Iphoto 6? I know I know. Who would still have Iphoto 6? Trust me,there are people that do.  I still have Photoshop 5 on my other computer. If ain’t broke don’t fix it right? Anyway, here is a downloadable PDF file that you can use if you’ve somehow inherited this classic program.

Iphoto 6 Tutorial

If you want to get the most out of any software program, you’ll want to get under the hood. Here are a few tricks you can do to increase Iphoto’s functionality.

Speed up Iphoto ‘09

Iphoto is great. It’s one of the easiest photo applications to use, if NOT the easiest and it is great with storage. However, the downside is that when you start to accumulate  a bunch of pictures, Iphoto slows way down. Fortunately, when you get down under the hood by using Terminal, you can “de-fragment” Iphoto. Defragment? What is this Windows? Well, Iphoto’s library tends to get bogged down after awhile. Macosxhints posted a tip for “vacuuming” your Iphoto database.

iLife Tip: Enable Multi-Touch maps in iPhoto ‘09

TUAW shared a tip from a tweet they discovered regarding multi-touch features on Iphoto Maps. By using the terminal, you can create a command to allow scrolling/zooming on your newer  Macbook to manipulate maps.

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What wonderful news I heard today that Ipad will be released sooner than I thought I heard at Macworld. It will be released on April 3rd–my birthday! What a wonderful present this would make! Ah wishful thinking but I think I’ll wait until my sister purchases one to see how well it stands up to the hype. You can read about the latest Ipad news here.

So you just bought Apple’s premier photo management software Aperture. What do you do? Do you get rid of your Iphoto? Not so fast. I love my Iphoto and I will continue to use it. See, you can import all of your pictures into Aperture, input the metadata, do all of your organization, color correcting and what have you. THEN—you can take all of these beautiful photos and then create wonderful calendars, greeting cards, and other projects with Iphoto. Apple designed these two to work hand-in-hand. Now let’s say, you have all of your pictures housed in Iphoto. You don’t want to make the full switch to Aperture but want to bring some events in to play with and manage. How do you do it? Just like everything in Apple, it’s an easy process.

1. Open up both programs.
2. In Aperture, go to FILE > SHOW IPHOTO BROWSER

Open Iphoto Browser

3. You will see a little browser pop up. That’s your Iphoto browser!

4. Simply drag an event from your Iphoto browser to a project you’ve created in Aperture and that’s it!

Drag Event to Project

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I thought that the absence of Apple from this year’s convention would really dampen the spirits. To some degree, I was right. The convention was held in one hall at the Moscone Center this year—one hall! I started attending about three years ago and the expo used to encompass three halls: Moscone North, South, and West.  If you’ve never been, just imagine days and days of wandering halls of cool, geeky stuff, workshops and classes. Of course, every year you could count on a keynote address by the one and only Steve Jobs regarding the latest and greatest gadget to be released.  This year it was the discussion of Ipad, but no keynote from Mr. Jobs. and a lot fewer exhibitors. Hopefully, Apple will have a change of heart and make its way back to Macworld! (crosses fingers).

Feature Presentations

Some of the higher profile presentations included Q&A with film Director Kevin Smith a.k.a. “Silent Bob“, the man behind movies:  “Chasing Amy“, “Clerks” and “Mallrats“.  It was definitely one of the more entertaining presentations . I don’t think anyone expected to laugh as much as they did. Most of the discussion centered around  his latest film “Cop Out” featuring Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis. He also took questions from the audience with many asking him advice about film making.  I’m still trying to think of the relation between Kevin Smith and Apple Computers, but someone thought he’d be a good addition and to be fair he did speak a little bit about the iPad!

Kevin Smith

Guy Kawasaki and TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Other anticipated events included the 20th anniversary celebration of Photoshop, a keynote address from former Apple marketing guru and co-founder of alltop.com, Guy Kawasaki. He discussed the current innovation and revolution of the tech market showcasing some of the visionaries of Apple software products including: Square’s Jack Dorsey, Bing’s Florian Voss, Boinx Software’s Oliver Breidenbach and HearPlanet’s Steve Echtman.

However, the highlight of the entire convention and expo was the much anticipated discussion of the Ipad, due to be released in June of this year.  Led by Jason Snell, VP & Editorial Director of Mac Publishing, the panel discussed the features, anticipated updates, changes, disappointments and other issues regarding this device.

iPad presentation panel

Contrary to what you may have heard in recent news about the Ipad being the “Kindle Killer”, this panel agreed that the Ipad isn’t meant to take over the Kindle any more than the Kindle is taking over printed books. Rather there will be groups that both devices satisfy needs for.

The same argument was presented in regards to laptops and computers. Would the Ipad take the place of a laptop?  Would the lack of a camera take away from the “functionality” of the Ipad?  Would the Ipad replace or be an addition to  desktop and laptop computers? Almost unanimously, they agreed that if the Ipad was going to “kill” anything, it would possibly be the “netbook killer”.

Although opinions varied, the panel seemed pretty excited about its release, especially with the potential applications and integration with Iphone. All remains to be seen once the product launches this summer.

The Expo

Presentations are one thing, classes are another. The expo is where it’s at. This is where everything and anything is showcased and sold to the tech-happy crowd. Some exhibitors were veterans such as: Graphic Authority, Microsoft, HP and Verbatim. But visibly absent from this year’s expo (besides Apple), were  two veteran Macworld exhibitors:  Nikon and Canon.  However, several smaller companies and a slew of independent developers saturated the expo floor. Here are some of the great things we discovered walking around. This is only a fraction of what was there, but nonetheless interesting First Look product launches with some of the exhibitors winning “Best in Show”.

• CarMD.com –A personal diagnostic tool that provides drivers with a fast and easy-to-use analysis of their car’s health.
• Apparent — showcased Doxie, a smart, modern paper scanner that sends photos and documents straight to web apps like Flickr, and Iphoto.
  
  

  Bulletscan

• Blue Microphones — presented the next generation of their award winning mic- Mikey — compatible with Iphone and Ipod Touch.
  
• Navigon — showcased Mobile Navigator and application that transforms the Iphone into a navigation device.
• Telefingers–a glove that allows you to touch, tap, stroke and scroll on your Iphone or other touch devices. (The one below is a competitor.)
  

  Dots Gloves

  Some of the mobile applications included:  Date Check and IKeysToGo. Date Check allows you to perform a background check on your Iphone before you meet up with someone from a dating website. IkeysToGo allows you to quickly look up keyboard shortcuts on your Iphone for programs such as Iphoto, Photoshop, and Microsoft Word. Others included applications purely for entertainment purposes such as a slingshot game and comic book character creations.

The Rest of the Bunch

ShowWx

You turn your Iphone into a small movie projector. You attach the gadget to the back of the phone and play your movie on the phone to project! Pretty simple and pretty innovative!

Mac Practice

As more and more hospitals and doctor’s offices move towards EMR (electronic medical records), Mac Practice offers a powerful software solution to a health professional’s needs. It even comes with an Iphone application to access records conveniently and securely.

irecord

I thought this was one of the most interesting products that I saw. IrecordPro allows the user to record audio and video directly to the Iphone, Ipod touch, Ipod nano and Ipod Classic without using a computer. It supports full resolution D1 (720×480) video encoding and it can also transcode MPEG2 content to H.264. It also supports WAV & FLAC lossless audio recording.

All in all, despite being a little disappointed with the “shrunken” convention, I was impressed with the amount of people still enthusiastic about Apple related products and the continuing development of software (despite Apple’s absence this year), especially for the Iphone. It is apparent that the trend will continue in the direction of these multitasking devices especially with the upcoming Ipad.

Hopefully next year will bring back more exhibitors and Apple! Until then, happy computing.

Find out more about these applications and products by visiting macworld.com

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Very excited about going to Macworld next week. This is our annual trek, but this time we are attending as working media as well as  fans and conference attendees. With my dedication to this website, I want to provide you the best information I can with the latest and greatest related to Iphoto but also just some really innovative products that will be showcased this year. I’ve purchased alot of great software and accessories in the past and with the latest announcement of Ipad this is going to be a great event even with the absence of Apple this year. Stay tuned for some video and pics of the conference next week. I plan to do more reviews of  some new products that some companies have given me the heads up on.

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Here are some more cool downloads to increase the usability of Iphoto. Best thing is they are free! Now I know that these are mainly for the “geeks” in us who want our Iphoto to do the most it can do. The rest of us aren’t concerned with these type of things. Just in case you get the urge to be experimental here they are:

Iphoto to SQL

• Creates an SQL dump file of all the metadata files
• Creates scale of images and vignette
• Retrieve pictures and associated metadata in database

Iphoto to SQL creates: title, comments, keywords, stars, date, album file name and picture name.

Compatibility

• Mac OS X 10.4 or later, iPhoto 7.0 (iLife ‘08) or later. Click here to free download iPhoto To SQL

Ultimate Productivity Automator Action Pack 3.11

This allows you find Iphoto item paths. However this does a lot more with programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Quark Express, etc.  The pack comes with many automated workflows  to increase productivity.

Download it here

Iphoto Override 4.02

This is a drag and drop utility to create libraries .

Download it here

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Here’s a plug-in that’s FREE and you can use to export pictures from Iphoto to Gallery. What is Gallery? It’s a free open-source web-based photo organizer that you can integrate with your personal website or within a community. Here is the link to both.

IphototoGallery

Gallery

Before you do any updating to Iphoto 09, make sure you make a backup of all of your files on time machine.  For some reason, people were having issues with Faces and Places according to CNET. You can see more of the Faces and Places article here.

Problems:

• Faces not recognizing “faces”.
• Places putting locations in wrong areas.

Solutions:

Faces

• manually add faces, re-import the library or remove the faces database

Places

• manually enter the geographical location of each photo.

Recently, you may have heard the buzz about Apple releasing Ipad some time this year, which some are labeling as the “Kindle killer”. While I am VERY curious to see what impact Ipad will have on the gadget hungry public, I don’t know that it will necessarily be the” Kindle killer”. I hope they showcase it at Macworld next month, but since Apple is no longer part of the convention I don’t think that will be a possibility….we will see when I make my trek up north.

But in regards to the “Kindle Killer” claim, I’m a bit skeptical about that one. Well, part of the reason I say that is because I just got a Kindle for Christmas so this would be a bummer if I just got something already obsolete! I think what might steer some away from buying one is the mere price tag. Kindle is expensive enough at $299, but  from what I’m reading Ipad will be $699 and like the Iphone you will get stuck with a contract along with that. Kindle offers free Wi-Fi already as long as you just use it to browse and download books directly from its store. So, there are no additional connection charges unless you try to web browse on it for other things.

Apple is always targeting the user experience. I think the Ipad will be more like the Iphone/Ipod bunch but a large version. I think it will fill the multimedia cravings of techno geeks like myself to watch movies on and play with things. Kindle on the other hand, is focused on providing reading content for its readers– period.  While I do enjoy reading my books on my Iphone when I do not have my Kindle in hand, I really like the look and feel of a Kindle. The screen is not bright like a computer but simulates the look of a book page.

People were saying the Iphone was going to be the end of Blackberry. As you can see, Blackberry is still around trying to keep up. If anything, the Iphone was the original Palm and general PDA killer. Although, I hear that Palm Pre is pretty cool. Regardless, I think the Ipad will make a showy entrance as its predecessors and as soon as I get my hands on one, I’ll be sure to let you know what I REALLY think of it.

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