Today, Apple announced the launch of the 3.0 software upgrade for its Apple TV, which offers a redesigned user interface and compatibility with Apple’s recently released iTunes LP and iTunes Extras, along with Genius Mixes and Internet radio. Shortly thereafter, Apple also released iTunes 9.0.2, which adds support for Apple TV’s 3.0 software, a new “dark” viewing option for Grid View, and additional accessibility support.

The redesigned main menu in Apple TV’s 3.0 software offers direct access to recently rented and purchased movies, as well as a variety of other content. iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras are available in full-screen viewing for both audio and video titles. The addition of Genius Mixes in Apple TV, a feature which was first introduced by Apple last month with iTunes 9, allows users to listen to automatically generated playlists from their iTunes libraries. Thousands of Internet radio stations are now also accessible within Apple TV with the new software update. Finally, another new feature included is enhancements for viewing photos, as the Apple TV can now make use of the Faces and Events features in Apple’s iPhoto Mac software.

Along with adding support for the Apple TV 3.0 software and the other two new features/additions, iTunes 9.0.2 also once again breaks syncing with the Palm Pre.

Read [Engadget]

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Author: David Pogue
Publisher: O’Reilly
Publication Date: January 2009
ISBN 10: 0-596-15403-8
ISBN 13: 9780596154035
Pages: 304
Price: $24.99 print, $19.99 e-book

David Pogue is quite the popular fellow. Newspapers love him, NPR loves him, Apple users love him, and apparently the camera loves him…or he loves the camera. David has written numerous books in O’Reilly’s The Missing Manual series, but he does seem to focus on photography and video. A few months back, I received a review copy of David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual, but it sat on my bookshelf behind a slew of other reviews I’ve allowed to pile up. But now that summer’s here and my camera’s out more often, I decided to check this out to see what tips David had for me this time. Ends up, I should’ve looked at this book sooner, because it may be the most practical Pogue book I’ve ever read.

That, of course, is not a knock on any others. But if I’m reading a book on iPhoto or iMovie, the usefulness of the book is limited to the software. Yes, David tends to include chapters on how to first film something good or shoot something good before you bother to learn how to edit it, but the focus of those books is rightly on how to use software. With Digital Photography David has more room to cover photography terminology, practices and rules you should know before you bother learning how to apply transitions or when to use the Ken Burns effect.

It’s actually a bit odd reading a book like this, because along with the freedom of not having to focus on one piece of software comes the fact that you also can’t focus on one piece of equipment. There are hundreds of digital cameras out there, a couple dozen of which are likely pretty good. So, what features should be covered? Is it worth talking about nighttime photography when so many cameras simply can’t handle it? Highlights warnings? Prime lenses? The answer here is obviously “Yes,” as David covers them all, albeit at different degrees. This is a book for beginners, after all, and…well, I’m not sure that’s a fair way to put it. It’s a book that helps you make sense of the technology, the capabilities, the limitations and the theories behind digital photography. Pretty much anyone can benefit from that.

To illustrate this point, here’s the table of contents:

Part One: The Camera

• Camera Kinds
• The Only Features that Matter

Part Two: The Shoot

• Taking the Shot
• The Ten Decisions
• The Anti-Blur Chapter
• How They Did That
• The SLR Chapter

Part Three: The Lab

• Camera Meets Computer
• The Digital Shoebox
• Fixing Your Photos

Part Four: Your Audience

• Photos on Paper—and Everything Else
• Electronic Photos

Part Five: Appendixes

• Where to Go From Here?
• The Top Ten Tips of All Time
• Photo Credits

As you can see, although you’re not likely to need every chapter, beginning to intermediate photographers are bound to find some use. When my wife and I decided to make the push into the world of SLR, I did enough research to know what to look for, but not enough to learn how to properly use what I bought. This book was wonderful at making the technology useful to me. Not only does it explain certain features and techniques better than the manuals do (of course), but it tells you when what’s appropriate, and offers tricks on how to get shots it would’ve taken me years to discover on my own (see Part Two, Chapter Five: The Anti-Blur Chapter). Would I have ever figured out how to create a makeshift tripod using string, a bolt and a washer? No.

Beyond such tricks, David does a great job of teaching you how to use your camera without actually ever talking about your specific camera. Unfortunately, this also means that he’ll detail some wonderful technique that can’t be accomplished with what you have, making you wish you’d paid that extra hundred bucks for the next step up.

And, of course, David does this with his normal flair. His writing is friendly. It’s accessible. He’s a great teacher. And when he echoes something you already knew, you’ll become his buddy. (Hey, David, I’m with you on turning off the flash. Nothing amused me more when I lived in NYC and I could see all those flash bulbs popping atop the Empire State Building at night…people trying to light up New York City from 86 stories up with the flash on their Kodak Disc Camera.)

Ultimately, then, this book proves useful at three different points. First, when you’re researching a camera to buy and need to know what to look for (hint, the megapixel count simply isn’t that important); second, after you’ve purchased the camera and want to learn how to take better photos; and third, after you have the photos and want to know what to do with them. That third bit is better served by books dedicated to your software of choice, but this book does cover some options to help you chose said software.

David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual is a fun read that makes takes the intimidation out of learning digital photography, and will correct you on the many things you’ve learned incorrectly over the years. If you’re looking to buy a camera, buy this first. If you’ve just bought a camera, buy this second. You (and the people who look at your pictures) will be better off for it.

Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Apple today released an update to iMovie, their video editing program that’s part of the iLife suite of applications. The new version fixes a problem where attempting to open projects with a file size of 0KB would cause iMovie to quit unexpectedly at launch. Version 8.0.2 also addresses a problem where full-screen mode could not be accessed on some systems.

The 24.1MB download is available via Software Update or from the Apple support website.

Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

For those of you who missed it (indeed, I did until just now), Apple has released updates to their core iLife/iWork apps. iWeb, iMovie and iPhoto have all been updated, along with iLife Support, as have Keynote, Pages and Numbers. The updates were posted to Apple’s website on March 26th, and should be showing up in your Software Update.

iLife update details:

• iWeb 3.0.1 - This update addresses issues when publishing to an FTP server and other minor issues.
• iMovie 8.0.1 - This update improves overall application stability as well as addressing minor issues related to usability.
• iPhoto 8.0.2 - This update improves overall stability and addresses minor issues in a number of areas, including Faces, Places, photo sharing, and slideshows.
• iLife Support - This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues. It is recommended for all users of Aperture, iLife ’09, and iWork ’09.

iWork update details:

• Keynote 5.0.1 - This update improves reliability when deleting Keynote files, copying slides between presentations, or working with transitions and builds.
• Pages 4.0.1 - This update improves reliability when working with EndNote X2 or MathType 6, or deleting Pages files.
• Numbers 2.0.1 - This update improves reliability when deleting Numbers files, importing Microsoft XLSX files, customizing the toolbar, working with some functions, or working with charts.

Along with Software Updates, the downloads are available directly from Apple’s support site.

Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching, so why not get creative with your Valentine’s gift? With iLife there are so many possibilities for you, but we’ve got one other idea, too.

iLife

GarageBand is introducing basic lessons. It’s never been easier to learn to play the piano and guitar right on your Mac. You can follow along at your own pace that teaches your lessons through the HD video instruction, synchronized notation and animated onscreen instruments. Go through a series of nine lessons that will prepare you to play the entire song. You can slow it down or repeat any part you want until you’ve got it right. When you’re more comfortable you can play a romantic song for your girlfriend or practice your skills with a complete virtual band.

What woman wouldn’t love for her boyfriend or husband to write and record especially for her? There are so many different things you can do with this program, so skip the sappy card and over-priced chocolate, and create something your Valentine will never forget.

With iMovie you can create your own home movie for that special someone. Whether it’s your wedding, an anniversary or just a video of your date at the beach, you can make any memorial moment special just by creating your own home movie to burn onto a blank DVD so you guys can watch it anytime you’d like. iMovie is easier than before, just drag-and-drop and edit your movies. You can now add more clips to your projects and insert or replace a pop-up menu.

Photos are very important to everyone. With iPhoto ‘09 you can organize all your photos based on who is in them. That makes it easy for you to add names to your photos. And, it helps you find the people you’re looking for, even if your photo libraries are large. It’s the easiest way to organize and create a special slide show with your favorite photos to recreate those special memories.

Once you’ve added names, just click the Faces view to see the corkboard that will have a snapshot for each person you’ve named. You can even flip the snapshot to add a person’s last name and Facebook ID.

Digital Scrapbooking

A lot of women can’t get enough of scrapbooking, so why not get your significant other iRemember Digital Scrapbooking 2.0? It’s super easy to use; all you have to do is drag and drop your pictures from iPhone, crop them, and arrange them onto your page. It’s the easiest way for you to preserve memories of your family…and it’s something you can do together. This gift will be a surefire way for you to earn some brownie points.

Valentine’s Day will be here shortly; have you decided what gift you’re going to get that special someone in your life? Head over to Apple.com to find the perfect gift for someone special for Valentine’s Day.

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One of iPhoto ‘09’s key features is Faces, which uses face detection and recognition to organize photo albums by face. This may not be the highest on people’s “want” lists for iPhoto ‘09, but it certainly is a cool idea. You want to look at photos of John? Just click on his snapshot on the corkboard. Personally, though, I’m having trouble finding it useful in most practical situations.

When Phil Schiller demoed Faces at Macworld, the photos he was using were well lit, head-on photos, and the subjects were basically making the same face every time. For people who have iPhoto libraries chock full of mannequins, this may help out quite a bit. But for people like me, who use iPhoto for snapshots (I use Aperture for more professional photography), it becomes kind of a pain.

Phil would have had us believe that iPhoto was magic and automatically found tons and tons of photos, but this didn’t seem to the the case for me. Once Faces had finished it’s scan, I started naming a few people in my photos. After naming people in about 20 photos, I returned to Faces to see how things were going. Turns out, it had found a bunch of photos, most of them with the wrong people in them. In quite a few photos, it had completely missed a huge, well-lit face, and marked a tiny face in a photograph in the background, which I found bizarre.

Overall, Faces took way too much coddling, and I wouldn’t trust it to get people right on a new import of photos. I spent most of my time not confirming faces, but going through my photos and naming people over and over, showing iPhoto new faces, and deleting the faces it found in trees and bookshelves, in hopes that it would become smarter. But it really didn’t. The final straw for me was when I came to a set of about ten photos, all taken within seconds from a tripod with the self timer. There was basically no movement from picture to picture, and yet, iPhoto was unable to recognize even a single one of us from one picture to the next, even after I had named people three times.

Bottom line, Faces would be great if you do professional portraits and want a quick way of organizing them, or if you love taking pictures of friends and want some way to easily find them and don’t really care about perfection. For me, there was so much teaching going on without iPhoto learning anything that I think it might have been just as easy to manually tag everyone in every photo…not like that’s far off from what I did.

How has your iLife/iPhoto ‘09 experience been going? Sound off in the comments below.

Product [iPhoto]

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Apple has been touting the universal “logo” for years, and promised to support both Intel and PowerPC during the (quite long) transition to Intel. However, the end of this transition may be near, as evidence of Apple moving to Intel-only software is clearly appearing.

Within iLife ‘09, and more specifically GarageBand ‘09, the Artist Lessons/Learn to Play feature seems to require an “Intel-based Mac with a dual-core processor or better.” Not only is this cutting PowerPC users out of the loop, but Apple is also cutting the (early) single-core Intel Macs out of the loop. Learn to Play is quite a prominent feature of GarageBand ‘09, and in itself encourages users to take out their wallets and upgrade. Lessons go for $4.99 each, and are available from an Artist Lessons store.

iLife ‘08 cut out support for G4 Macs in iMovie ‘08, supporting Intel Macs and G5 processors. This seems to be a continuing trend, with Apple constantly cutting support for PowerPC, encouraging a switch to intel.

Product [iLife ‘09] Via [Ars Technica]

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When Phil Schiller unveiled the new Faces features in iLife ‘09 at the Macworld Expo 2009 keynote, my first thought was of my wife. “It’s going to confuse her with the wrong person,” I thought, “and I’ll have to hear about it for the next three weeks.” Well, that wasn’t the case. iPhoto ‘09 seemed to understand the problems it could cause and decided to err on the side of caution when seeking her face in my iPhoto library. But is it easier to identify door knobs than my wife’s face?

Seriously, Apple? The door knob? I can understand confusing a couple of faces, but iPhoto looked at the door knob on the pantry door in my kitchen, and apparently saw something else. Something evil! Maybe. I’ve since looked at it closely, hoping to find a ghost or the face of Jesus or something cool like that, but no. It’s just a door knob.

I’m not sure if that’s more or less surprising than the fact that it also thinks my son’s hand is a face:

I suppose it’s possible he drew little eyes and a mouth and was doing that old hand puppet comedy bit, or maybe he caught and was throttling the Ghost of the Haunted Pantry Door Knob. I suppose I’ll just have to keep taking pictures of his hand until it either makes me laugh with funny voices or is finally freed to cross over into the light.

And speaking of ghosts, is there one hiding up here in the tree?

I’m really kind of creeped out by the thought of some face hiding in the trees above a children’s Easter egg hunt, but I’m glad iPhoto is able to find it. I now know not to go back to that Easter egg hunt this year. I also know not to buy my children Tonka trucks, because apparently they’re putting subliminal face images in their packaging.

I must admit that I really don’t see it, but I do feel a sudden urge to smoke some Marlboros, and I think I’m beginning to understand that maybe Islam is the light.

But it’s not all about finding ghosts and exposing subliminal advertising with iPhoto. It’s also about pointing out that, yes, Flash Gordon really is “just a man with a man’s courage,” and a man’s face. In the picture below, iPhoto found Flash Gordon from the comic strip on my T-shirt, then actually correctly identified him again in a different photo of me wearing the same T-shirt.

I think that’s a good thing, though. Flash has always felt like family to me, and it’s good to know I’ll be able to find him amongst photos of my family and friends.

Now, does all this mean that Apple needs to do a bit more work on iPhoto ‘09’s Faces features? Are you kidding me? This is awesome. I think they should play this up. It should find your face and ask, “Is this Johnny Depp?” It should find your wife’s butt and say, “Dude, you know you wanna tap that!” It should find your door knob and yell, “For the love of all that’s holy, don’t open that door!” I suppose that all would upset some people, but I’d get a kick out of it.

In the meantime, Flash and I have some ghosts to catch.

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Having issues with GarageBand ‘09? Then you’ll be happy to hear that Apple issued an update for it today.

Here are the details:

About GarageBand Update

This update improves overall stability and addresses specific issues with downloading lessons from the Learn to Play Lesson Store. It is recommended for all GarageBand 09 users.

Nothing too major here, but any issues users may have experienced in relation to downloading lessons should be fixed now.

In order to get the update, just run Software Update from the Apple system menu and follow the prompts, or click the following link to download it manually.

Download [GarageBand Update]

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GarageBand ‘09 is one of the three apps that received major updates in iLife ‘09. This year, Apple has set its sights on music teachers with Learn to Play and the Lesson Store. Now with GarageBand’s help, you might finally learn how to play the guitar.

When you first launch GarageBand ‘09, you’ll be greeted with a quick tutorial video. More are available on Apple’s site, but chances are that you just want to dig in and see what’s different. I agree.

The first difference you’ll notice is the New Project Window. Here you can choose to start a new project like normal, use Magic GarageBand, open an existing project, or one of the three new options. The new options are Learn to Play, Lesson Store or iPhone Ringtone.

Learn to Play is basically a set of musical lessons produced by Apple. By default, you’ll have one Piano and Guitar lesson each. Just select one of the them and you’re on your way to learning an instrument.

Since I’m already fluent in guitar, I chose the Piano lesson. While you don’t need one, you’ll definitely want to have a USB keyboard for this and the rest of GarageBand. A number of companies make USB keyboards in different sizes, usually 25 to 88 keys. Currently, I have a 25 key keyboard which I never properly learned how to play. The lessons say this will be sufficient to use throughout all of the lessons. I tend to doubt that, but we’ll see.

The lesson is decent, though if you have previous musical experience, you might get bored quickly. Even still, I think this could prove to be an effective way to at least get yourself started with either the piano or guitar.

More lessons are available through the Music Store. Best of all, there are nine lessons for both instruments that don’t cost a penny. You can also purchase less generic lessons from artists who will teach you to play their own songs. This isn’t brimming with content quite yet, but it’s a start.

If you choose the iPhone Ringtone project starter then you’ll be presented with a project for making, what else, ringtones. Apple is basically encouraging you to use sound effects and loops to create ringtones, but you’re certainly welcome to get your hands dirty and create some truly original work as well. To be honest, this preset seems a little pointless.

The interface of GarageBand ‘09 has been tweaked as well. The loop browser is now, more comfortably, on the right side instead of the bottom. It also is clothed in shades of gray, the way I think it ought to be. The whole interface seems more clean now. They’ve tidied things up and made it prettier. I’m actually a little bit surprised that those wooden bars on the sides of the window are still there. Maybe in ‘10.

When adding tracks to your project, you now you have a new third choice, Guitar. This is just like adding a real instrument, but it gives you access to a whole bunch of new guitar amps and effects that are fully tweakable. The amp and pedals are represented with pictures, making them delicious. This won’t be replacing anyone’s half stack and pedal board anytime soon; but just like the lessons, it’s a great place to start. Now, all you need is an interface with which to record your guitar (or other instrument).

One quick tip. If you try out the new guitar mode and can’t figure out how to actually hear yourself playing through it without recording first, just do this. Select the picture of the amp before hitting the edit button, and now you can set your preference for monitoring.

Overall, these are all very welcome additions to GarageBand. Basically, the news here is Learn to Play. The extra guitar effects are nice, but we already had effects in previous versions, and these aren’t that much better. They just didn’t look this pretty before. I think a lot of people will enjoy the musical lessons, myself included. And while GarageBand may be able to teach you to play guitar, it won’t teach you how to act like a Rock Star. I’ll save that lesson for a different day.

Product [iLife ‘09]

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iPhoto ‘09 is full of new features, but the two biggest features are the new ways of sorting your photos. They are Faces and Places. Let’s take a look.

Faces

The first new feature I wanted to try out in iPhoto ‘09 was Faces. Call me vain, I don’t care, but I want to make sure that my Mac knows who its master is. It also doesn’t hurt that I have a fair amount of pictures of myself.

In short, Faces is great, and it works better than I expected it to. Yes, for some reason it initially confused me with Tony Bennet, but that’s alright, I’ll let it slide. Honest mistake. I was really impressed by some of the pictures in which it found me. Take, for instance, this one:

I took that on my iPhone at… well, I could show you on a map now! Sorry, back to the point. This is a small picture, and my face is distorted in a circular mirror. But after less than 30 seconds of confirming my face on numerous photos, it found this one. Wow. That said, it won’t get everything. Don’t expect it to find the side of your face, otherwise you might be disappointed. Besides, didn’t your mother teach you to point your beautiful face at the camera!?

Places

The second new feature I went to is obviously Places. The next best thing to my Mac being able to identify me amidst a group of people is it to know where I’ve been. If you have an iPhone and you use it to take pictures, then you will be very happy. While it hasn’t always been a feature of the first gen iPhone, many of your photos will be already be geotagged. iPhoto automatically takes that GPS data and makes sense of it, placing it right on a map. It really does a great job of telling where you are. Now, this is a little bit of an unfair example, but check out where this pic of Cali Lewis and me was taken.

That’s right, the Moscone Convention Center. I was expecting San Francisco, or maybe the street. But again, wow.

This is powered by Google Maps, so you’re likely pretty familiar with the maps already. Zooming in will center on the last pin selected on the map. You can choose from terrain, satellite or hybrid. If you want to see the pictures from an area, just click “Show Photos” and you’ll be taken to that collection. You can also choose a location with an iTunes like hierarchical display. But why would you want to do that?

First Impression

iPhoto ‘09 doesn’t really seem that different from ‘08, but that’s because ‘08 was already a great program. This version brings some pretty interesting features, namely Faces and Places. I think it’s highly likely that these two features alone are what is driving sales on iLife ‘09. Do you need either of these features? The practical answer, probably not.

The real answer? Of course you do. Are Faces and Places highly productive and necessary features? No. But they are flashy and fun and show off the wonders and power of the Mac beautifully. They give you two more “Hey, look at what my Mac can do” features with which to shame your PC-enslaved friends.

Product [iLife ‘09]

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I finally got my copy of iLife ‘09 (thanks to the weather), and the first thing I’m going to do is play around with iPhoto. Why don’t you join me?

The very first thing you’ll stumble upon after you install and launch iPhoto ‘09 is a welcome screen.  iPhoto ‘09 will recommend that you go to a special web page to watch some tutorial videos.

You’ll find out all about Faces, Places and other great features of iPhoto ‘09. Check it out, it’s a great overview for anyone who’s unsure of whether they need the upgrade. Actually, there are a ton of videos that Apple has created to get you familiarized with not only iPhoto ‘09, but the whole iLife ‘09 suite. Definitely check them out.

There really are a lot of awesome features packed in here, and I’m very excited to finally get a chance to play around. More to come soon…

Product [iLife ‘09]

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While at the Apple Store today, purchasing iLife ‘09, I made an interesting discovery. Apple seems to have “forgotten” about iDVD on the iLife ‘09 Box.

At the Macworld 2009 Keynote, earlier this month, Phil Shiller didn’t even mention iDVD. We found that odd, considering iLife has been a suite of five applications for a few years.

The same is shown when visiting Apple’s iLife page; it says “iLife ‘09. iPhoto. iMovie. Garageband. iWeb. All part of every new Mac.”

It has been a feeling of mine for some time that Apple wants all media to be shared via the internet, and not via DVDs, and I think the exclusion of iDVD from the iLife ‘09 box helps to confirm my theory.

The only one mention of iDVD on the entire box, is in the fine print, listing iDVD as part of the Contents; “Contents: DVD containing iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, iWeb, iDVD and QuickTime…”

Full Story » | Written by Jordan Satok for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Today, Apple officially released iLife ‘09, which includes iMovie ‘09. They also pulled their free download of iMovie HD for iLife ‘08 users. I guess it’s time to move on.

The last time Apple updated iMovie, they were met with much opposition from users over the radical redesign of the video editing tool. To keep users happy, they posted a free download of iMovie HD for all iLife ‘08 users. But it seems now that Apple is quietly saying “move on” to all of the users of the older version. If you already have iMovie HD, it will of course continue to work, but you won’t be able to download it from Apple any longer. So, if you’re holding tight to the old interface with a death grip, you’d better back it up.

Thanks to MacRumors for noticing this today.

Via [MacRumors]

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We reported yesterday that iLife ‘09 orders have been prepared for shipment. Apple has now officially announced that the program suite will be shipping January 27.

CUPERTINO, California—January 26, 2009—Apple® today announced that iLife® ’09 will be available tomorrow, January 27, and features major upgrades to iPhoto®, iMovie® and GarageBand®, with breakthrough new ways to organize and manage photos, create movies and learn to play music. iLife ’09 is included with every new Mac® and is available as a $79 upgrade for existing users through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

Apple announced iLife ‘09 at Macworld, on January 6th, along with iWork ‘09 and the new 17” MacBook Pro. Those who have purchased a new mac since January 6th qualify for the iLife ‘09 Hardware Up-to-Date Program, allowing them the opportunity to upgrade to iLife ‘09 for $9.95 + tax.

Product [iLife ‘09] Via [Apple PR]

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Just a quick heads up to anyone who ordered iLife ‘09. Depending upon when you placed your order, it may already be on it’s way to you. Apple promised late January, and it couldn’t get a whole lot later. Let’s just be thankful it’s on time.

iLife ‘09 will bring a number of different updates to the iLife package. The most significant updates can be seen in iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband. iPhoto gets Faces and Places (new ways to sort your pictures). iMovie gets a little more powerful in the department of editing video, but the real feature here is what I like to call iStabilize. With it, you can make shaky video watchable, though I’m not sure anything could make The Blair Witch Project watchable. Garageband gets more effects and music lessons. You can buy song lessons in Garageband taught by the original artist. Now Apple can sell you the same song in no less than three different formats!

If you haven’t already ordered your copy of iLife ‘09, I highly suggest you look at the Family Pack. With it, you get four extra licenses to use on any Mac in your house, and it only costs $20 dollars more.

Product [iLife ‘09]

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Word has is that Apple has pushed iLife ‘09 to gold master, making it possible for you to get an iLife as soon as Monday, January 19th.

The big features that everyone is talking about for iPhoto ‘09 are Faces and Places. These make it possible for you to sort your pictures either by who’s in them, or where you took them. There’s some serious technology behind these features. Faces will actually pick out photos that it thinks might be the same person you’ve identified before.  And with Places, the software will take geotagged photos and give you a dot on a map to help remind you exactly where you took it.  That’s if you have a GPS enabled camera, though.

A quick tip before you upgrade, for all of the iPhone/DSLR owning readers.  Get in the habit of taking at least one pic with your iPhone before or after you whip out that DSLR. Now you don’t need a GPS enabled camera. You’re welcome.

And the big feature for iMovie ‘09?  They’re renaming it to iStabilize ‘09. Just kidding, but video stabilization really is the coolest new feature since it worked amazingly well when I saw it at Macworld. You also can do some fun things with maps and animate them along with your travels, since people often videotape their adventures.

All this and more coming sooner than you might have thought.

Via [9to5Mac]

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Face recognition. Wow. We have the same—if not better—technology as the local police station. How freakin’ cool is that? iPhoto is groundbreaking in the fact that you can train it to recognize someone’s face and know where you took the picture. Let me introduce you to Faces and Places.

Faces is the term apple has coined to describe a breathtaking new feature for your iPhoto software. What it does is allow you to group your photos together by who is in them. This is simply amazing, and it is only going to get better in the future. Yes, this first attempt will take a lot of user input, but when you’re done teaching your Mac who everyone is, you will be able to upload a photo and have it get filed away neatly with all the other photos of Tommy.

Yes, if you have two people in the photo, the photo gets filed under both of them or all three or four or however many faces can fit in a photo. Unfortunately, from all the information I have been able to gather, it does not work really great out-of-the-box. People who have had their hands on iPhoto ‘09 are saying it needs a lot of user input for small objects such as toddlers and small adolescent children. It will not work with pets or babies, and one would have to assume that as your children grow you will need to update the software accordingly.

The way it is supposed to work when you install iPhoto ‘09 and run faces for the first time, is that you pick a photo and it will identify the faces in it. You then type the name of the face in a box just below the face. Apple says to do it in a “few” photos and iPhoto will do the rest of the library for you. A few? I wonder if I am going to have to tag half of the 10,000 photos in my library or just 4 or 5. Let’s hope it is reasonable.

Places is the label for iPhoto’s newfound ability to organize your photos via a Geotag. If you have GPS enabled camera, or an iPhone, you can theoretically take a photo of the Eiffel Tower with your iPhone, upload it to flickr, Facebook, or Mobileme, and instantly your friends and family can make a couple of clicks and know your exact location and can see what you see. Places is going to require more user input than faces.

In order for places to work, you have to assign an area on the map, and iPhoto can then put a photo that you take in that geographic area to the name you designate for that area. Basically I would have to manually tag all 10,000 of my photos. Not going to happen. What I will do, however, is tag any new photos that I have so I can create a cross country album by state when I ride my motorcycle across the country next summer.

Apple and technology. What’s next? Online live video streaming from your iPhone? We are a firmware update away from it, people. Apple never ceases to amaze me. Love or hate them, they are the absolute standard for innovation.

Full Story » | Written by Anthony Parkinson for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

iWeb, iMovie, Garageband and iPhoto have all been upgraded. These are the applications that comprise the iLife suite. If you own a Mac, chances are you use one or more of these applications just about every day. Apple seems to be updating the software with new features about once a year, and this year everything gets a major improvement or two. Some of these new features are very powerful tools that are actually used by law enforcement (Faces). Kinda cool that we can use face recognition at home now. So, lets get to it.

iWeb did not get any major upgrades this year, but did get a few new features that are worth talking about. The Facebook users out there will love the fact that you can link your site to your Facebook account and can then let your friends know when you have updated your site. For the hardworking web designer, you can now manage multiple sites in iWeb. Each site will have its own menu and can be published individually at different times. I know people who have wished for that functionality for years. Wish granted. Other than that, not whole lot new going on in iWeb 09’.

iMovie got several major changes and several new features. Pretty major overhaul, if you ask me. Drag and drop got way cool. Now you can drag and drop a clip into a clip. Also they have added a green screen and a cutaway effect. I know there are people out there like me who have trouble getting our clips to line up just right. Enter the precision editor. This is a magnified film strip of the clips you’re working with so you can see exactly where they end/begin. You can also edit audio and video independently, so you can use the sound from one clip with the video from another. This is some serious film editing here people.

Imagine the astronomical amount of money a Windows user would have to pay to get this kind of power. $79? I am already sold, and we haven’t even gotten to Garageband or iPhoto. Back to iMovie. They have added a feature called animated travel maps. This gives you the ability to add a 3D flight plan to a movie. iMovie 09’ also has a new video stabilization feature. What it allows you to do is have the application scan your clips (all or one at a time) for camera movement. It then can stabilize the picture for you. This is undoable, however, if you want the effect. iMovie ’09 introduces 18 new animated titles, 19 new one-click video effects, and eight new transitions. The last notable new feature is the ability to browse your movies full screen. This will allow you to watch your videos without making a movie if you don’t want to. I can’t wait to use this application.

Garageband got its hair done, and nails done too. Not only can you record any instrument in a near professional manner, but Apple has decided to teach you how to play a guitar or piano, too. They only thing you have to do is write the masterpiece and take the nine basic lessons for the guitar or piano. You can even have artists give you lessons if you like. Sting, Fallout Boy, and John Fogerty are just a few of the artists who have provided some insight into their world of music. Amateur guitarists such as myself will have the most fun with the new version of Grageband. They have added amp modeling to the long list of tools at your disposal. Nice. I use Gearbox for my amp modeling, and it has a lag. Not a big one, but just enough to notice. I have to assume that an amp and cabinet set up right inside Garageband will not suffer from this annoying issue. Apple is claiming 30 complete rigs. I’m sure there are going to be good ones and bad ones, but it only takes one good one.

The last notable feature is Magic Garageband “Jam.” What this does is turn your Mac into a full screen full customizable band. Sounds like fun to me. They could have taken functions away from Garageband, and will still use it heavily. I’m glad they didn’t do that.

iPhoto got the coolest new feature of them all. Faces. Face recognition for the common man? Are you serious? This is stuff that is used at the FBI, CIA, and any other agency that hunts people. You can even create smart albums much the way you would in iTunes with LP names. My guess is that real world, iPhoto will need a moderate amount of user input for Faces to work well, but I can tell you that I am going to find the limitations out of sheer curiosity. The powers that be have also added a places feature to iPhoto 09’. Places is only going to be used by people with a GPS enabled camera or an iPhone. This is because the only way it will work otherwise is for you to go through your entire library and tag each photo manually with location information. I have 10,000 photos. I am not going to tag them. If you do decide to tag them, you can then search by location or keyword.

Themed slideshows is another cool feature. It has six themes that let you create beautiful slideshows in seconds. So, for you social-lights, Facebook is now integrated into iPhoto, and you can create a details map of where you have been. Let’s not forget the additional edit capabilities. iPhoto rocks hard.

Well that just about covers it. More horsepower, better gas mileage,  and more towing capacity, and all for only $79. You can’t beat that deal with a stick. I will be pre ordering. What do you think of the new stuff?

Product [iLife ‘09]

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Ask almost anyone who attended the Macworld keynote this year what they thought of it and you probably won’t get a very great response. With no Steve Jobs, the keynote was almost bound to not be as great as the past few years. However, not only did Phil take the place of Steve, but there weren’t any outstanding new product announcements.  The only real hardware announcement was the new 17” MacBook Pro. So, do we have a right to be angry with Apple for a “mediocre” keynote? I don’t think so at all. Read on to find out why.

You would be correct in saying that Apple didn’t release anything all that groundbreaking at this keynote, as with the iPhone and such from past years. However, you can’t really blame them. The economy isn’t all that great right now, and people aren’t as willing to spend money. Apple realizes this, and, in my opinion, is extremely able to coast on some of the amazing products they currently have. By not announcing a new product, they can spend more time and money developing and improving their current ones, something everyone can appreciate.

And can you really say there weren’t any great announcements? The innovation that was brought forward in the new iLife ‘09 software was outstanding. Think about it. Both Places and Faces in the new iPhoto take advantage of two things that people love to do with their photos. And to have this built in to $79 software is a great feat, if you ask me. Not only that, but iPhoto now takes advantage of Flickr and Facebook, two of the most popular photo sites. It doesn’t stop there, though. iMovie ‘09 offers some groundbreaking image stabilization algorithms that will make editing video even more fun and easy. And people are complaining there wasn’t anything great?

In my opinion, we Apple fanboys have been spoiled in the last couple years with great new announcements to spend our money on. This year, we should be just as happy. Although there is no new iPhone or Mac Mini, the software we use everyday on these machines has been greatly improved.  That’s just as important as the hardware can be.

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I use Garageband 08’ quite a bit, as a casual guitarist. Garageband is not professional recording software but is excellent for people like me who don’t necessarily need to record more than 24 tracks simultaneously or need to adjust the audio on each of those tracks. Garageband is perfect for people who record on the weekends with their buddies in, well, the garage.

Classic Rock

My experience with Garageband has had its good points and has had some bad points. Let’s take multitrack recording for instance. This is a feature that was new to the 08’ version of Garageband. The idea behind it is that you can rerecord a portion of your track until you feel you have gotten it right. In theory, that is a really cool feature that a lot of people could use. The problem is how they implemented it. In order to to avoid a mistake or a pause in the recording where you don’t want one, you have to use the multitrack in an area between to pause. What I mean is that once you have the multitrack recording area set and you hit record, it will continue to make passes until you stop it manually. In the time it takes you to manually stop the recording you have a space of time with nothing recorded, and unless this is what you are trying to do, it can be very frustrating. There should be a pause after each pass to give the musician time to stop the recording if they want to. Beyond that, I wish there were more “metal” like drum loops, but I can’t fault Apple for that, and there are plenty available on the net.

Modern Rock

Now, let’s get to Garageband ‘09, which was announced this week in the Macworld Expo Keynote. The first thing I would like to talk about are the new Basic Lessons. Every musician can learn. No one is perfect. What I like about this idea is there are people out there like my niece who just picked up a guitar about a year ago, and could really use some lessons. I live 600 miles away and am not able to provide her with lessons, and I am hoping that Garageband 09’ will be good enough to help out. I, myself, would like to learn more about the piano, and the fact that you can speed up or slow down the lessons is something that can come in handy for people to who already know a little bit about guitar and piano. I really hope that Lessons turns out to be as good in implementation as it sounds in theory. There is also a twist. Some of Americas favorite artist have created custom lessons from themselves. Should be interesting to see who participates is lessons along with already announced artists such as Sting, Fall Out Boy, and John Fogerty.

Alt Rock

Let’s talk about guitar effects. Currently I use Gear Box from Line 6 to do all of my amp modeling. It works pretty, well minus a bit of delay when using it with Garageband. It is not bad enough that I can’t use it though. Gear Box offers hundreds of amp and cabinet combinations and also has models for bass and voice. Garageband 09’ is going to throw its hat into the amp modeling arena. I don’t have a list or anything that tells me what all of the models will be, so this is going to be a wait-and-see for me as to wether or not they did it right. I hope they did it right; if I can get rid of the minor delay with Gear Box, that would be totally cool with me. The Apple website claims to have over 30 rigs to choose from, which is kind of a small number compared to other software, but if they sound good you only need a few to write good music.

Jam Sessions

I love to jam. It is a very “free” feeling to pick up an instrument and just start playing; no worries about how well you’re doing, no worries about being perfect for the recording, no worries about being better than the people you’re jamming with. It’s just playing for the love of music. Enter Magic Garageband. Most of the time, when I sit down and pick up my electric guitar or bass, I fire up Magic Garageband and just jam out for a couple of hours. If I come up with something decent, I will record it. There are, however, a finite amount of combinations, and you will run out of new material at some point. Well, new in Garageband ‘09, “Jams” has been added to Magic Garageband. This offers more control over your backing band. You can change instruments, styles, and volume all from the full screen stage that will be in front of you. I, for one, am very excited about these new features.

All in all, I think this version of Garageband is going to be a major improvement to an already good product. I can wait to get my hands on it.

Product [GarageBand ‘09]

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For those of you who haven’t been living under a rock this past week, you’re aware of Apple’s new and improved iPhoto application that will come out with iLife ‘09 later this month. This update, which requires Leopard 10.5.6 or higher, brings a couple of exciting features such as Places and Faces (which are a nice addition to Events from the last version). These updates, as well as some other ones, will bring a lot more functionality to iPhoto, and I am really looking forward to this software. What exactly should you expect to see with this new software? Other than some improved editing features, there are some other major updates. Read on to find out.

New Features

Places: One of the hot new trends in the photography world is geo-tagging photos with the coordinates where they were taken. Some cameras now even come with GPS installed in them to help with this process. With the new iPhoto, you cannot only take advantage of this data that is embedded in your images, but iPhoto will automatically see it and show where it is on a nice graphical map. If you don’t have a GPS enabled camera or add on device, you can tag the photos yourself using a city name, address, or any other location. Apple describes this new feature as such:

Places automatically imports photo location data from a GPS-enabled camera or any iPhone or you can manually assign a location to any photo, group of photos or event. Once iPhoto knows where photos were taken, you can easily explore them with a simple search or an interactive map.

Faces: This new feature finds and scans human faces on imported photos based on face recognition technology. Once it scans a few examples of the same face with some helps from the user, it will automatically find the rest of the photos in the library that contain that face. If it is unsure, there is a process that allows users to confirm or deny whether or not the specific face in question does appear in that photo. With all of these scanned photos, iPhoto ‘09 creates new albums based on the people who appear in the photo to make it even easier to find them in your album. Here is Apple’s description:

iPhoto automatically scans photos to detect people’s faces and when you assign a name to any face iPhoto will automatically find more pictures of that person. The library can be searched by name or browsed using the new Faces View.

Online Sharing: If you use Flickr or Facebook at all, then you’re going to love the new iPhoto, which comes with integration with both of these. For Flickr, you can simply upload images straight from iPhoto now instead of having to use the web client or another piece of third party software such as Flickr Uploadr. Furthermore, the geo-tagging on these pictures will also be imported into Flickr. However, the Facebook part of this feature is more exciting. With the new Faces feature, uploaded images to Facebook automatically are tagged according to the Faces you have tagged in iPhoto. If anyone adds a tag to the photos you upload, they can automatically be synced back down to your local library, which can save a ton of time. Apple has this to say:

iPhoto ’09 lets you easily publish photos to Facebook or Flickr. Photos published to Facebook include assigned names, and name tags added on Facebook sync back to iPhoto.

Themed Slideshows: With six built in themes, making slideshows in iPhoto ‘09 is even simpler than before. These themes automatically use Classic, Shatter, Snapshots, Scrapbook, Ken Burns, and Sliding Panels transitions. And with the new Faces technology, iPhoto will also find faces in the image and make sure they remain in the viewable portion of the photo no matter where it fades or slides to, which is pretty awesome. On top of this, a filmstrip on the bottom lets users easily navigate between photos. Apple says:

You can also share photos by creating a themed slideshow to play on your Mac, iPhone or iPod, or create a beautiful travel book, complete with customized maps of your journey.

What to Expect

With all of these new features, iPhoto ‘09 will not be one to disappoint. With new competition from Picasa, these updates will help to keep iPhoto on top. The features I am most looking forward to are the Flickr and Facebook integration, as they will save me endless amounts of time of switching between applications and such. I have always found the older iPhoto to be a little feature lacking, but now I am thinking more and more about making it my main photo application. How about you?

Product [iPhoto ‘09] Via [Apple PR]

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Having spent a few minutes with iPhoto ‘09 (instructed by an Apple employee who hadn’t spent much more time with it himself) here are a few answers about it.

First off, Faces doesn’t work with animals. You tag someone’s face by selecting a photo, clicking the “Face” button, and dragging a box around the area you want to identify as the, well, face (boy, can I see that getting abused in colleges). iPhoto ‘09 then churns through the photos, trying to identify other, similar facial features—and it takes a while, too. The iMac it was demonstrated on was spinning, like the iTunes Genius feature, when I got to the show room floor, and while it had begun to assemble pictures after I tagged a few pictures, it wasn’t finished when I left (there were about 1,000 photos total on the screen).

One question that was answered by one of the iPhoto experts on hand (he may have been a developer, but he was running around answering so many questions I didn’t have a chance to ask): Faces does not work with pets. You can tag Rover in photos if you like, but iPhoto won’t be able to determine if its your beloved pooch in photos.

Likewise, babies and children are apt to give Faces a lot of trouble.

Tagging a young boy as “Davey,” Faces pulled up a lot of photos of him, but also a lot of pictures of a similar-looking young girl (sister, perhaps?). The demonstrator suggested that tagging more photos of Davey would help iPhoto become more discerning in its selections, along with telling it whether its guessing right (via a yes or no box).

Likewise, when I tagged a newborn as “Little Jimmy,” Faces was unable to find even one match—again, right away—even though there were several more photos of the child in the same set. It has the easiest time with adults, I’m told.

Places will be familiar to anyone who’s played with Flickr geotagging: you get a map with pushpins, indicating where the photo was taken. Simple, easy.

One of the niftier features in my opinion is the online integration.  Not only can you upload to Facebook and Flickr (keeping your Faces and Places tagging intact), you can also “subscribe” to Facebook and Flickr albums within iPhoto, like subscribing to a Google Calendar in iCal.

If someone updates the album, the pictures are updated in iPhoto as well. Click on the iPhoto album, and you get an arrow link (like the iTunes store uses) that will take you to the online site.

Organizing, integrating, and sharing are the big “what’s new” with iPhoto ‘09. I can’t imagine rushing out to pay $79 for it ($99 for a five-member family pack), but once I do have it, I’ll have a heck of a lot of fun tagging everyone I know.

See announcement in our Macworld Expo keynote blog.

Product [iPhoto]

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Apple spent quite a bit of time today on the new iMovie ‘09, and justifiably so. I didn’t like iMovie HD at all, mainly because it was a brand new program with a brand new way of using it, forcing users to relearn the system while not really offering anything new to justify the learning curve. With iMovie ‘09, the justification has arrived.

The demo during the keynote was stunning, offering fantastic, complex transitions and effects that can be easily implemented by users. There are now two layers in the timeline for precision editing, but only two. Still, anyone wanting more than that is likely going to be looking at Final Cut Express, anyway.

Advanced drag and drop makes it easier to splice video with other clips, which will please iMovie users who are tired of the Split Clip at Playhead command.

Dynamic themes and animated travel maps will really increase the look and “animation” of menus and such, and although they do look really good, you’re stuck with what Apple gives you. I expect it won’t be long before third-party companies start releasing their own map and theme modules, though.

Perhaps the coolest feature, though, is image stabilization. This’ll be great for both film geeks who want to play around with it, but also for pretty much everyone else who has trouble holding a camera steady. To explain what this is, think of those blurry videos of bigfoot or the JFK assassination where the camera bounces around the whole time. Image stabilization can center on the subject of the video, and rebalance the film so it there’s bouncing or shaking. It’s very cool, and open up a whole new world of boating videos, I’m sure. Even better, UFO video fakers will no longer have an excuse for bouncy video.

The image above doesn’t really do it justice, though. Check out the video at Apple’s website.

For more on the announcement, see our coverage of the Macworld Expo keynote.

iMovie ‘09 will ship in late January/early February with the rest of the iLife ‘09 suite. iLife ‘09 will be free on new Macs, and will retail for $79 for one license, $99 for a family pack.

Product [iMovie ‘09]

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Geotagging became an official part of iPhoto ‘09 as Apple announced its new “Places” feature. Users will either be able to tag the location of the photo manually, or, if using a camera that has GPS capabilities (like, say, an iPhone), the data will be added automatically. From there, iPhoto will create a map with pushpins indicating where pictures were taken. Users can mouse over them to get a thumbnail version of the photo, similar to the Flickr geotagging feature.

No word yet on pricing for iLife ‘09.

Full Story » | Written by Bill Stiteler for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

At today’s Philnote, Apple announced the addition of “Faces,” face-recognition software for the new iPhoto ‘09. The software will allow users to tag a person’s face in a picture (by drawing a box around it). Faces will then attempt to identify other pictures with the same person. iPhoto will then create a page for that person (similar to a smart folder).

In addition, since iPhoto ‘09 features integration with Facebook, people who have already been tagged from the social media website will have that info integrated with the iPhoto data. iPhoto ‘09 will also include features for geotagging (dubbed “Places” by The Phil). No word yet on pricing.

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According to ComputerWorld’s sources, Apple is ready to update iMovie and move it to the cloud. Here’s what Seth Weintraub had to say:

I’ve heard from reliable sources that Apple will offer a significant update to iMovie at next week’s Macworld. It will largely focus on Internet video in the Cloud for the YouTube generation.

This juicy little rumor is just in time for Macworld Expo. This feature could be helpful for some movies, especially for those whose end destination is YouTube. Plus, you have the added benefit of not having to store those movie files on your computer. Files uploaded to Apple’s service would be viewable on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Weintraub also believes that iWork is moving to the cloud to join others like Google Docs.

This is a fun rumor, but I’m not sure how useful it is. God knows I’ll be thankful if people use this before they dump their garbage on YouTube and expect me to watch it. But other than short online videos, I don’t see this being better than a desktop application. I’m always afraid of what happens when I’m not hooked to the internet. Then what? And that’s why I like my desktop applications.

Read [ComputerWorld] Via [9to5Mac]

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Google added support for CalDAV back in July.  But now they’ve improved that feature, which means syncing between iCal and Google Calendars is easier than ever.

To set up syncing between iCal and Google, first make sure you actually have a calendar set up with Google. All you really have to do is log in to Google Calendar.

Now start by downloading Google’s tool, Calaboration. After unzipping the tool and launching it, sign in to your Google account.

The window now displays all calendars that are set up with your account. Check the calendars that you want access to in iCal and click Add to iCal.

Calaboration now makes sure that iCal isn’t running and does all of the hard work setting up CalDAV accounts in iCal. When you next launch iCal, your Google calendars will be fully synced and editable.

If you’re scratching your head as to why you’d want to sync to a Google Calendar, then consider this. You can keep track of your personal (public) schedule and let friends, family or anybody, really, have access to that information on their computer. Now you’ll never have to tell them (again and again and again) when you’re working; just update your Google calendar and save yourself from the headaches. And thankfully, setting this up is pretty painless as well.

First, log in to Google Calendar and go to Settings.  Click the Calendars tab and find the calendar that you want to share and click on it’s label. Towards the bottom of this page are a few calendar addresses.

Now you have to choose between a public or private calendar. Public calendars are searchable through Google, so it’s your call as to whether you want strangers finding your calendar with a search. You can make your calendar public in the Share This Calendar tab and use the first set of addresses.

If you choose to stay private, just use the private address. This will give you control over who has access to the calendar. You can share your calendar with people by clicking the HTML button and sending them this link.

If they have a Mac (and thus iCal) it can automatically be synced to their computer. Copy the iCal link and send it, along with the following instructions, to anyone you wish. Feel free to use my generic template if you like.

I’ve set up my schedule so you can view it on the internet. If you’d like to have my schedule available and constantly updated on your Mac, it’s pretty easy. Just copy the following address and do the following.

[Insert your iCal link here]

1. Open iCal
2. Click Calendar in the menu bar followed by Subscribe
3. Paste the link that I sent to you here
4. Click Subscribe and OK
5. All done

This process will add a new calendar under the Subscriptions section in the sidebar. After clicking Subscribe, you can change some values, such as the calendar name or label color, but the default values will work fine.

This is a great way to share a schedule with friends and family.  And best of all, it’s not that hard.

Product [Calaboration]

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Apple has announced it will not be charging money for the workshop “Creating Memorable Gifts With Your Photos” starting this weekend at Apple stores across the country. This is obviously a marketing mechanism for people to use iPhoto to create various photo calenders, books, and cards within the iPhoto application.

I have used iPhoto to create both the photo book and cards, and I have to say it is absolutely amazing. The books have several themes to choose from and several different page layouts available. You can choose between a hard-back or a soft-back option. I have chosen to make all hard-backs, and the quality is absolutely breath taking. The images are crisp and jump off the pages. The book construction is sturdy and, in my experience, stands up very well to everyday use. This is a great Christmas gift idea; I know I be ordering a couple this holiday season.

The cards are just as compelling. They can be ordered in bulk with several photos in a lot of different placements. They come with envelopes that are perfectly matched to the sturdy cardboard size. This is an excellent, low cost option for ordering your personalized cards this holiday season.

In my opinion, you just cannot go wrong with the book, cards, or calenders from iPhoto.

Product [Apple iPhoto]

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The Mac is easily one of the best choices you can make if you want to edit and store home videos. It was practically built to consume media, and movies are no exception. But what if you want your videos to have easily accessible chapter markers like scenes in DVDs? It’s not really that hard, and you have a couple choices, though the built in way is not obvious. Heck, who would have thought to use Garageband enhance a video?

Macworld has a great article detailing the process of adding chapter markers to any videos you may have. It works great if you have your own podcast, recorded television or even if you just want to have a record of those funny things that happen at family events. I mean really, it never gets old watching people fall down. They made an entire show out of it…America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Back to the point. Adding these markers is really simple. Just edit your video in iMovie or other program if necessary, and export the finished product. Just make sure that wherever your video comes from, that it’s finished. Open Garageband, and drag the video into a new music project.

Select that movie track in the timeline and a chapters area appears below. Move the playhead to a place where you’d like to add a chapter, click the Add Marker button at the bottom of the window, and in the Chapter column enter a name for the chapter: Opening, Pie Fight, or Rude Bit, for example. Don’t bother entering a URL title or URL.

Then, after you are done adding chapter markers to your heart’s content, just click Share in the menu and Send to iTunes. You’ll get some choices for quality level, and then click Share to complete the process. The movie is automatically added to your iTunes library, which is great if that’s final destination. Now your video has chapter markers, and feels that much more professional!

It should also be noted that you can also add chapter markers with a program called HandBrake, which, if you are into editing videos, you probably already have. In HandBrake, under the Output Settings, go to the Chapters tab. Just remember that you only want to add chapters to a final video. If you edit it again with iMovie, it does something really dumb; it erases them. Someday, Apple will fix this, I’m sure, and probably add the chapters functionality into iMovie where it belongs. But until that day, at least you have a couple options.

Via [Macworld]

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It’s just a few days after the end of the our last batch of Apple rumors, but we wouldn’t be Apple fans if we let the silence continue much longer. AppleInsider has brought some new rumors about Snow Leopard and a possible code rewrite for the Finder.

People familiar with matter say the Finder, which currently stands as one of the oldest Carbon-based applications in the Mac OS portfolio, has been completely re-written in the company’s native object-oriented application program environment called Cocoa.

AppleInsider’s sources also claim that most other applications by Apple included with Snow Leopard have been completely wrapped in Cocoa. I know, it’s hard, but you just have to stop thinking about iTunes and Mail shaped chocolate bars.

Apple is also said to be increasing their support for MS Exchange 2007 in Snow Leopard’s iCal, Address Book, and Mail. It’s still a work in progress, but work nonetheless.

Another juicy feature rumored to make its debut in Snow Leopard is ImageBoot. Building on Apple’s NetBoot, ImageBoot allows a user to boot their system from a disk image on another partition or external drive. This is useful for setting up numerous test environments and booting them when needed. This is similar in some ways to virtualization software, but is not emulation of any sort.

So, there you have it; a few more rumors to keep you going. Now, if I could just keep the Cocoa inside of my Mac instead of on it, then everything would be great.

Read [AppleInsider]

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9to5Mac is theorizing that this Tuesday event could be about more than just the MacBook family. Though Apple’s invitation was unusually specific (“The spotlight turns to notebooks”), 9to5Mac contends that iLife and iWork 09, as well as Blu-ray, could be present at the event. Though I’m fairly positive Steve Jobs won’t discuss anything at length besides notebooks, here’s what could happen as an update on the side.

• iLife and iWork ‘09 - Though these software suites are normally released at Macworld, last year iSuites ‘07 were never born, and instead, the ‘08 version came out in August of 2007. It is possible that the iSuites are now a late-year release, though I think that if they have waited until October, iLife and iWork will wait for Macworld 2009 to get back on schedule.
• Blu-ray Macs - If the MacBook family gets Blu-ray, then the iMac and Mac Pro will have to as well. I think a more likely scenario is that the MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Pro end up with the HD format drives, with perhaps an add-on option for the MacBooks.
• Mac OS X 10.5.6 - Big feature here would be Bluray support. What else could 10.5.6 bring? I’d like Time Machine to get smarter, but that’s my only huge issue. Oddly enough, Mac OS X includes icons for Blu-ray and HD-DVD, so I question why they exist if there is no software support for it.
• New iMacs - The only reason this rumor is going is because it is possible that, with a Blu-ray addition, the iMacs would need an entirely new motherboard. And if they’re going that far, who knows how much farther they’ll go? This is very low on the likeliness scale.
• New Cinema Displays/Docking Stations - One can dream, can’t he? Apple will, one day, redesign the Cinema Displays. The question is when, if even in this lifetime. There have been whispers that retailers have been asked to stop ordering, but there have been no confirmations. There have also been some loose-logic observations that because all the MacBook’s ports are on one side with the new cases (FYI- they were before, too) that there might be a docking station coming along. Though it might reduce wire-clutter just a bit, it seems really unnecessary and prone to problems, like overheating.

What do you think/know/wish that Tuesday will bring? Sound off below in the comments.

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I’ll admit it, I got into Oasis late. After they fell out of favor with the British press and lost the American spotlight (undeservedly, I might add), I heard “Go Let it Out” and thought, “Hey, these guys just may catch on.” It’s not entirely my fault, though. I was living in New York City at the time, meaning the only thing I could hear on the radio was sports talk.

Regardless, I’m still a fan of the band, and I’m greatly looking forward to Dig Out Your Soul, their new album due out October 7th in the U.S. It’s good to know there are still rock bands out there who always look like they really want to beat you up…and could.

And it’s even better to know an A-list band such as Oasis is making use of Apple’s GarageBand. In a recent interview with MusicRadar.com, chief songwriter, guitarist and sometimes vocalist Noel Gallagher explained that after taking four-and-a-half years to record Don’t Believe the Truth, Oasis ditched their elaborate home studio and started recording demos on guitarist Gem Archer’s “...little GarageBand computer.” The reasons for this aren’t entirely flattering, but would you expect one of the Gallagher brothers to flatter someone? No, and I wouldn’t want them to.

Head on over to MusicRadar.com for the full interview, featuring more on GarageBand, as well as Noel’s hilarious (but rather insightful) take on Guitar Hero.

Via [MusicRadar.com] Preorder [Dig Out Your Soul]

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Apple has updated its iLife ‘08 applications and accompanying software. The updates are available for download from Apple’s Web site, and can also be downloaded through the Mac Software Update tool.

The new versions are as follows:

• iWeb 2.0.4
• iLife Support 8.3
• iMovie 7.1.4
• iPhoto 7.1.4

The updates mostly “... address general compatibility issues, improve overall stability and address a number of other minor issues,” according to Apple. iPhoto 7.1.4 is the only exception, which contains new holiday greeting card and postcard themes for use with Apple print products.

There is also one cosmetic change to the updates: .Mac’s apps’ menu commands have been replaced with references to Apple’s newly launched MobileMe Service, which is pretty much an upgrade from .Mac, a move that Apple executives characterized as a “branding” update. Earlier this month, Apple released an update, the Mac OS X Update for Mobile Me 1.1, which included general system fixes that enhanced MobileMe’s compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5.4.

iLife Support includes system software components that are shared by all iLife ’08 applications.

Via [Gear Live]

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iPresentee, a developer of add-ons for Apple’s iWork and iLife applications, has released free Keynote Objects, a package of images for Apple Keynote, iWeb and Pages. The package continas 100 easy to use Keynote Objects for decoration in iWeb websites, Keynote or PowerPoint presentations and Pages or Word documents.

All Keynote Objects contain background transparency, and can therefore be used on any colored background. Each image can be changed in size, rotated, increased or decreased in opacity, fitted with shadows or even overlapped with one another to create extra effects. 

Keynote Objects requires any Macintosh computer running Mac OS X with any version of Keynote, iWeb or Pages. They are also compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint and Word.

The kicker, of course, is that Keynote Objects is being offered free of charge. Samples and more information about Keynote Objects are available immediately at the iPresentee website

Product [Keynote Objects]

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Although it does have some simple and elegant themes right out of the box, iWeb probably isn’t being used for many business websites. iPresentee hopes to target businesses with five new iWeb themes: Office, Global, Money, Illusion and Papery. Each contains seven templates: Home, About Us, Services, Support, Clients, Contact Us, and a blank template. Personally, my favourites are Money and Global, though all can easily be customized without manually editing a line of code in iWeb.

Each of these themes has a different target approach, from emphasizing a firm’s business ambitions, to informing clients about a company’s services. The themes are available for $10 each, or $30 for all five.

Product [iPresentee]

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iPresentee is offering five new iWeb Themes that are geared towards small businesses. These themes include Office, Global, Illusion, Papery, and Money, and come in at only $30 for the entire package or $10 each. In order to use these themes, you need Apple’s iWeb 2.0 or installed. According to the product description, “Each iWeb Theme for Business has seven templates: Home, About Us, Services, Support, Clients, Contact Us and Blank. All themes can be adapted for developing personal website.” There are plenty of screenshots over at their site, and most of the themes look pretty well designed.

iPresentee also offers other iWeb templates as well as different Keynote stuff (animations, themes, 3D graphics, etc). They all look pretty cool, so be sure to check out their site. If you have bought or used any of their themes or anything else, let us know what you think about it.

Via [Macsimum News]

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Computer Music, a popular British magazine about just that, has featured GarageBand in its latest issue. The feature includes coherent guides on everything from starting a project to publishing it in iTunes. Also included in the issue is a demo disc, featuring 12 video tutorials and 200 high quality loops for GarageBand as part of Remix Tools, a JamPack add-on from Apple. The following is from a preview of the issue on Computer Music’s website:

“From first steps with Magic GarageBand to publishing your tracks on iTunes, everything you need to know is here, teamed with audio demos and GarageBand songs to remix on the included disc.”

The magazine is available on UK news stands now.

Via [Apple Hot News]

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Opening day of WWDC ‘08 appeared to kick off a string of software updates from Apple. Quicktime was updated to Quicktime 7.5 and iMovie has been updated to iMovie 7.1.2. Following close behind was an update to iDVD ‘08, which has been updated to iDVD 7.0.2. The download is 20.27MB.

Logging onto Apple’s support page, you’ll find that the update “fixes general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.” However, if you are searching for additional information about the update, Apple isn’t talking about it. I’ve found that annoying, and always wished Apple would release more information about its updates.

iDVD users saw many additional features added to iDVD ‘08, including:

• Ten new animated themes
• Better performance
• Advanced menu customization
• Stunning slideshows
• Pro-quality encoding

Full Story » | Written by Opal Tribble for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Today, Mac users received an iMovie update. Apple has released iMovie 7.1.2. Apple usually doesn’t reveal too much information about its updates, and the iMovie update isn’t any different. When you log onto the Apple support website, the message states, “This update addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.” The download is 17.9MB.

iMovie is a fabulous movie application developed by Apple, Inc., which allows users to create their own movies. I purchased my 17” MacBook Pro almost two years ago, and iMovie was an application I used often. I’ve since moved on to Final Cut Express. iMovie was originally released by Apple in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application.

iMovie joined the iLife ‘06 suite in January 2006. When iMovie ‘08 was released as part of iLife ‘08, it took several steps backwards. I was puzzled by the features that had been left out. Many iMovie users expressed their disappointment because Apple left out a lot of the sophisticated editing features that users had grown to love in iMovie ‘06. Features such as creating classic timeline, creating DVD chapter markers, along with in-timeline audio were completely removed from iMovie ‘08. Apple responded to the complaints made by many iMovie users and released iMovie HD 6, which is available as a free download for those who have purchased iMovie ‘08.

If you want to check software updates manually, click on the Apple menu, then click on Software Update. If updates are needed, they will appear, and you can choose to download them. If you haven’t updated iMovie, log onto the Apple support website and download iMovie 7.1.2.

Full Story » | Written by Opal Tribble for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »