com for free.

Whether traveling for business or pleasure, ZAGG helps you stay connected with creative device accessories that protect, personalize, and enhance the mobile experience.  www.zagg.com

2ReturnMe, Lost Item Recovery System. Place tags or labels on anything you want back. Finder dials an 800# enters the PIN and is connected directly to you. www.2ReturnMe.com

And look for us next year at the LA Times Travel Show and the New York Times Travel Show.

Connected Traveler Technology Showcase

Our newest event will take place tomorrow in San Francisco.

The Connected Traveler Technology Showcase, a media-only showcase of the latest travel tech products, apps and services will feature demonstrations by developers of tech-savvy apps, gadgets, and technologies.  Open to international travel reporters and San Francisco and Silicon Valley’s technology, feature, business and broadcast media, The Connected Traveler Technology Showcase and takes place during the week of Pow Wow, the travel industry’s premier international conference in North America.

We realized that there are plenty of technology trade shows that cater to tech media, but none bring the wealth of products and innovative technologies to travel press. The travel press includes a large audience of reporters who don’t go to tech trade shows but who are always in search of information that can improve their readers’ travel experience.

Notebooks, tablets, apps, GPS devices, cameras, mobile storage, and cloud-based solutions, are becoming an integral part of most road warriors’ lives.  In addition to the necessities, there are many products that make traveling safer, more enjoyable and create smarter travelers.

Sponsors include:  GE Digital Cameras, Gogobot, GoSmart, HP,  INRIX Traffic, Ken Kobré Photography-The Lightscoop, Line2, Liquid Image, Mobile Monitor Technologies, Plantronics, Proposal Software, Schedulicity, SpotWorld, SugarSync, TeleNav, Traxxit Technologies, Verizon Wireless, Visual Travel Tours, VIA, and Western Digital.

The Connected Traveler Technology Showcase is a tabletop demo event based on 20+ years of similar successful media events and product showcases,  during Siggraph, and E3 and Lunch at Piero’s during COMDEX and CES.

The Connected Traveler Technology Showcase is open only for working travel and technology writers.  Video will be featured at www.patmeier.com and www.connectedtraveler.com after the show.  For more information, please visit: www.patmeier.com/connectedtravelershow.html or call +1415.389.1700.

Future Connected Traveler events will be scheduled for Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York.

Escort demonstrated the PASSPORT IQ at the Lunch at PIero’s innovator and press event during CES. Some very clever engineering enabled them to combine radar detector with full GPS NAV in a single, highly attractive device. With 5″ full-color touchscreen, 3D maps, voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, over speed limit alerts, red light / speed camera alerts, speed trap warnings and full radar and laser gun alerts, the all-new PASSPORT iQ™ establishes the standard for protecting consumers from unwanted tickets and guiding them safely to their destination. www.escortinc.#mce_temp_url#com.

It’s been ten years since USB 2.0 came on the scene. Now VIA Labs, the only company in the world to have a complete USB 3.0 solution with host, hub and device controller products, is quickly setting industry standards.    At the Lunch at Piero’s innovator and press event during CES, VIA Labs explained how today’s massive high def video, high megapixel pictures and other rich huge content are commonplace on cameras and other devices, making it important to have a USB 3.0 host controller in the first place to enable data to flow swiftly and make full use of USB 3.0 devices. And unlike USB 2.0, USB 3.0 is capable of simultaneous transmitting and receiving. VIA Labs makes it faster and better. www.via-labs.com

Brite-view, a media streaming and media player company introduced its wireless transmission products including Air Sync HD is a wireless transmission product that can transmit 66 feet or 1080i content 100 feet. HDelight can wirelessly transmit uncompressed 1080p digital content 30 feet from PC to TV with no latency. Demonstrating these products at the Lunch at Piero’s press and innovator event during CES, brite-view showed that with the built-in loop-through connection, it is possible to connect the Air SyncHD transmitter to the HDTV and HD cable DVR in the living room via HDMI cables, and watch exactly the same cable channels and TV shows on your bedroom HDTV connected to the Air SyncHD receiver.
Professional news gathering crews will also love the benefits of latency-free wireless video transmission when out in the field shooting news stories away from their mobile video trucks.  www.brite-view.com

VIA presented the next step in its Nano processor line which initially attracted such major brand names as Lenovo. The new VIA Nano X2 dual-core processor expands VIA’s reach into the desktop, notebook and further into the embedded market.

VIA also answers the particular challenge of delivering high quality video over separate simultaneous streams to multiple displays.  The VIA eH1 graphics card is particularly suited for embedded developers with multi-display projects requiring 1080p HD video with the kind of longevity that embedded designs require.

The VIA Nano X2 and the VIA eH1 multi-display DX 10.1 graphics card were demonstrated at the Lunch at Piero’s press and innovator event during CES.

For more information see www.via.com.tw

VoiceDJ from Speak With Me, Inc. is an iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad* application that allows users to control their mobile music library entirely with their voice. VoiceDJ is built on Speak With Me’s device-based technology platform, which delivers 99 percent accuracy and decreases voice recognition response time from seconds to milliseconds, providing the fastest, most accurate voice-activated app available. VoiceDJ, which was demonstrated to reporters at the Lunch at Piero’s press and innovator event during CES, also recognizes nearly 1 million words from a person’s vocabulary and can easily handle music libraries with hundreds of thousands of entries. And unlike most other voice solutions, VoiceDJ doesn’t need an Internet connection to function so users can enjoy the app anytime, anywhere and spontaneously change songs, artists, albums or genres as the mood strikes. Watch for many more applications with this remarkable voice recognition technology.  www.speakwithme.com

Phone Halo is an App that works with the Cobra PhoneTag and prevents you from losing your valuables. Just on the heels of winning the Popular Mechanics Editors Choice Award during CES 2011, Phone Halo and the Cobra PhoneTag were showcased at the Lunch at Piero’s press and innovator event.
Phone Halo does three things to protect your items
Recover: When the Bluetooth disconnects, Phone Halo records the GPS coordinates to pinpoints the item’s last known location on a Google map and can send the map to your contact list.
Locate: Phone Halo acts as a two-way finder by beeping your belongings at the press of a button.
Protect: Phone Halo wirelessly tethers your phone and item. If the items become separated, both can ring to remind you something is being left behind and the application locks your phone. www.phonehalo.com

C3 Technologies demonstrated its photo-realistic 3D maps, drilling down in detail to actual window level as part of their display at Lunch at Piero’s. The company also announced the release of its first software development kit (SDK) for creating mobile, social, geo-location applications that utilize the company’s database of more than 100 photo-realistic 3D maps. Since 2007 when it was spun out of the aerospace and defense company Saab AB, C3 has redefined mapping by applying previously classified image processing technology to 3D maps as a platform for search, navigation and GIS apps. The company’s automated software and advanced algorithms enable C3 to rapidly assemble extremely precise 3D models, and seamlessly integrate them with 2D maps, satellite images, street level photography and user-generated images.  For more information please see www.c3technologies.com.

AOC is the world’s largest manufacturer of LCD/LED monitors and HDTVs. With more than 60 years of design and manufacturing experience, AOC has earned a reputation for selling user-friendly, technologically advanced monitors, TVs and multi-functional displays. At Lunch at Piero’s during CES, AOC Marketing Manager Robert Velez showed the company’s newest products including an Android-based tablet with an industry-leading 8″ touch screen and USB port plus conveniently placed buttons for easy operation. AOC also showed the Aire Black LED – the slimmest display panel throughout any monitor in the world.