Well, Macworld Expo 2007 has come and gone, and all we're left with are memories, aching tootsies, piles of press packets, and one monstrous head cold. Warning: If you happened to run into me at the Expo and we shook hands, I highly recommend that you start munching tons of vitamin C, posthaste.

 

If you're like me, what you like best about the Expo is discovering both nifty new stuff and stuff that's not all that new, but which you didn't yet know about. (Actually, if you're really like me, you're a middle-aged, somewhat out-of-shape polack with a bad case of the sniffles, but I digress...) This year I ran into a goodly amount of interesting and/or impressive stuff, some of which I wrote about in my last missive - oh, and since then I've had the chance to listen to that iMainGo iPod speaker case in a more sound-friendly environment than the Expo floor, and I must say I'm quite impressed.

 

In addition to the items I wrote about on Thursday, here's a round-up of eight more items worthy of your attention, including one of the slickest li'l iPod speaker stands I've ever seen, a great way to achieve painless backup, and another fine RAID array to set my storage-luvin' heart a-flutter.

 

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Etymotic's ety8 Bluetooth earbuds may be a bit pricey at $299, but look at all the stuff you get - and, no, they don't supply the iPod nano; that's up to you.

 

The ety8 is a slick set of fine-sounding earbuds from a long-time maker of fine-sounding in-ear technology, from earbuds to hearing aids, Etymotic Research. (Etymotic, by the way, is pronounced "et-im-OH-tik" and is Greek for "true to the ear.")

 

One nice feature of the ety8 is that there are controls for the iPod right on the right earbud, so you can control play and pause, adjust volume, and skip tracks forwards and backwards. The ety8's batteries are rechargeable over USB, the antenna is internal, and the unit has a pro-quality sampling rate of 44.1 kHz in 16-bit resolution.

 

According to Etymotic spokesman Ron Scicluna, the ety8 has a frequency range of 20Hz to 16kHz, and since it speaks the 2.0 ADP Bluetooth protocol, you'll not only be able to use the ety8 with the included iPod nano dongle, but also with your Mac once it's running Mac OS 10.5, Leopard. In fact, you can buy the ety8 without the iPod dongle for $199 if you only want to use it with other supported Bluetooth devices. Scicluna said that although the standard Bluetooth distance is 10 meters, "normally you get quite a bit more than that."

 

Style being a subjective thing, I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not the rectangular ety8 earbuds look fashionable or dorky. To my eyes they're strikingly off-beat.

 

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Now you can listen to Sinatra singing "The Way You Look Tonight" while finding out exactly how you do look.

 

The Expo featured, oh, possibly a squillion iPod speaker stands, but this one - the TunePro from Macally - caught my eye. The mirrored flat panel is the speaker, which is created using SoundVu technology from NXT. If you squint at the image above, you can see that there are blue LEDs behind the half-silvered mirror in the upper right; those are the display for the TunePro's digital AM/FM tuner and alarm clock; you can set the clock to wake you either by radio, iPod, or a simple raucous buzz. In addition to playing tunes from your iPod, it'll charge it, as well.

 

The TunePro's sound is enhanced by SRS WOW technology - and if it works as well as the SRS WOW Plug-in for Mac, which enhances iTunes, its sound should be impressive, indeed. In addition to the WOW enhancements, the TunePro also has straightforward treble and bass controls, plus a full complement of presets for the AM/FM radio. There's also a line-in jack on the back to connect whatever other audio device you might want.

 

The Tune Pro is brand new - it's not even up on Macally's Web site yet - but when it finally appears, you'll be able to pick it up for $129.99.

 

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If you regularly need to cut out complex images from their backgrounds - think heads with unruly coifs - this Photoshop plug-in set may be the answer to your prayers.

 

Okay, so this isn't a new product - Virtus' Fluid Mask 2.0 for the Mac shipped in May of last year - but it was new to me. Possibly if my work involved removing tons of images from their backgrounds in Photoshop, I would have heard of it earlier - because it would have saved me tons of time and eye-watering agony.

 

Simply put, Fluid Mask makes it a piece of cake to cut complex images out from their backgrounds. If you've ever used masking and channel optimization in Photoshop to cut complex images, you know what a time-consuming pain in the glutes that effort can be. Well, if Fluid Mask works half as well in reality as it did in its demo, you owe it to yourself to check it out. But don't just take my word for it - check out the gallery of projects sent in by happy Fluid Mask users on Virtus Technology's website.

 

By the way, Fluid Mask's system requirements are rather modest: Mac OS 10.2.8 or later, a 833MHz G4 or higher, and Adobe Photoshop 7.0 or later.

 

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A waterproof headphone set and a waterproof iPod nano case - cowabunga!

 

You gotta love people who run into a problem in their daily lives, then go out and create a product that solves it - Pete Dirksing, for example, and the rest of the H2O Audio crew, who created the H2O Audio Series waterproof iPod cases.

 

These waterproof iPod cases and waterproof headphones (that's waterproof, mind you, not merely water resistant) are submersible up to 10 feet - plenty deep for most casual swimmers, wakeboarders, and kayakers, not to mention hot tubbers and sauna devotees. "I surf with mine all the time," said Dirksing. "We're San Diego surfers, so that's kinda how the product was born."

 

A waterproof membrane hangs over the headphones' speakers. According to Dirksing, "It's kinda like a one-way door, so sound can get out but water can't get back in." As for the iPod case, "It's a silicone T-seal and a clear polycarbonate case, so it's a similar technology to a waterproof camera housing."

 

The H2O Audio Series comes in sizes for "pretty much from the third generation forward," and costs $39.95 for the iPod shuffle, $79.95 for the iPod nano, and $89.95 for the iPod video; each includes a neoprene armband that you can use in the water. The headphones are sold separately at $39.95. The company also makes a $39.95 swim belt that you wear on your back, with the iPod on the small of your back so you don't get tangled up in the cords while you're swimming.

 

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This memo recorder is not only compact and convenient, it's also damn cute.

 

I don't really know why I like this little item so much. After all, it's just a microphone for your iPod nano. I guess it's because the folks at Extreme Mac just got it so right - all the details are perfect, and all the capabilities are exactly what you'd want them to be.

 

The MicroMemo includes a monophonic directional microphone on a flexible neck that plugs into a small speaker-equipped unit that, in its turn, plugs into a second-generation iPod nano's dock connector. You can remove the supplied microphone and, instead, plug in any microphone that has a 3.5mm jack; if, for example, you want to record in stereo - to record in stereo, however, you'll need to use a powered microphone. The MicroMemo records in WAV format; you can choose to record in either 16-bit audio at 44 kHz or 8-bit at 22 kHz. You can listen to your memos over the included speaker, but according to Travis Read, an industrial designer for Xtreme Mac, you'll want to hold the speaker up to your ear 'cause "It's not super loud."

 

On the bottom of the speaker unit there's a three-position switch: Mic, for recording using either the included mic or your choice of mics (gain control is automatic in this mode); Line, for recording a line-level signal from any source; and Earbuds, so you casn plug your 'buds into the mic jack to listen to your recordings. All the needed software is built into the iPod's OS (the Voice Memo function); saved memos are automatically given time/date stamps, and to move your memos to your Mac all you need to do is sync the MicroMemo with iTunes .

 

The MicroMemo is available at Apple Stores nationwide for $59.95.

 

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All TextSoap 5.5 does is clean up text - but it does it very, very well.

 

I've never understood why "one-trick pony" is considered pejorative. After all, what if that trick is a really, really good one? What if the pony knows how to do that trick in hundreds of variations? What if the pony is smart enough to let you easily modify that trick in countless ways?

 

Meet TextSoap 5.5 from Unmarked Software, a pony that performs its one trick - cleaning up text - in more ways than at which you can shake the proverbial stick. TextSoap isn't new - after all, it's now at version 5.5 - but it continues to get better, allowing you more and more control over exactly how you want to clean up that email that acquired tons of extraneous characters or insane formatting when it was bounced from sender to forwarder and so on, or exactly in what way that you want the text you just scraped from that non-standard website to be formatted. TextSoap contains over 100 built-in cleaners with simple, one-click access that you can either use as-is or customize into sets that best fit your needs - and, of course, you can save and share your customizations.

 

There's so much that TextSoap can do that I'll just point you to Unmarked's website, where you can peruse all of this helpful utility's many and varied capabilities. TextSoap 5.5 is available in two strengths: Standard, at $29.95, and the truly burly Deluxe, at $39.95; both require Mac OS 10.39 or later, though 10.4 is recommended.

 

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Too busy to set up a backup system? Let MacBak take care of business for you.

 

A new company by the name of MacBak was showing a simple, easy-to-use, impressively versatile online backup system that it's just launching now.

 

According to Erik Ohlin, one MacBak's owners, "Our mission is to protect graphic designers and creatives from themselves. They went out and bought Retrospect and it's sitting on a shelf, and they went out and bought a FireWire drive and it's not plugged in. They want to do the right thing, but they're too busy creating."

 

Sure, there are a lot of online backup services available, but MacBak take a different tack with theirs. Ohlin, again: "Unlike other backup services, we provide additional storage every month - an additional 10GB per seat per month. The other guys, they sell a bucket - here's 5GB, here's 10GB - and then when that's full you have to buy more buckets. We thinks that's a silly way to do it - you're going to keep working, we're going to keep backing you up. As you create more files, you're going to need more storage, and we'll just keeping adding it on. We just automatically append 10GB to your storage every month for each Mac that you're backing up. So if you've got four Macs in your shop, that's 40GB this month, 80GB next month, 480GB at the end of the year, and we just keep growing."

 

The 10GB-per-month figure is just a guideline; if you need more, Ohlin will give you more - but you get the idea. The subscription service starts at $89 per month for one seat, with additional seats at $30 each. You don't pay more for more storage space - a subscription is a subscription is a subscription.

 

If you have more than one Mac to back up, MacBak with provide your shop with a Mac mini that manages the backup process. Sending files to the Xserves that comprise MacBak's data center is done through a simple Web based interface - drag and drop your folders onto the interface, and MacBak's client software encrypts your files at 128-bit strength and sends them securely to the data center. At the data center the files are Spotlight-indexed, and there's a Web-based interface for searching them and their metadata that Ohlin claims is "just like the Finder."

 

MacBak also makes it possible for you to share files with your clients over their service. According to Ohlin, "If you're a creative professional and you're collaborating with your clients, and they want to send you files, we also have a collaboration suite so we can allow for file uploads. It's a secure area where a customer can upload files to your shop or download files from you. It's user-based, so if you're doing work for Pepsi and Coke they won't see each other's files." Pricing for this part of the MacBak service is not yet set.

 

Ohlin expressed pride that MacBak is "very Mac-centric." The entire process, he said, is "all Mac-Mac-Mac." The same, to be sure, can't be said about Retrospect.

 

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You may need to be a storage geek to fully appreciate FirmTek's breakthrough. If you're not a storage geek, you're just going to have to trust me.

 

Personally, I'm tired of the ridicule. Every Expo, someone asks me the inevitable "So, what have you seen that most excited you here at the show?" My response is usually something along the line of, "Well, FirmTek is showing a bootable port-multiplier-equipped SATA drive enclosure and AMCC is shipping its xSATA multi-channel RAID array." And the eyes of my questioner roll, and they either say right out or merely think, "What a geek!" Look guys, not everything important is multi-colored, splashy-flashy, or preceded by the letter "i."

 

Okay, maybe I am a bit defensive. Must be this cold (which, since I first started writing this, appears to be graduating to ague status).

 

So enough about my hang-ups and health. What I really want to tell you is that FirmTek of Union City, California, was showing a couple of impressive storage products at the Expo, one with a capability shared by no other product in the entire Mac and PC industry - at least to my knowledge and as is claimed by George Rath, the company's Firmware Engineer.

 

First off, a quick lesson in storage geekery: A port multiplier is a device that allows multiple SATA hard drives to be connected to a drive controller via a single cable, thus saturating the SATA bandwidth over this single cable. At the Expo, FirmTek introduced a five-drive enclosure with a port multipler. Now, a port-multiplier is not rocket science; what is, however, ground-breaking is that FirmTek's microcode in the multiplier allows you to boot from this eSATA enclosure. According to Rath, that's a first.

 

Also according to Rath, "with five drives, basically off-shelf drives, we can achieve speed significantly over 200MB per second." The five-drive enclosure pictured above, not yet named, will ship "probably in March," at a cost of around $550. FirmTek sells its enclosures without drives - "unpopulated" is the standard industry term - so you can fill them with whatever drives you'd like (an easy task, by the way).

 

FirmTek was also showing the euphoniously named FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2 (the top unit in the photo above), a dual-bay, hot-swappable SATA enclosure. It's a straightforward dual-cable enclosure without a port multiplier, and goes for $199.95. The other nifty item in FirmTek's booth was their FirmTek SeriTek/2SM2-E (somebody's gotta help these guys with product names), an ExpressCard for MacBook Pros that has two eSATA ports to accommodate, say, a companion FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2; the FirmTek SeriTek/2SM2-E ExpressCard is a mere $119.95. To quote the humble Rath, as he swept his arm to indicate the Expo floor, "What is interesting about this unit is that we are using our own microcode which is superior to anything in this room."

 

One last word from Rath: "I'm pretty proud because it is our design entirely, the reason is that it doesn't use SCSI emulation, it's native SATA. It is providing the user with native S.M.A.R.T. data, it is a complete pass-through, it is the only one in the industry currently for this kind of chipset."

 

What a geek! Gotta love 'im.