Sweet Rides, Monkeys And More: 15 Scenes From Interop NY

Technology vendors from around the globe converged on New York City's Javits Center this week for Interop New York and the Mobile Business Expo to show off their latest and greatest wares. A number of vendors also showed off a little more. Whether it was a hot car, a dude in a gorilla suit, flying monkeys or a group of booth babes dressed to hit the links, Interop had a lot of interesting scenes to offer. Here we take a look at 15 things, other than the technology itself, that caught our eye at Interop this week.

Lenovo, which unveiled five new SMB servers at Interop, marking its entrance into the worldwide server market, gave end users a chance to feel like a legit Formula One driver with this race car, complete with three screens to let drivers feel like they're really on the track.

We're not really sure if Kaseya can really wipe away wrinkles and hide the gray hairs, despite what this poster indicates; but the automation vendor did make good on its promise to get customers up to speed with automated IT.

It's the Interop Network Operations Center (NOC), dubbed InteropNet. The cube houses all of the personnel and networking gear that keeps Interop up and running.

NetOptics rolled out its Mini Cooper to entice onlookers. Along with showing off the Mini, NetOptics unveiled the Director, a smart filtering appliance that directs traffic of interest to monitoring tools.

Diskeeper was offering attendees a chance to go home with this lightsaber, complete with a light up tube and real battle sounds. During a little downtime, the Diskeeper crew played out their favorite battle scenes, though Darth Vader was nowhere to be seen.

Along with training to be Jedi Knights, the Diskeeper team also unveiled Undelete 2009 with InvisiTasking, a data recovery solution designed to ensure that no data is ever lost, even on Endor.

Though the summer has come to a close, that didn't stop IP address management vendor Bluecat from giving attendees a few last drives on this realistic golf simulator. We're not sure what golf has to do with IP address management, but we were able to improve our game a few strokes trying to find out.

Keeping with the golf theme, Bluecat enticed Interop visitors to their booth with these lovely ladies, dressed ready for the links in their argyle sweater vests and blue skirts that read "Who's Your Caddy?" on the back.

First rule: Don't go to power management vendor Eaton's booth and ask about the motorcycle. You'll be quickly instructed that it's a chopper, and should be referred to as such. The killer bike was built by the fine folks at Orange County Choppers.

There probably aren't too many opportunities in life to dunk a gorilla. But ImageStream let Interop attendees do just that. An on-target throw would dunk this gorilla in a ball pit. No, it's not the same as water, but just as fun. Here the friendly gorilla celebrates after being spared submersion.

A big hit at Interop New York were these flying, screaming monkeys. Just stretch out their arms and fire, and these little bad boys fly several feet all while screaming like a monkey. These little primates drew crowds to the Ortronics and Symplified booths, and were given as rewards after a brief sales pitch.

All it takes is five seconds for someone to steal your data. Or at least that's what McAfee was illustrating with this Smart Car. The driver's side window was smashed out and the laptop, left next to the vehicle on a pile of shards, was easily removed. Better lock that data down.

Hardware support vendor CPlus was on fire at Interop New York, drawing in folks on the show floor with this smoking tower. On the other side of the booth, a printer also puffed plumes. The message: Don't let this happen.

The carpet on the Interop show floor may be blue, but it's also green. These signs were placed every few steps to remind attendees that just by walking the show floor, they're doing their part for the environment.

A representative from Force 10 wowed the crowd with a few yo-yo tricks before the vendor gave a presentation.

Citrix kept the car and racing theme alive at Interop with this miniature racetrack featuring tiny little cars (even smaller than the McAfee Smart Car). Attendees raced the remote control cars for cash and prizes. Well, that's not true, but it did give them a break from all of the vendor sales pitches.