So Conan did his first San Francisco roadshow last night downtown at The Orpheum. And we loved it. And of course by “we”, I mean those bastards that actually got tickets for the show. Not me. I dutifully filled out the form at NBC weeks ago when he made the announcement. I got my friends to fill out the form. Near as I can tell, nobody I know scored a ticket.

I spent the day at Macworld today so you didn’t have to. No, no. No thanks are needed. It’s just who I am.

I made the trek into The City with several goals in mind: I wanted to talk to the Quickbooks guys about the issues in moving from Windows to Mac; to talk to the QB and FileMaker Pro guys about ways to move data back and forth between those apps; to check out some project management packages, see the Leopard and Microsoft Office 2008 demos, and to see how close I could get to the iPhone.

Are you sick of reading about the iPhone yet? I’m planning on trekking into The City tomorrow and hope to get a first hand look, but spent plenty of time last night reading the specs, watching the keynote video and going through the flash presentation that Apple posted. After the first blush of excitement several questions popped up that will require some answers between now and June when this puppy actually goes on sale.

Here’s my short list:

Steve walks out onto the auditorium stage, set just as the Moscone Hall will be on Tuesday, though the crowd today is only 2 people instead of thousands. He walks over to the stool in midstage and cracks open the water bottle sitting there. He takes a drink while he imagines the cheers from the crowd on Tuesday.

“Welcome!” The crowd cheers in his mind are still so deafeningly loud that he is sure nobody heard him. He raises his hands to quiet the crowd, waits a moment, and then again says, “Welcome!”

I’d gone months without an iPod after my last one got stolen this summer. It was soooo painful. Suddenly the music was gone. The Podcasts were gone. All replaced by commercial radio. Now I remember why I got an iPod. But I couldn’t bring myself to go without lunch for a few months in order to buy one of the current big disk versions. It just seems too likely that the Apple phone or the true “video iPod” is likely to be out soon.

My kids are living an asynchronous life. This dawned on me on the way to school the other morning. A song was playing on Radio Disney that both my 5 and 8 year old were singing along with. As it ended, my son yelled, “Play it again, daddy.”

“Ummm, I can’t,” I said, “that was on the radio.”

In a struggle to maintain some patience with my clearly nonsensical response, he said, “Daddy, just hit the backwards button.”

SAN FRANCISCO–The Apple fan community was run off the road this week by the announcement that Steve Jobs will change his shoe allegiance after 20 years of success. The announcement by Jobs coincided with some sort of product announcement by Apple and Nike. Steve wore his traditional jeans and black turtleneck, but the famed New Balance 991’s were nowhere in sight.

OK, its already proven that you geek freaks out there prefer to get your geeky news from the likes of Amanda and Cali and Amber. I guess that’s not too surprising since this geek demographic is skewed a bit toward the young guy logging more time on the keyboard than dating. Not you guys, of course. I mean you guys are cool. Its the other guys that need to see those rosy lips saying things like “motherboard” and “hack” to get them through the day.

OK, OK, the Web 2.0 mention is probably a little bit gratuitous. But hey these are new services so they have to be Web 2.0, right? So this will be the best review I’ve ever written for a service that I quit using. Just go with me a bit here, ok? It’ll all come together in the end. Really.

Moe, Larry, Shemp and Curly, representing in no particular or discernible order the Big Four music companies, shuffled into the office and arranged themselves around the small conference table. They talked quietly, shifting glances to the blue-jeaned Apple CEO sitting behind his desk, typing on his Mac. He doesn’t glance at the four men.

Finally he pushed away from his desk, grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge under his desk, and walked over to the chair at the head of the table. He smiled around the table.

I’m addicted to my Podcasts and am finding the really geeky stuff the most entertaining. Right now my favorite is Leo Laporte’s and Steve Gibson’s Security Now! Despite the title, it has nothing to do with the blue uniformed guy wandering your local mall, trying to look intimidating. Instead geek wiz Gibson talks with Leo once a week about computer/data/Internet security issues. Ever wonder how a LAN works or even the Internet itself? Want to understand encryption and how PGP and other desktop encryption engines work? And how safe they really are?

As you may know, Apple Computer and Apple Corps will be back in Court this week for the third time to fight over whether Apple Computer has been naughty in using that name for its music business. A secret closed door hearing last week brought all the main players together for a last ditch settlement discussion. Luckily, Lostinafog has once again (miraculously) been able to attain an account of that meeting…