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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/11584
FIRST PERSON It’s the Little Things After years of sports cars with four-figure sound systems and booths most easily measured in acres, the exhibit hall had a substantially less extravagant look and feel. What this meant was that the smaller shops were finally able to get some hard- earned attention. There was a lot of incredibly cool stuff that show goers could actually afford and, as usual, many of them were things that didn’t get shelf space in your local Apple Store. Here’s a quick tour of some of our favorites: Verbatim, offered one of the biggest surprises in one of the smallest packages. The TUFF-N-TINY2GB up to (very soon now) 16GB USB drives are just a bit bigger than the zipper pull on an overcoat. Roughly a third of the drive sinks into your computer as the USB connector. They also showed a very elegant and very Mac- friendly SureFireportable USB/FireWire 800, self-powered portable hard drive. Ten1 Design clearly deserves an award for fielding products that are utterly brilliant as well as remarkably useful. Fortunately, I got to their booth in time to have a choice of colors for the Pogo SketchI bought (the following day they were only available in pink). It turns your MacBook track pad into a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet. Combine it with Ten1’s Inkletfor sketching or to take advantage of Apple’s built-in Ink handwriting recognition system or Autograph(also from Ten 1) to add signatures to Word, Pages,or Mail documents. Both the Sketchand the longer Pogo Stylusmake it possible to use your iPhone when you’re wearing gloves; the soft foam tip combined with the conductive aluminum shell. MicroVision’s Show WXis not exactly in the “impulse buy” category with its $500 price tag along with the fact that it wasn’t quite ready to ship at show time. But it’s even more impressive than the more primitive but still show-stopping prototype demonstrated last year. This little projector plugs in to the docking port of an iPhone or touch (and we can probably assume an iPad, as well) letting play back video on any surface. It handily walked off with one of the best-of-show awards. They’ll Be Back The biggest news of the show was that it will return next year and I’m ready to make my reservations at the chic (and bargain priced) Hotel Metropolis for January 25-29, 2011. 38 MacDirectory