Well, that was a fun week. I spent most of my time learning more about Final Cut Studio, but did take some time to peruse the show floor from time to time and did see a few new items that were of interest:

• Video capture on an iPhone from Polar Bear Farm. Granted, it had no audio and was not an approved method by Apple (read: jailbroken), but they plan on revving it once the SDK comes out at the end of next month.
  
• Belkin was showing off a new surge suppressor they plan on releasing in March. It has two outlets that are always on and four that can be turned off with a remote. Why, you ask? Because a lot of devices draw power when they're plugged in, even if they're not being used. Some things, like alarm clocks, you want to have power all the time, others not so much. Why the remote? So that you don't have to bend down under your desk or behind your nightstand or entertainment center to turn things off. Just make sure the remote is packed with rechargeable batteries, eh?
• Now Software has long been a leading calendar/contact management developer for Macintosh. Their new cross-platform groupware solution, NightHawk, is definitely worth a look.
• Belkin was also showing off iPod/iPhone docks for 2 or four iPods. Fun for multi-pod families, available in March. Another company was showing off solutions for recharging and syncing up to 30 iPods. Great for museums, or other implementations where you want to have groups of people to have access to the same media.
• BusySync - for sharing iCal calendars.

The item that I'm most looking forward to getting my hands on? Apple's own TimeCapsule. TimeMachine, included with Leopard, makes backups a breeze. TimeCapsule takes it to a whole new level of ease, especially for the laptop inclined. It's a wifi router with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive built in. You point TimeMachine at it, and your computer backs up to it without you ever having to do a thing. You can have multiple computers back up to a single device. Not sure if you can extend the capacity by plugging in more hard drives, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Blue jeans? Check.

Grey running shoes? Check.

Wire rim glasses? Check.

Black mock turtleneck? Check.

Typing out a blog entry on my iPhone while listening to music I bought on iTunes after hearing it at Apple's WWDC last year? Check.

Well, my hoped for announcement didn't happen. The accessibility features in iWork '08 still leave a lot to be desired. The other announcements were fun - MacBook Air... seriously sweet - but nothing earth shattering. Subtitles added to iPhone - I thought it already had them? Good to see, and it looked like a nice interface - no big surprise there.

I'll be at Macworld all week, and will try and find things that would be interesting to the folks here. The best thing so far was trying to find WiFi and seeing an OLPC mesh network available. Couldn't join it, but still fun to see.

I've been visiting South America the past couple of weeks, and nothing made quite as much of an impression on me as this:



On Lake Titicaca, there is a village made up of approximately 43 floating man-made islands. The islands are made from the reeds that grow in the lake - which also serve as a source of water purification and food. Tourism is their main industry, and they put on a marvelously entertaining demonstration of how the islands are built, anchored, and moved or sawed in half when trouble with neighbors occurs.

But the solar panels were what caught my attention. Talk about living off the grid! Unfortunately, I didn't think to check for an open wifi network until I was headed back to my hotel, where the wifi was slow and ungainly.