MWSF10: O’Grady’s Best in Show

I previously blogged about Macworld’s Best of Show awards which were given out at last week’s 2010 event. Now that the dust has settled and I’m back home after traveling during the east coast’s snowmageddon, I’ve gone through my notes and made my picks for the best items at the show. The following are my personal show picks and a few gems that caught my eye at Macworld SF 2010.

Yapper - Also a Macworld pick, this excellent service creates a native iPhone app out of any RSS feed and submits it to Apple for approval. Simply fill out a form with a RSS URL, description, upload an icon and a splash screen and the service does the rest. It regularly costs $499, but is only $99 through February 19, 2010 as a Macworld show special. That’s right, you can have your own iPhone app for less than $100. You can add push notifications for another $49 and $99 gets you an Android version.

DJay 3.0 - Version 2.0 of this excellent DJ software was one of my show picks in 2009 and this year’s definitely update earns 3.0 a spot on the podium. In addition to mixing, blending and scratching music tracks from your iTunes library, DJay 3.0 adds auto-cut scratching, a killer feature that automatically applies the pattern of the currently playing song to your scratches in real-time. Simply drag two fingers up and down on the trackpad while holding the “c” (fast) or the “v” (slow) key on the keyboard to transform and scratch like a pro. This feature is mind blowing on the MacBook’s multi-touch trackpad and alone is worth the $49 price tag. DJay is perfect for any DJ that doesn’t want to buy a lot of equipment and/or buck up for Serato Scratch Live, which can set you back more than a grand (once you add a mixer).

Bonus points to:

• KB Covers‘ keyboard skin for DJay 2, which has all the shortcuts for DJay printed on top of a $30 keyboard skin (their Serato Scratch Live 2.0 skin comes out in March)
• Vestax Spin, DJay 3’s $250 dedicated controller allows you to control and cue tracks with two touch sensor platters that emulate turntables.
  
• the upcoming DJay Remote app will let you connect to your iTunes library and mix from your iPhone

A bunch more after the jump…

Thermapak Heatshift – This $25 cooling pad dissipates heat from the bottom of your MacBook while you’re using it on your lap. I combine mine with a Podium Coolpad for the ultimate cooling for those late night work sessions on the couch.

iTouchGloves – These fashionable leather gloves work effortlessly with the screen on the iPhone and iPod Touch (great for people in the east, like me). The best part is that just a slight touch works, no hard pressing needed.

TruePower IV Pro - This update to my favorite iPhone battery is a 3100 mAH iPhone battery with faster charging and a mini-USB instead of the dock port found on the previous model. What I’m really looking forward to is the IV Plus, which combines a battery, case, LED flash and infrared remote in one slick package. It will reportedly start shipping in the second quarter of 2010 for around US$130.

Shure SRH750 DJ Headphones - I liked the SRH240 ($59) headphones that came in my speaker bag so much that I sought out the even nicer SRH750 DJ headphones in the Shure booth. The $149 DJ phones rock a 50mm driver and comfortable, padded ear cups that swivel 90 degrees for one ear monitoring while mixing.

Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 2 - Based on current OpenOffice.org 3 code stream this free office suite features a capable word processor and spreadsheet. Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 2 features a ton of new features including support for Visual Basic Macros, OLE Objects, embedded audio/video, enhanced support for Microsoft Office 2007 files and OpenOffice.org file formats.

Square – A new startup by Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey. Square provides a tiny square device that plugs into your iPhone headphone port and allows you to accept payment cards with no contracts, monthly fees, or hidden costs. Imagine being able to accept a credit card for something you sold on Craigslist or during your huge spring garage sale. Just buy their $1 app, sign up for an account and they will send you a card swiper dongle. Square handles the processing and payments and takes a 2.9% cut of sales where the card is present and 3.5% when the card number is manually entered. Available in “early summer.”

Bonus picks:

• Mophie’s marketplace iPhone case/credit card swiper - coming soon
• Linea Pro - Portable barcode reader and magstripe reader for the iPhone/iPod touch. This is the card swiper that Apple now uses to accept payments in its retail stores.

I guess that’s it. Please add your show picks in the TalkBack below.