I hadn't been on the convention floor at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show for an hour before I encountered these three examples of the most tired naming strategy of our time: the infamous lowercase i.

By the end of the day, I could have collected at least half a dozen more, but I didn't want to belabor the point. You get the idea.

Please, people. You're better than this. The iPrefix was worn out years ago. Even if it wasn't Apple's common-law wife at this point, it just rings corny nowadays. Nothing sounds more dated than something that's trying too hard to sound cutting-edge.

It's time to kick away that crutch and walk on your own name. OK, OK, my metaphor's stumbling but the truth keeps marching on: small-i names are for small thinkers.

Of course, it's possible that the iThing is so old now, it's retro. Maybe the people behind these companies are sneering at me for not getting it. If so, carry on baffling and irritating old guys like me. Such is the way of the world.

But if not, if you think a lowercase-i name is still the very model of a modern cyber-moniker, take a word of well-intentioned advice: that "i" is making you look kind of goofy. Consider another angle for the name of your product or company.

And no, it shouldn't involve "cyber", either.

Cast your i's over our CES 2012 coverage all week on the Woot blog. Or hey… maybe we could call it the Woot iBlog. Just an idea.

The Woot writers are back at the hotel after a long day dancing with the painted Jezebel that is the Consumer Electronics Show. Many wonders we have seen - well, maybe like one-and-a-half wonders - along with some funny stoopid stuff, and we'll be sharing it all with you in blog posts, videos, and tweets over on our @WootLive feed. While we pound the raw material we gathered today into something presentable, walk with us now down the concrete floor of yesteryear with this selection of posts from past Woot CES coverage…

What We Saw At CES, 2010
This infectious summary of the sights and sights of CES proved so popular - with its creator Matthew, at least - that he repeated the template last year. What new marvels will appear in the 2012 edition? Keep an eye on our CES coverage to find out!

The TV Hat
It's not only the greatest product ever made, it's also the promise of CES made real. Hey, tech giants: forget about the new operating systems and 3D TVs and tablet computers and get your best minds on making more stuff like this. Let a thousand TV Hats bloom!

The Wootable Awards, 2011
Every year we "honor" the most, uh, let's say "noteworthy" products, booths, and ephemera at CES with the Wootable Awards. Last year, we put together the first-ever video Wootable Awards ceremony, which is vastly superior to most awards shows in being much, much shorter. If you can't get enough of this kind of thing, don't miss the blog posts for the 2010, 2009, and 2008 editions.

You'll find much, much, way too MUCH more in our archive of CES coverage from 2007-2012. We'll be shoveling even more onto the pile over the next few days and there's nothing anybody can do to stop us!

It's CES Week on the Woot Blog! We're kicking off the festivities (and killing time while we actually fly down there) with a dissertation on Las Vegas, the human condition, and how to cope.

Being assigned to cover CES is a bittersweet moment: sure, there's the glitz and glamor of an electronics industry trade show, all kinds of cool blogger parties I can pretend I was invited to, and blowing my per diem on Ring Dings. Unfortunately, there's the slight inconvenience of the location:

Vegas.

If you've never been to Las Vegas, you might have visions of Rat Pack-era casinos full of tuxedo-clad fellas with slicked-back hair playing Baccarat or asking the sexy dame on their arm to blow on the dice before they throw Craps or downing a martini and polishing off another cigarette before ducking back into the lounge to negotiate some mobster business while taking in a show. Well, take that image out of your head and behind a seedy diner and put a bullet in its head, because there's no such thing and if there ever was it's long gone. No, the Vegas that remains standing today is a heaving, smoke-stained testament to gluttony, sex, and gambling addiction. So upon finding out you're headed there, one experiences The Five Stages of Vegas...

Denial

Upon your arrival in Vegas, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. You refuse to admit to yourself the horrible magnitude of the situation you're in, and even try to convince yourself it's not that bad. "Hey," you say in earnest, "maybe this time I'll hang out in the casino. Might even win a couple of bucks!" Your enthusiasm is quickly euthanized when you spend your first night walking around the gaudy, golden interior breathing in more cigarette smoke than you have cumulatively inhaled in your life before, and noting the abundance of sordid, leathery old people seemingly glued to their seats, pulling again and again on penny slot machine arms. And that's when stage two hits you.

Anger

"What the hell are these people doing here?" "Who is insidious enough to capitalize on this kind of behavior?" "Why don't we tear down this monument to all that's wrong with humanity and let the desert consume this whole damn town?" Those are all perfectly normal thoughts you're bound to have as your unbridled anger in the face of raw, unfettered consumerism for no other reason than to spend money and blatant, sex-crazed marketing that assumes your IQ is driven entirely by your genitals hits you full on. You curse the sky and kick the dusty, sun-baked ground as Rita Rudner's bizarre smirk looks down on you, motionless but judging.

Bargaining

It's a perfectly natural reaction, when dropped into a soulless, humanity-crushing city, to want to find the fastest way out of town. "Please," you mutter to whatever deity or scientific principle you hold dearest, "Please just get me out of here. I don't want to be here any more." Unfortunately, hopes and prayers have a pretty terrible track record of being answered ANYWHERE, especially Vegas. So soon enough you'll feel yourself sinking into the next stage.

Depression

This is it. You're in it, now. There's no escaping until the trade show is over, so you've got no choice but to strap on your shoes and head to the convention center, trying to avoid all the bizarre phone sex advertising handouts from various immigrants on the strip. The thought of traveling thousands of miles, probably risking deportation along the way, in the hopes of a new life and opportunity only to wind up handing strangers pictures of naked women on the street is enough to make you wish for a nuclear attack on the city with you in it.

Acceptance

As you drown your sorrows in yet another buffet, you realize you're a part of it now. Sure, you can SAY you're here for CES, and you can justify the money you spend as the company dime, but you're in the Vegas food chain. You breathe in the recycled air and you drink the watered-down cocktails and you're okay with it. Your primitive ape brain, faced with such shock and discombobulation, initiates a bizarre Stockholm Syndrome and you begin to accept that this is your life now. The whole world consists of your hotel, the walk to the trade show, and whatever terrible fast food joint you eat at in between because you were so busy taking photos of various iPhone accessories that you forgot to eat.

And just as you start to feel your descent into madness truly hit top speed, it's all over. And it's time to fly home. And you swear to yourself you're never coming back here, but deep down you know you will. Mainly because your boss tells you to.

Flickr photos (in order) DSC223861, Silver Legacy Casino Hotel, Reno, Nevada, USA by Jim G. and Overhead Screen Fremont Street by Caitlyn Willows used under a Creative Commons License.

Love it or hate it, Las Vegas is a quintessential American experience. And as with other quintessential American experiences like "Rock Around The Clock" and McDonald's, it takes me about two-and-a-half minutes to get my fill of it. As we get ready to march into the Neon Babylon next week to cover the International Consumer Electronics Show for the 6th straight year, I can't help thinking that maybe it's time for this orgy of hype and desperation to go bother some other city for a while. Here are four leading candidates.

Pyongyang, North Korea: CES likes to think of itself as a spectacle, and nobody does spectacle like the North Koreans. They also happen to be in dire need of hard currency. Imagine 20,000 gymnasts twirling in praise of Toshiba, or a stadium full of true believers holding up placards to form a gigantic XBOX Kinect logo - all for just pennies per drone! CES Pyongyang would also present a great opportunity for industry insiders to get a firsthand look at the prison camps where the gadgets of tomorrow will probably be built...
 

Williamsburg, Virginia: How do you position CES as a thrilling look into the future when every year, the hot topic seems to be either "thinner TVs" or "bigger TVs"? By setting it in a facsimile of Colonial America. Nestled among wig-weavers and butter-churn repair shops, even those sad little booths hawking iPod cases will look like emissaries from a brilliant Tomorrowland. (CES INSIDER TIP: 2012 is shaping up to be a "thinner TV" year.)
 

Mogadishu, Somalia: Speaking of the future, whatever your vision is, you can see it right now in Mogadishu. Techno-utopians will marvel at its booming mobile phone industry, mainly because the infrastructure for landline phones has largely been destroyed by decades of war. If you're more in the Peak Oil/imminent-collapse-of-civilization camp, the Mogadishu of today could be the Atlanta or Phoenix of tomorrow. And what better place is there to examine the urgent issue of piracy? Plus, we all know about the close affinity between tech geeks and libertarian theory. Nowhere in the world is that theory put more fully into practice than in the sun-splashed small-government paradise of Mogadishu. Just make sure you bring enough cash to hire a team of armed bodyguards.
 

Seattle, Washington: The nerdiest city on Earth is also (perhaps not coincidentally) a major gateway between North America and Asia. Plus, I'd get to sleep in my own bed every night.

Sadly, CES looks set to stay in Vegas for at least a few more years. So that's where we'll be all next week as we bring the magic and tedium of CES to the Woot blog. If you'll be there, find us and say hi. And if not, give our regards to Mogadishu.

Photos (top to bottom), all used under a Creative Commons license:

• Arirang, Pyongyang by Flickr member David Stanley.
• Colonial Williamsburg by Flickr member HBarrison.
• Mogadishu by Flickr member rjones0856.
• Monorail and Space Needle, 1962 by Flickr member Seattle Municipal Archives.

You know, we got these nifty branded shirts and hoodies, we set up a big booth, we even spent time shooting monkeys and t-shirts into the crowd wildly.

And yet not enough of you guys are tracking us down and showering us with the Beatles-esque adoration our fragile egos were hoping.

Maybe you don't get it. This CES? This is it for us. After this, we go back to the "office." It's basically like a veal calf cage, but with less space. Our eyelids are held open by toothpicks. Our laptops are literally STRAPPED TO OUR LAPS. The Mountain Dew IV drip is started and we don't stop writing again until the next CES.

We need something to give us hope; we need something to give us a reason to live. We need you to pretend like you want a picture taken with us. That's why, starting tomorrow, if you see us roaming around looking confused in our giant exclamation point shirts or hoodies, stop us and take a quick pic. There are five writers in all, and we're going to spread out. If you can get, say, photos for at least FOUR of us, we'll make it worth your while.

With a Bag.

Of Crap.

That's right. Get 4/5 of us on (digital) film and bring the pics by the Woot booth (South 1, Booth 22110) to get your very own Baby Of the Cosmos. Boggy Old Creature. Boysenberry Oiled Cadaver. Whatever you want to call it.

But either way, good luck. You might have an easier time getting some shots of Bigfoot on the convention floor.

Oof. I think I know exactly how this guy feels after my first day at my first ever CES pretty much kicked my sorry rookie butt. My legs are sore, my brain is fried, and I'm kind of paranoid that at any moment, some guy with a microphone headset is going to pop out from behind the mini-bar and tell me about how room service is going to CHANGE EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING I KNOW or something. If I'm going to make it to Sunday, I obviously need to be a little better prepared...

1. Bring better shoes.
You know that thing they say about CES being the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow? Believe that, son. It's friggin' huge, and your feet will hate you at the end of the day if you don't have some sturdy kicks. I tell you, I am watching my feet throb, literally pulsating, at this very moment and it is not a pleasant thing. So, yeah, next year? Next year I'm bringing some shoes with better arch support.

2. Free wifi is a scarce thing.
You would think that, at a convention that with this many gadgets, technological wonders, and WIFI ENABLED SMARTPHONES AND COMPUTERS, you'd be able to get wifi somewhere. You would be wrong. And the places that do offer some wifi service are just as packed as the halls are. Tomorrow, I expect to be bloging from a bathroom stall in the Starbucks to get a nice quiet connection.

3. Cash rules everything around me.
Yeah, debit and credit cards are nice and convenient, but at CES, they won't necessarily help you buy a soda when you get thirsty. I know it's a probably a classic rookie mistake, but I couldn't resist an opportunity to throw in a Wu-Tang reference.

4. There is no such thing as personal space at CES.
Seriously, I must have accidentally rubbed the bits of me normally reserved for my wife against over one hundred strangers over the past 24 hours. Well, okay, for at least three of those people, I kinda meant to do it. All I'm saying is I know all this sweat on my shirt isn't mine.

It wasn't all horror, pain, and inappropriate touching. In fact, there was plenty of awesome that happened today. Take my first piece of CES swag, for example.

No one has ever given me a small anti-bacterial gel spray before. It's like I'm living in a dream.

Or is it a nightmare? Read our 2010 CES coverage and decide for yourself.

Is that a wireless streaming video device in your pocket, or are you just happy to see our CES 2010 Coverage?

Some bloggers assigned to cover CES might get sucked into the lights, glitz, and glamour of Las Vegas. Some bloggers might spend all night pounding drinks at a Toby Keith theme restaurant and gambling away their per diems on nickel slots.

Not us, though.

While some freeloading press-credential abusers might just do a cursory search for "CES" on YouTube and post the first videos they find, we definitely did NOT do that. At all. I don't really even know how I thought of something like that because honestly, it is like the exact opposite of what we are doing.

I mean, for that to happen we'd have to be so hungover that we missed the entire first day of the show, and THAT definitely wouldn't ever happen because our boss would kill us. So here you go: stunning video footage of cutting edge technology definitely on display today at CES 2010...

So, uh, the theme this year is…retro. Yep. Everything is supposed to look super old school, because we're all in a recession and what not. Please excuse the 3:45 intro that we totally added because we taped this ourselves. But good news, rural shut-ins: satellite dishes and BetaMax are back! There have also been amazing advances in 1-inch TV screens as big as Zack Morris's phone.

In other COMPLETELY NEW and TOTALLY NOT PHONED IN developments, Kodak is unleashing a new technology centering around photos on CDs. Pretty fantastic, we bet- rather, we KNOW, because we were there. Also, everyone's got old camcorders lying around, right? Well now Videonix is pioneering a camcorder video editing system! Pay no attention to all those "1992" references. That's an industry term, like "Q4," "megabytes," or "You can't sleep in the walkway, sir."

OMG the world's smallest TV! And it's only retailing for $400! And it's only the size of a shoe box! We're telling you, retro technology is going to be this year's killer app. Bigger than that stupid bell bottom craze that happened for like a week in 1995.

Okay, so these might be old CES videos, but before you watch and scornfully laugh at the outdated technology and the naively excited people testing it, just remember: the cutting edge sales reps you see here are now the confused, mumbling old folks blocking entire pathways at this year's CES.

Kick it new school with our up-to-the-decade CES 2010 coverage.

Our attack on CES is now underway. But the party is divided! Three brave men followed the right hand path into the side of the hall without Lady GaGa in it. Here's a little of what they found...

3D TV, 3D TV, 3D TV! That's the big thing in this new two-weeks-or-so-post-Avatar world, so it's great that all these people had them ready to show by some coincidence. It's even better that they figured out how to present them in a camera-friendly manner. Take, for example, LG.

Once the glasses were on, LG's 3D HDTV looked exactly like, well... this.

By putting footage of their boothbabe on the screen, LG offered an easy-to-photograph reference point. What a great idea, and a very nice TV in person. 3D will very likely become the new wave for action movies, if nothing else, and it's going to be an exciting time. We look forward to carrying one of these televisions in... oh... 2017?

The Motorola booth was like a grassy park in this city of technology. We also checked out what they had to offer in the world of 3D.

Again, very nice, clear, clean, and consistantly multi-dimensional. But Motorola! You gave us nothing to photograph! But we tried our best to find a hack for you, our beloved readers. We put the glasses on our camera.

It doesn't really carry over, but can't you see a little 3D there at the back? You know, if you squint?

Over at the Intel booth, we were very taken with the Intel Reader, their digital eBook whatchamacallit. Sure, it has a ton of memory and plays mp3, but it also has a built-in scanner, letting you make copies of real books and then save it to your reader... or any other device that accepts the scans! It's apparently around in Europe, so it's not brand new or anything, but an eBook reader that helps you make your own eBooks was cool enough to catch our eye.

We're already identifying likely candidates for our annual CES Wootable Awards post, but when we saw this next item, we decided we wanted to give one out early. And that's Worst Use Of Space.

This Maxell speaker bar takes up literally three times as much space as the actual player, and that's when it's turned SIDEWAYS. A terrible use of space, and it looks like bike handlebars, we assume no one would ever possibly want this. So watch for it soon on sellout.woot!

Speaking of terrible waste, why not waste some time with Woot's CES 2010 coverage?

Maybe you hear about all the celebrities making appearances at CES and you imagine us tech-industry nerds mingling with the megastars. Let me tell you what it's really like.

First, you'll be cheek-by-jowl with a big crowd of people in a space not really made for crowds. And directly in front of you will be the tallest man at the show...

Then you'll have to sit through a self-congratulatory marketing spiel from a corner-office suit (in this case, Monster Cable founder Noel Lee) about how this new product rollout isn't just a branding deal, it's all about the music. Tee-hee.

After that, you might catch a glimpse of an actual famous person who has created artistic works of wide reknown: in this case, the mighty Dr. Dre.

Finally, out comes the headliner - as far as you can tell, anyway - who then delivers a tepid 45-second monologue about how excited she is to be partnering with blah blah blah. The real payoff comes when you tell the folks back home in wherever that you saw Lady Gaga! They never have to know it was actually kind of lame. Unless they read this blog post, anyway.

If you're into things that promise more than they deliver, you'll love our CES 2010 coverage.