Volume Number: 25 (2009)
Issue Number: 02
Column Tag: Macworld Expo

Macworld 2009: Best of Show

MacTech and Macsimum News team up for Best of Show awards

by Dennis Sellers & Neil Ticktin

MacTech Magazine and Macsimum News teamed up for the first time to announce their Best of Show awards for the 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo. With so many products from over 450 exhibitors, editors from both publications combined forces to find interesting jewels on the show floor. In alphabetical order by product, here are the winners:

1Password, by Agile Web Solutions. 1Password is a password manager and 'data safe' that can store bank account information, personal details, login credentials and secure notes. Thanks to plugins for Safari, Firefox and other browsers, these values can be automatically filled in on web-based forms. An iPhone app is also available that can sync with the desktop version (http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password).

BlueStorby JMR. BlueStor is a new line of Mac-compatible 16- and 8-bay RAID storage solutions. BlueStor uniquely uses a PCIe card and treats the RAID unit also as an external chassis that can in turn be used as a point of expansion for other PCIe cards, including further storage expansion. Powered by a Mac Pro using Final Cut Pro software, the BlueStor product line will run multi-stream real-time HD playback (http://jmr.com).

Dictate 1.2.1 by MacSpeech is the latest version of the speech recognition for the Mac. Dictate customers can dictate any specific word, no matter how obscure, by spelling it letter-by-letter with the Spelling mode. It also has a "move" command for easier verbal editing of a document, a Spelling Mode for letter-by-letter dictation of unusual words, and the Phrase Training capabilities that help the user increase accuracy on the fly.(http://www.macspeech.com)

FontXChange by Morrison softDesign is Mac OS X software that converts fonts to OpenType, PostScript Type 1 and TrueType for compatibility across both Macs and Windows systems. It supports batch processing for converting entire font libraries and has preferences to set font encodings. FontXChange has a font inspection window with preview and support for many font encodings. The latest version upgrades encodings to Unicode 5.1, updates parsing and rendering of various font tables, adds an option to generate .AFM files, adds font naming options and adds a feature to rebuild damaged fonts. (http://www.morrisonsoftdesign.com)

GraniteSTOR by Small Tree is a new family of shared storage solutions. First in Small Tree's GraniteSTOR product line is EasyAoE, an ATA over Ethernet protocol shared storage solution. It's designed specifically for audio/video editors and graphic artists looking for affordable means to manage shared storage solutions (http://www.small-tree.com).

iRecord by Streamingnetworks is a personal media transcoder that lets you record movies, songs, TV shows, video game clips and streaming audio directly to an iPod, PSP or USB storage device without a computer. It records using H.264 compression techniques while audio is encoded using AAC compression in real time (http://www.irecord.com).

NEC LCD3090WQXi. This is a 30-inch, 2600 x 1600 desktop LCD display for high-end graphics applications. It has a wide format design (16:10 aspect ratio) that provides roughly the same work area as two smaller sized displays. The NEC display offers a wide color gamut, an ambient sensor, MultiSync support and more (http://www.necdisplay.com).

ModBook Pro by Axiotron is an aftermarket modification of the unibody MacBook Pro, Axiotron's ModBook Pro offers a 15.4-inch pen-enabled display with a pixel resolution of 1440 x 900 WXGA, and features a surface layer of the company's etched, paper-emulating ForceGlass for drawing and writing comfort. It features Axiotron's Synergy Touch, a technology that employs touch functionality primarily in support of the pen input (http://www.axiotron.com).

Neat Receipts by Neat Co. Neat Receipts is a mobile scanner and digital filing system that enables you to scan receipts, business cards and documents so you can organize, store and secure all your important information. The patented technology identifies and extracts the important information and automatically organizes it for you. A Spotlight plugin allows you to search on all information without launching the application (http://neatco.com/products/neatreceipts-for-mac).

PhotoMotion by GeeThree is for Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express lets you preview and import high-resolution images from existing libraries. You can preview images from Aperture, Lightroom, and iPhoto libraries and Pictures folders. Other folders can also be added. The plug-in appears as a standard Final Cut generator. There's no need to adjust keyframes when adding transitions or changing the duration of the animation (http://www.geethree.com).

LiveScribe Pulse by LiveScribe. Livescribe's Pulse Smartpen captures handwriting and simultaneously records audio and synchronizes it to the writing, so users never miss a word they hear, write or speak. Users can tap on their notes to replay what was recorded from the exact moment they were writing. With the Livescribe Desktop software, notes and audio recordings can then be transferred to a Mac, where they can be digitally stored, searched, or shared (http://www.livescribe.com).

TapIt4Me for iPhone by Ettore Software. This is a version of the company's text expander app (originally available only for the Mac) that runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The application expands keyboard mnemonics into full phrases and whole paragraphs, increasing your typing speed (http://ettoresoftware.com).

TypeTrax by Insider Software and Moksa. Type Trax is a new product for managing design projects created using Adobe Creative Suite. Developed jointly by Insider Software and Moksa, Inc., TypeTrax manages projects, and tracks, organizes and pre-flights project files, including fonts and digital assets. It adds the missing link to digital design projects. Fully integrated with Canto Cumulus, a leader in digital asset management, TypeTrax allows a user to simply drag a document into Canto Cumulus and TypeTrax automatically detects and displays the project's font resources in WYSIWYG mode (http://www.typetrax.com).