How’d the event survive the big transition? Well, there’s no doubt about it: A Macworld with Jobs unveiling something interesting onstage and Apple employees demonstrating stuff in the hall would have been better than this one. On the other hand, some of the most bustling, vibrant Macworld Expos I ever attended were held in Boston in the late 1980s, when Apple itself was sans Jobs and not releasing anything terribly exciting. And when Apple said it decided to leave the show in part because it could interact with its customers at Apple Store locations, it was a rational explanation even if you didn’t like it. One of the largest Apple Store locations is a few blocks from Moscone, and basically amounts to an Apple Macworld Expo booth that’s open year round. When I walked by it last night it was mobbed–with conventiongoers, I assume.

It would have been cool if the iPad had been unveiled at Macworld Expo before throngs of conference attendees rather than a few weeks earlier before a much smaller group of mediafolk. But I don’t think there’s an alternate universe in which Macworld attendees got hands-on experience with iPads. At best, they might have seen the new gizmo in demos or inside a case.

No, it’s not the lack of an Apple keynote and booth space itself that had the biggest impact on Macworld 2010. It was the fact that many prospective exhibitors decided to pass on the show when they heard the news about Apple’s departure. The exhibition area which once packed multiple halls now fit comfortably into one area, and if you walked around the perimeter you saw that there was actually room to spare. The office count of exhibitors was 25o, down from 400 last year, but around a third of the 250 were iPhone developers, some of who had bought exhibition space consisting of one quarter of one small table. Some large companies, such as HP and Microsoft, were present; others, numerous others, like Adobe and Canon, were no-shows.

Me, I spent most of two days at the event, and had a good time on the floor and at presentations by multiple smart people who didn’t happen to be Steve Jobs. Much of the coverage of this post-Apple Macworld has been cranky and apocalyptic, but I found the quality of what was there to be…not bad. The ratio of wheat (interesting products and companies, be they big or small) to chaff (boring, me-too stuff) was respectable–there were far fewer major exhibitors, but there was also reduced acreage devoted to iPhone cases. I’d trade the 2008 or 2009 show floors for the 2010 one in a heartbeat, but it was far from moribund.

And it was far from empty: IDG is saying that “over 20,000″ attendees showed up, which was enough to pack the smaller exhibit space. A final audited head count is presumably on its way, but attendance was apparently down at least somewhat from 2009’s 28,353, and down a lot from the 41,891 people who attended the final Jobs Macworld in 2008.

Do I miss the older, larger, newsier Macworld? Absolutely. But I do get the sense that some of the people who are declaring the new Macworld to be pointless and/or about to die are pining for a show that never quite existed. Such as this guy quoted in a San Jose Mercury News story:

“When I first starting coming in 1990, back when the computer was new and the world revolved around it, you HAD to be there, you HAD to see Steve present,” said Jon Kahn, a 52-year-old software developer from Watsonville. He remembers the days when “developers were rock stars and fans would ask them for autographs. Now with Apple gone, it feels kind of sad. It’s not as big anymore, and I miss the old Macworld.”

I don’t begrudge Mr. Kahn his memories, but unless he was misquoted–or the Steve he speaks of is someone other than Steve Jobs–they’re false. In 1990, Jobs was in exile from Apple and running NeXT. He didn’t show up at a Macworld Expo until the 1997 Boston edition–held after a dozen years of Macworlds that I don’t recall anyone dismissing as a waste of time.

(Standard full disclosure: I’m a former employee of Macworld Expo’s owner IDG, and still participate in its Employee Stock Ownership Program.)

Share/E-Mail

In the Drink

The day will come when you drop your digital camera into the pool–or if you use your phone in the bathroom, it’ll land in some odd place. Here are products to dry them out. Pour the ingredients of Dry All into an airtight container with your wet gadget and wait for 48 hours. The other method is to slip your device into a Bheestie bag and hang loose for up to 72 hours. Neither product will help unless it’s used immediately. Crossing your fingers might add to the drying process. Both products cost $20 and–pardon my LOL–no, I haven’t tested either.

Quiet on the Set

Attach the Easy Shot Clip to your pocket, and as you wander around, it records two hours of video and sound. The unobtrusiveness of the camera is what struck me: I could wear it at a birthday party, say, and capture the event. If you’re geeky, attach it to a helmet for a first-person look to your video. It has 2GB of storage, produces 640-by-480 video at 30 frames per second, and has a built-in, rechargeable battery. It’ll cost about $70 when it’s available in April.

The Print Shop

It’s been around for 25 years (my mom still uses an ancient version from 1990). The latest iteration has all the things you remember — a way to create invitations, labels, sign, greeting cards — and tons of clipart. And Encore has added new features including smart wizards, photo editing, and over 150 custom projects. The dopey part: The new version isn’t backward compatible; nor is there a trial version. The Print Shop Deluxe costs $35 and works with all versions of Windows.

How Far Did I Go?

If you charge clients for travel time, or need to keep track of mileage for yourself or employees, you’ll love the Mileage Tracker. With a built-in GPS, it records the miles you’ve driven, including the time it took you, where you went, how long it took to get there (and back).If you want, it shows the route, including stops. (You spent two hours at the Kitty Kat Inn…what’s up with that?) The portable device generates accurate reports, ideal for IRS audits (or for tracking your kid’s whereabouts). The Mileage Tracker costs $200; there are no monthly fees.

CES: More Misses

I’m a pragmatist, a frugal one at that, and I have to be convinced that a product is useful and necessary, will make my life richer, or just make me seem bright and witty. I’m going to take a pass on these.

Swiss Tricks

Victorinox, the Swiss Army people, have knives with built-in flash drives. I think it’s silly, but I’m probably the only guy who does. They have 30 variations, some with laser lights, ballpoint pens, and flash drive with 16GBs of RAM. At CES, they were showing off a flash version with fingerprint scanning security. If you’re boarding a plan, you can detach the flash drive and pack the knife part. Prices start at about $30.

Feel the Hype

I enjoy listening to jazz. (I’m exploring online music at RadioTuna right now.) But I don’t like feeling my music, much to the disappointment of Vibe Attire. Connect your MP3 player to the vest, choose the intensity level, and start vibrating–to the tune of about $150 for the vest. I imagine it’s also ideal if you connect it to your TV and watch adult videos. Just saying.

Now Hear This

My uncle Ted won’t give up his hearing aid, the one he bought 40 years ago. “It looks like a flesh-colored Bluetooth headset,” I shouted to him recently. Now there’s the AuraEQ-bluetooth-headset that doubles as a — yep, you’re way ahead of me — a “personal local sound amplifier.” (And don’t you dare call it a hearing aid, y’hear me?) About $80.

GPS Rip-Off

It’s the thing that’s stolen from cars the most often: your GPS device. Often it’s taken because the thief knows where you are — not home, for sure — and can click “take me home” to see where you live. MapLock tried to sell me on a gizmo that leaves your GPS device in broad daylight, securing it with a locking device and what I think looks like an easy-to-cut cable. Watch the video to convince yourself this is a $50 product you don’t need.

My advice: Stow the GPS receiver in the glove compartment before you leave the car and wipe clean the suction marks on the windshield. Get rid of the black disk stuck on the dash for the suction cup on the GPS’s holder (a guess-where-my-GPS-is-hidden alert). It’s not as convenient, but depending on the car we’re in, we use either a homemade cup holder mount or a portable mount.

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]

Share/E-Mail

Okay, back to this reality. In December 2008. Apple announced that Macworld 2009 would be the last one with an Apple keynote (by Phil Schiller) and Apple on the show floor. Many Applewatchers took the news to spell the end of the show, and IDG, Macworld’s owner, spent a year regrouping and reimagining Macworld, attempting to make the show a success without the presence of the irreplaceable company that defined it for its first quarter century.

The iPad was announced last week, on Apple’s timetable at a venue of Apple’s choosing.  IDG announced last year that it was streamlining its show’s name to Macworld 2010 and moving it to dates that don’t collide with the holiday season: It’s next week, February 9th-13th at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. I spoke with General Manager Paul Kent, who says that the conference’s mission remains the same as always: “It’s about product discovery, education, and social networking.”

“All three are things we do particularly well, and they’re things we can  control,” Kent told me.

With Apple’s absence, the organizers are emphasizing the educational and social aspects of Macworld, by redoubling efforts to make the conference component worthwhile. Steve Jobs may be planning to spend the show quietly at work in Cupertino, but IDG has lined up numerous Mac celebs to speak, such as director Kevin Smith, David Pogue, Guy Kawasaki, Leo Leporte, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, and my Macworld pals, including editorial director Jason Snell. There may be no iPads on the premises at Moscone, but there will be a session about the gizmo, and Kent told me that Macworld will be “a forum for people to talk about this thing.”

When Apple pulled out, many exhibitors lost faith and/or interest in Macworld and pulled out: Kent says that IDG expects about 230 companies to be on the show floor, about 200 fewer than last year. That means that the show will fit into one hall; among the companies that will be there are Microsoft, HP, VMware, Monster Cable, and eighty developers who are exhibiting in a new area dedicated to apps.

All of which brings us back to the question that nobody can answer for sure just yet: What is Macworld’s future? It’s going to be a far smaller show, and the tech world’s eyes won’t turn to Moscone as they did when Steve Jobs (or even Phil Schiller) graced the keynote stage. Many prognostications are bleak.

As an outsider with some knowledge of IDG, my semi-informed expectation is that there will be a Macworld 2011, and the big question is whether it’ll be a pretty good (albeit downsized) show, or will feel like a Dead Show Walking. That depends largely on whether the attendees and exhibitors at the 2010 show come away feeling that their time and money were well invested.

At least everyone’s known for more than a year that it’s going to be a very different show than in past years, and expectations are so guarded-even among Macworld fans–that exceeding them shouldn’t be a pipe dream. For me, Macworld 2010 is a subway ride away. I’m attending–between Macworlds Boston and Macworlds SF I’ve attended the show off and on over all three decades of its existence–and will let you know what I think.

(Very full disclosure: I’m a former employee of IDG and am still a participant in the company’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan.)

Share/E-Mail

As usual, I’ll use the excellent CoverItLive service to share the news as it happens. If you join me, I’ll try to answer your questions, too. These live events are a blast–just ask any of the thousands of folks who have been showing up for recent ones such as our coverage of Google’s Nexus One launch.

Here’s where to go for next week’s Apple coverage: technologizer.com/appletablet. Head there now, and you can request that we e-mail a reminder to you.

See you there, I hope!

Share/E-Mail

I spent three days at the not-as-big-as-before Consumer Electronics Show. I ignored the behemoth booths — Microsoft, Panasonic, Casio — and focused on the smaller, more interesting companies along the edge of the exhibit floor. I spotted some innovative products:

• A smartphone app that turns off e-mail and texting features if the speed of your vehicle exceeds five miles per hour.
• Lexmark’s multifunction printer that has something very appealing: Lexmark ink cartridges for under $5.
• Fashionable 3D eyeglasses for when you can afford a 3D plasma screen.
• Something to bring your electronic gadget back to life if you drop it in water.
• A video camera the size of a flash drive with two hours of recording time.

I have lots more, including a report on Terk’s Hi-Def internal and external antennas and a new-style rechargeable battery. Below is my first blurb about a portable radar device; more next week.

Pull Over, Mr. Bass

From CES: Need to give that speed-trap motorcycle cop some help? Whip out PocketRadar, a cell-phone sized radar gun, and get the real-time speed of any moving object. I’ve never had the need, but you might want to clock the speed of your child’s pitch, see how fast that crow is flying, or aim it at your kid pulling out of the driveway. It’s interesting, but at $250, too expensive for me.

Epson Workforce All-in-One 610

You know how unhappy I am with multifunction printers. The last one I bought–from Brother–didn’t last more than a year; the printer claimed the cartridges needed replacing even when there was still plenty of ink in them.

Epson sent me its Workforce 660 to try. I’ve had it a month (I ship it back to them in February) and I like the way it works. First, the stats: $200 list, but about $120 at Costco and $170 at Amazon.

Likes: It can scan, fax, and copy, and it prints faster than my laser printer. There are ports for memory cards and flash drives; the printer has Wi-Fi connectivity, so setup with my wireless router was easy. The automatic document feeder is handy for multipage scans or faxes.

Dislikes: No automatic duplexing. Also, the printer looked slick, but some parts–the input and output trays, for example–felt flimsy and cheap. The 100-sheet input tray shudders loudly when the first sheet of paper is pulled through the printer. It scares the dog each time. Plain paper black printouts were sharp; color, not so much. Photo printing on photo paper looked fine. The control panel has lots of info, but navigation is a little confusing. The killer, as you’d expect, was the cost of ink cartridges: Epson black at about $16 each; color roughly $12. LD Products sells reconditioned Workforce cartridges for $7 each.

For $120, and using remanufactured cartridges, the Workforce 610 is an okay deal. But before you buy, watch for my Lexmark review in two weeks.

JDownloader: Open Source, Free, and Terrific

For years I used FlashGet to download freebie tools and legitimate movies and TV shows. FlashGet works fine, but it just hasn’t kept up with a few innovative–and downright lovely–features in my new favorite, JDownloader.

It’s free (and Open Source) and it remembers download passwords, checks for valid links before downloading, and automatically unarchives the file with a built-in WinRAR plug-in. It also does those simple things you ordinarily have to do, like removing the dots and underscores between words in file names. And built in is an online, real-time chat window to help you get support from other users.

I use JDownloader in Firefox; read the Install and use JDownloader with Firefox blurb to help you with the installation. Chances are good you won’t have any problem with JDownloader, but I’ve put together a few JDownloader Tech Tips just in case you do.

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]

Share/E-Mail

In the meantime, I’ve been reflecting on what I hope I’ll encounter at the show. I share some of them in my newest WePC.com contribution, Six Things I’d Like to See at CES (But Probably Won’t!). Check it out–and while you’re at WePC, you might want to investigate how to get a shot at winning a free PC.

Oh, and any of you going to CES?

Share/E-Mail

Oh, and the ones who stuck around until the end got to witness something pretty special. After we raffled off some prizes, our friend Dale Larson–who, among other things, was an Amiga engineer–sent a Tweet to his girlfriend Laura La Gassa from the stairs where we’d been giving away stuff:

Laura, you’ll be pleased to learn, replied thusly:

What we all saw wasn’t the first Twitter proposal, but it still felt like a little moment of history. Here’s a Tweetstream from party attendees with coverage of the memorable moment and the rest of the bash. Thanks to our sponsors–SugarSync, Marvell, Eastwick Communications, and Marketwire–for helping to make it all happen.

Share/E-Mail

Tech the Halls is pleased to be sponsored by SugarSync, Marvell, Eastwick Communications, and Marketwire. Hope to see some of you there!

Share/E-Mail

He’s as important a pioneer as Johannes Gutenberg or Alexander Graham Bell –except that he’s alive, well, and very much deeply involved in determining the future of the medium he created. He’s Sir Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web and the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and it was an honor to sit in the same ballroom as the guy yesterday as he appeared onstage as the final guest at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

As TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters noted, Sir Tim has joined Twitter–here’s his account–and started tweeting shortly before his Web.20 session began, Like nearly every new Twitter user, he started out by being somewhat confused, as he noted in his first tweet.

Judging from Sir Tim’s third tweet, he’s already a user of the Twitter-like Identi.ca service–which makes sense, since (unlike Twitter) it’s an open-source project and therefore reflective of his dedication to openness on the Web.

Side note: Twitter’s recent introduction of a spam reporting feature is a boon, but there’s something jarring about the “report timberners_lee for spam” link at the right of his page. It’s a little as if George Washington suddenly showed up at the White House today, wanted to stop in for a visit, and was forced to walk through a metal detector…

Share/E-Mail

I figure I’ve witnessed at least 5,000 demos of hardware, software, and services so far, but I’m not sure if I’ve seen as many in so little time as I have over the past week as an attendee at both TechCrunch50 and DEMOfall, two conferences that both involve dozens and dozens of product launches. As I’ve sat here watching demos–including both really good ones and really bad ones–I’ve been mulling over the things that successful demos nearly always have in common. I’m documenting them here as a public service, or at least to get a few things off my chest.

Product demonstrators, heed the following advice…please?

1. Say what the product is. Early on, in a straightforward manner stripped of hype and buzzwords–both to make what follows clearer and to disabuse the audience of any misperceptions. (Example of why this is a good idea: HP’s Skyroom was the first product unveiled this morning at DEMO, and I labored under the misunderstanding that this software product was some sort of hardware until about halfway through the announcement.)

2. Don’t tell the audience that your product is going to change the world. Or even that it’s amazing. It probably won’t, and most likely isn’t. And by making inflated claims you ensure the product will fail to live up to them. Besides, truly amazing, world-changing products speak for themselves. (Yes, I know that Steve Jobs hypes products to the heavens, and it works–and the moment you magically turn into Steve Jobs, you can start doing it, too.)

3. Demo fewer features, not more . In a venue such as DEMO that gives you little time to do your stuff, you should probably focus on a couple of features at most. Certainly no more than three. Make sure they’re both memorable and representative.

4. Don’t claim you have no direct competitors. You do. (They don’t have to be exactly the same as your product–in fact, if they were exactly the same it would be pretty darn confusing.) Claiming you have no competitors makes you look clueless, or full of misplaced hubris, or both.

5. Have a backup plan in case something goes wrong. Have several of them, actually. At both TechCrunch50 and DEMO, a meaningful percentage of the demos have failed–momentarily or completely. I’d try to eliminate potential points of failure. I’d introduce redundancy if possible. (At the Windows XP launch in 2001, Bill Gates did a remote demo via Webcam using a notebook in Times Square; it choked, and he pulled out an identical notebook that worked.) And I’d figure out what I’d do and say if the demo was an utter failure.

6. Be very, very careful about trying to be funny. I’ve seen demos that have made me laugh (intentionally so!), but I’ve seen ten times more that I thought were lame. And some of the ones that made me chuckle didn’t help me remember the product in question. (I recall a guy in a cowboy hat from a DEMO past, but couldn’t tell you a thing about the product he was pitching.)]

7. Mention how you plan to make money. Briefly, and at the end, but everybody is wondering, so you might as well get it out of the way.

8. Remember that fewer presenters are usually better. At DEMO, many of the demos involve multiple people, but the most memorable ones usually involve one person on stage. It probably reduces the chances of embarrassing screwups, too. (There’s a reason why Steve Jobs has historically gotten Phil Schiller involved in his demos only when he absolutely, positively needed a second person.) The person who does the demo should probably be the most talented presenter in the company, whoever that person may be.

9. The most credible presentations are done by people who you can envision using the product. For some reason, amazingly few of the scads of presentations I’ve witnessed involving professional graphics software have been done by artists. More often, they’re done by people who would have trouble sketching out a stick figure. Similarly, music-related demos are best done by people who seem to love music, and game PCs should be demoed by people you can imagine playing games.

10. Make sure your audience can see the demo. Especially in a venue such as TechCrunch or DEMO, where it may be hard to read small onscreen type, and projection may be on the fuzzy side. (Most impossible-to-see demo I’ve ever sort of witnessed: Microsoft’s unveiling of the first Windows CE PDAs, which involved murky projection of even murkier non-backlit monochrome displays.) It’s probably a good idea to avoid demos in which not being able to read the screen renders the demo unintelligible.

11. Practice. Practice. Practice. Take a break. And then practice some more. Lastly, practice. Other than having a truly great product, it’s the best way to ensure that your demo goes well.

12. Go to shows like TechCrunch and DEMO and take notes about the clichés you hear. Then avoid them when you do demos. (There’s a generic sameness to many of the demos at these conferences that makes it hard to tell one company from another.)

I could go on, and I might at some point. But you’ll have to excuse me right now–I need to go back to watching demos…

Share/E-Mail