IBC reminder and fast ways to track new product announcements

A quick reminder: If you're involved with or interested in professional video, the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) starts this coming Thursday, September 9th, in Amsterdam. As with many conferences of this type, most of the new products are announced either shortly before the conference begins or the first day of the conference, in order to drive traffic to exhibitors' booths. A great way to keep track of new product announcements is a site called Virtual Press Office, or VPO. They distribute press releases and already have almost 100 press kits from exhibitors available for download. (Materials on the site will be updated throughout the show.) You don't need to be a reporter to use VPO, but you do have to register in order to get access to some of the materials.

In addition to VPO, you can also find IBC press releases at BusinessWire and PR Newswire. Not all companies use all three sites, so monitoring them all will enable you to keep track of just about everything.

September will be a big month for new product announcements

Stand by for a lot of new product announcements in September:

• The announcements start Wednesday, September 1st, with Apple's fall event in San Francisco. We're likely to see a new iPod touch and iPod nano; we may also see the long-rumored next-generation Apple TV, and possibly even an announcement date for iOS 4 for the iPad. 
• IFA, one of the world's largest consumer electronics conferences, begins on Friday, September 3rd in Berlin. Samsung has already previewed its new Android-based Galaxy Tab tablet, and will formally introduce it at the conference, and we're likely to hear from many other companies as well.
• IBC, the International Broadcasting Conference, begins on Thursday, September 9th in Amsterdam. We'll see production versions of products that were shown as pre-production models at NAB last April, as well as many new products. Panasonic will almost certainly show production models of its AG-AF100 4/3" and AG-3DA1 3D camcorders, and Sony is likely to formally announce its professional Alpha-lens-based camcorder.
• Photokina, the biannual photography conference, will begin in Cologne on Tuesday, September 21st. Canon, Nikon and Sony have already announced new DSLRs in advance of Photokina, but many more products are likely to be announced at the show.