The Best of Macworld (pt. 2)

Who: VN Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Joseph Connelly
What: 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo
Where: Moscone Center, San Francisco
When: January 7 + 8, 2009
Why: For the swag

The Scoop: If you missed yesterday’s installment of my two-day adventure to Macworld 2009, where I devour the veg options and meet the students from the Santa Barbara Middle School Teen Press, just click here to get up to speed.

Today we focus on the fun new programs, accessories, and gadgets that I dutifully uncovered for all you Mac addicts and fanatics while I loyally wandered the halls of Moscone North and South for two days last week. There were many, so let’s dive right in.

Accessories

At least two companies are making “removable skins”—of the purely synthetic, non-animal variety, of course—that allow you to customize your iPhone, iPod, and even your laptop, while protecting your device from scratches and UV rays. Seriously. MusicSkins offers a variety of decals featuring music and pop-culture artists, though when I asked if they had The Ramones or Black Sabbath—the favorite bands of VN Technical Advisor Thomas “Mr. T” Russell—the sales guy replied, “No, but we have the Sex Pistols.” God Save The Queen. Meanwhile, GelaSkins offers prints of a more artistic nature, including a panda wearing a headset and the anatomy of a gummy bear. I kid you not.

Speaking of headsets, earphones were the Expo's “it” items, with so many vendors hawking so many styles that I can’t begin to document them all. Suffice it to say that if you are interested, you can find earphones for just about any purpose imaginable (and probably a few unimaginable).

Always on the lookout for green products, I was quite pleased to find several, including Solio, a plug-in hybrid solar charger. This universal device replaces all your chargers (iPhone, iPod, camera, GPS, etc.), harvests its energy from the sun, and can hold a charge for up to a year. Sweet. I can’t wait for the wind-powered charger. Tread, another environmentally conscious company that also happens to have the coolest website I’ve seen in a long time (next to vegnews.com, of course), makes protective cases for your laptop, cell phone, camera, or music player out of recycled butyl rubber … prophylactics for your electronics, so they won’t spread any viruses, I assume. Check them out; this company is worth your support. My third low-impact find was Brenthaven, a Washington-based manufacturer of stylin', high-end laptop bags with a “zero impact” mission and lifetime guarantee. The company promises to offset all purchases with carbon credits, and is introducing a line of bags made of partially recycled materials. 

Brenthaven: Low-impact lap top and messenger bags

Applications

Runners, cyclists, and fitness junkies will love iMapMy, a downloadable application that uses GPS technology to track daily training data on iPhones, rendering obsolete ol’ fashioned watches or pesky GPSs. If you jog or pedal wearing an iPod, you’ll want to get hip to TuneUpMedia, which boldly states, “Your music collection is a mess. TuneUp fixes it. Automagically.” Yes, this download promised to organize and keep updated all the iTunes you have legally downloaded, including cover art. While we’re getting organized, two vendors offer apps for your digital photos. HoudahGeo, for those with an abundance of time, can “pin” photos to the location they were taken, and “geotag” them to Google Earth. Dick Cheney approved, too. MyPictureTown is Nikon’s safe, secure photo storage and sharing website, so you don’t have to store all your snapshots on your own computer. It also offers a Mapview function, similar to Houdah. And my fave foto find was Eye-Fi, the world’s first wireless memory card, which automatically uploads your pics sans cables or those pesky devices some of us still use. Life is good.

Devices

I’m not sure I fully understand the Pulse smartpen. It’s a pen that also records audio and can speak what you have written back to you, is headset-adaptable, has a built-in LED display, a speaker, and connects via USB to your computer. Oh, it has a camera, too. Did somebody say Bond? James Bond. On the practical side, the IntelliScanner mini is a tiny gadget that helps you organize everything in your home using barcode technology. Also works great for collectibles, such as wine or books, and is an asset in case of theft or disaster. The software even includes printable insurance reports.

There was much more, including the SwingSeat SwingChair office chair, the varous NadaChair brand non-chairs, and Tutto, the healthy four-wheel-drive luggage, all designed for people with bad backs. But I’m already over word count, so I’ll leave with the following. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a non-profit outreach program that gives kids a chance to express themselves through music and video. See what they do at lennonbus.org.

And last, PositScience develops brain fitness programs that allow you to think quicker, remember more (I think), and … what's that word I looking for? Focus. Yeah, that's it. I took their “brain quickness” test, and rather than embarrass you with my results, I’ll just leave you with this photo. ‘Nuff said.

Portrait of the blogger after acing the brain quiz

Jobs' Tears (Macworld pt. 1)

Who: VN Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Joseph Connelly
What: 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo
Where: Moscone Center, San Francisco
When: January 7 + 8, 2009
Why: To find Steve Jobs some protein

Macworld 2009 takes over Moscone Center in San Francisco

The Scoop: Macworld hit San Francisco again last week, making news more for what it wasn’t than what it was. First, Apple co-founder, CEO, and former veg Steve Jobs was in the headlines for not delivering his usual info-geek/rock-star keynote address. The official word was that there were no huge new-product announcements from Apple, and Jobs only gets rolled out for the "big" events. News stories such as this one—which broke as the conference convened—suggest another explanation for Jobs' conspicuous absence, reporting that his drastic weight loss had been a “mystery even to him” and that it was only recently discovered that a hormone imbalance had been “robbing” his body of proteins. Right.

The second piece of non-news—that Apple is pulling out of Macworld and that this would be the company’s last appearance—didn’t put much of a damper on the die-hards, though it did seem to keep non-believers away. I visited the Expo twice in two days, and the crowds, like Jobs, seemed thinner than in past years. Certainly not 40,000 enthusiasts, as advertised.

Still, Macworld is a tour de force, a place where there is certainly something for everyone. My assignment was twofold: Scope out the veg scene, and find eco-friendly accoutrements that might be of interest to VegNews readers. I scored big on both fronts, and also met a great bunch of kids in the process. Today I’ll recapture my food experience; tomorrow I’ll fill you in on all of the hip-and-cool “must have” products I stumbled upon.

Apple-a-Day 1

I picked up my creds and headed to the press lounge, where, instantaneously, the first half of my mission bore fruit. Literally. Two large buffet tables offered loads of cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple, and grapes, plus bagels, coffee, tea, and juice, courtesy of Fuze, a company that offers “visual, high-definition meetings on your iPhone.” There were some cheese Danishes, butter, cream cheese, etc., but no meat at all. Nice. I enjoyed two ample portions of fresh fruit, and buried a bagel for later.

While breakfasting, I noticed a large contingent of young people at the next table. Yes, the Santa Barbara Middle School Teen Press crew was also covering Macworld. These little whippersnappers are a sophisticated bunch who are already pros at social and professional networking, as evidenced by a follow-up email I received less than two hours after our first meeting:

“Hi! I'm Mary from the SBMS Teen Press. I talked to you earlier and found out about VegNews. I just wanted to say that I think it's really great that you have a magazine that focuses on vegetarianism. Anyways, just thanking you guys!”

The student journalists of the Santa Barbara Middle School Teen Press Corps

My future employers and I exchanged business cards, and wouldn’t you know it? Mary and her colleague, Charlie, are both veg. (follow the above link to see a video of Charlie interviewing Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak.)

After my first three-hour venture into the Macworld Expo, which filled every inch of Moscone Center (named for former SF mayor George Moscone, who was assassinated along with Harvey Milk, the subject of this critically acclaimed new film you may have heard about), I used my $15 lunch voucher to pick up some vital vittles from one of the numerous food vendors peddling their edibles in the convention center. While there was plenty of flesh at this juncture, finding veg offerings was a snap. I scored an ample bowl of hearty and flavorful minestrone soup, used the bagel I had stashed from breakfast to sop it up, and complemented both with a nice-and-fresh quinoa salad (zucchini, squash, black olives, mushrooms, a single cherry tomato, parsley). Vegan dessert offerings included more fresh fruit (bananas, apples, pears); since they didn’t give change, I took three bananas, which I gave away to a few housing-challenged folks on my way back to the subway.

Apple-a-Day 2

I returned to Macworld the following afternoon after a VegNews staff lunch featuring special guest Billy Hulting, the Grammy-nominated percussionist in the band Zappa Plays Zappa. Using my Day 2 voucher, I scoped out a different vendor where I procured a pre-made veggie sandwich, fruit cup (cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple, strawberries, watermelon, grapes), bagel, and banana. I also nailed the $15 exact this time, leaving no change behind.

All said, eating veg at Moscone proved quite easy—surely a sign of progress. Yes, this is San Francisco, but most of the attendees of Macworld come from afar, and while I didn’t survey what everyone was eating, the abundance of (mostly) healthy, (mostly) fresh vegan options made this conference one Apple you could sink your teeth into.