SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — They call themselves the “Kickstarter Kids.”

They’re the group of entrepreneurs backed by Kickstarter, the group funding website — and there were a bunch of them at Macworld.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here’s a surprising statistic from Macworld 2011: about 40% of show goers don’t have a smartphone.

That was the number given to me at a meetup on the show’s last night. It was from someone who ran a competition all week in one of the booths. To win a prize, entrants had to download an app to their smartphone — and about 40% didn’t have a device that could download apps.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Down on the show floor, I ran into podcaster Tim Chaten, who was using an iPod touch to record video.

Chaten had his iPod touch mounted in a home-made camera rig, complete with an external microphone.

It looks like a pretty good setup for shooting quick and easy videos.

Here’s how he put it together:

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Even without Apple, Macworld 2011 was packed and there was a great vibe. Check out some of the most interesting products on the show floor.

Above: These wholesome twins at the ShedWorx booth were so nice. ShedWorx develops VoltaicHD video conversion software for the Mac.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here at Macworld, people are raving about the iStreamer, a small metal box that turns your iPhone or iPad into a high-fidelity audio source by connecting it to your home stereo.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Macworld 2011 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces and interesting products on the show floor.

Above: Three-year-old Hope Malabed takes a break with an iPad. There’s lots of kids with iDevices at Macworld.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Given the explosion of visual art inspired by mobile devices running Mac iOS and apps developed to help artists create work on them, it came as a bit of a surprise to see the way Macworld organizers chose to display digital art at the 2011 Conference and Expo.

The Expo’s art was placed in “digital art galleries” displayed on 27″ Samsung wide-screen TVs housed in unobtrusive kiosks, dispersed in the cavernous hallways of the 2nd and 3rd floors, where only a portion of the conference’s attendees — media personnel and those who purchased something other than Expo Only tickets — was likely to see it.

This is curious in the light of recent attention given to the digital creations of artists producing work on the Mac platform, which in years past could be seen framed, on brightly-lit wall space, in the middle of well-trafficked concourses.

Click on images in the gallery above to see artist and title information, as well as the curious distortion effects rendered in iPhone photographs of art (made, in many cases, ON iPhones) displayed in a digital TV slideshow.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Dolly Drive, a new cloud-based storage solution specially tailored to Mac specifications, launched Thursday from the Indie Spotlight at Macworld in San Francisco and looks to be one of the smartest plays — and best values — to come out of this year’s show.

Remote storage accessible from anywhere, any time, Dolly Drive is designed to work exclusively and specifically with Apple’s Time Machine, giving Mac users an inexpensive, seamless method for creating secure, redundant (in some cases, perhaps, primary) backups that can be accessed to restore digital files from any location with an Internet connection.

With tri-level security including authentication encryption, data transmission over secure tunnel and multi-leveled, complex authentication protocols for third-party access to data at Dolly data centers, a Mac user can feel confident in the security of data stored for as little as $10 per month for 250GB. Other pricing plans prove Dolly Drive is serious about delivering value for a service that should be attractive to computer users of any sophistication level.

No other remote storage solution we’re aware of is engineered to work directly through Time Machine, nor is any so dedicated to serving Mac users.

This is definitely one of the nicest finds we’ve seen at Macworld 2011 and well worth further exploration.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here’s a panoramic pic of the huge crowd that just went into the main auditorium at San Francisco’s Moscone Center West to hear what the comedian Sinbad has to say about, well, Macs presumably.

As much as I wish I could be inside getting the benefit of the big guy’s wisdom and a few yuucks beside, I’m trying to gather info on a few of the pretty interesting products we’re seeing at Macworld this year.

So I’ll have to leave it to others of my colleagues to fill readers in on what Sinbad had to allow at his keynote today.

But I thought you’d be pleased to know he can still draw a crowd.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — The biggest booth at Macworld used to be Apple’s. Until 2009, when Apple pulled out, the first thing attendees would see was Apple’s giant booth.

That spot is now occupied by, of all things, Sanho Corp., maker of the HyperMac line of external battery packs. The company is best known for being sued by Apple. Apple filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Sanho for using its MagSafe connector in the HyperMac batteries.

HyperMac’s booth is front and center of the show hall. It is draped in a couple of big banners, giving it by far the biggest presence at this show, which is made up mostly of small companies in small booths.

Getting sued by Apple must be good for business.