Rabbits' ears, dragons' eyes, and more from Macworld

SAN FRANCISCO -- The mood at Macworld this week is upbeat and professional. While it's clear that Macworld-without-Apple will be a different event in 2010, it's now seeming likely that "different" may be quite good.

The conference organizers, IDG, have definitely set the tone by putting on a 2009 Macworld that is possibly the best run Expo in years. For the first time, AT&T phone reception for iPhones, and WiFi for a variety of devices, is available throughout the facility. (Phone reception and WiFi not just a frill -- I wasted far too much time at last year's Macworld traipsing upstairs and outside of Moscone several times a day to leave/get voicemail messages for/from people I was trying to connect with inside the hall.)

This year's registration (online and onsite) was quick and smooth, and the food offerings, while pricey as usual, offered quality and variety (including Peets coffee). Paul Kent, one of the IDG honchos, made great use of Twitter to provide Macworld news (and, likely, to monitor conferees' reactions). (How this guy also had energy to perform with his rock band at Macworld parties at night is beyond me.)

This year's silliness quotient was filled by Peachpit Press, which gave out full-size pink and white bunny ears to advertise their Moxie series. It's truly amazing how idiotic people look in business casual and bunny ears, and how many people were willing to wear the headgear. It became clear that either the geek crowd has no fashion sense, or the Moscone Convention Center has too few mirrors.

It seems as though the creation of the iPhone apps store has revitalized the third-party developer scene, opening the door to the low-budget creative developers who once made the Mac platform so exciting. The iPhone and iPod accessories vendors are out in force, and so are the major manufacturers of cameras and high-quality printers.

My "must have" discovery at Macworld this year is something called the Dragon Eye webcam, from the folks at S&D, who offered the futuristic and whimsical Dragon i video and music stations for the iPod. The Dragon Eye is a flexible, rotating USB webcam for a laptop that is, as far as I can tell, the only webcam of its type with adjustable LED lighting. I'd do quite a bit more video casting if my office webcam didn't have me looking like a shadowy burgler caught on bank security camera. Unfortunately, the Dragon Eye is not yet distributed in the U.S.

Which brings me to the story of the videocast that put me on the other side of the camera. About 40 minutes after arriving at Macworld Tuesday morning, I ran into Steve Sande, author of Take Control of iWeb. He was doing coverage of the Expo Hall for AOL weblogs, which is apparently part of The Unofficial Apple Weblog, better know as TUAW. A friend and I yakked with Steve at some length, and were rather surprised to find a few hours later that the whole interview, which had some decidely zany moments, was up on the TUAW site.

In the next 48 hours, I heard from half a dozen folks I hadn't talked with in years, some of whom I'd had no idea were even interested in Apple coverage.

Notes on Macworld 2007

The effect of the iPhone announcement on the Macworld gathering was intriguing. I believe it was the first time Steve Jobs had announced something you couldn't go out and buy, or at least pre-order, at the show. And only a very few of the pundits, such as Glenn Fleishman and David Pogue, actually got their hands on what, pre-FCC, is best describe as the "working prototype" of the device.

Since no one could buy one, and almost no one had used one, people were reduced to photographing the two iPhones displayed in glass bell jars (like the Hope Diamond), or, as most of us did, going about regular Macworld business.

It took me a full three days to "do" the exhibit halls. Midway through I was invited to be part of the Take Control authors/editors panel on the Macworld magazine stage. Each panelist was asked to comment on show news related to our particular areas of expertise. Fortunately, I'd just picked up a demo of Storyist, new novelwriting software developed by an ex-Apple guy who writes thrillers, so I spoke about that.

For the past few months I've been using some nicely thought-out but rather buggy novelwriting shareware. I was excited to see that Storyist has many of the features I like (searchable and organizable lists of characters, settings and other elements) with a cleaner, more OSX-like interface. The cost for real software with more power under the hood? $59.

It was a little odd pitching novelwriting software to a sea of geeks, but a dozen or more faces in the audience lit up and people began calling out requests for the Storyist booth number so they could rush over and check it out for themselves.

So my first foray into Macworld punditry was successful. The following day I came across another writing-related product I wish I could have talked about. So I'll pass along that tip here:

Blurb.com is a self-publishing site that's been around for a while and seems now to have gotten its act together. It provides easy-to-use online software that allows you to turn blogs, manuscripts, photo collections, cookbooks, and more into attractive softcover and hardcover books (starting at $18 for a 40-page soft-cover "trade" paperback). The software interface is similar to that in iPhoto for ordering print books, which I've used successfully for years. The final products I saw at the show were high quality and quite stunning. I asked which blog apps you can import from using their "blog slurper," feature and they said TypePad, WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal. (Note that their website says the Blogger and LiveJournal support is "coming in 2007." Hmmm.)