A Virtual Visit to Macworld Expo
My yearly travel plans are based on a personal Annual Big Three of trade show events: Macworld Expo San Francisco in January, Musikmesse Frankfurt in March, and Mac-Expo London in October. While Musikmesse provides an amazing glimpse into what you can achieve be combining the art of music and state-of-the-art technology (and is even sort-of related to my day job), the other two give me great reasons for (at least) annuals visits to my two favorite cities while also meeting lots of like-minded Mac-heads. You can imagine my dismay when I had to cancel this year’s trip to San Francisco due to some personal health hiccups.
Of course, nothing can replace actually being there, what with San Francisco and Macworld Expo being places that you simply have to experience in person. However, checking out all the coverage provided on the net by mainstream Mac websites, but also by bloggers, via photosharing sites, etc. is the second best thing to being there. Also, the perspective of the amateur journalists gives an idea of what the event was like for attendees that goes way beyond the impression you get when you rely on established media alone. Here’s a mix of both pro and amateur media that allowed me to be there without actually being there.
If you, too, could not go to San Fran this January, visiting the following websites should be well worth your while.
The Established Pros
For starters, Steve Jobs’s keynote speech is a must-see. After watching the video stream, read the TidBITS folks’ MWSF 2006 issue to help you see through the haze conjured up by Steve’s Reality Distortion Field and find out what was really announced at the show.
Introduced in October of last year, the MacNotables podcast is a great addition to the list of Mac-related podcasts, and their claim to feature “the Mac experts you want to hear from” is very true. Among their offerings are a few recordings of live panel discussions held at MWSF2006.
At last year’s Macworld Expo San Francisco, we saw the debut of David Pogue’s fabulous “Macworld Live!”, a one-hour event resembling a late-night talk show, featuring Macintosh luminaries and celebrities as guests. Among Pogue’s guests this year were Nitrozac and Snaggy from the hilareous Joy of Tech comic strip as well as the first-ever Macintosh Evangelist, Guy Kawasaki. Big kudos to the folks at Macworld for making the 2006 show available as a two part “Poguecast.”
The Grass-Roots Pros
Another transmogrification of the “Podcast” moniker, Sam Downie has attended Macworld Expo to produce a few more of his entertaining Tech:Casts. Sam not only interviews Mac celebrities, but also “average Mac-heads” like folks standing with him in the queue for Steve’s keynote.
While both of the two arch-rivals in the Macintosh radio realm, Inside Mac Radio and Your Mac Life, have both covered the announcements from the show extensively, IMR has just published very few videos as part of the Inside Mac TV series, while YML has put lots and lots of videos and photos online, mostly interviews with company reps, but there’s also a very special gem among their videos: the wedding (20.6MB QT movie) of YML’s own Lesa and Shawn, and the official is — Andy Ihnatko!
The Amateurs
If you’re looking for photos and personal commentary, there’s quite a bunch of good stuff to be found on Flickr. Just have a look at what you get with tags like mwsf2006, mwsf06, macworldexpo, etc. And finally, to round things off, there’s a nice photo set by Steve Rhodes with a neat, expansive coverage of all things MWSF2006 (if you disregard the too expansive vlogging bits).
And if Steve’s photo set isn’t enough, there’s always the MWSF2006 picture pool.
Update: The most enjoyable video coverage of MWSF I’ve found on the net so far is featured in episode one of a very promising new video podcast by renowned tech journalist Leo Laporte, called MacBreak. Not only is it highly entertaining to watch, but it also has the best video quality of any vodcasts I’ve watched so far. And it comes in iPod-ready format, too.
What’s more, Leo has announced that the podcast will also be made available in 1080p HD via Torrent streams. Makes you wonder what the size of those HD episodes will be. Or, even more importantly, if your machine can actually handle those beasts…
You can subscribe to the less resource-intense iPod-ready version of MacBreak via iTunes.
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