In the cheap seats for Jobs' keynote

Greetings from the only media person voluntarily occupying the spillover room for Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote address. (It has a Wi-Fi connection, and CNET News.com has a fondness for real-time news.)

Faced with an unusually large press turnout for this year's shindig, Apple Computer exiled most of the second-string media--you know, managing editor of the East Kalamazoo Mac User Group newsletter--to a separate room a kilometer or so from where Jobs is talking. There, they get to listen to classics such as "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" before watching the Apple CEO bluster live on a big-screen TV.

Apparently, this is not standard-issue Macworld protocol. Typical comments at the door were on the order of, "I come here all way from Bad Wurtzenburg am Steir! You are telling me now I am not even in zee same room as Herr Jobs?"

We were unable to confirm reports there was a whole separate room for writers from Think Secret.