Macworld Boston Showtime Awards presented
July 15, 2004 - 14:40 PDT   MacMinute is proud to announce the Showtime Award winners for the Boston Macworld Conference & Expo. Below you'll find twelve of the coolest, most interesting hardware and software products shown at the event. To be considered for an award, products had to either begin shipping during the show or else be demonstrated for the first time. Among the winners were Harman Multimedia's On Stage, Hash's Animation:Master, @Last Software's SketchUp 4.0, and Prosoft's Picture Rescue.

Animation:Master by Hash, Inc.
At long last, Hash has released a Mac OS X version of Animation:Master, which combines 3D modeling and animation tools with a renderer to offer an all-in-one 3D character animation studio. The US$299 software includes modeling, texturing, animation, and rendering tools. Animating characters and objects can be done in full real-time shading using OpenGL hardware acceleration.

Combo ION Drive by IOGear
The Combo Drive is a tiny, portable hard drive with "Tri-Select" technology. You can connect it to your Mac via FireWire 400, FireWire 800 or USB 2.0. It also lets you automatically back up a single file or en entire directory as programmed. It's compatible with Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.2 (and higher) and can handle up to 60GB of storage, depending on the model. Pricing hasn't yet been announced.

HOBO Henry Science Kit by iScienceProject
The $149 HOBO Henry Science Kit for Mac OS X is a new data logger-science based learning kit for Macs and which is targeted to K-6 students. The kit –- which revolves around HOBO Henry, a traveling science superhero -- includes: a matchbox-sized HOBO data logger, which students can use to automatically record temperature, relative humidity, light and liquid temperature; HOBOware software; a HOBO Henry sponge figure; and a 48-page activity book with classroom labs and activities.

iClip by Inventive
iClip has been updated to version 3.1 and is available on CD for the first time. The multiple clipboard/scrapbook/launch application now automatically records changes to the clipboard. It's compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 or later and costs $29.95 for the CD version and $19.95 for the electronic version.

Impression by Babel Company
The latest version (2.6) of the $25 backup application for Mac OS X now provides a new "imps" hfspax-based restorable archive format that really improves backup and restoration speeds. In addition, this new version offers several bug fixes and includes full Unicode support for all catalog, log and session files.

Integrity by Avail Solutions
Integrity is a backup and recovery software solution for Mac OS X. Using Integrity, Mac servers such as the Xserve G5 and Xserve RAID can manage the data protection requirements of a Mac environment as well as a heterogeneous network. Integrity's suite of data protection modules for Mac OS X includes: the client modules that manage backup and restore functions; the server module, which enables a Mac to provide storage management services; and the managed replication and protected data migration utilities, which move and/or copy data throughout a storage hierarchy to support D2D2T appliances.

MacElite II CD/DVD duplication system by Disc Makers
The new MacElite systems, now with two drives, offer large capacity, high-throughput, unattended disc duplication and printing systems that feature an interface that allows you to design disc label artwork, copy CDs and DVDs, and archive images of frequently copied titles to a hard drive. Pricing ranges from $3,590 to $4,390.

On Stage by Harman Multimedia
On Stage is a "sound station for all iPods." Due in early September at under $200 (final pricing hasn't yet been determined), the circular On Stage connects to iPods (all generations) and iPod minis. With a double speaker system and 12 watts of power, the On Stage puts out high quality audio and can be used to sync your iPod with your Mac.

PhoneValet Message Center by Parliant Corp.
The PhoneValet Message Center (PVMC) costs $199 and turns a Mac into a telephone communications hub for homes and small businesses. This week Now Software and Parliant Corporation introduced a business telephone management solution based on the integration of Now Up-to-Date & Contact for Mac and the PhoneValet Message Center. By the way, look for new AppleScripts to enhance the features of the PhoneValet Message Center, President/CEO Kevin Ford told MacMinute.

Picture Rescue by Prosoft Engineering
Picture Rescue is a Mac OS X utility for recovering deleted digital photos. A great utility for digital photographers, Picture Rescue can recover deleted pictures from your digital camera media (single delete or delete all functions), from a reformatted digital media card (except XD cards found in Olympus and Fuji cameras), and from a corrupt digital media card (one that is no longer mounting or showing up when plugged into the camera or media reader). The $59 software works with all media card formats and adapters.

SketchUp 4.0 from @Last Software
SketchUp 4.0, the latest version of the "3D for the rest of us" software, includes such new tools as Follow Me, Texture Tweaker, Face Me, the Intersector and the Ruby Scripting Interface. SketchUp is used for 3D model creation, viewing, modification and presentation. Unlike 2D software, the SketchUp user is always working in 3D and can orbit around the model at any time with just a mouse click. See our July 14 overview for details.

Wheel by Spymac Network
Wheel consists of software and online services that include: a 3GB e-mail account (with POP3, IMAP and Webmail access); iCal and Web page hosting; and Internet-centric applications. The package, which ships on a $39 CD, includes WheelDrive, an "online hard drive" that integrates into both Mac OS X and Windows environments and includes 250MB of online storage. There's also WheelGuard, software for backing up to hard drives, CDs and DVDs.

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