I probably saw only a handful of non smart phones and those with smart phones, probably 60%-70% were probably iPhones.  I’m thinking I only saw one other person with a Motorola Droid.  During lunch and during all the breaks, a good majority of people were on the phone checking back with the office or on their phone checking their twitter feeds, Facebook accounts, rss feeds, etc.  These times have been traditionally to network with other people, pitch their company to new people.

I think the biggest change that I saw at this conference was the amount of laptops.  It wasn’t too long ago that only a hand full of people had laptops because they were so expensive.  I remember getting my first laptop…  a Pentium 200 Mhz generic brand.  It probably had 30-45 min of battery power.  Even in the last few years, the advancement in laptops has change dramatically as well.  People with laptops that were only bought a year or two ago were searching for plugs because their batteries couldn’t last that long.  I even heard someone say, “Can I plug this in for a second while I swap out my battery?”  Those with newer Macs or Netbooks were good for the conference.

As I mentioned before, I only saw a handful of people with iPads.  I imagine, next f8 conference, there will be a whole lot more.

Facebook is announcing and showing off some new tools  that will make it easier for websites to integrate Facebook into their site.  You can find out all the information at on the F8 site.

I’ll do write another post on the technology I’ve seen at this conference.  I haven’t been to many of these conferences but it’s interesting to see how things have changed in general.  Everyone with a smart phone (mostly iPhones), laptop (a lot of Macs), etc.  I’ve only seen like 3 iPads. 

This little short trip takes me to Philadelphia again.  Why Philly again?  That will be left for a future post.  This time, I made some decisions.  I left the DSLR at home and just brought the little point and shoot.  The big question is, what about the computer?  I do a have a project that I have been madly coding away to finish.  I made an interesting decision to bring  the netbook and not the Macbook Pro.  One of the reasons why I decided to do this is because I knew I would be walking around a lot and a part of me thought about the potential of something happening while walking around a big city.  As far as that potential is concerned, for the record, I haven’t threatened or paranoid at all this trip, but I must say, walking around with a netbook is awesome as  far as the weight is concerned.

Now for a little technical (or as some would like to say, geeky or nerdy stuff).  Would the netbook be powerful enough?  So far, it’s been alright.  At times, it’s a little maddening to wait for things to load.  On top of that, it’s Windows!  As far as Photoshop is concerned, I’ve been using the ever popular GIMP.  The night before I left, I had to make sure that I synced up my work from my Macbook Pro to this little netbook using SVN.  The big difference is of course the difference in screen size.  My workspace has been reduced from a 15.4″ screen to a 10.1″ screen (although I am borrowing my friend Matt’s monitor).

With all that aside, it’s been an interesting experiment to live a little bit lighter on the tech side, although if you consider what I still travel with, I still have quite a bit of tech with me.  Maybe the iPad isn’t such a bad thing at all.  I know I wrote that long blog post concerning the iPad: iWant vs iNeed, but I’m starting to come around to seeing the potential usefulness.  In other words, I’m making more excuses for myself to get one (which I still feel that I will hold out as long as possible on getting one).

One thing is for sure… I’ve definitely been traveling a lot lighter.  I’m definitely taking less pictures as well.  You gain some, you lose some.

Until the next destination.