ALA Midwinter Meeting offers mixed tech bag in Boston: top vendors left out in cold in split-level show floor, slow Internet connection cripples demos.(infotech)

As slow as molasses in winter. That old maxim now can be altered to "as slow as the Internet at Midwinter." The demo-destroying sluggishness of the show floor's net connection at Boston's Hynes Convention Center during the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting, January 14-17, received almost as much grumbling as the two-tier exhibits. All the top tech houses were ganged on the upper floor, which received little traffic despite an increase of several thousand attendees over the 2004 show in San Diego, while the ground floor exhibitors enjoyed droves of visitors (see News, p. 17).

Boston proved a typically quiet Midwinter, with few significant vendor announcements. Nonetheless, enough products and word of forthcoming ones made the show interesting. The hot topics at recent meetings--RFID, …