Safari 4

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Well the good ol' secretive Apple has released a new version of Safari. Safari 4 Public Beta. There are many changes in the product. There are some that are great and some that are kinda pointless.

The first thing that I want to go over is the Top Sites feature. If you have ever used Google Chrome then you will be familiar with this. This essentially a home page that is quick loading and shows you a visual array of your top visited sites. This will be a great replacement to all of you out there who have Google set as your home page. I had about:blank for my home page before, but know I will keep it at this considering that Top Sites is just as fast.

Also in the same Top Sites page there is a place to have access to all of your history. you can open up a nice overflow view and search through it visually or by typing the name of the site. This is a huge improvement over just having the menu drop down for your history.

The big "A" has also improved the engine on which the browser loads its pages with. Safari now is officially the fastest web browser that you can get your hands on. Pages load so fat in fact that Apple has decided to remove the page load status from the URL field. I have found that the new Safari 4 really does load pages a lot faster than Safari 3.

Apple has made some interface changes as well. To start off with, the most obvious thing and most annoying is the new tab management. I didn't really like it at first, but I guess I can get used to it. The tabs are now at the very top of the window. (See the video above for more information.) Also they have made Safari look like a native Windows app; that is if you are running Windows. This is a great improvement because I know of quite a few people that wouldn't use Safari because they said it just looked ugly along with the rest of their applications.

Be sure to watch the video for what I think about the new browser from Apple. Overall I am pretty impressed. Please comment and let me know what you think.

Quick Tip #2 Audio Fade in iMovie

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Google Earth 5.0

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There is a new version of Google Earth out if you haven't heard that already. Google Earth 5.0. There are a few new things that have been added in the new version and there are some old bugs that have been fixed. Ironically there are now new bugs that will have to be fixed in the future.

The first and probably the coolest feature of Google Earth5.0 is the Ocean View. The essentially allows you to access articles on the ocean and get an under water view of things. This is long over due since in the post the ocean was just blue uncharted land.

The next thing is historical imagery. If you zoom in on a spot and turn on the historical imagery layer than you will be presented with a date slider. This allows you to change the month a year of the picture that you are looking at. This is kinda cool if you want to see what your house looked like 20 years ago.

The last thing that I wont to go over is the new feature to record what you are seeing. Google calls this tour recording. Its almost like a screen cast of Google Earth. It allows you to show some one around a town with some commentary. This is all great, but the format is Google Earth's own. This means that you can't as of this point export your tours to a MPEG-4 file or anything else for that mater. Considering how open Google usually is I would suspect that some kind of export feature is on its way.

So that is Google Earth 5.0. They have added a lot of cool new features and I would suggest upgrading; after all it is free. Please comment and let me know what you think about what Google has done with Google EArth 5.0.

Quicktip #1- Dock

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz3NVoyGbcU

This is the first of what will hopefully be a series that I will continue. I am going to be doing quick tips. One every other day or so and they will be showing people some lesser known things that you can do in OS X that will save you time. I hope you like it and please comment.

iMovie '09 Demo

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This is the iMovie '09 demo. iMovie '09 is included in the iLife 2009 suit which is available at Apple's Website. The new version if iMovie has a lot of new features to offer and is a real improvement over iMovie '08. The thing was with iMovie '08 that they had removed so many basic features that most movie makers will use. They have fixed this problem in iMovie '09. That means if it was the features that were holding you back from upgrading then you should get this. However if you are still using iMovie HD ('06) because you like the timeline view than you are out of luck. (They have removed the iMovie HD download from the site by the way.) I think if you gave the new interface a chance then you would like it once you got used to it. If you are still longing for the timeline view then stay with iMovie HD, gripe some more to the big "A" or get something else. OS now lets get to the new features,as there are quite a few.

They have added a new advanced editing mode in iMovie '09 that turns on more advanced features that novice people would not know about. Included in this "advanced" feature they have given us an advanced editor. It really is hard to get used to at first, but as usual you find that it is really intuitive once you get to know your way around. You just have to play with it a little bit.

The next thing that Apple has added are the per-built themes. These make it really easy to edit a video. All you have to do is select a theme and iMovie will automatically mach up sound, transitions, titles, and more. This is a quick and easy way to impress people with a few simple steps.

One really neat thing that is now available to us is the travel maps. If you have ever seen Indiana Jones then you know what I am talking about. Remember that plane on the globe that shows up whenever he goes to a place? This is what travel maps is.

There is also now a video stabilization tool that will transform your video from making people sick to stunning your family members with the technology available at your hands with you Mac.

As usual there are also some other things that are like the icing on the cake. Apple has added a ton more titles and transitions along with a new full screen mode.

Overall I am impressed with iMovie '09. What do you think? Is ti enough to get you to upgrade? Let me know.

iWeb '09 Demo

[Insert Video Here]
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In this Video I demoed the new version of Apple's iWeb program, which is a great and easy way to create a website. They have not really added any new features, but they have improved old ones.

The first thing that I would like to note is that there are now considerably more themes. There is bound to be a theme in there that you will like. Keep in mind that all of theses themes are really nice looking. Apple has done a great job with looks.
Next Apple has improved the way that you add objects to your site. They have added a really easy to use bar on the right that ties into iLife to let you access the rest of your media.

Also included in the Media side bar is widget functionality. Apple had added a few of their won that would be useful for a everyday site. If you like to be a little more custom though then just add a custom HTML widget that will allow you to add in what ever you like.

Lastly, there is now a better way to upload your websites. Rather than uploading the whole site agin iWeb '09 looks for the files that have been changed and only uploads the files that have been changed, which makes for faster uploads. Also you can upload you site to your custom domain by simply using the FTP uploader.

So there is not much new in iWeb '09 and it is defiantly not a very motivating upgrade, however some of the other items may convince you to upgrade. As far as I am concerned iWeb '09 is simply icing on the cake. Please Comment

GarageBand '09 Demo

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[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/XaaD1L_Tm-8" width="350" height="288" wmode="transparent" /]

This post is the next in the series of iLife '09 demo posts. This is the GarageBand 2009 post. Apple has made a few improvements in the music editing software, but will it be enough to persuade an upgrade? Lets find out.

They have added a new feature that allows you to basically have a virtual amp on your guitar. I have no clue how good this works because i don't have a guitar, but it will probably work well. This is a very simple thing that allows you to add basic effects and customize the sound of you guitar if you happen to be recording it.

The last thing that I would like to mention is the new lessons. This is really the most compelling feature that they have put into GarageBand '09. This essentially allows you to learn how to play either the guitar of the keyboard. There are (from what I can see) a wide variety of lessons that are $4.99 in the lesson store. GarageBand includes a few starter lessons to let you see if that is something that you would like to spend money on. This is overall the highlight of GarageBand '09 and it will be interesting to see if they will add more instruments later on.

So what do you think about GarageBand '09? I have not been able to test out most if the features and see how they work, so it would be nice to hear back from somebody to let me know how it is.

iPhoto '09 Demo

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If you didn't already know there is a new version of iLife out. Inside of the suit is the new iPhoto '09. iPhoto '09 is packed with new features.

The main thing that I would like to take note of is the Faces future. This is built in face recognition functionality that allows you to name people in your photos. iPhoto will then take the information that you have given it and use it to automatically identify photos in the future.

The next thing to take note of is places. Places will really shine if you have a camera the embeds geo tagging information into your photos when you take them. This will allow iPhoto to map out exactly where you were when this photo was taken. Don't fret though if you don't have a geo tagging camera, as you can still manually add meta date to your photos. The results won't be quite as exact as with a geo tagging camera, but it will still prove useful. Once you are done telling iPhoto the locations for your pictures it will then give you a nice map view of the pictures and where they were taken.

Some other things to note are the new slide show themes (which are really cool),advanced editing features ,direct uploading to facebook, and direct uploading to flickr.

All of the things that I have listed above are included in the video above this post. iPhoto '09 is a really slick photo managing program and will really help you keep your multitudes of photos stay organized without you even having to do much work. Please comment and let me know what your thoughts on the new version of iPhoto. Will you be upgrading?