[By Carleen Hawn] I’m told this year’s Macworld drew the biggest attendance in years. IDG won’t say just how big that is, but if true, I suppose this means it was a success. And I can see how the weeklong event would have been a ball—for gear heads on a shopping spree. For them Macworld Expo was great, starting, of course, with Apple’s unveiling of the iPhone. But the conference part of Macworld left me wanting. I mean, say you’re an online publisher who paid your way into Macworld to pick up some new tricks for ramping up traffic to your site—and especially monetizing it. You’d have learned this: “game your Google ranking” and “try to avoid letting your content appear on MySpace.” I mean, really. I love podcasting, so I attended a VC panel billed as delivering the scoop on what investors “need to see before a single dollar is invested in your creation.” I got this: “It depends” and “It’s all relative.” “I might think something is worth $1 billion and he’ll think it’s worth a dollar.” Come on—how about some “action items” for $800? (At least, I was on a press pass.) But maybe it’s me.
Gadget hounds would’ve been sated, though. While the only thing anyone will remember from Macworld2007 is the debut of the iPhone and possibly Apple TV, there were plenty of other cool products to see, too – a lot of them in the exhibit hall featuring the small companies sans big marketing budgets “working out of garages and doing the stuff that is most Apple-like,” as Adam Engst of TidBits.com put it. But my favorite was Blurb—a well-funded start-up that—finally—brings professional-grade digital book publishing to consumers. These are beautiful hardcover books, not the grainy junk from KodakGallery or early iPhoto. Fashion your grandmother’s recipes into a proper cookbook with ease and Blurb will help you sell it, too. (Look out, Rachel Ray!) The company handles fulfillment, shipping and customer service through their site. I met a man who said discovering Blurb made Macworld2007 worth it for him. It is one of the few companies I saw here that does more than merely decorate the “user experience” with special features. And unlike some new media formats, Blurb doesn’t require users to jettison all the comforts of tradition. (My mom doesn’t comprehend “podcast” but she gets “book.") Not unlike the iPhone, Blurb uses technology to help us do more with the old stuff we enjoy so much. This is progress, too.
Related:
-- Self-Publishing Service Provider Blurb Gets $7.16 Million Funding
-- Stealthy Blurb Inc. Gets $2.05 Million Series A Funding