And the iPhone was obviously a great communications device. I used its SMS and phone features when I needed to send or receive an urgent message or to actually speak with someone. I used the clients and (iTunes links) to send out updates about things I saw at the show (here's an )--a number of Macworld editors' "tweets" appeared on video displays around Moscone Center. Finally, I used the iPhone's e-mail client to keep up with the hundreds of messages I received each day of the Expo; to send info to my fellow editors about interesting products I saw; and for non-urgent communication.
A quick aside: Using the iPhone for e-mail had two significant benefits. First, it meant I could leave my laptop in my hotel room, significantly lightening the load I had to lug around. But it also made it easier for me to check my e-mail regularly: I didn't have to put all my bags down, pull out my laptop, and search for a decent Wi-Fi signal. With the iPhone, much of my e-mail management was done during "down time"--while grabbing a bite to eat, waiting to speak with a vendor, or standing in line--that would have otherwise been wasted. So instead of just skimming subjects and dealing with the urgent messages, I was able to read and deal with many messages as they arrived. (Yes, Expo is that crazy for us, which explains why most of us fall into a deep, deep sleep at the end of the week.) Whereas previous Expos left me with an overflowing Inbox upon my return to the office--several years I had more than 1,000 messages waiting at week's end--by lunchtime this Monday I was down to 20 or so messages to deal with.
The iPhone also helped me manage my treks around the Expo floors. To understand this part, you need some background: Each Expo, the Macworld editorial staff visits nearly every vendor on the show floor to see their products and to give them some one-on-one face time. To prepare, we create a spreadsheet listing every vendor along with booth number and product area; each Macworld editor then volunteers to visit particular booths based on that editor's beats. Given that my beats include , , and , I had more than 100 vendors to personally visit this year. That's a lot of booths to keep track of.
In years past, I printed out this spreadsheet and marked off, with a pen, each booth I visited. I also carried a Macworld Expo floor map and conference program with me to figure out exactly where each vendor was located. This year, I used a combination of two iPhone apps, and , to find those vendors and track my booth visits.
As I noted in my review of ToDo, it syncs with the online service ; it turns out that Toodledo lets you import tasks from files. So I saved my section of the Macworld vendor-visit spreadsheet as a CSV file sorted by booth number, imported it into my Toodledo account, and synced ToDo. The result was a to-do list on my iPhone with each "task" displaying the booth number and name of a vendor I was assigned to visit. After stopping by a particular booth, "checking off" that task moved it to the Completed section of the list.