Some cool downloadable movie images:
Macworld 2006

Image by Brian E. Ford
Brief off the top of my head comments:
I’m fairly indifferent about the MacBook Pro and the new iMac. I’m happy to see that they made the transition quicker than thought possible, but considering that neither of these announcements are in my budget nor a necessity even if they were… I’ll just chalk these up to a job well done for Apple. The new laptop "looks" nice, and I’d be happy to accept one if it fell in my lap. Otherwise, I’m not willing to pay a premium on 1st Gen Hardware that isn’t fully supported by This Gen software.
(I’m slightly annoyed to see that there is no Firewire 800 in the laptop, but I’m not sure that this will cause any real world problems for me. My reaction is more of "shucks it looks like USB 2.0 might beat out Firewire after all.")
iLife:
I’m still looking through the new features, and it looks like most of the apps are merely upgrades so not a lot to say here other than about iWeb which is pretty much what I expected it would be after hearing about it over the last few days. I’m not quite sure whether it’s going to please the Standards people as I have no idea about whether it uses CSS and XHTML or what the deal is with that. I’ve been wanting to put a blog together for a long time and if this allows for me to make one that looks like "I" designed it and didn’t just use a bunch of Apple templates… this might interest me. In other words.. could be neat if the "templates" can be customized or ignored. (I’d also like to be able to see the code and tweak it.)
As far as iWork, I’m really interested to see if Keynote translates well to PowerPoint and vice versa. (PowerPoint is a requirement for my Job, but I’d love it if I could get away with Keynote.)
I’m slightly disappointed (but not all that surprised) with the lack of any substantial new video offerings for iTunes. I’m also disappointed that thus far there is no word on whether or not Front Row will be available as a standalone purchase. It ought to be if it isn’t.
.Mac still offers nothing that will pry 100 dollars out of my hands.
No new shuffle, which kind of surprises me, but doesn’t bother me as I love my shuffle as it is. (Not that this is any reason for Apple to "not" make a better one.)
I also hoped for but did not expect to see some sort of integration with my television from my iMac with the introduction of some downloadable movies. I suspect it’ll happen eventually, despite not happening today.
The new iPod remote sounds kinda neat, but the FM adapter seems kinda like an afterthought designed to appease the stupid requests for the same in an actual iPod. Scratch that… now that I’m looking at it… it’s pretty lame.
I’m curious to learn more about the new 10.4.4 update, which isn’t available as of yet.
All in all, pretty boring unless you’re really excited about being a guinea pig for the first generation intel Macs, which I’m not. A lot of these are really good things for Apple, but not necessarily great for the excitement level. Perhaps I’ll find some buried nuggets to gush about as I look about and read other commentary.
Update: Photocasting in iPhoto seems pretty neat.. if not exactly new. Slightly tips the value scale of .Mac a little higher. So far it also seems to be a lot neater if you happen to know a lot of other people that own a Mac. My parents are on the cusp of -maybe- getting one for their next computer, but I’m not holding my breath. Integration with flickr would have been pretty neat, as an option, even though it’s slightly different in concept. Again, if my parents (for example) had iPhoto and I had .Mac and could take advantage of this.. it would be really cool.
Update2: Full screen editing in iPhoto also seems pretty cool. In fact, iPhoto has a lot of neat little tweaks that will help me justify spending 79 bucks for iLife. (That way if iWeb is completely useless… it’s not as big of a loss.)
Wrightspeed Electric Supercar

Image by jurvetson
Last year, I noted the beauty of the Volta and the emerging need for downloadable Engine Ring Tones for otherwise silent electric cars….
Well, a lot has happened in a year. I just posted a video of my ride in this electric supercar on Revver. With the wind noise, it’s hard to hear my discussion with Ian Wright, the founder and builder of the car. Here are some interesting tidbits about the movie:
• 0-60 in 3 seconds (faster than a supercar (shown in this race)).
• 1/3 the energy consumption of a hybrid (170 Miles Per Gallon equivalent).
• Everything you see is in first gear.
• The fast stops are regenerative braking (returning energy to the batteries).
Hopefully cars like this from Wrightspeed and Tesla will add a bit of consumer cachet to the electric car category… and accelerate the industry to the future.
Making Photomovies

Image by tonyhall
Making Photomovies
Here’s a basic outline of the process of making photomovies (slideshows) .
• I use the ‘Slideshow’ feature in iPhoto on the Apple Mac.
• and iTunes, which links to iPhoto, for the sound
• and Garageband to edit/trim the music/soundtracks.
* All this software comes free with the Apple Mac
- and Apple QuickTime Pro –
Making a slideshow (photomovie) in iPhoto – simplified version
1. Have some images in iPhoto and audio in iTunes.
2. Create a new ‘Album’ in iPhoto – give the Album a working title.
3. Choose a group of photos and sequence them in the Album view.
4. Click on the arrow at the left bottom of the iPhoto window, or click the ‘Slideshow’ icon – the making-process (procedure) is slightly different in each – I usually click the arrow at the left bottom of the iPhoto window, and use this process.
5. In the pop-up box (which comes up after clicking the arrow)
Select ‘Settings’ – from this I usually select :
‘Transition: Dissolve’, slow-dissolve,
‘Play each slide for – 5 – seconds’ (to start with),
and unselect all other tick boxes.
* try and keep things simple to start.
In the pop-up box (next to Settings):
Select ‘Music’, select your soundtrack from iTunes.
and ‘Save settings’
(and now make a QuickTime Movie)
** I view the slideshow in Quicktime, because that’s the way they will be used, and the timing is different if I play the slideshow straight from iPhoto.
6. Making QuickTime Movie
- Click ‘Share/Export’ from the menu bar, in the pop-up window (called ‘Export Photos’).
- Select ‘QuickTime’ and type in width, height and ‘Display image for – (5.00) – seconds’. (My movies are either 720×540 or 720×480)
- Click ‘Export’ – export to desktop initially.
* This will give you a ‘rough-cut’ of your movie – which will give you some idea of length and how the images interweave with the soundtrack. You’ll probably need to go through this process a few times to get a ‘fine-cut’. In a fine-cut the soundtrack will be the right length and the images will be sequenced in an appropriate order.
Once this is OK then you have one more step for making it viewable.
** You’ll need QuickTime Pro for this bit – downloadable from Apple
7. Open the QuickTime movie of you slideshow. In QuickTime Pro click ‘File/Export’ and in the pop-up window select ‘Export : Movie to Hinted Movie’ – and save with new name (I usually add an ‘h’ to the title of the movie)
8. This QuickTime move is now ready to upload to a web site. I have my own web site and use Dreamweaver.
* If you haven’t got your own own web site you’ll need to experiment with the direct upload to dedicated Video web sites – I don’t know much about these – but YouTube, GoogleVideo come to mind, and blip.tv looks interesting.
***** and …. leave me a note if you manage to make and publish a photomovie!
Hope this helps.
Good luck!!!
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