I got to the hall at round 11AM after spending the morning in my hotel room writing yesterday’s blog. Quiet is good. Like an idiot, I decided to walk the 8 or so blocks to the hall, forgetting these are reeeeeeeeeal long city blocks. After a quick breakfast at MyMac.com Central (Mel’s Drive-In), I met with a few folks at our table in the pressroom and briefly chatted with Patrick Norton, formerly of TechTV, DL.TV, and now over at Revision 3 working on some new projects.
Then it was off to the show floor once again. This is probably my last day in the main (south) hall. Tomorrow and Friday will probably be spent in the west hall, where all the smaller developers are set up. This is not to say there aren’t a number of small developers in the main hall. There is a special location set up for about 20 or so small kiosks and booths for small developers. A number of these had a lot of activity, and is where I focused my time yesterday, and will do so again today at the west hall.
I first visited the folks from Synium Software who developed MacFamily Tree, another product from Germany, that has been around for quite a while. This is a fine product, recently uprevised to version 5. It really takes great advantage of the graphics capabilites of Mac OS X and makes it real easy to create attractive charts and presentations of family genealogies. Mac users have a very poor selection of genealogy software. The products themselves are quite good, there just aren’t a lot of them, and they don’t always provide the depth of features some genealogists need. MacFamily Tree 5 is a great product for amateurs and pros alike, and because it fully supports the GEDCOM genealogy data exchange standards, it’s an easy matter to import and export family data to share with others.
One thing I love about Macworld Expo is the sheer variety and diversity of products. H2Audio offers a full line of waterproof and water resistant cases for iPhones and iPods. The iPod cases can be fully immersed down to about 3 meters, and can be listened to through newly-improved waterproof headphones, that have a special rubber seal designed to plug into the case, keeping the water-tight seal intact. The case for the iPod classic even uses some interesting technology to permit complete use of the touchpad, often even when wearing gloves.
Did I say there were a lot of software developers from Germany? Well, here’s another one. Pleasant Software, makers of Ãœbercaster, the podcasting program, had a small booth, and showed off their latest upgrade to Ãœbercaster, version 1.5. My brother, Guy Serle, uses this program to record his Podcasting segments, which Tim can then easily integrate into the MyMac.com show.
Marco Pifferi gave me a super demo of VectorDesigner, a full-featured vector drawing program for people who don’t need the power or expense of Adobe Illustrator. I will be reviewing this product in the near future, so watch the feature side on this site.
Do you have multiple iTunes libraries and want to keep them synchronized? Ascertant Technologies was demonstrating Tune Ranger. I use my desktop machine as my primary storage point for my iTunes library, but would like to keep a second set on my media server to supply my home theater system. This is the product to do it. Again, I hope to have a review for MyMac.com readers in the near future.
It was also good, once again, to see veteran developer Microspot, developer of MacDraft. I was using this program on a Mac Plus at my employer’s back in 1985 or 1986. It was MacDraw plus so much more. That it’s still here is clear evidence that there is still a market for a product like this, and it is the clear winner for those who need to get graphics out of older legacy files from MacDraw, Apple/ClarisWorks, and many other PICT-based graphic files.
Belkin had a big booth as always, showing off their products in an environment that looks like a contemporary home, so you can see how you might use these products. The first thing I saw that interested me, as a multi-computer user, was a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch box that handles DVI (digital video interface) connectors, rather than the more standard analog VGA monitor connectors. This contemporary looking device, slated to sell for about $289, should be on dealers’ shelves by the end of March. They also showed their new Draft-N wireless router. Looks good. Podcasters can also rejoice at some new options for standalone recording. The basic model, designed to hold an iPod Classic or Nano, has several built-in microphones and a level control. Price is going to be around $99.00. For $299, you can get the same concept in a larger package. The big difference that it has four sliding mixers, XLR connectors, and more, so you can add more microphones or other audio sources. Again, an iPod slides right into it.
Ooh! Almost forgot! Nemo had asked me to sub for him at a demo over at the NEC displays booth. I spoke to one of the PR folks, after having to cool my sore heels for about 30 minutes, and got a good idea of NEC’s outstanding display technology, which garnered at least one best-of-show award, but the real biggie was the prototype curved screen 42 inch diagonal DLP tv. The display is between 3 and 4 feet wide, and about 18 inches high. It uses four separate DLP projection engines (using colored LEDs for lower power and longer lamp life, and no color wheels for increased reliability). The unit on display was clearly a prototype, as you could see light output differences between the four DLP engines, but the potential was certainly there. This could be a great display for gamers (well, wealthy gamers…), video production folks, graphic designers, and more. Price is expected to be somewhere between $4,000 and $6,000, and could be on the market by the end of 2008. I want one, even though it would never fit in my home office–well, that’s immaterial. I just want one.
At the end of the day, Guy and I returned to Tim’s hotel room, battered, bruised, but at least not bloody, to record a quick podcast to describe the events of the day and play back a number of interviews, and a place to hear all the fun with the quiz for prizes at MyMac.com sponsor Prosoft Engineering’s booth.
We finished up the day at the famous/infamous Cirque du Mac party at a local watering hole. The trip there was downright exciting–especially when the cab hit and knock down (but fortunately did not injure) a pedestrian. The event itself was simply huge. The place was filled to capacity, with a line going out the door for folks waiting to get in. The Macworld All Star Band, with luminaries such as Chris Breen and pioneering Mac journalist Bob Levitus (anyone besides me remember Macazine?) did their usual fine job covering the hits of the 50s to today. Among those in the crowd were many luminaries of Mac podcasting such as Victor Cajiao, Adam Christensen, Ken Ray, and of course our own Tim Robertson.
Today, I hit the west hall, and tonight are several podcast-related parties and shows. I’ll let you know what I saw.
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