Ways to Track the Apple Developers Conference Live

Tomorrow will be a tough day on the net…well, not for everyone, just the people interested in what Steve Jobs will be saying at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) Keynote. The WWDC runs from June 9-13 in San Francisco and promises to be full of explosive announcements. We already know that the 3G iPhone will be revealed, that there is probably a change coming for .Mac (perhaps called “Mobile Me”) and probably a couple more things up Steve’s sleeve (like the new Developer’s Mac – Mac Fusion). The Keynote starts at 10:00 am (Pacific Time).

The question, though, in my mind is how will we receive the information. Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity to attend, even being a “local” to the San Francisco Bay Area. So experiencing it first-hand will be out of the question. Therefore, like many of you, I will have to turn to various online options. But that is where my concern arises. I would think that by now, there would be many tried and true methods for getting real-time information, but these have failed in the past or have been only partially built out or have had the infrastructure complete crumble under the weight.

So, what to do? All I can say is I will probably be hitting quite a few different options and I figured that I would share them:

• Twitter – there is already a lot of press about whether or not Twitter will be able to withstand the load. They have recently come under pressure of having potentially shoddy architecture that doesn’t scale well. There may be some good people to follow during that time (like @leolaporte) . However, since using 3rd party applications like Twhirl or 3rd party web integrations like Hahlo 3 are limited by Twitter, if you want very up-to-the minute updates, you will either have to use the SMS option or visit Twitter directly on the web. My prediction is that Twitter is not going to scale very well during this time. Also, for caching your Twitter posts, should Twitter go down, check Twiddict.
• Summary sites – As Twitter starts to fail or you want to see a more focused view of what is going on, you should probably head over to Summize or Tweetscan. I’ve pre-populated a few links within these services with keywords “wwdc, apple, iphone or steve jobs”. Search on Summize; search on Tweetscan.
• Other social network tools – there are many other social networking sites and tools that will have plenty of conversations. A few that I will follow:
  • Friendfeed – be sure you have all the proper Apple/Mac/iPhone friends set up.
  • Plurk – relatively new to the social networking arena but very “hot” right now, this might be a good Twitter alternative to watch. Nice visual timeline might be good for this type of live event
  • Tumblr
  • Jaiku
  • …and there are others.
• Live Blogging sites – for those of you who are interested, there are a few new live-blogging sites that have popped up recently. Two that I’m following are:
  • CoverItLive – last time there was a big Mac Expo, these guys had a bit of scalability problems. However, their features are truly stellar and well rounded. They are definitely trying to make a rebound after the last time, with announcements of scalability and feature improvements. A quick Google search reveals quite a few big names that will be using CoverItLive tomorrow, most noteably TechCrunch.
  • ScribbleLive – a relative newcomer to the market, I have talked with these guys personally about their product. They have published a quick list of some companies using ScribbleLive for tomorrow’s announcements.
• Big Name Sites – these sort of go without saying. These sites will be there in person, shooting pictures and a solid bet on having pretty good coverage:
  • Gizmodo – here for live blog link
  • Engadget – live blog
  • TUAW – WWDC info pages
  • MacRumors – live page
  • ArsTechnica – live page
  • MacWorld – live page
  • MacDailyNews – live page
  • C|net – live page
  • TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) – live page
  • Others??? – Leave in the comments section
• IRC – Internet Relay Chat
  • There are ways to follow the updates via the “older school” IRC channels which are pure chatting. They can be a bit hard to follow. There are both software and web-based clients to use. I have hooked into Mibbit for a web-based version. Be sure to choose “Other Server” and put in the appropriate server. Then put in your Nickname and the IRC channel. A few are listed below:
  • Server: irc.macrumorslive.comchannel: #macrumors
  • Server: irc.arstechnica.com channel: #wwdc
• Audio Streams
  • iPhone Alley – live audio stream using uStream

For those who are interested, I will most likely be sending out updates from what I find out via Twitter or Ping.fm. Just following me by searching for “hightechdad” on any of the major social networks.

HTD says: Can’t wait to hear the announcements and seeing how the infrastructures can handle the traffic. Anyone want to donate a 3G iPhone to me? (grin!)