Today was day one of the formal part of MacWorld/iWorld. Yesterday was a day of all day sessions, and a day of the MacIT conference, which runs in parallel to the show. I’ve been tweeting out a bit today on my personal twitter account – @michaelrowe01. The great thing about today was that I did the kick off session and a few other talks, but also got to spend some time walking around on the show floor. I didn’t take many pictures, but I did get to meet a few cool apps and app developers.

The first was Tappd – This is not Untappd (my favorite beer tracking app), but a social application recommendations tool that is hoping to address the problem that many of us have with the app store… the inability to find cool apps. I had a chat with @martinuttly and it seems like they may have something here. The App is free and they do not take funding to “improve” app visibility in their app. All of the recommendations are based on Tapps, i.e. recommendations from people in your social network. You can follow people you trust, and get their recommendations. I have installed it, and if you want to follow me in the app, I am using my twitter ID above.

I also had a chat with the team from Cloak. Cloak 2 is a very easy fire and forget VPN solution for the Mac and iOS, that seems to have a really good model. For $2.99/mo you can get a 5GB account of secure data. For $9.99/month you get unlimited encrypted data. But what is the neatest feature for me is that you can configure you device easily and sync it across all of your devices. When you define your account you can indicate which networks you trust. When you device is on that network, it will not enable the VPN, but anytime you are not on those networks, the VPN kicks in automatically. Very cool!

I got to see the developers of my favorite must have app – 1Password. The guys at AgileBits, always have a team of people on the show floor who can answer your deepest technical questions. While this is MacWorld/iWorld they have a version for Windows, and for Android. The Android version is only a reader for now, but there are rumors that a fully 1Password 4 version should be coming out soon! I can now fully recommended 1Password for people regardless of what platform they are on.

And finally I got to see my buddies over at Reallusion. They are showing off their latest cool toy for the Mac – FaceFilter. This tool is great for people who don’t have the time to learn all the ins and outs of PhotoShop but would do want to touch up portraits and other pictures with people in them. I hope to get a chance to play with this app soon and provide a deeper review.

I will try and get a few pictures tomorrow…and will add them to the blog.