Apple's online store went offline Tuesday morning, presumably in preparation for new products to be unveiled during the Macworld keynote to be presented by Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice-President of Worldwide Product Marketing. The Mac Observer will bring all the news from Mr. Schiller's discussion live as it happens. This will be Apple's final appearance at Macworld Expo, ending a run of more than two decades of affiliation with IDG's trade show.

SAN FRANCISCO -- IntelliScanner Corporation on Tuesday introduced mini cubed, which includes a rechargeable mini scanner, a USB cable, a neck lanyard, pre-printed asset tags, and software in a metallic cube. The mini scanner, which is approximately the size of an iPod nano, features built-in memory for storing information before being synced to the software as well as scan and delete buttons.

SAN FRANCISCO -- TheBrain Technologies is exhibiting PersonalBrain 5.0, the latest iteration of its visualization and organization software, at this week's Macworld Expo. The upgrade features an outline view with a broader view of information, visual tagging, a presentation mode with full-screen display, and the ability to save customized layouts created in expanded view, as well as to import outlines and mind maps created with other software.

Verbatim, Imation, and SanDisk on Tuesday announced a new ExpressCard SSD, new external hard drives, and a line of one-button backup USB flash drives, respectively. Verbatim is in attendance at this week's Macworld Expo, while SanDisk is exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off in Las Vegas on Thursday, and Imation is at the 2009 Storage Visions Conference happening in Las Vegas on Tuesday and Wednesday.

SAN FRANCISCO -- During this week's Macworld Expo, Sling Media will demonstrate SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone as well as a prototype of SlingPlayer for Mac HD, which allows Slingbox PRO-HD users to stream content to a Mac.

Join us today for live coverage of Phil Schiller's Macworld Expo Keynote Address.  It's scheduled to begin today (Tuesday, January 6th, 2009) at 9 AM PST / 12 PM EST, but we'll be in the conference hall early posting photos and up to the minute updates.

John F. Braun spent some time this weekend and Monday taking pictures in and around the Moscone.  We've published them here for your viewing pleasure.

SAN FRANCISCO - EZQuest announced Monday the Cinema Pro rack-mountable RAID solution, a RAID solution that can hold up to 16 hard drives with up to 24 TB of storage.  The device is hot swappable, and conforms to the 3U rack mount form factor. It connects via an external PCIe bus.

SAN FRANCISCO -- O'Reilly Media and Book Passage started off their Macworld Expo activities a day ahead of the conference's official opening day with a special panel and book signing filled with Photoshop CS4 experts. The panel included Photoshop luminaries Lesa Snider King, Deke McClelland, Derrick Story, and Lightroom pro Mikkel Aaland.

SAN FRANCISCO -- FileMaker announced the immediate availability FileMaker Pro 10 at Macworld Expo on Monday. The new version of the database application gained a redesigned interface along with built-in SMTP support.