The fall Life-Changing Products tour started on a very high note in Orlando, where Show Technology put on another well-attended event. Traffic in the booth was some of the strongest in the five-year history of the exhibit.
The festivities began on Thursday morning with an appearance on Channel 6 to show off the latest crop of smart home gadgets. I’d appeared on the same program in January. The show is beginning to consider me “their” gadget guru.
Doing two shows in Orlando in one year required the introduction of six products for the fall. The newbies included Robimatic, a robotic flatbread maker; Tertill, a robot that weeds the garden; and RoomMe, which knows who is in the room and sets lights, music, and temperature accordingly.
A long interview before the show paid off with a piece in the Orlando Sentinel the day the show opened. The piece focused on smart home products that can save you money. As noted in the article, the smart-home-gadget market has settled down after a raft of introductions over the past five years. The survivors, which you can find on retail shelves, have a common denominator; they cansave you money on home bills.
Before the show opened on Friday, Fox 35 stopped by to do a feature on pproducts in the booth. The three-minute segment, which was shown again in the evening, included most of the products in the exhibit. Sony’s robot dog, Aibo, was once again a star of the show, because of what he doesn’t do — poop, pee, or need to be walked. Too good to be true.
