Filed under: Macworld

Fallen Earth is a respectable postapocalyptic MMO -- I've never played it (one MMO is enough for me, and the gigantic World of Warcraft is still claiming my time), but it's grown pretty popular since release in September of last year. And now the game is set to pick up another chunk of audience, as the owner Icarus Studios has announced that they're releasing a Mac client for the game. It's currently in beta (and was made using Wine), but if you're interested in trying out a new MMO with a postapocalyptic twist, head on over, give the client a download (you'll need a game account, though there's a free trial available), and give the team a good Mac welcome.

That's not all, though -- Icarus is also working on their very own iPhone app, and I got to play with it this week at their GDC 2010 booth. For Fallen Earth players, it'll be a must-get, but even if you're not currently a player of the game, the app is a shining example of what's possible with a "supplementary" game application -- it allows for all sorts of in-game functions directly from Apple's handheld device.

Readers of TUAW know that we all enjoyed this year's Macworld Expo a great deal, and that we were able to talk to hundreds of vendors and Apple fans during the week that our team was on site. Many of you chose to join in virtually through our frequent livecasts and videos during and after the show.

During Macworld 2010, IDG World Expo announced that next year's event is planned for January 27 - 29, 2011 at Moscone Center West in San Francisco, and today they surprised us all by announcing a one-week free registration window for the show. They're giving away free expo passes (no admittance to conference sessions or special events) for the next week. All you need to do for your free pass is to click here and fill in the requested information on the form.

We want to see you in San Francisco next January, so take advantage of this great offer today.

We had the opportunity to interview Mitch Waite, the developer of iBird Explorer Pro (US$29.99). This is an iPhone/iPod touch App running under OS 3.0 or better. According to Mitch, it is fourteen field guide books rolled into one App.

Apple liked the App so much that it was included it in an iPhone TV commercial. Macworld liked the app too and it was awarded the best reference App of 2009.

This is one big App, since it contains over 900 beautifully rendered pictures of birds, that Mitch will tell you all about in the video. It weighs in at 391MB, which may be a concern for those of you running out of storage. It's self-contained, needing no Wi-Fi or cellular connection. This was a wise design choice, since out in the wild, Cell signals can be a hard commodity to come by.

We apologize for the poor audio syncing of the video, but Mitch's story is quite fascinating.

Click on the 'Read More' link to view the video interview and demonstration of iBird Explorer Pro.

Adam Jackson has been attending Macworld since 2003, including the New York and Boston shows. His devotion to Apple and the Macworld Expo was highlighted in the excellent "fanboy" film Macheads (available via iTunes). When I sat down with him at Macworld we spoke about the past, present and future of Macworld. Video after the link (pardon the abrupt start).

One website that must reside in nearly every Machead's bookmarks collection is iFixit. They provide detailed, step-by-step repair guides (and parts) for nearly every Mac, iPod or iPhone fix you can think of. Their instructions are always clear and thorough enough to make even the most daunting repair possible. If you lack those special tools, they've got those, too.

They're also known for being among the first to take apart brand new Apple hardware. When I sat down with Kyle Weins from iFixit during Macworld Expo, he revealed that who gets the privilege of the first teardown is determined by the flip of a coin. He also talked about the site's history, current offerings and of course the iPad. You can watch the full interview after the break.

OK, I'm the first to admit that I didn't feel Macworld Expo had much of a future without Apple. After all, I was the guy responsible for the graphic that showed a gravestone with "Macworld Expo 1985 - 2010: Rest In Peace" engraved on it (my apologies to Paul Kent of IDG World Expo for that...). But even in that post, I still ended on a note of hope about the show. Many of our readers, however, agreed in an informal poll that the show had seen better days and that without Apple, Macworld Expo 2010 would be the last stop.

Longtime PC Magazine writer John Dvorak took the decidedly negative path in a recent post titled "Macworld Expo's Iffy Future." Based on a single quick walk through of the Expo captured on video, he concluded that the show is dead: "Last one? I think so."

After spending a few days at Macworld Expo 2010, I have exactly the opposite opinion to Dvorak. 2010 was the year that many vendors stayed away from the show, thinking that it just wasn't worth the time and effort. Nearly every exhibitor I talked to at the show said without reservation that they'd be back next year, and I've heard from many hardware and software vendors who say that even though they weren't in San Francisco this year, they'll be there in 2011. Just as I'm certain that spring crocuses will soon peek through the snow, I'm confident that Macworld Expo will be back in 2011 with even more exhibitors and visitors. Why? Let's go through some reasons.

They're the voices you hear coming out of your computer and your iPhone -- you know, the ones that tell you what's coming soon and why you might want to save up for future purchases. Yes, contrary to what you might have guessed, podcasters have faces to go with those voices; we showcased three of our favorites in our livecasting sessions from Macworld Expo, and the clips are reproduced in the second half of this post.

Our three victims visitors deliver distinctive voices on Apple news and the Mac/iPhone community. First up, Shawn King of Your Mac Life, who graded the expo from his 13-year perspective as an Internet broadcaster. Second, the maven of daily Mac news (and a TUAW contributor), Ken Ray of Mac OS Ken. Last, friend to novice Macheads everywhere, Victor Cajiao of Typical Mac User. Enjoy!

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/brettlider/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

It's hard to believe that it's been a week since I left Macworld Expo 2010 to head home. Last night, I finally went through the last snippets of video from the Expo and put together this short compendium of three interviews.

The first company I talked to was Telnic.org, a group which champions the use of the .tel top level domain as a type of global address book. There's a free iPhone app available for updating your .tel domain information from anywhere.

Next, I visited shortly with John from Agile Partners, the developers behind GuitarToolkit. TUAW's resident musician, Mat Tinsley, reported on this app last September and it's quite impressive.

Finally, I talked with the folks from myRete, who have created an interesting social networking app called WhosHere. There are over one million users of WhosHere, and with the free texting and VoIP capabilities of the app you can ask the locals in cities around the world for travel tips or a date. Want to perfect your language skills with a native speaker? WhosHere is an easy way to find someone to chat with.

As with several earlier videos, this suffers from a bit of mic noise. Our apologies!

We met many developers and tried many apps while at Macworld Expo last week. Among the more entertaining was Hangman RSS from Fingerarts.

Developer Luigi, a self-professed "news junkie," visited the booth to tell us about his company's latest app. It starts with the classic game of hangman that we all played as kids. Here's the twist: Instead of presenting the user with a random word to guess, it pulls a timely news headline and leaves a key word out. It's your job to guess that word. If it's too difficult, you can get a hint in the form of the article's abstract. If you win, you get to read the full article.

It was surprisingly fun and looked great. Watch the video above for a demo and our conversation with Luigi. Then check out the game in iTunes (there's a free version as well).

Our videos are almost all posted, the interviews are all transcribed, and the impressions are all done and published -- we're finally bringing our Macworld 2010 coverage to conclusion. It was a heck of a show -- while there wasn't a lot of attention outside the conference floor from folks expecting more about Apple, on the show floor itself there was clearly an excitement and a sense of opportunity for lots of companies who might have been overshadowed by Apple's presence in the past. It was a smaller show, for sure, but in some ways it was also a better show. We're still not completely sure what will happen next year, but Macworld 2010 was a success -- not as big a success as it was when Apple was putting wind in the sails, but a success nevertheless.

We saw a lot of stuff at the show, from dozens of accessories, to the wild Parrot AR.Drone, and even the closest thing to an iPad that we could find. After clicking on the link below, read on to see what a few of our bloggers had to say about the best of what they saw at the show.

Last year we reviewed Storyist, the software for writers. It's a great app that lets you manage all aspects of a writing project, like plot points, research, characters and more. Once you're done writing, you can export to many popular file formats, as well as prepare your document for an editor, for use as a screenplay or even digital distribution.

I sat down with Steve Shepard at our Macworld booth to discuss the app, how to get the most out of it, his experiences at the show and finally whether or not he's got any plans for the iPad. Check out the video above to see our conversation.

When Apple first introduced the Macintosh, there weren't many authorized third-party developers around... even fewer unauthorized ones, when you think about it. One guy did manage to sneak in the back door and ship his app for the original Mac on an accelerated schedule: Jim Rea, the founder of ProVUE Development.

The company's original database for the Mac, OverVUE, was the 2nd commercial app to ship for the platform (Microsoft's Multiplan was #1). The DB application later evolved into Panorama, which continues to run on the Macs of today.

Jim was kind enough to share some of his memories from the early years, and update us on the soon-to-ship Panorama version 6. Both videos are in the continuation of this post.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!

Today on TUAW TV Live we'll be talking about Macworld Expo 2010, the OWLE bubo, camera apps for the iPhone, and any other topics that happen to hit host Steve Sande's fancy.

Some of the camera apps that we'll be discussing include Lo-Mob, ColorSplash, CinemaFX, FocalLab, and Project365. All of these apps are in your friendly neighborhood App Store and should only make a slight dent in your wallet.

The video and chat tools are on the next page -- just click the Read More link below to get in on the fun.

Among the unusual and innovative iPhone apps we saw at Macworld Expo was Flook, a location-based search tool for urban discovery that turns your walk through town into a multimedia adventure, complete with audio and image annotation and growing popularity for the most intriguing spots.

The idea is to create "serendipitous discovery" of the interesting and novel places around your neighborhood -- "a bit like StumbleUpon for the world around you," as the Flook site says.

We got a chance to chat with Ambient Industries co-founder Tristan Brotherton, who provided a quick demo of the app and a few words about the Flook approach and philosophy. Catch the video below.