Today I thought I would give you a preview of MacExpo which is on this week in San Francisco. This annual gathering of geekdom gets a lot of attention, partly because it is the event where many new Apple products are announced, and partly because Steve Jobs gives the keynote speech, allowing those who are so inclined to indulge in some hero-worship. For these reasons, there will be plenty of coverage on websites and in the papers of the goings on at the Moscone Center in the coming week. So to prepare you for the excitement, I thought I would give a little tour of the best places to look for Apple-related information (for all you techies – you know who you are). I am also going to visit myself later in the week, so look out for a report from the trenches too.

A good summary site that doesn’t indulge in too much hype is the Guardian’s onlineblog. They have a reporter attending the conference, and give a nice summary of rumours and other information.

To get the full Apple experience, go to Apple’s site to watch Steve Job’s keynote speech. Unlike previous years, this one is not being broadcast live, but will be available as a Quicktime file from 6pm PST on Tuesday (or 2am GMT Wednesday). Apple will also have the latest new product information on their site soon after the speech – or at least they have in the past.

For those with a more serious Mac obsession, macrumours carries all sorts of gossip and guesses about what will happen next, and The Cult of Mac is a good blog on the Wired Magazine site.

So what are we likely to see? Well, attempting to synthesise the most popular rumours, rather than create any new ones, we are looking at a small flash-based iPod, around 1GB in capacity, an Apple-Motorola phone collaboration, a possible Apple media server and a possible business software suite to rival Microsoft Office. Of course, this is all just fevered speculation at this point, so watch this space…