Macworld was fun, frantic, and exhausting — just like it always is. The show was full of interesting gadgets and software, as well as a huge number of things I would be hard pressed to care less about. Here’s a run-down of a few things we found interesting or surprising.

Biggest surprise: The unbelievably large number of companies whose express purpose in life appeared to be selling iPod and iPhone cases. I mean, come on…

Coolest scanner: Fujitsu continues to surprise me with cool document scanners. Their newest, the ScanSnap S300M, is so tiny that you can easily bring it with you on the road and use it with USB power from your laptop. This is a roll-fed scanner (not a flatbed), so it’s designed for documents, not images. But after talking to the folks at Fujitsu, I’m convinced that it could scan photos pretty darn well in a pinch.

Fun Media Moment: I was interviewed by a guy from Forbes magazine about the new MacBook Air. Unfortunately, I liked the new finish on the laptop a little too much (it really is velvety) and ended up in trouble with my wife after the article described me as stroking it lustily. (How often does the word “lustily” show up in a business magazine!?)

Adobe’s booth was a happenin’ place, of course, though each time I walked by they appeared to be showing the newest version of Photoshop Elements. I am constantly amazed at that software; even though Photoshop can do it all, Elements makes a number of complex photo-editing features so simple that I think many creative professionals may want to use it.

Most astonishing software-to-be: GridIron Software demoed their Flow software, which watches what you do and remembers relationships among your files. For example, if you place a PSD image into an Illustrator file, then place that AI file into InDesign, then make a PDF of that file, Flow knows… and it can later tell you which PSD and AI file was used in that final PDF. If you try to delete the AI file, it’ll warn you saying, “Hey, did you know that this is currently being used in this InDesign file?” It’s amazing software. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really exist yet. They hope to be shipping this coming summer.

How about you? Were you at Macworld? If so, what noteworthy software and hardware did you see?