Every year as we walk the show floor, we keep part of our attention focused on what's cool, different, or otherwise worth mentioning outside of the major news of the event

After we snap out of our dreams of sugar plum fairies and New Year's celebrations, we'll be trekking off to San Francisco for the annual Macworld Expo and Steve Jobs Keynote of Apple Goodies

New Ebook Helps Mac Users "Sync Different" -- Maybe you've figured out how to sync songs to your iPod or Safari bookmarks via .Mac. But there's a whole universe of syncing options available to Mac users, and our latest ebook, "Take Control of Syncing in Tiger," brings that universe to your Macintosh, helping you with everything from iSync to the kitchen sync

By the time you read this, Tonya and Tristan and I will be on a well-deserved vacation trip to see family and friends in California, Oregon, and Washington (so we won't be reading much email for the next week)

For the most part, we don't play games - real life is challenging enough, and you can't beat its graphics or immersive experience. But there are still plenty of times when a computer game would be just the thing

And now for something completely different! Long-time TidBITS reader Simon Sunatori recently contacted us about doing a DealBITS drawing for a new pen he'd invented and patented, and while it wasn't Mac-related (other than coming in colors reminiscent of the original iPod mini), I was sufficiently intrigued to check it out

Pop quiz: can you think of a round, computer-driven device that has four buttons, is not made by Apple, and ought to be in every household by the end of the decade? In case you don't pay much attention to the domestic scene - and by domestic, I mean the low-down world of dust bunnies, dog hair, and cookie crumbs - the answer is Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner from iRobot. Roomba is about the size of a medium pizza, and about as thick as a pizza box

It's 11:00 PM, and we're in moderately heavy traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge on our way into New York City. Our directions, passed down in the family for generations (well, at least it seems that way) say to take the second exit after the bridge

This week marks our 15th anniversary of TidBITS, and although we remain somewhat astonished that we've maintained a weekly publication schedule through so many years, the evidence that we've done so is incontrovertible

Now that Adam lives in Ithaca, the only time we see each other in person is at January's Macworld Expo in San Francisco. When we met up for the last show, at a small gathering at Joe Kissell's apartment, one of the first things he said was, "Man, you've ruined it for the rest of us!" What had I done? He pointed to Joe's mantelpiece, which had a copy of the beautiful, professionally printed Christmas card that he and Tonya sent out

Credit card number theft is one of those events that seems to happen only to other people... until it hits you. That just happened to me, and the repercussions proved a bit more instructive and far-reaching that I would have initially anticipated. Awkward Dating -- The first hint that something was wrong came when Tonya was reviewing the charges on the MasterCard we use solely for business purchases

Back in 2000, when I decided that I needed a good digital camera, I checked around online and was utterly flummoxed by the incredible level of detail provided by the camera review sites

A few days ago I went down to the Tompkins County Public Library with Tonya, Contributing Editor Mark Anbinder, and our technical friends Keith Kubarek (a consultant who helped us decide on a content management system) and Oliver Habicht (an IT director at Cornell University Library) to test their new wireless network

We're finally caught up from our vacation on Kauai, Hawaii, and as much as I wish I could say that it was a truly relaxing and wonderful time, in reality I was utterly sick for all but the last few days, which put a major crimp in affairs

Tristan Turns Five -- At Macworld Expo in San Francisco five years ago, I had to leave a day earlier than planned to make it home in time for Tristan to be born

Last July's Macworld Expo in New York was, as I wrote back then, highly concentrated, with many fewer exhibitors and many fewer attendees. Apart from the raw numbers, though, the show went well, so I have no ill premonitions regarding the upcoming Macworld Expo in San Francisco

Sometimes we wish we could rewind life as easily as rewinding television programs recorded by TiVo. In last week's issue, Alex Hoffman's article "TiVo Series2 Improves on Original" discussed how the digital video recorder could organize recorded programs in groups when perusing the Now Playing list

In last week's coverage of Macworld Expo in New York, I ran out of space to discuss one of the more subtle differences between this year's Macworld Expo and previous ones: the banning of children 12 years of age and younger from the exhibit floor

No Issue Next Week -- We won't be publishing TidBITS next Monday to give everyone on the staff a break, particularly Jeff Carlson, who's just finishing iMovie 3: Visual QuickStart Guide and looking forward to a relaxing week culminating with his birthday on May 30th

Being a teenager means living in an awkward time when you no longer quite wish to behave like a child, but you boomerang between rebelling against adult society and revelling in the fascinating world of adulthood