At one booth, a company hawked villas on an island off Panama.

The companies are also hawking their different technologies, which sometimes leads to a technospeak babble in the marketing materials.

The company, Smith Micro Software Inc. in Aliso Viejo, Calif., is hawking Internet Comm Suite, which lets users embed video and audio attachments in E-mail messages.

For the bank that now calls itself the "bank of opportunity," they argue, promoting white-glove service for the extremely rich at the same time that the broad company is hawking credit cards and mortgages to first-time home buyers is a particularly tricky sell.

His company, Allegiance Advantage Inc. in New York, was hawking "Saints G'Lore," saints of the Roman Catholic Church redesigned in contemporary fashion for use on greeting cards, clothing and other products.

So the company that has made an advertising platform a major part of its iOS strategy is also hawking an ad-blocking technology for its Web browser, where it has no stake in ads.

The organizers are hoping to attract 15,000 people; about 200 companies are hawking their products, 50 of them publishers of comics and other graphic fiction.

It's a strange test, however; the company won't be hawking DRM-free music at Apple's iTunes Store, at least at first.

A few companies were hawking TVs that double as mirrors.

The many companies who have set up shop there are not only hawking their wares to the Chinese.