Possessing 5- to 12-inch displays, pad-based computers, aka tablets, are a hybrid of smart phones and laptops, offering the ability to read books, surf the Web, play movies and games, and more. Many use virtual keyboards and handwriting recognition for text input through a touchscreen. Furthermore, at least two companies have introduced 3-D tablet computers that don't require special glasses, with more models expected before the end of 2012.

How fast is it taking off?

Despite a false start with Microsoft Corp.'s pen-enabled Tablet PC in 2001 that never took off, the tablet computer burst on to the scene when Apple Inc. launched the iPad in April of 2010. Selling nearly 13 million iPads in its abbreviated first year, Apple launched the first major salvo in the rise of tablet wars - but certainly far from the last. Competing manufacturers are issuing their take on the iPad the way AOL Inc. used to bombard consumers with its software disks. Nearly 80 tablets were introduced at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). By the end of 2011, 64 companies would be producing an estimated 102 tablets, according to management-consulting firm PRTM. Of the dozens of models available, the most popular include Samsung's Galaxy Tab, Dell Inc.'s Streak 7, Research In Motion's BlackBerry-branded PlayBook, and of course, Apple's iPad.

New kids on the tablet block, like Amazon Inc.'s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook Color, suggest that overall acceptance of tablets may go quicker than any technical adoption in history. Indeed, a survey by Google discovered that 30 percent of tablet owners considered the device to be their primary computer.

Yet even that armada of manufacturing may not be enough to slake the demand for tablets, whose true impact should perhaps be measured with a seismograph: According to Infiniti Research Ltd.'s "Worldwide Tablet Market Forecast Report," users are adopting the tablet at an even faster pace than they did smart phones, computers, and game consoles. That conclusion is borne out by market-intelligence firm International Data Corp. (IDC), which predicts that worldwide shipments of tablets will grow at a head-spinning clip of nearly 60 percent annually, surging to more than 46 million units by 2014. But even those impressive estimates may be too cautious. Jefferies & Co. Inc., a global securities and investment banking group, projects 246 million tablets will be sold in 2014, while researchers for investment bank Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Capital Markets LLC believe more than 400 million people worldwide may be using tablets by 2014.

"Tablets provide a new media format that is highly portable, has a large screen to display products on, and is intuitive for staff to use. This fits the bill for trade shows with trade show managers, exhibitors, and attendees walking the show floor," says technology consultant Corbin Ball, CMP, and author of "The Ultimate Technology Guide for Meeting Professionals." "They will be able to use these tools on the go to get directions, access floor plans, qualify leads, connect with social-media sites, view conference programs and exhibit guides, take surveys, and much more."

How are exhibitors using it?

Raw Talent Inc. wanted to compile a database of guests who entered its drawing to win a free guitar at CES in 2011. But the Coral Springs, FL-based maker of Raw Talent Guitar, a software program that teaches users how to play guitar, didn't want to stifle its clientele, who are as freewheeling
as a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. So instead of asking attendees to line up at a fixed site in the exhibit to input their names - which might strike booth visitors as being coldly corporate and about as hip as polka - Raw Talent's five booth staffers used two iPads to acquire the information.

When guests entered the 10-by-20-foot exhibit, an iPad-equipped staffer could walk and talk with visitors inside the booth, or even take the conversation to the aisles, when the booth started to resemble Woodstock. After explaining the program that offers instant feedback to help fine tune your strumming and twanging, booth staff signed up guests for the drawing by inputting their personal data into a form on the iPad. At the end of each day, staffers tweeted that day's winner via the iPad's Twitter app.

Hoping to sign up 200 people for the giveaway, the company signed up more than 500 - and also compiled a database of prospects it could contact after the show. By simply using the iPad as a way to physically liberate staff and customers from the more rigid confines of stationary PCs and the booth, it hit the right note with attendees, playing to an image that was more laid-back than uptight.

While Raw Talent capitalized on tablets' portability, Schott North America Inc. and its Home Tech business unit exploited another of its robust powers: The fact that, as Jefferies & Co.'s research concluded, people prefer the tablet over regular computers for watching movies and listening to music by as much as a two-to-one margin. Schott and the Louisville, KY-based Home Tech wanted to educate attendees at the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Expo in Salt Lake City about the benefits of their Robax glass-ceramic, which is used in residential cooktops and fireplaces. Lacking adequate space for a full-fledged presentation theater in its 400-square-foot booth, Home Tech turned to iPads to enable and enhance that education.

Three of the booth's four staffers were positioned next to an area where Home Tech conducted live demos of Robax. Once guests finished watching staff heat up a sheet of a glass to nearly 200 degrees, then sprinkle a handful of ice cubes on it - which would make the regular tempered glass used for kitchens and fireplaces explode like a cherry bomb - staff members directed them to the iPads. Rather than listening to a set-in-stone litany that can feel as scripted as a robo-call from a presidential candidate, however, the company let guests choose from any of five animations and three videos on the tablet.

Running a brief 10 to 30 seconds long, each of the eight items stressed Robax's strongest selling points, from its durability to its efficiency. For example, attendees might have played a video where the company heats a sheet of Robax to 600 degrees Fahrenheit and then douses it with a blast of liquid nitrogen that chills it to 350 degrees below zero; despite a temperature swing of nearly 1,000 degrees, the glass stays intact. Or, they might have played an animation showing how Robax doors over a fireplace transfer heat more efficiently than glass doors.

Once attendees finished, they could "Like" Home Tech on Schott's Facebook page, or follow the company on Twitter, all using the iPad. Eventually the company plans to evolve the iPad animations into more sophisticated iPhone and Android versions of the apps that will act as standalone promotions, thus extending the booth experience even more.

Where can I find out more?

TabletWiki will quickly get you booted up on the subject of tablet computers. The Microsoft Center for Research on Pen-Centric Computing is another great starting point for those who want to understand the technological underpinnings of tablet PCs. For a more general approach, the Open Directory Project's Tablet PCs page furnishes news, product info, FAQs, and more.

3 Radio Frequency Identification

Originating during World War II to help differentiate allied aircraft from the Axis planes, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) comprises a microchip attached to a curly radio antenna set on a substrate, which is usually referred to as a "tag." The microchip can store approximately two kilobytes of data, which the antenna transmits to a computer, or a "reader." The reader in turn sends radio waves to, and receives signals back from, the tag. Typically, RFID is employed to communicate information between a stationary reader and moving objects - e.g., attendees in your booth wearing RFID tags - over short distances of up to 100 feet.

How fast is it taking off?

About 2.4 billion RFID tags were sold from 1946 to 2006, according to IDTechEx Ltd., a Cambridge, U.K.-headquartered consultancy that researches the printed-electronics industry. The market has magnified so rapidly in the last few years with so many different types of RFID tags available - from tags that track your pets to those that monitor the military's cargo containers - reliable statistics are difficult to pin down.

The Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) Inc., a Cranberry Township, PA-based trade association for the automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) industry, suggests that the number of RFID tags used in 2012 will probably skyrocket into the hundreds of millions. Still, the variety of tags reflects two common denominators propelling the technology's intense expansion: size and cost. While the RFID tag circuitry in the 1970s covered a volume about twice the size of a penny, today it occupies a space about one-tenth the size of that same penny.

RFID's cost has diminished as dramatically as its size, from about $5 per tag in 2000 to roughly 15 cents today. Perhaps best known for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s use of it in supply-chain management, and automated toll-collection systems such as E-ZPass, RFID will continue to grow annually at a rate of about 26 percent, according to the Global RFID Market 2010-2014 report from TechNavio, an Elmhurst, IL, research firm. Now integrated into virtually every aspect of life, from pill bottles to passports, RFID is also materializing more frequently on the trade show floor: Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc. and GE Healthcare, for example, have already incorporated it into their booths to better parse customer behavior and thereby pump up their return on investment.

"RFID may be decades old, but its uses for trade shows and exhibiting are still emerging," says Richard Norby, the vice president of creative services at Live Marketing Inc., a Chicago-based exhibit- and event-marketing agency. "While it can be highly effective for tracking where attendees go in your booth, it can be used for much more. For example, RFID can be used to trigger customized media to appear on monitors when a key customer or certain tier of prospect enters your booth. You can also use RFID technology to alert your booth staffers so they can engage those customers and prospects."

How are exhibitors using it?

When you have almost as many products and services as cable TV has channels, keeping track of which ones generate the most interest can be as daunting a task as waiting for "Reservoir Dogs" to finally play on the Lifetime Television Network. That's the problem Thomson Reuters Legal ran into for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) show in Denver.

Normally the Eagan, MN-based provider of information to the legal industry displayed its products in clearly defined, separate exhibits. But for AALL, it consolidated all individual products it usually showed into one main, 3,000-square-foot exhibit space. With 31 product areas lumped closely together, from legislation-tracking services to document-proofing tools, alongside attendees crowding the space like trial attorneys at an asbestos convention, it would be supremely difficult to chart how much interest each individual product drew. That's why the company turned to RFID.

When visitors approached one of the 50-by-60-foot booth's four check-in stations, their badges were scanned and linked electronically to individual RFID tags they toted with them to all product stations they visited. Coaxing guests to visit as many stations as possible, Thomson Reuters staff informed attendees they could accrue one point per station visited and two points per session viewed in the theater area. Once guests compiled at least seven points, they could move to the gift center where they received small prizes and be entered into a daily drawing for an iPad giveaway. To sweeten the pot with a pinch of philanthropy, Thomson Reuters also donated $5 to the National Audubon Society for each guest with the minimum seven points who stopped at the gift center.

As the guests migrated from station to station, the RFID readers automatically recorded their visits (but not visitors' names or personal data). Attendees could then monitor their score by visiting any of four "Check Your Points" stations, before finally grabbing a prize at the gift center. The results were so stunning, they should probably have been illegal: Thomson Reuters recorded 950 individual booth visitors (55.8 percent of the show's approximate total of 1,700 attendees) who visited an average of 6.59 product stations. With the RFID-supplied metrics, Thomson Reuters was able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that its WestlawNext Mobile (a legal-research app) and Westlaw Court Wire (an app that delivers info on new litigation and court decisions) were the most visited product stations in the booth, while simultaneously identifying products that, due to lower interest levels, could be scrubbed from future booths to decrease clutter and allow a more open floor plan.

Where can I find out more?

"The History of RFID" website is bulky with technical detail, but also offers an engaging history of RFID and useful insights on why the technology is spreading so quickly. The online RFID Journal's "Getting started" page is another excellent gateway to the technology, with plain-English sections on its background, costs, and even 10 questions you should ask RFID vendors. Aim Inc.'s website is yet another Swiss-Army-knife resource, with a newsletter, primer, FAQ section, glossary, and even case studies on RFID.

In next month's installment of "Techno Files," we'll cover another trio of techno-baubles transforming the exhibiting world in ways barely imaginable only 20 years ago. E