The hidden gem in today's WWDC keynote

Today's keynote at Apple's WWDC in San Francisco brought plenty of cool tweaks to both the desktop and iOS devices. Rather than go through the extensive list of impressive features (which will be available on Apple's website shortly, I wanted to focus on one (relatively) hidden gem: Reminders. At first glance, Reminders is nothing more than a to-do list. However, it happens to be a location aware to-do list, meaning it can remind you of specific tasks when you arrive/leave a certain place, or happen to be in the vicinity of another place.

Imagine the possibilities if the APIs that make this work are also available to developers: You could set your phone to automatically text someone you're headed home at the end of the day, maybe even fire off emails when you're somewhere you don't want to be bothered, etc. It could almost be a location-based, mobile version of Automator.

Sure the other features will get more press, and will be more key in the ongoing market share battle with Android, but for me, this is the feature that makes it most feel like we're living in the future.

Want to go to WWDC 2010? You Might Want To Clear These Dates

Kudos to MacNN for a little bit of technology gumshoe-ing to discover what looks likely to be the dates for WWDC 2010. You see, Apple hasn't announced the dates for 2010's developer conference yet, but June/July is a safe bet, in general. However, some investigating reveals an events labelled simply as "Corporate event" is scheduled for June 28- July 2. "Corporate event" has been used in the past to block the WWDC dates on the Moscone Center calendar until Apple announces the event.

Of particular interest, if this conference followed the patterns of previous ones, the keynote could occur on June 29th, As MacNN points out, this is exactly three years to the day of the original iPhone release. Just a fun date to celebrate, or an indicator of the expiration of AT&T's exclusivity on the iPhone? Keep an eye on those T-Mobile/Verizon/Sprint execs' calendars!

Why WWDC 2010 Won't be Like WWDC 2009

No, we don't have any secret source divulging the big announcements at the next WWDC, a mere 11 months or so away. What we do have though, are technology changes from Apple that will change the way you get your news from WWDC in 2010.

First, it's always been a pet peeve for us that once upon a time, when Apple was smaller, and more people had dialup, they would stream the Macworld/WWDC keynotes for all Apple fans to enjoy. Then, as bandwidth costs dropped, and the company became more prosperous, the live streaming disappeared.

In its absence, a host of sites, ours included, have tried all sorts of ways to creatively bring the announcements to the masses. We've used live video leading right up to, and immediately following the Keynote, relying on the scores of livebloggers to fill in that big gap in between. But next year will be different. The auditorium will be filled with iPhone 3GS owners, phones quite capable of video streaming. While it's very likely a live streaming app will be available by then (perhaps even next month) even if that didn't happen, people now have a device capable of quickly uploading clips to youtube. People will be able to shoot the Keynote in short segments, and upload them seconds later. 

Audio streaming will also be possible. When anyone can stream audio from the event, what will Apple do? Will they line the walls with lead to cut out signals to the outside world? Will they give everyone a locker and force them to put their Apple product in it for the duration of the keynote? Of course not. (Well, let's not rule the lead out entirely.)

The rational thing for a company that is so concerned with image, and how its message is received would be to return live streaming of the event. Apple would then offer a professional live stream, and control the message at the same time.

Either way, WWDC 2010 won't be like WWDC 2009. At least not in how you read/hear/view it.

Post WWDC Keynote: Your thoughts

And another WWDC  keynote is in the books. What did you think? Our award for biggest surprise goes to the announcement of Snow Leopard as a $29 upgrade for existing Leopard users. Runner up: Scott Forstall in a lab coat. The most unsurprising part: the features of the new iPhone. Lacking any real unexpected whiz bang feature, the iPhone 3Gs (The "s" is for mainly the same. We kidd!) met expectations, without exceeding any of them.

And while it's great to have an iPhone at $99, it's a bit of a letdown for it to simply be the existing models.

Oh, and the MacBooks are updated. Long live firewire (for awhile...) What are your thoughts on today's announcements? Post below, or leave us a voicemail (we might use it in a future show) 408-627-8242. 

And a quick thank you to everyone who watched our live video stream today! Be sure to follow us on twitter @TDLLive for future live broadcasts, or just tune in next Monday night at 9PM ET / 6PM PT...

Live WWDC Video Added To Monday's Show

Not only will we be doing our in-studio live analysis of the WWDC Keynote announcements, but we'll also have live video from the convention center. We're teaming up with Dan Brusilovsky of the Apple Universe Podcast to bring you the first video of any new hardware/software on display.

And of course, we'll be following all of the live blog feeds around the web, so save the mouse clicks, and watch as we bring all the info together in one place. 

(Note: While our full broadcast begins at 12:30PM, I'd suggest getting in early, as our feed will be capped at 10,000 simultaneous viewers. Additionally, Dan might be able to bring us live updates earlier in the day.)

See you (well, you'll see us) Monday!