Macworld Adventures, Day 3

Yesterday I spent the morning in the west hall where I saw a few things interesting:
Wiretap Studio Pro
I finally got a good look at this application. It is very impressive. On the fly preview of the encoding and file size could save me a bunch of time. I may have to switch to this one. Stay tuned.
Fluid Mask 3
This application is $199 but does an excellent job of removing background in about 2 minutes. If I was a graphics professional, I’d be all over it.
Avery Design Pro
The label people have some excellent Mac friendly software to work with their products. I”m in the beta and will keep you posted. It should release in a few months.
Plasq Doozla
A fun little drawing application that I may end up buying for my kids.
I also got to meet Kenji Kato, who was very friendly and helpful with his greenscreen video demonstration.
I had lunch with the podcasting gang.

From left to right that is Allison Sheridan, Yours truly, Victor Cajiou, Katie Floyd, and Don McAllister.
It is funny how we’ve all just physically met the last few days but we all get along as if we’ve known each other for years.
In the afternoon I hit the South hall one last time and then returned to the hotel to refresh for the Mac Podcaster meeting and mingle in the evening at Jillian’s. The podcast was lively and the mingle afterward was even more fun meeting people from all over the world that love all things Macintosh.
This morning I’m packing up and heading back to Macsparky headquarters. It has been a fun few days but I’m ready to get back to my family and my “other” job. I have marked the days for next year – January 5-9, and already look forward to coming back.

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Macworld Adventures – Day 2

Today I recovered from my travel day and got an early start. I met up with some podcasting friends before the show started and was one of the first through the doors when it opened. I spent the whole day going through the south hall and talking to lots of the small and a few of the big developers.
I’m writing this late so I’m going to just touch on some of the high points.

1Password

The 1Password folds are continuing to refine their application. They now have a working beta on the iPhone that auto fills the forms. This is a blessing for a phone that lacks cut and paste. I think it is some sort of dark magic.
MacSpeech
They licensed the dragon engine and built an OS X (intel only) engine around it. It looks really good. They are talking about a February release and this is one application that could really help me out.

Eye-Fi
Imagine this. You take a picture on your point and shoot with this special SD card. You then walk into your house and your camera sees your iPhoto and downloads the pictures over your wifi network while you are still unloading the car. You had to see it to believe it. Recognize the face in the picture?

Tune Ranger
It syncs all of your iPod libraries including ratings and play counts. This one looks very useful.

BusySync 2.0
Sync’s all of your family (or business) calendars over bonjour and to Google calendar. It looks really slick and includes features like automatic back up. Maybe this will solve a cause of marital disharmony in the Sparks house.
Office 2008
The Microsoft update looks good. Maybe that is what happens when you wait 4 years to update the product. Or maybe it is actually good. I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

I watched the word presentation that looked interesting and the powerpoint presentation that really looks about 10 years behind Keynote.
iPod accessories
There are a LOT of iPhone accessory vendors. After awhile they all started to look the same to me except for the one below. That one is certainly unique.

There were more, but its late. One observation I can make is how fun it is to watch these small independent developers amaze me ingenious applications. One guy had a web application that could read HyperCard stacks!
In the evening I went to the Cirque du Mac party and got to spend time with some of my favorite Mac friends including Don McAllister from Screencastsonline, Adam from MacCast, Victor from the typical MacUser, Jonathan from MacTipsDaily, John and Dave from MacGeekGab and I made several new friends. The band sounded fantastic.
Now its off to bed and tomorrow I am hitting the West Hall.

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MacSparky’s Macworld Wish – iTablet

I’m not going to call this article “predictions” because I really have no basis in fact to make any predictions. There is, however, no shortage of predictions out there. In fact, if you go to www.insert.any.domain.here you will probably find a list of Macworld predictions. Instead I’d like to talk about the one gadget I’d love to see Apple release even if there is little or no chance of it actually doing so.
An Apple Tablet

I actually used a PC tablet for a year and a half. It was a Gateway and while it wouldn’t win any beauty contests it had a vivid glass screen that swiveled to cover up the keyboard. I thought I’d use it as a sort of ebook reader and research device but that didn’t end up happening. The problem with that computer was largely its size. It was too big and too heavy. I couldn’t sit and casually read on it. I had to have a desk to lean it on, preferably at an angle. Likewise it was not convenient using it in tablet mode during client meetings. The other problem was the digitizer. The ink was too thick and I couldn’t take precise notes and the software was clunky. It was just too hard to use in my daily routine and before long I was back to paper pads.
In short, it was heavy as a brick and the UI felt it was designed for monkeys. I wonder what company could get the form factor right and fix the UI? Hmmmm.
Well, although there has been speculation of an Apple tablet, a lot of people “in the know” seem to think the iTablet will only exist in the land where Elvis still lives and Unicorns roam. Maybe they are right but I sure would like to see what the Apple wizards could do with a Tablet and some of the iPhone UI technology.

Just maybe they could make a device that allows me to do legal research on pdf versions of cases or straight off the web easily.
Maybe they could allow me to sit on the couch without a laptop and review email, rss, twitter and other things necessary for an information junky.
Maybe I could actually read a book and annotate it electronically.
As I write this, it occurs to me that what I really want is that pad they used to carry around on Star Trek.

The ubiquitous device that people carry around to get work done. Something that gets out of my way and allows me to do research, or interview clients, or conduct a deposition while giving me easy access to whatever information I need. It would also need bluetooth keyboard support for added functionality (and please for the love of Pete, turn on bluetooth keyboard support on the iPhone while you are at it). It doesn’t have to be particularly fast, or have oodles of storage.
So there is my Macworld wish. An Apple tablet with the right UI and the right form factor could just change the world … again.

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New Mac Pros and Other Things Shiny

Today Apple announced an upgrade to the Mac Pro line making the eight cores standard. That is one screaming machine. (Of course I said the same thing about my 512k Atari ST about 20 years ago so it is probably all relative.)
Anyway, I’m not so excited about the Mac Pro since I run solely on my laptop. However, the fact that Apple would announce these new machines the week before Macworld leads me to believe there must be several other things shiny and new to share. Hmmmm.

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MacWorld Bound

I had a fantastic holiday week split between visiting family and chasing my kids around the house. Now I’m planning my mid January three day escape to MacWorld. It looks like I’ll be there Tuesday the 15th through Thursday the 17th. They are estimating 50,000 attendees so if anyone wants to meet up for a bite, please drop me a note. In the meantime, I’ve been sniffing around the interweb and found some great resources for MacWorld visitors.

Macworld.com

The “official” site.

macworldbound.com

This little blog has lots of great information for first timers like myself including things as simple as what to bring. I’m looking forward to reading its updates over the next few weeks.
If anyone else knows of good MacWorld resources, please post a comment.

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NewsFlash – El Jobso Speaks at MacWorld

It is offical, Steve Jobs will be the keynote speaker at MacWorld tuesday morning, January 15. I’m not really sure why this is big news but at least we know for sure now. Unfortunately, I’ll just be arriving at that time. Not that it matters. I didn’t buy the superpass to get me in anyway. I’ll be somewhere close though . . . having a zen moment with all the other broke Mac geeks.

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