Ted Landau is the proud owner of a new MacBook Air, and provides some insight into the benefits and limitations of the SSD drive, the unibody construction and how it compares to the PC netbook market. While not for everyone, Ted explains how it compares and compliments Mac desktops, other Mac laptops and even the iPad. Then, Ted examines the Mac App Store announcement and what he thinks its impact will be on developers and users alike, why he thinks sooner is better to establish an app store presence, and why he isn’t necessarily happy about it all.
Maria Langer, the author of the brand new Word for Mac 2011 Essential Training for lynda.com talks about the new version of the venerable word processing program, and whether you really need it. Part of the new Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, Word 2011 has greatly reduced the number of available toolbars, eliminated the formatting palette, and added the much-talked about ribbon. Maria explains why those changes require some learning, but are for the best. The different kinds of tables in Word and which to use for what, the return of macros and why you need to understand privacy and security in Word documents are all part of the discussion.
Paul Kent, Vice President and General Manager at IDG for Macworld, gives us a first look at the Macworld 2011 Conference tracks and what will be offered. Starting with the “immersive learning experience” that is the Macworld workshops, Paul takes us through who will presenting and some of the topics, including the just added Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and iLife ’11 sessions, the Supersessions, the IT Conference track, and the User Conference track. Paul also provides an exclusive announcement on the “Show Me Something I Don’t Already Know” track, talks about the dates of this year’s show and how they worked out, the part that music will once again play at Macworld, and gives an update on The Macworld All-Star Band. Perhaps most importantly, Paul and Chuck discuss the opportunity that Macworld offers to hardware and software developers to connect with the most enthusiastic, vocal, connected Mac users, to all levels of the Mac media, independent and established alike, and why they need to be at the show to make it happen.
The Road to Macworld 2011 is a special MacVoices series produced in partnership with Macworld to preview some of the exhibitors and presentations at Macworld 2011 in San Francisco from January 26 – 29 at the Moscone Convention Center.
Author and Mac expert Joe Kissell is back to talk about the second edition of Take Control of MobileMe, Second Edition,, Apple’s online service. MobileMe has evolved both over its lifetime, and since the first edition of this book; Joe covers this evolution, talking about what has disappeared, what has been introduced, and how the little changes have added up to an imperfect but improved and valuable service. Among the functions and features discussed are syncing through MobileMe, MobileMe Mail and the ways it beats Gmail, the uses and shortcomings of iDisk and photosharing and more. Joe explains why, even with its faults, MobileMe is a good value and why you should be a member.
In Las Vegas at BlogWorld, Meg Clark and Ayush Agarwal of CoTweet discuss their solution for social media activity by enterprise-level clients. With posting capabilities for both Twitter and Facebook, CoTweet facilitates not just getting the word out, but also offers tools to manage customer interaction and sales opportunities through integration with SalesForce. The CoTweet duo discuss the logistics of getting started with CoTweet, the feature sets of both their free and paid services, and more.
