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