Posted By Paul Kafasis on January 29th, 2004

…a wrapup of Macworld San Francisco 2004. It was a whole lot of fun, and a whole lot of work, but it was definitely worth going to. Read on for info and photos from the show.First, Audio Hijack 2.1 is out. It’s got a new, stronger hijacking method, and it’s a free, recommended update for all users. Download it.

Second, it’s really time to do a wrapup of Macworld San Francisco 2004. It was a whole lot of fun, and a whole lot of work, but it was definitely worth going to. Read on for info and photos from the show.Quentin and I flew out to SF from Newark Airport (“The Newark of Airports”) on Monday, January 5th. We arrived and checked in at the Serrano Hotel, then headed over to the Moscone to set up our booth, with help from our friend Mark Johns of SloppyDisk fame.

We didn’t snap any photos of the Moscone, but here’s one of the South Hall (where our booth was). Booth setup was followed by dinner with Slava, Jason, and Nick from Unsanity. I’ve worked off and on with Slava and Nick for about 5 years now, but this was the first time we’d ever met.

Approximately the same size as Jesus

The show opened the next morning, and we set to work on perfecting our spiels and demos. I was expecting a phone call from the hotel when our CDs (full of software demos from Unsanity, Flying Meat, and Fidelity Media) arrived, but it never came. We spent the day showing off our stuff, and handing out info sheets.

The Unsanity “Booth” (They did some demos at OWC’s booth)

That night was the Macworld 20th Anniversary party, a swanky affair at the top of the Sir Francis Drake hotel, overlooking Union Square. A gorgeous view, and a chance to meet some contacts while not trying to convince people to download our software.

Our booth was often swamped – That’s Tom Bridge, Cannonball of Macslash to the left of our banner

The next morning, Wednesday, I was woken early by a phone call about our CDs – they’d been delivered the day before…to New Jersey. After several minutes of swearing, Disc Makers arranged to have them sent overnight, so we’d at least have them Thursday and Friday. I’d like to take a second to thank Erica at Disc Makers for her help, and to recommend Disk Makers to anyone – great prices, great work, and great customer support. The fault for this shipping mixup lies with us as well as Disc Makers, but they took the steps to correct it.

We talk the talk

Anyhow, Wednesday was another other day of schmoozing and pitching our stuff. Several Macworld writers swung by to say hi and talk about the mildly infamous Macworld UTM post, and it was great to meet them. At the end of the day, Rick LePage (President of Mac Publishing) swung by and we discussed Nicecast. After this, our new best friend Jim Dalrymple stopped by to evaluate Nicecast for a potential Best Of Show award.

We continue to talk the talk, now with a large polystyrene award behind us

That night was the MacObserver party at the Chi-Chi Lounge. Balloon hats (courtesy of Dan the clown, who’s attending Circus School), henna tattos, and yet another open bar. Let it be know, drunk 45 year olds are frightening.

Thursday morning two fantastic things occured. 1) Our CDs arrived and 2) We won our Best Of Show award for Nicecast. Traffic to our booth continued to be heavy, and we handed out over 2500 cds in under 6 hours.

Thursday night we had dinner at Cha-Cha-Cha’s with Brian Covey and the guys from The Omni Group. We met out at the O’Reilly TenCon, and it was excellent to have a reunion over Mediterranean and sangria. We then checked out the illustrious Amoeba Music (How could we not?), and headed to the Your Mac Life party at Slim’s.

Friday was the last day at the show but we worked our asses off, trying to get rid of as many CDs as possible (so we wouldn’t have to fly home with them). I met Sinbad while no one was at the booth, so there’s no photos of that. We got rid of all but one box of CDs, partly due to persistence, and partly due to unloading them on MUG leaders, in the hopes that they would pass them on to their members.

Our new friends Carlos and Vesna, of Matias

As the lights went down, and the applause rose among the vendors, we were finally able to relax. It was a great show, and we had a whole lot of fun, while meeting a whole lot of people. If you stopped by to say hi, or to tell us our products “changed your life”, we appreciate it, and I’d like to apologize if we seemed a bit harried – we were swamped.

I’d also like to thank Tracy for our nighttime tour of San Francisco – you’ve come through as a tour guide for us twice now, and we can’t thank you enough for it.

Good night, San Francisco

As always, stay tuned for more great software, and more mediocre pictures like these (most of them taken by me).