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Saturday night on the expo floor was the booth crawl, and the free beer flowed like water. There was 20 times as much beer as munchies, so the booths that had free pretzels were drawing bigger crowds than the places giving away drinks. A couple of booths were giving out shots of tequila and jagermeister. Saturday will likely take some time to clean up.

Intel probably had the most useful gadget of the show with these neat little retracting phone cords. They'd certainly be handy for any laptop owners.

What better way to wrap up Graft Grab 2K than with shots of the obligatory literature table and magazine rack. Basically anyone who had something to push dropped their stuff off at the table. The magazine rack had the latest copies of CMP's stuff for all takers.

March 11, 2000

nVidia was giving away cute little toy skateboards if you happened to own a fairly athletic hamster.

Flying things were common on the expo floor. Periodically you could hear a chorus of whistles from Microsoft tossing a few dozen whistling toy gliders from their booth. Boomerangs were also common, as you can see from this Guillemot employee modeling his favorite freebies.

Flashing buttons were also common, but nothing was quite as bright as those of S3's employment booth. These things were downright blinding!

Coasters aren't generally a touchstone of the freebie-lover, but Xenote had something genuinely interesting. It's a key chain-sized device that allows you to bookmark more than just web pages. They'll soon give you the ability to bookmark radio stations as you listen to 'em in your car. Eventually they promise that you'll be able to bookmark locations and even people with this device. Pretty high-minded, but interesting.

There were only a few squeeze-bottles on the floor this year. Here are the friendly employees of Interact Studios employment booth modeling theirs.

While most folks were happy to show off their company's freebies, some were not. A surly Gamasutra employee made it very clear that he had better things to do than pose with their giveaway T-shirts and bubbles.

Microsoft's reputation for the best giveaways is well-deserved, and it's also well known around the floor. Lines queued up around the booth whenever it was time for them to hand out more freebie forms.

It didn't really matter if you didn't want freebies, you were certain to end up with 'em anyway. Here are a couple of Aureal employees slinging squishy-balls and T-shirts into the crowd. If you didn't leave the floor with a dozen new car-wash rags, you just weren't trying!

Free T-shirts were in force as always. AMD probably had the best ones with three colors of tie-dye print shirts.

In an odd, but original, bit of marketing, sidefx.com was giving away their own brand of "Proceed Cola". It was unclear what it had to do with their product, but it did stand out.

Microsoft once again proved to have the coolest giveaways that you couldn't get. After doing an afternoon's worth of show-watching from ten different booths, you could get one of the following: - A cordless wheel mouse - A fleece vest - A Sidewinder joypad, joystick, or wheel - A Digital Sound System set of powered speakers - An nVidia graphics card - An Aureal sound card - An S3 graphics/sound combo card

Almost as creepy as the giant Rugrats characters was the bowl of shrunken heads being given away by Search Associates. They're a headhunter, get it?

There's just something about rubber balls that screams "license my technology!" This particular set was from OpenTV.

And finally, the most interesting giveaway was from utility.com, which is an internet-based provider of electricity (currently available in CA and PA). They were giving away this odd-looking electric car. They claim that it tops out at 65 MPH, and it'll go 30 to 60 miles on a charge.

WildTangent, the new owners of Genesis3D, are credited with the first official publicity stunt of the GDC. Without warning, a couple of wild-eyed religious zealots started pacing the sidewalks in front of the convention center. Passers-by were handed a sample of their religious literature, which consisted of a demo CD and an invitation to their demo in a nearby hotel.

Creative Labs once again brought out their underwhelming "lounge" outside the seminar rooms. There was nothing really different from last year --a half-dozen tables with chairs, a monitor playing psychedelic demos, speakers blaring throbbing music, a stack of CD's of the demo playing on the monitor, and a couple of cash bars selling ridiculously overpriced drinks. Just like last year, few were taking advantage of the $2 sodas.

The second unmistakable mark of the GDC is the demo CD. Along with tons of sample games intended to show off the latest graphics, sound, or online gaming technology, there are IGF participants trying to woo users and publishers with their latest low-budget creations. The floor's not open yet, but Longbow Digital Arts (pictured) is ready with complementary demo copies their latest 3D tank-shooter, TreadMarks. We are happy to report that the rumors that TreadMarks demo CD's have been exploding in high-speed drives, impaling users with shards of sharp plastic are false. . .mostly.