Blog Posts from MacWorld Expo

Microsoft Blogger Lounge

Probably one of the coolest places at the show. Thanks MS for the free M&M’s, water, and WiFi!

January 16, 2008 at 8:52 pm by Bryan Schwegler. | 4 Comments.

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TidBITS: Resource for the Mac User

One of the MacWorld presentations that I checked out today was Tools for Collaboration by Adam Engst, the publisher of TidBITS. Although I’m new to Mac, I have some familiarity with the publication because I’ve researched Mac news for different articles that I have written over the years. However, when Adam asked the people in the room how many of them were readers of TidBITS, the number of hands in the air was fewer than I would have expected. Perhaps this was because it was just after lunch and everyone was a little too sleepy to put their hands up. But it might mean that some Mac users are unaware of this great resource for Mac news and information.

TidBITS has been around for nearly two decades, providing information and news about Mac goings-on. The basic premise of the site is that it takes the news that is coming out from various sources and applies it to the real life issues faced by the average non-technical Mac user. In addition to updates that are applicable specifically to the Mac OS, the site provides fun educational stuff about Apple’s gadgets and about entertainment as it applies to Mac. There’s a little bit of something for every kind of user to be found here.

Incidentally, Adam co-founded TidBITS with his wife Tonya. She is one of the six bloggers for the site as well as the site’s senior editor. She’s also one of the few women speaking at MacWorld this year. For gals who like to support the other women in the industry, a trip over to Tonya’s TidBITS blog might be in order.

January 16, 2008 at 8:31 pm by Kathryn Vercillo. | No comments.

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Office:mac 2008

As I sit in the Microsoft Blogger Lounge, I thought it would be appropriate to spend a minute to give you my very early first impressions of the newest version of Office for Mac.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, as I hope someone from the Mac-Forums will volunteer write a full review. But I will say that I’m impressed. Not only is it faster on Intel Macs, but the completely revamped user interface just provides such a better experience using Office on the Mac.

I’m going to to be honest, I have been using iWork exclusively for the last few months since I found Office 2004 just too slow to use on a daily basis. And while I do love iWork and think it has promise, it just doesn’t compare to the power and versatility of Microsoft Office. At $149.00 for the Home and Student edition, it’s definitely more than worth the price.

January 16, 2008 at 6:35 pm by Bryan Schwegler. | No comments.

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The Mac-powered digital studio

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus made a stop at Macworld Expo 08 and offered tours, plenty of digital music equipment to play with, and a very helpful guy named Nick to talk about their amazing digital studio setup.

January 16, 2008 at 6:27 pm by Michael Gaworecki. | 1 Comment.

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Wikis: Where Collaboration Is Happening Today

The first two presentations that I went to today both focused a bit on collaboration. First, I went to Web 2.0 and E-Learning which had a segment about how online collaboration can benefit the classroom environment. Then I went to Collaborative Editing Tools and Techniques which focused on collaboration options for the publishing world, be it web publishing or print publishing. Although each of these presentations focused on multiple types of collaborative environments, they shared one strong suggestion in common. Both said that wikis could be successfully used as collaborative tools for essentially any environment.

January 16, 2008 at 6:17 pm by Kathryn Vercillo. | 1 Comment.

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Girl Gamers at MacWorld

The first presentation of the Users Conference that I attended was this morning’s Vision Track presentation on the relationship between Web 2.0 and e-Learning. One of the things that speaker Nick Floro talked about was that educators can use gaming, especially interactive gaming platforms such as Second Life, to engage students who are used to dividing their attention amongst multiple things at once. (He explained how you can create classrooms in Second Life and use them to present video materials in a sort of online virtual interactive classroom).

January 16, 2008 at 3:32 pm by Kathryn Vercillo. | 1 Comment.

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iTunes Movie Rentals starting to trickle in

iTunes Movie Rental titles started to show up slowly overnight, replacing some of the placeholder titles iTunes web developers had presumably stuck in to test the Top Rental module (some which were not for rent, by the way).

I’m trying to decide what movie I’m going to rent for my iPhone and my 4+ hour flight back to Cincinnati Friday. On the way here, I watched a movie I purchased, but renting is what I really want to do.

I wonder what this will look like on my iPhone display.

Hmmmm… Suggestions?

January 16, 2008 at 12:55 pm by Chris Ainsworth. | No comments.

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MF Exclusive: Interview with Jeremiah Cohick

During this week I was fortunate to spend some time with one of my very good friends and one-time Apple Switch commercial star, Jeremiah Cohick. I sat down with Jeremiah after the keynote to ask him his thoughts.

B: On a scale of 1 -10, how would you rate this keynote overall?

J: I’m going to go with a 7. I’m not at all interested in movie rentals through iTunes because I have Netflix. I am not going to buy an AppleTV, there wasn’t any hardware update to it to make it better than the PS3 I already have which does what AppleTV already does and it has Blu-ray. iPhone update is great (but I still want an IM client). But the MacBook Air is pretty sweet.

I’m disappointed Apple is charging for an update that hackers made available for free to Touch users months ago.
(more…)

January 16, 2008 at 12:51 pm by Bryan Schwegler. | No comments.

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MacWorld Gear and Accessories

Walking around MacWorld this week, I’ve rapidly learned that the laptop bag I use to hold my computer and notebooks and all of the other junk that I tote around isn’t really very comfortable. As a result, I found myself drawn to the many booths in Moscone West that were selling laptop bags. Once I’d turned my attention to that, I found that I was also pulled towards all of the different cases and accessories for other gadgets.

Here were some of my favorite accessories finds:

January 16, 2008 at 12:45 pm by Kathryn Vercillo. | 1 Comment.

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MacBook Air’s unremovable battery

John Gruber posted a great first look at the MacBook Air, chiding the tech media about its enclosed battery, and I couldn’t agree more:

No swappable battery. I think this aspect is going to play out exactly as it has with the iPhone: (a) there’s going to be a ton of criticism from the gadget and tech press decrying this as a terrible decision; and (b) the vast majority of users don’t care and won’t mind the sealed battery at all. Seriously, the press is not going to shut up about this — you can’t go 10 feet in the Expo media room without hearing someone complain about it.

I personally like carrying an extra charged battery with me on long trips, but it wouldn’t keep me from buying an Air if I otherwise wanted one.

Amen, brother. Folks need to get their heads around this.

January 16, 2008 at 12:18 pm by Chris Ainsworth. | No comments.

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