Huh, well, this is sort of embarrassing; have you been a bit puzzled by our complete and utter lack of pre-Expo slavering speculation in advance of the show kicking off next week? Perhaps you simply chalked it up to the harsh reality that, without Apple in attendance, the odds of any big Mac announcements are looking a little on the peaked side. Or maybe you just figured that we've matured substantially over the course of the past several months and so we're too cultivated to indulge in such petty and juvenile antiiiiimmmmmpphhWAAA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!! Hee hee (sniffle) sorry, we really thought we might be able to pull that one off with a straight face. Ahhh, good times.

But see, the truth is that we kindasorta just plumb forgot all about it. Really! The notion that the show starts in just a few days' time struck us as a complete surprise today, and we're already scrambling (well, in the loosest sense of the word) to scrape together a few hours next week to go check out the show floor, such as it might turn out to be. Like we said, Apple won't be there, so the general excitement factor is registering at about a 2.2 on the Schiller scale. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular metric, a 10 generally accompanies a real Stevenote following press leaks about a completely new product line, while a 1 indicates the level of excitement appropriate for, say, finding a 10-cents-off coupon for a brand of gum you never chew.

A 2.2 is roughly equivalent to the sort of excitement that comes from getting to peel the adhesive cover off the holes of a new disposable salt shaker at a table in Denny's.

That said, we have to admit that we're impressed with IDG World Expo's hustle; we just checked out the official Expo exhibitor list, and it's a lot less anemic-looking than it was as late as four short weeks ago. IDG had only signed 29 companies in mid-April, and there were 40 signed up as of the beginning of last month, but now there are 69, including a couple new heavy hitters-- Microsoft and MYOB, as touted in last week's IDG press release. It appears that the "Expo" part of the "Conference & Expo" might not be a total waste of space after all.

But don't get all giggly for a happy ending just yet, because Think Secret reveals that "Microsoft and MYOB were given booth space for free just so their names could be added to an exhibitor list that's light on big developers." (One assumes that IDG made a similar offer to Apple, and Apple still wouldn't come.) Meanwhile, morale among the vendors sounds like it could use a little bit of a boost: "already Boston Expo exhibitors are talking like they will never exhibit at a future Boston show, if there is a show next year. Two exhibitors Think Secret spoke with said they have already been told by IDG World Expo that next week's show will not make a profit." So if there is going to be a Cinderella story, this may be the last chance ever.

Not that we actually expect Apple to come swooping in on a big white horse or anything, you understand; for one thing, as we mentioned a month ago, Apple is gearing up to be an exhibitor at DV Expo, instead, most likely because it feels some sort of homing instinct to return to Javits every summer, sort of like those swallows coming back to Capistrano. But mostly we're not optimistic because we've always suspected that Apple's whole "we hate Boston" spiel was never more than a ploy to extricate itself from the obligation of spending all that cash on exhibiting at two domestic Expos a year; if it can kill the show outright, Apple gets to back out without looking like a cheapskate.

We could well be wrong, of course, and if we spot any glass slippers on the show floor next week, we'll be sure to give you a holler...