MacWorld Has Come and Gone

I didn't get as much out of MacWorld this year as I did last year. I finished walking the expo floor after lunch and headed home. There were a few things that were interesting:

HARDWARE

Invisible Shield
If you don't like bulky cases for your ipod's, iphones and other gadgets this looks like a great product. Invisible Shield is a clear, polymer-like coating that is impermeable.

Rhino • Skin
A beautiful, light aluminum hardcases for both macbooks and macbook pros. Comes in either black or aluminum finish. I am taking one to Myanmar and well let you know how it works. The only thing I am suspect of is the cover latches. They seem a little flimsy.

iSkin
They have created a beautiful leather laptop case called Soho. Beautiful.

ScanSnap
Fujitsu just released their new portable color sheet fed scanner for the Mac called the ScanSnapS300M. It will operated on USB power from your laptop. It will hold 10 sheets at a time and do duplex (two-side) scanning in one pass. Looks like a great portable tool. It does not ship for a couple of months

IntelliScanner
The IntelliScanner Mini is an interesting device. You can use it to organize your books, dvd's, cd's etc. It's cordless and has a memory so you can scan a bunch of items and load them into it's data base. I have an old one with a cord, which is a hassle. The thing I was most interested in is that you can create a web-based data base of your books, films, etc and access the data base from any computer and from the iPhone. This is a breakthrough for me because you don't have to transfer the data base from computer to computer and you can access you library remotely.

Iris
IRIS just released a new TINY USB-powered sheet scanner called the IRIScan 2. It scans only one side but it weighs almost nothing. Scan quality is not to bad. I bought one and will let you know how it holds up.

SOFTWARE

Blurb
Blurb books, that you can order on-line, have come a long way. Their product is beautiful and affordable. I looked at several hard and soft cover books. The printing and binding was excellent. You download their software called "Blurb Booksmart", layout your book/cover and upload it. The product is far superior to Apple iBooks.

Recosoft
They have developed two interesting conversion programs. PDF2ID converts PDF's to InDesign documents and PDF2Office converts PDF's to files editable in Word, PowerPoint, RTF, AppleWorks and others.