SAN FRANCISCO - Optoma was showing a new iPhone and iPod dock at Macworld Expo that includes speakers and a built-in pico LED projector that you can use to project movies and other videos onto a wall, screen, or other flat surface. The NEO-i turns your iPod touch, iPod, or iPad (with an optional kit) into movie projector that includes a quality sound system.

John F. Braun checks out Direct Mail Pro 2.3, the latest version of email marketing software from E3 Software. Jonathan Hammer, President, gave The Mac Observer a demonstration of this product.

SAN FRANCISCO - Focusrite was showing VRM Box at Macworld Expo this week, a device that brings multiple pairs of studio, reference, home, car, and other speakers and to a set of headphones, allowing musicians and producers to test how their song sounds in many and more environments with just one device.

SAN FRANCISCO — John F. Braun starts his photo adventure with images approaching Moscone West, and then gets right to the show floor. He captured images of the TuneUp girls, a paper monster, some greatest hits, a toasted iMac, a word from our sponsors, and more.

SAN FRANCISCO — John F. Braun checks out the Gilf, an iPhone 4 tripod mount and stand that was brought from concept to market in five months. The company was showing off the stand this week at Macworld Expo 2011 in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Omni Group, well known for its popular Mac OS X applications like OmniFocus and OmniGraffle, has moved into the iPad app space and is hard at work on releasing an iOS version of OmniOutliner. The app will include many of the same outlining features as the Mac OS X version, and will support sharing outliner files with the Mac.

SAN FRANCISCO — John F. Braun learns about Dolly Drive, the first online backup solution for Apple’s Time Machine. The easy to use service lets users perform Time Machine backups anywhere they have an Internet connection and doesn’t require any extra hard drives.

SAN FRANCISCO - iConnectivity announced Thursday iConnectMIDI, a device that allows musicians and producers to connect their MIDI device to their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. The company claims that it is the first MIDI interface compatible with Apple’s CoreMIDI technology that was introduced in iOS 4.2 late in 2010.

The Mac Observer Contributing Editor Chuck La Tournous will be digging under the hood in Apple’s Safari Web browser at Macworld Expo 2011. Chuck’s session starts at 10:30AM pacific time on Thursday, January 27.

Wednesday, January 26, marked the kick-off of the annual Macworld Conference & Expo at Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif. The Mac Observer staff is on hand to participate in panels, check out the show floor, and report on the event. Several stories have already been filed with more to come, along with always-popular photo galleries of the show floor.