Apple’s latest quarterly report indicates they sold 37 million iPhones, 15 million iPads, and 15 million iPods, compared to only 5 million Macs.  Should it be a surprise that current and future success for Apple is and will be in mobile technology? Perhaps that is why this trade show is no longer called simply Macworld — it’s Macworld |iWorld.

Friday, a lot of my focus was on photography and I was wowed by presentations, products, and apps.  Here are a few things that caught my attention:

• In a presentation by Michael Clawson, he quoted from an interview he did with the famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, about how powerful the iPhone is: “The iPhone is the snapshot camera of today.” Now that’s an endorsement. And yes, he clarified, she was dead serious about it.
• Crave a better lens for your iPhone? Olloclip is an add-on that allows you to take better photos with iPhone, including a fish-eye, wide-angle, and macro lens built-in. iPro Lens is a similar concept, but is meant for more serious photographers…or at least those with more serious money to invest in their photos. Think of them like Aerosmith (Olloclip) vs the Rolling Stones (iPro Lens) – they’re both good, but cater to slightly different audiences.

• I’ve been a long-time user of Camera+, an app that enhances the already awesome things Apple’s built-in Camera app can do. If you want to get serious about photos on an iPhone, this is a must-have.
• Every once in a while, you wish you could capture everything with a panoramic shot. I’ve used Pano, but it requires too much effort. Far easier is Autostitch — You just shoot, and the app automatically stitches your photos together. This picture, made up of 8 different shots, took me about 15 seconds to do:

• Two fun photography apps: ColorSplash lets you convert photos to black and white, then restore color to only select parts of the photo. PicFrame lets you make an orderly collage of up to four photos, in multiple arrangements. Check out what I did with a photo of a shirt, using both apps, to honor our late HMAUS friend Ryan Suenaga.

• Joan Matsukawa, Jerome Koehler and I got to see Les Posen’s presentation on unleashing Keynote. It’s often described as Apple’s take on PowerPoint, but that is truly understating the power of the application. I joked to a woman who said she had not yet used either Keynote or Powerpoint,”Good! That way you won’t have to unlearn any bad PowerPoint habits!”  And Keynote for iPad — It’s so easy to use, I’ve created and presented, straight from my iPad…and you can do the same on iPhone!

Note: We hope to have some good news to deliver in the very near future about Keynote training opportunities we’re exploring together with Les Posen. Stay tuned!

More to come…

And here are just three of the many neat things that caught the eyes of our HMAUS man in San Francisco, Capsun Poe:

One of the most interesting products I saw was an inductive rechargeable battery case for iPhone 4/4S. It won’t come out until late March, they think. www.kudos-power.com

 

I also met with Jeff Tidwell of SuperTwtr (and other visualization efforts). He’s willing to talk to HMAUS about his work and is a former resident of Kauai.

Another product that had lots of interest is a new battery pack from the HyperJuice folks. It’s not available yet, but has been announced.

 

More tomorrow!

Well, for a more tangible take on a this taxing technological topic, check out Stanford Professor Manu Prakash’s model of a computer made out of…Bubbles!

Video courtesy of www.sciencefriday.com

Advertising Age’s Super Bowl poll of readers is getting down to the wire. Apple, Inc.’s iconic 1984 commercial is in the final list. Here’s your chance to cast your vote for the best. And we hope it’s Apple’s.

Here is the link to see all 19 entries and to cast your vote:

http://adage.com/superbowl/article?article_id=148594

by Terrence Young

Saturday was a slow conference day. The rooms were not as crowded as before but the sessions were still excellent.

“Going Paperless,” led by Katie Floyd, was about reducing paper document archives through scanning and digitizing. Do you realize the space you could liberate if you didn’t have to store all those receipts, statements, tax returns, and utility bills? With a good scanner, a little effort, plus a good document management plan, you could really clear a lot of the clutter out of your office or closet.

“FaceTime and Video Chat” was led by Tidbits editor Glenn Fleishman. Video chat and conferencing have come a long way in the last couple of years, and while the technology is still evolving, its usefulness is becoming apparent to more and more people, especially to families who can use FaceTime so easily — with simply a phone call.

Both Katie and Glenn frequently use video chat to communicate with their audiences and they were very enthusiastic about the prospect of sharing their expertise with HMAUS, via video chat, just like Joe Kissell did at Mactoberfest.

We met some really smart, interesting, inventive people this week, and we’re making connections!

Thanks to HMAUS for making it possible for me and Ron Albu to have this stimulating experience.

One last circuit around the trade show floor…

And all the macadamia nuts are gone!

Bye Bye Macworld

For the woman who has everything

“We are still going strong.”

by Terrence Young

Now that we know our way around the Big City a little better, we can spend more time focusing on connecting with other conference participants. For example, first thing this morning, just as we entered the main hall, we spotted an unmistakable face — it was Lynda Weinman, the founder of the super online tutorial website Lynda.com. We immediately seized the opportunity to introduce ourselves and couldn’t refrain from extending our praises for the wonderful training service that is Lynda.com. (If you haven’t tried the extensive catalog of tutorials on the site, you simply don’t know how much information you are missing.) Lynda was accompanied by one of her best (and to date my personal favorite) trainers, Garrick Chow. It certainly was a great way to start the day.

The morning gained further momentum with the first session — How to Publish Your Video Creations — led by prolific digital media author Richard Harrington (RHED Pixel). It was an intense hour learning about how to prepare video for distribution to an online audience. Compression, bit rate, interlace, de-interlace, sample, aspect ratio, FLV, H.264, MPEG-4; it’s complex to be sure, but video is where it’s going to be. “Get wit da program!”

Geekettes

The bulk of the rest of the day was spent scouting the trade-show floor checking out the extraordinary booth-babes … I mean products … as well as drumming up vendor interest in donating products to HMAUS for future giveaways.

A very smart white board

There are some very interesting products being promoted. One item that was particularly attractive was the Smart whiteboard. Maybe you’ve seen it? The technology has been around for over twenty years but has evolved to … take my word for it, it is amazing! If it weren’t so expensive ($6500+) it would be a great tool for HMAUS to have for making presentations. So what is it?! Think more-than-advanced multi-touch whiteboard … sorry, you have to see it to appreciate it.

Macworld Expo is certainly no CES, but on the other hand, all the products on exhibit are real-world, useful and available now. Hopefully, the generosity of the vendors we’ve met will allow HMAUS to give some of the great stuff away … at Mac Springfest perhaps?

So whaddya think of the view from my hotel?

Wish you were here!

Terrence Young

PS.  Ran into Guy Kawasaki;  plus invited Adam and Tonya Engst to visit us sometime.  Tonya has the idea of gathering all the authors for a retreat on Hawaii … interesting idea, yes?

by Ron Albu

Terrence and I attended a standing room only Super Session presented by Christopher Breen and Ben Long providing in depth information about the iPad, with lots of tips and tricks and information about apps and accessories. We also presented these two Mac nuts with chocolate mac nuts from Hawaii and invited them to present for us if they visit Hawaii.

Christopher Breen has visited the user group on the island of Hawaii and told us that he hopes to come to Hawaii again this year. Ben also said that he would present for us either in person or virtually. Both of these Macworld stars are very knowledgable and personable presenters who are very popular with Mac users.

We also went to another session about using the iPad for presentations and got to talk to Les Posen some more about coming to Hawaii. He said that there is a good chance he could come to Hawaii this summer and he would love to work with us on doing some projects in Hawaii.

We also got to spend some time on the expo floor visiting vendors and spreading some aloha by giving out more mac nuts to the Mac nut vendors. They scanned our Expo passes into their data bases and showed great interest in sending us some of their products for door prizes at our events. The floor was crowded with Mac users exploring all of the great new products and software for Apple fans. There are so many vendors that it will take days to visit all of the booths.

The day ended with a sold out Mac User Group Reunion. The MUG Board was so successful in getting donations that their door prize awards often consisted of two or three items because they had collected so much material from donors. Everybody in the room won something and some people won more than one item. We were also pleased to see Guy Kawasaki who donated some of his books, including a new one that will soon be out.

Guy Kawasaki graciously posed for pictures with many of the MUG members in attendance. Terrence worked to encourage some of the writers to have a retreat in Hawaii which would provide even more opportunities for our members to benefit from meeting with these knowledgable Apple stars.

It really is a great experience to be among so many people who share our passion for the all the new technology and how it is changing our world.

Aloha,
Ron

Today was awesome. Not too many people signed up for the all-day pre-conference workshops and tomorrow starts the regular Macworld with all the exhibitors showing up tomorrow.

My session on Presentation Magic using Keynote was awesome. I have learned to approach these seminars with high hopes but moderate expectations so as not to be disappointed. I was not disappointed.

Les Posen from Down Under presented for the third year in a row, and I understand why he has been invited back twice. He is a psychologist and uses his knowledge about neuropsychology to design his presentations.

He kept us enthralled all day long with great ideas and concepts about how to construct a presentation and get your points across to the audience and keep them involved without boring them and using the same old rote techniques which makes Power Point so stale. He showed us some amazing uses of Keynote features that really help to illustrate what the presenter is trying to teach. Now I really want to do more hands-on with Keynote to learn and practice these skills.

Terrence got in tonight and we are meeting in the morning to split up the sessions that we will attend during the day. The MUG reunion is tomorrow at the end of the day.

If you want to check out some of the sessions, you can  go to Macworldexpo.com and/or download the iMacworld app for the iPhone.

Aloha,
Ron

HI Touch Learning Clinic this Saturday

Do you have a “how-to” question? A good face-to-face session and hands on support works wonders for many in need of TLC. To help, HMAUS is bringing back the “good old” fixit clinic.

Come to the new “HI Touch Learning Clinic” this Saturday from noon to 4:00 p.m. at the ING Direct Cafe.

Your HMAUS friends will be on hand to help you figure things out. We’ll have a recent model laptop on hand to demonstrate, explain or explore concepts and fixes. You may bring your own laptop, handheld or luggable system if a “look-see” is needed. We do ask that you be considerate and resist bringing a lifetime of “issues” because we’ll be on a “as time permits” basis.

What can you expect at the HI Touch Learning Clinic:

• Learn how to explore the Internet to find solutions
• Learn how others use applications and the operating system
• Learn how to perform basic maintenance
• Learn “best practices”
• Learn how to manage upgrades and downgrades
• Learn about new (or old) applications and hardware

HI-TLC will be a free form open clinic, appointments not necessary. Help will be dependent upon volunteers on hand but we’ll try to attend to all who come. You can help by preparing a list of the items that are of particular concern to you. You may complete and bring this form for your visit.

If you don’t have any questions but just want to help others please come and lend a hand. We can all be FFF (face-to-face-friends).

Saturday, January 8, 2011
2nd Floor Alii Conference Room
Noon to 4:00 p.m.

ING Direct Cafe
1958 Kalakaua Avenue

Here are three programs from CNBC which will get your geek up: Welcome to Macintosh, MacHEADS and Inside the Mind of Google. Show times are today at 4:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. Oceanic Cable broadcasts CNBC on channels 116 and 1116.

Welcome to Macintosh
A look back at the inventors, engineering and design that came together to produce the world renowned Mac computers.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, two friends united by their interest in technology and dissatisfied with personal computers made by others, set out to make what they called the world’s first good personal computer. The first Apple computer became the cornerstone of a company that would change the world. In 1984, Apple introduced Macintosh and thrust the industry forward into a new era. The style and ease of a Mac led to an inspired revolution in the computer industry. Whether you know it or not, these events have changed your life.

MacHEADS
Explores the world of Mac, a cultural phenomena that created a cult fan base, made Steve Jobs a modern day hero and generated a multi-million dollar business.

The Mac community is filled with adoring fans. There’s worldwide excitement and anticipation for “all things Apple.” You’ll meet adoring Apple fans with unwavering loyalty for the company and it’s products. What makes Mac computers, the iPhone and iPods so popular?

Inside the Mind of Google
Takes viewers Inside The Mind of Google for a rare look at the world’s most powerful technology company and its crown jewel, the Google Internet search engine. This is the fascinating story of how two grad students, in barely a decade, took a one-time research project and turned it into a global technology powerhouse…changing the way we interact with information, the Internet, and each other. See how Google came to dominate the search industry and turn it into a profit machine… and see where it’s taking its next step… and how the company plans to address arguably the biggest controversy in today’s digital age: privacy.

Show Times

Monday, January 4, 2010
4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Welcome to Macintosh (2008)
Airing on CNBC Oceanic Cable channels 116 and 1116

Tuesday, January 5, 2010
3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Inside the Mind of Google
Airing on CNBC Oceanic Cable channels 116 and 1116

Tuesday, January 5, 2010
5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
MacHEADS (2010)
Airing on CNBC Oceanic Cable channels 116 and 1116
Repeats: Thursday, 1/7 at 9pm and 12am; Saturday, 1/9 at 7pm; Sunday, 1/10 at 10pm