Jeremy Pepper emailed me to give me a heads-up that client Cisco Systems is opening a “connected home” tomorrow in Second Life to coincide with CEO John Chambers’ keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The connected home seems to be a dominant theme at this year’s CES; Microsoft’s Bill Gates spent a fair amount of his keynote talking about it, too.

There has been a considerable amount of discussion about the wisdom of establishing islands in Second Life as opposed to getting out into the world and interacting with residents. The best answer is probably to do both. For this type of an initiative, having an island on which to build a model connected home makes perfect sense. And given the attention CES and Chambers’ speech will generate, it could attract a lot of traffic. Also, Jeremy’s email was a perfect bit of blogger outreach. Since we know each other pretty well in real life and he knows my interests, it was no big deal to toss off a quick email alerting me to the event.

Jeremy works for Weber Shandwick Worldwide, by the way.

For those who need an incentive to visit the connected home on Cisco Island, the company is giving away real iPhones in-world each day CES is taking place. The iPhone, announced recently, is a cordless handset for Skype calling.