MacWorld Attendance Booming

Yesterday IDG announced it already has over 28,000 registered attendees. That is pretty amazing considering we are still four months away. I know it was popular to predict the end of Macworld with Apple pulling out but the re-engineering of the event (and moving it to February) may prove to make it bigger than ever. If you decide to go to Macworld this year, make sure to check out one of my sessions.

Mail Tags 3 and Snow Leopard Compatibility

MailTags now has a Snow Leopard friendly release. Perhaps even more interesting is the promised version 3 with a redesigned interface and other new features. I thought Indev's other product Mail Act-On made a lot of nice improvements with its last major release (review here) and I look forward to see where they go with MailTags 3.

Mac at Work Presentation in Orange County

This Saturday I'll be giving a version of my Mac at Work presentation to an excellent local Mac User Group. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by. I'm going to be doing a several public speaking events on the Mac over the next few months to work out the kinks before Macworld.

PDF Pen Gets Better OCR

PDFPen and PDFPen Pro, my favorite OS X PDF applications, recently updated to incorporate the OmniPage OCR engine. I've been testing it the last few days and there is a noticeable improvement in both accuracy and speed. The justification for paying Adobe a king's ransom for Acrobat just gets smaller and smaller as Smile On My Mac continues to improve PDF Pen.

Analyst Predicts Expanded Apple Cloud

I don't know if it is true but it makes a lot of sense, especially in light of these server farm deals.

MacRoundtable #71

Yesterday I joined in the recording of Mac Roundtable #71 along with Chuck Joiner, Steve Stanger, and Victor Cajiao. I wasn't actually planning on participating in this episode but when I saw that cast, I couldn't resist. They are some of my very favorite podcasters. The episode is heavy on rumor and speculation but also lots of fun. Check it out. Also, thanks to Chuck for editing and turning the show around in about 12 hours. Amazing.

Microsoft's Courier Tablet

Gizmodo published some interesting pieces this week about Microsoft's new tablet, the Courier. This product appears very much rooted in Microsoft's traditional tablet computer space with a pen but also incorporates some interesting touch features. Frankly, some of them are so close to the iPhone gestures that I wonder if there won't be a patent fight. Regardless, I'm glad to see Microsoft getting in the space. It looks like an innovative device but I'm not sure how well hinging two screens together is going to work in the long run. I suspect Apple's eventual entry will be quite different. Frankly, if someone brought a hinged iBook tablet thingy in Steve Jobs' office, he would probably leave with it lodged in certain unmentionable places. The good news is there appears to be a lot of innovation around computing lately and that can only be a good thing.

BusyCal 1.0 Released

One of the most interesting applications I saw at Macworld in January was the beta for BusyCal, the beefed up iCal replacement created by the same team that did BusySync. I was so impressed, I gave it a Best in Show award. I've been using the beta for a few months and today the final 1.0 version released. I am not disappointed. This application cures most of iCal's sins. You get recurring to-do's, baked in (easy) google calendar syncing, compatibility with BusySync (and BusySync functionality built in). I also like the event editing window.

There are plenty of interesting features for a 1.0 release including built in weather support and the calendar displays sunrise and sunset in the weekly views. It took BusyMac just 6 months to get this right. What has Apple been doing with iCal for the last 6 years? There is a free demo. A license is $40 per computer but there is a discount for multiple licenses. If you already purchased BusySync, the upgrade is just $10.

Mac Power Users 11: Snow Leopard Services and Macworld

Today Mac Power Users episode 11 published where we talked in depth about Automator and Snow Leopard Services. We also interviewed Paul Kent, Macworld Expo's General Manager about what is going to be new and exciting at Macworld 2010. Check it out.

Jason Snell on Applescript

Macworld editor Jason Snell wrote a nice piece in Macworld in defense of Applescript. I agree completely. It would be a shame for Applescript, a language designed Mac power users, get turned into a language designed for Mac programmers.