Paper Airplane Drones and other Nifty Items at GetGeeked NYC!

Getgeeked is a tech industry media event for new consumer electronic products and services designed to provide a great experience for both the press and today’s passionate tech enthusiast. It is held annually in both San Francisco and New York City.  The NYC event took place last Thursday evening at the Brooklyn Expo Center in Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

I was invited as a member of the media, which is great because the exhibit was open to the media at 5 p.m, two hours before it opened to the general public. As such, I was able to walk around comfortably and meet with the exhibitors and hear about and see demonstrations of the products being showcased. I was treated to a few t-shirts and other promotional items.  Attendees were also given coupons for drinks and food (which was very good).

The location of the event was about one mile from Brooklyn’s Hipster capital, Williamsburg.  It was a lovely day so I took a subway to Williamsburg and walked to the event.  Here’s a view of Manhattan across the East River.

I have attended Getgeeked events for the past 3 years.  Each year, not only is the location different, but so is the vibe. This year, more than most, was a trend towards services on smartphone apps, bluetooth experiences and kickstarter projects.

The exhibitors ranged from well-known, established companies, such as JBL, Lenovo and SanDisk, to brand new start-ups and kickstarter programs.

My favorite was Power Up, which produces a paper airplane which you can control with your smartphone as a remote, and a kickstarter project for the first ever paper airplane drone with a LIVE streaming camera – I tried this out – it was freaking cool!

here’s a video.  This is cool.

Naturally, I was interested in iFit, a company that makes fitness equipment as well as wearable devices to track exercise.  The treadmill pictured below, had a table-like workstation for those people who need to stay connected at all times.

I have never worn a wearable product that measures your activity, and iFit gave me one, called the Vue, to try out and review, so I’m looking forward to this.

While undoubtedly for a younger audience, I was nevertheless fascinated by IMVU, an avatar-based social network, which uses 3D avatars which act out the users’ emotions through the use of gif files called stickers.

Another interesting product was called Handl, marketed as a gripless and dropless smartphone case designed to be a natural extension of your hand.  This device looked pretty nifty, and an improvement over other similar products I’ve seen:

Of course, so much depends on presentation, and who wasn’t drawn to this:

Yep, Yelp, who we all know and many of us love, was there with lots of little promo gifts on hand.

I was mostly fascinated by the nice Yelp man’s neck tattoo:

And then there was a company that connected a bluetooth to a toothbrush, delivering feedback on your brushing skills.  Do I really need that?

There were many others, but I can’t neglect these nice, smiling guys from Philadelphia, the proprietors of The Wearables Store, selling all the newest and best wearable tech products in one niche e-commerce website.  Here they are holding Won’t Run’s CD! Check out their store!