Simply put, Bullstorm’s Keyword Manager for iPhoto is indispensable to me and my digital photo collection. iPhoto’s built in key wording, although better than in the bad old pre version 7 days, is bad enough that I wouldn’t be using iPhoto if it weren’t for KM. Keyword Manager is to iPhoto what automatic transmissions, air conditioning, heated seats and power windows and locks are to modern automobiles. Its essential as far as I’m concerned so it was with great reservation that I upgrade to the newest version of iPhoto last month when I found out KM wasn’t compatible.

Yesterday, after a few weeks of slicing and dicing the new iPhoto Bullstorm released a beta version of Keyword Manager for iPhoto ‘09. See Bullstorm’s support forum thread for more information.

Beware: use at your own risk. This is a beta release and as such you should not use it on your iPhoto library without backing up first. That said, it sure is good to have KM back in iPhoto and I’m using it on my primary iPhoto library.

Keyword Manager is back, WOOHOO!

Tags:iphoto, update

Ars Technica is running an article that suggests Apple may be planning to expand the geotagging capabilities on the iPhone. On the surface this doesn’t seem like all that big of a deal but the article’s author, Justin Berka, points out that the expansion hints at a tie-in with iPhoto 09 allowing logging of locations, times and dates. This would be huge as most people, yours truly included, don’t have GPS enabled cameras yet. Sure you can buy add-on devices or enter the data by hand in iPhoto but being able to have your iPhone 3G do it automatically for you would just be so much better.

Perhaps the biggest ramification of this move (if it happens), however, is that it implies that Apple may be expanding what the iPhone can be doing in the background. Read the entire article over at Ars Technica.

At this point Berka is just speculating based on a “TidBITS source”, so it’s probably a bit premature to get our collective undies in a bunch. It’d be a great thing if it happens but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Joseph Henry

Tags:iphoto, geotagging

Telestream released a new version of ScreenFlow yesterday bringing the popular video screen capturing app to version 1.5. The new version brings titling and text objects, customizable mouse pointers, new audio effects and the ability to export screencasts to Windows Media.

“February marks the first anniversary for Telestream’s ScreenFlow™ screencasting application, and its thousands of users have plenty to celebrate. Now available, ScreenFlow 1.5 adds titling and text capabilities, customizable mouse pointers, audio effects and more to this popular screen recording tool. In its first year, ScreenFlow received four prestigious awards, built an enthusiastic following of thousands of users worldwide and received raving reviews from industry experts.

ScreenFlow is an easy-to-use, professional screencasting studio for Mac OS X Leopard that allows users to record, edit and share professional screencasts. This unique screen recording software captures the contents of a user’s computer screens at the same time as their video camera, microphone and computer audio. Powerful post-production editing capabilities, allow users to easily enhance their video productions. Educators, software developers, trainers and bloggers use ScreenFlow as a cost-effective tool to create professional videos for the web that enhance learning experiences, presentations and product demonstrations.

Version 1.5 adds support for titling and text objects, including multiple fonts and styles that enable users to add striking titles to their screencasts. New customizable mouse pointers include a finger pointer added specifically for iPhone developers to demonstrate iPhone applications. More than ten new audio effects allow users to add depth and warmth to their narrations. Professional, single-channel microphones can now be mixed into stereo automatically. Plus, users can now export their screencasts to Windows Media using Telestream’s Flip4Mac WMV export components.”

The update is free to registered owners of ScreenFlow. New users can download and try out a demo or purchase a full license of the app for $99 (USD)

ScreenFlow hardware requirements:

• Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 or later
• G4 or Intel based CPU required. Core 2 Duo recommended
• A Quartz Extreme capable graphics card
• A supported programmable GPU required for certain effects & functionality

Tags:update, video, screen capture

The Pixelmator team has released the next version of their image editing and creation app. The new version, 1.4 Sprinkle, boasts:

“improved graphics tablet support, new brush presets, minor user interface, compatibility and performance improvements, and several bug fixes.”

New features in this release include a new painting engine, Adobe Photoshop brushes support, a clouds filter, document presets, and more.

“Pixelmator's new painting engine delivers smoothness, performance improvements, and new brush settings for painting tools in Pixelmator. New advanced brush settings in Pixelmator include scatter, flow, follow direction, size jitter, stroke jitter, angle jitter, opacity jitter, and color jitter. In addition to the ability to load and save brush presets, the application also allows users to import Adobe Photoshop brushes.

New document presets in Pixelmator can be used to quickly choose image dimensions and resolution for display, web, photo, or print projects. Users can also create their own document presets.

Pixelmator's powerful new clouds filter allows the artist to easily generate realistic clouds that can be used in either photos, special effects, or for creating natural textures.”

The update is free for registered owners and is available as a $59 download for new users.

Tags:update, graphics, design, image editing

Isaiah Carew of YourHead today announced the official 1.0 release of Stacks. Stacks is an amazing RapidWeaver plug-in that allows simple drag-and-drop web page creation.

“We're very proud to announce that we've completed our beta testing and we've released Stacks 1.0. Over the past two months we've had help from thousands of beta testers and have fixed more bugs than we care to admit. The result of all that hard work by the dedicated testers is the most powerful tool for RapidWeaver layout ever.”

Stacks come with a number of ready made Stacks objects: Text, Columns, Image, Left Float Image (text wraps around the image), Right Float Image (text wraps around image), HTML and Stack (think rows). Third party developers are also building Stacks Objects to add even more functionality. Theme design outfit Elixir Graphics has released a free Twitter stack that imports a Twitter feed into your web page.

The best thing about Stacks is that you can “nest” objects within other objects. For example, lets say you want a two column layout on the top of your page and in the right hand column you want to easily place a Twitter feed:



Check out the Stacks page over at YourHead for more info. Isaiah has created some excellent screen casts showing how to use Stacks and highlighting its feature set. You can also download the demo before you buy.

Stacks is $19.95 and requires Leopard 10.5, RapidWeaver 4.2.1 or later and will work on both Intel and PowerPC Macintosh computers.

Tags:plug-ins, new, announcement

Dejal Systems, LLC yesterday announced Simon version 2.5, the essential server monitoring tool for Mac OS X. It checks websites and many other kinds of services for changes or failures, with lots of notification and reporting options. Version 2.5 adds SMS and Web notifiers, drive status services, and several other enhancements and fixes.

New Features:

• New SMS notifier plug-in, to send text messages via Clickatell or e-mail.
• New Web notifier plug-in (like the Web service) to post to a web-based script.
• Added S.M.A.R.T. Status, Drive Status, and Pulse services.
• Added a Post to Simon Wall notifier.
• Several enhancements to the reports features.
• Added a Convert Domain/IP command to change a domain name into the corresponding IP address, or vice versa.
• Plus many more improvements and fixes; see the release notes for details.

Simon comes in three versions: Basic $29.95 (USD), Standard $59.95, Enterprise $195.00.

Check out Simon 2.5 over at Dejal.

Tags:update

MacZot has VectorDesigner on sale today for $39.99. Normally $69.95 VectorDesigner is vector drawing application that’s easy to use at a price most people can afford and today it’s even more affordable.

Vector Designer:

“has everything you need to create fancy vector graphics such as posters, brochures, stickers, logos, web graphics, t-shirt and more.It features a wide range of tools and smart shapes: easily create rectangles, ovals, polygons, stars, bezier curves - even convert bitmap images to vector-based drawings thanks to VectorDesigner’s automatic raster to vector conversion!VectorDesigner even provides advanced tools for performing geometric operations, to achieve total control over your drawings (union, subtraction, intersection and exclusive-or operations)”

Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.4 or higher (10.5 recommended).
G4, G5 or Intel processors.
1.25 GHz or faster.
512MB
(1GB recommended).
Core Image supported graphics card.
Some features require Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

To get you started on the road to vector designing greatness, TweakerSoft the makers of VectorDesigner have put together some great screen casts. Check them out over at TweakerSoft’s website.

Tags:vector, graphics, design

Google has added the option in Gmail to display email in what they call “Multiple Inboxes”. For those (us included) that hanker for a better way than labels for organizing your Gmail inbox, Multiple Inboxes might be at least a partial answer. No, it’s not folders and nested folders but it certainly does help visually organize your inbox.

You have to have enabled Labs in Gmail. Then choose Settings>Labs>Multiple Inboxes to get Gmail set up for Multiple Inboxes. There is not much help on how to actually set the individual Inboxes up but with a little experimentation we’re sure you’ll be able to figure it out. We did and we’re not very smart.

Anyway, check out the full Google Gmail blog posting for more info.

Tags:gmail

Eternal Storms Software today proudly presents the second public beta of flickery, their newest software product. flickery is a Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" desktop client for Flickr, providing a gorgeous, simple, out-of-the-way interface for working with photos on Flickr. Manage your photos, favorites and photosets, view photos in gorgeous detail or search for a particular shot in the entire flickr database - it's all at your fingertips. Still, with all this power, flickery lets you concentrate on what's important using Flickr - the photos!

With an easy to use, yet powerful upload feature, users can share their photos in no time. Adding them to an existing photosets or creating a new one, it's up to the user. You can take snapshots with your iSight or screenshots of your running applications right in flickery, or add photos from your photo library. With a built-in editor, you don't need to switch to another application to crop or resize your photo before uploading it.

Read more...

Tags:Flickr