The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I got up Sunday morning pretty early to get my hands on a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and it has been one of the most fulfilling days of the year. I purchased the $70 bundle version that included the golden Wii Remote with the standard game and orchestrated soundtrack. The art style reminds me of Wind Waker, and the gameplay is spectacular.

Now let’s take a look at the start of the game.

The game begins with a short cinematic describing the legend of how Skyloft, Link’s village that floats in the sky, came to be. It describes a great evil that is eventually sealed away by a goddess, and how one “brave youth” will meet his destiny and end the evil once and for all. Link then suddenly awakes and is confronted by a giant bird, called a Loftwing, which delivers a note and flies off. The message is from Zelda, a childhood friend, who is awaiting you at the goddess’ statue. You then set off and get orientated with the controls of the game, and quickly must rescue your Loftwing in order to compete in the Wing Festival. After winning (of course), you and Zelda take a flight around Skyloft, where you are confronted by an ominous tornado which causes Zelda to disappear beneath the clouds. Soon, after receiving the legendary Skyward Sword, you dive down to the Surface, where your adventure begins.

You quickly become engaged in battle with some basic enemies, of which you must defeat by slashing your sword in certain directions to catch them off guard. This design shows off the accuracy of the Wii Motion Plus, and makes sword-fights much more realistic than previous games, such as Twilight Princess. As you make your way through the forest, you meet a Kikwi, an adorable, but somewhat stupid, forest dweller that you must help. After fighting off some enemies (and playing hide-and-seek as you chase after the Kikwi), you are told that its clanmates are in danger and that you must find their elder for directions. Your assistant, Fi, a spirit within the Skyward Sword, helps you search for Zelda as you help the Kikwis. After rescuing all the Kikwis, you make your way towards the Forest Temple, where Zelda had supposedly ran off to. As you go in, the camera zooms out and you see the feet of another character, who quickly disappears with a snicker.

My copy of Skyward Sword with the golden Wii Remote

Even though I’ve only just started the game, I definitely recommend it to anyone who owns a Wii. Though I don’t completely agree with IGN’s rating of 10/10, I would rate Skyward Sword 9.5/10, solely for the fact that I prefer Twilight Princess’ style of art. The main story line isn’t the only portion of the game you must follow, as there are side quests to conquer as well, such as upgrading your tools and catching different species of insects. The use of accurate slashes makes the game more enjoyable by a huge degree, and I can’t wait to get further into the game and see what it has in store. Though many stores are sold out of the $70 bundle, you can easily find a standard copy of the game for $50, which includes the symphony soundtrack.

CleanMyMac- This application is probably the best computer cleaner I have ever seen. It is easy-to-use and works great. What CleanMyMac does is it takes unwanted files off of your computer. Now don’t worry, nothing important, just caches, cookies, old application updates, and other useless files. It can also easily delete application, files, and manage extension. Now while this app does cost $15 for 6 months, or $30 for a lifetime, I was fortunate enough to get mine for free. I would highly recommend buying this app, no matter how clean you think your computer is. I have cleaned over 23 GB of stuff over 5 months!

Evernote- Evernote is just like the built-in Stickies application for Mac. Now you may ask yourself, why would I need this then. Good question! This app is Stickies, but better. With the ability to create albums and folders for your notes, it is much easier to sort your individual notes. Or if you like your notes in one spot, they have one section called “All Notes”. The app can also be color coded, so you can even further organize your thoughts. Plus, this app is free, so why wouldn’t you get it?

Skype- Now I know this one is popular, but for those who don’t know, this is probably my favorite third-party app ever (perhaps behind the next app that I will review). Skype is basically a free, internet phone service. You can call any Skype users for free, and any landlines or mobile phones for a low cost. Toll-free numbers, are, obviously, free, so you can use this as a main phone if you are willing to pay. And, of course, the app is free. Bottom line, get this.

Tweetdeck- Another quality, free app. This is the best Twitter client for Mac out there. No doubt. While it uses Adobe Air to function, it is okay, it makes up for it. The interface is great, with customizable colors, and customizable column views. Tweetdeck can also be used for not only Twitter, but Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more! Again, bottom line, get this.

These are all the third-party utilities or, productivity tools for the Mac for today. I will be doing some more reviews, if this gets good feedback.

Robert takes a look at a new Twitter app for iOS, called Twittelator Neue. Find more info about Twittelator Neue on their website.

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OmniTechNews:
Twitter: www.twitter.com/omnitechnews
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Kyle takes a look at Wallify for Mac, an OSX widget. More information about Wallify: http://omnite.ch/wallify

Did you enjoy this video? Check it out on YouTube! 

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OmniTechNews:
Twitter: www.twitter.com/omnitechnews
Website: Omnitechnews.net
YouTube: www.youtube.com/omnitechnews

For those Apple TV users that do not have a HDMI port on there tv and have been using an HDMI to DVI adapter have reported that the Apple TV “flickers” I personally have seen this problem and it is extremely annoying. It was recently confirmed by an Apple rep that they are working on a fix for the problem as we speak. There has been no set date on when this update will come but for those users it can’t come soon enough! Apple’s really good at fixing glitches so I’m sure its going to be a quick and easy fix.

As I’m sure a fair amount of you have heard, the new Minecraft Beta 1.3 has come out. This has probably left a fair few wondering,”What are all these new blocks Notch and his friends have put in?” I’m here to give a short comprehensive list of the new features of 1.3, assuming you haven’t  already checked the Minecraft Wiki. To begin, the most important item was the bed. This game play mechanic works by allowing the player to skip night. Very convenient if you do not want to be attacked in the night or if night is unbearably boring. As for those of you who are interested in the redstone side of things, I’m sure you noticed the mention of a new Redstone object: the multipurpose repeater. By right clicking on it, you can change it’s purpose to have different tick times. Originally, you could change it to 1, 2, 4, or 7 ticks, but that was changed for the sake of simplicity. It should also be noted that current only travels one way through a repeater. I personally have no ideas for this interesting property, but I’m sure some enterprising minecrafter will build something eventually that utilizes it to it’s maximum extent. Now for the half blocks. These aren’t particularly important unless you are very specific about you half steps. They are essentially differently textured stone steps, with types respective to the material they are made of. This also changes three parallel cobblestone on a crafting bench into making a cobblestone tile. Three sandstone (each made from three sand stacked vertically in the crafting bench) parallel create a nice-looking sand step. Three planks parallel will create a wooden step. Now, in order to create the original stone slab, one must use three actual stone, obtained by smelting cobblestone. For the other two new objects (bed and repeater respectively), you must craft them with three wool parallel over three planks. This will create the bed. The repeater is manufactured with torch, redstone dust, torch, in a horizontal line, underlined by three stone. If you are looking for a more in-depth description of these, go the wiki, linked above, for the authority on Minecraft items.

Flickr is an excellent social media tool for photographers, and many people use it to backup their photos. But what happens if the guys at Flickr slip up? It has happened before, and one user who’s been on Flickr for over 5 years has lost all of his 4,000 photos. Luckily, he kept original copies of all his photos, but if it happened to you, would you be prepared? Luckily for you, the guy over at ClipYourPhotos has created an awesome little Adobe Air Application for backing up your photos. Today, I’m going to be reviewing this application.

Backing Up Your Flickr Photostream

So I have 242 on my photostream, and I don’t have the originals. Manually downloading all of these pictures for the Flickr website would be a pain, but Bulkr makes it easy. I really like that I can choose the quality of the pictures that I download. This would be useful if you had a large amount of photos, and little space on your computer.

All of my photos EXIF data gets saved to the photos, but I can also set Bulkr to put the data in a sidecar file as well. This is useful when going back to edit your photos in a photo editing program because this way you can save more EXIF data from Flickr.

Lets say you backup one day, add some more pictures to your photostream, then backup the next day. If you set Bulkr to backup to the same folder each time you backup, then Bulkr will realize that it only needs to download the new images, therefore taking less time to backup your photostream. In the future, I would like to see auto-backups, but it’s not a problem hitting the backup button every now and again.

Downloading Other Photos

Bulkr is also a great tool for downloading other photos on Flickr. With Bulkr, you can download your own sets, photos from individual users, your favorites, or you can just search for photos to download. When available, you can even download original quality photos with their EXIF data. One thing I find a bit frustrating is when I need to download multiply images; you can’t hold shift, you can only hold control and click on multiply images. Luckily, you can just select all, and download pictures in batch. Bulkr will tell you when a photo is available for download or when it is not due to copyright; the ones available for download will have a little green copyright logo in the top left corner. You can also preview the images before you download which is a nice feature.

Wrap-up

Overall, Bulkr is a great tool for backing up your photos. It’s easy to set up a backup, and also very easy to download other photos on Flickr. Bulkr can be downloaded for free, but to get the pro features (original quality downloads and other useful features) it costs $24.99. I give Bulkr a 9/10, because it is an essentially app for any Flickr user and is easy to install and setup a backup. Bulkr is available for free, but the pro version costs $24.99 (limited time offer). It is available on their website here.

Remember everyone’s excitement with the features that iOS4.2 would bring to its users? I think the most exciting feature was AirPrint, which allowed you to print wirelessly from your device. Not only was this a great escape from the crappy third-party apps, but it made printing look like a cake.

But then we were told that only a few HP printers as of yet are AirPrint-enabled, and those of us with other wireless printers were screwed.

But wait-We’re not entirely screwed.

A company called Ecamm Network that makes great apps for the mac decided that this was unfair, and that they would make their own app that would seamlessly integrate with the official AirPrint app.

And they did. They called it Printopia. Don’t know if it’s just me, but I love saying that word. Printopia…

The kind fellows over at Ecamm sent me a copy of this excellent app to review.

If you’re wondering how it works, it’s pretty simple.

First, you have to head over to http://ecamm.com/mac/printopia and either download the 7-day trial, or the buy the full version, which is only $9.95 and it comes with free upgrades.

After installing, you will be taken to the Printopia preference pane inside System Preferences. If you have your wireless printer setup with your Mac already, this will be no issue, for it will appear in the list of supported printers.

As you can see, there are two extra options- “Send to Dropbox on Mac” and “Send to Mac”. These features do exactly what their name says; they send the file you want to print to your Dropbox or your Mac.

Then, you tick off whichever printer/feature you want to/don’t want to use, turn Printopia on, and you’re set.

Every time your Mac is on, Printopia will automatically turn itself on, so all you have to do is go on your iDevice and start printing.

This is an excellent app. Ever since I started using it, which was about a month ago, it’s worked like a charm with not one problem at all. The only downfall, which isn’t their fault, is that your computer has to be on for it to work. Hence its being a Mac app. But really, other than that, this is one of the best apps for Mac out there.

This is totally worth your 10 bucks if you’ve got a wireless printer that’s not AirPrint compatible.

My rating? A solid 9/10. I’m serious.

Buy it here: http://ecamm.com/mac/printopia

iLife ’11 is one of the new products announced at Apple’s Back to the Mac event, and the package includes updates for iMovie, iPhoto, and GarageBand, but no luck for iDVD or iWeb. Let’s check out the official specs, shall we?

From your Facebook Wall to your coffee table to your best friend’s inbox (or mailbox). Do more with your photos than you ever thought possible. And do it all in one place. iPhoto.

New Full-Screen Modes

Bigger is better. Especially when it comes to your photos. In iPhoto ’11, you can browse, edit, and share your photos full screen. With a quick click, desktop applications, the menu bar, and other distractions disappear, bringing your images front and center. Full-screen views take advantage of every inch of your display. So your Faces corkboard and Places map stretch from edge to edge, and you see more of your Events, albums, and projects. Go from picture to picture while basking in full-screen greatness using the new filmstrip. More screen real estate means a bigger workspace for perfecting each shot or creating the most memorable iPhoto projects ever.

Facebook Enhancements

iPhoto and Facebook are now even better friends. Because some of the things you love doing on Facebook — posting photos and updating your profile picture, for instance — you can do in iPhoto. Share your amazing European vacation by publishing the photos directly to your Wall or to an existing album. If your friends leave comments on your photos, you’ll see them in iPhoto. iPhoto even shows you all of your Facebook photo albums, including the ones you published using another application. You’ll always know which photos you shared (or didn’t share) on Facebook, because iPhoto keeps track of that for you.

Emailing Photos

Emailing a photo usually means bouncing from your email application to your pictures folder and back again. But now you can create and send beautiful messages without leaving iPhoto. Just choose from eight Apple-designed themes that you customize with your own images and words. Then select the photos you want to send, and iPhoto places them in the template. Rearrange photos with a simple drag and drop, adjust the image mask, or change the size and style of your text. Even attach high-resolution versions of your photos for your recipient to download and keep. iPhoto optimizes your message so it’s never too big to send.

iPhoto works with popular email services like MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, and AOL. And since iPhoto keeps track of all your email messages with photos, you’re free to open a sent message, make changes, and share it with someone new, anytime you want.

New Slideshows

Hear the word “slideshow” and you probably imagine a typical, photo-by-photo, fade-in, fade-out production. With iPhoto ’11, there won’t be anything typical about the slideshows you make. New animated themes — like Holiday Mobile, Places, and Reflections — give your photos movement. For instance, in the Holiday Mobile theme, images swing in and out as though they were hanging from an actual mobile. Each shot is centered and framed perfectly, thanks to face detection. And the animated themes include their own soundtracks, so your photos and music play together flawlessly.

Big Leap in Books

iPhoto ’11 makes it even easier to create professional-quality books using your own photos. So you can relive unforgettable moments one beautiful page at a time.

Building your book starts with a new dynamic Theme browser where each theme is revealed in a carousel — complete with images you’ve selected. Pick a theme, and an even smarter Autoflow instantly goes to work, placing your images for you. Your key photo becomes the cover shot. Higher-rated images are featured more prominently. Photos taken on the same day appear together. And all the while, face detection ensures that photos of people are cropped and framed properly. Change the background color, font, layout, and more. Add eye-popping full-bleed, two-page spreads.

Letterpress Cards

There’s just something about the elegant look and feel of a letterpress card. With iPhoto ’11, you can create custom letterpress cards personalized with your photos and text. For the first time, traditional printing techniques join modern digital photography. Each iPhoto letterpress card is made from premium paper and produced using a centuries-old printing method. Then it’s digitally processed with your photos and text. iPhoto letterpress cards are available in 15 beautifully crafted themes complete with matching envelopes. Celebrate the holidays. Announce the arrival of your bundle of joy. Tell your friends to save the date. Whatever you choose, your one-of-a-kind cards arrive at your door, ready to impress.

For full descriptions, photos, videos, and more on iPhoto ’11 click here. If you have no idea what iPhoto is (who are you trying to kid?) then click here.

My Review

The  first MacBook I ever owned was, coincidentally, the first MacBook that ever was. I inherited it from my gadget addict aunt, but the state she gave it to me in was terrible. The screen was broken, so I had to plug it into an external screen, and it was terribly slow. I don’t even remember what I used it for, I think it was iMovie HD. But never iPhoto, it was too slow to run more than one application at once. One day, a smoke-like smell emanated from my then precious MacBook. Turns out smoke was actually coming out of it, and eventually it caught fire. And that was that. I was the saddest boy in the world after that happened; I had no computer but the crappy home PC that only ran Windows Movie Maker to edit videos on, what was I to do? Suddenly it was my (10th?) birthday, and I received the best gift an aspiring ten year old filmmaker could receive: a 2006 MacBook white. That’s when I really started to use iLife (iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iPhoto.)

Sorry that this story dragged out for so long, I’m just trying to explain my experience with iPhoto.

Back then, iPhoto was pretty simple; but a great concept. Keep all your photos organized in one place. Then came events and such, and iPhoto became bigger and better. I don’t remember what happened, but one day iPhoto stopped working for me. It told me I had an old version of the software but the pictures were uploaded using the newest version, and it wouldn’t let me do a thing. So that was it between me and iPhoto.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s been fairly long since I last used iPhoto, so I don’t exactly know what’s entirely new and what’s just a minor improvement in iPhoto ’11, but from what I read it’s kind of clear to me now. So bear with me if I make a mistake.

iPhoto ’11 is shiny. The interface is something a graphic designer (and even a user) would like to stare at for hours. It does take a while to get a hang of things (button placement, what’s this/what’s that?, etc.) but once you do, the user experience is really something.

Full Screen Mode

I’m not lying when I tell you full-screen mode on iPhoto is a fantastic new feature. It’s like getting rid of all the dead space for the best, you can do so much more when using your whole screen. It’s also great if you wake up one day wanting to work on that family album of yours or the Christmas postcards for your grandparents and don’t want to use any other of your applications but iPhoto.

Events, Faces & Places

These three features were new in the iLife ’09 edition, but if you read my story above you would know I had no idea about them. Okay, well, I actually did get to use Events, but I was not aware of the Faces and/or Places features’ existence. No idea. So I tried Faces out today using iPhoto ’11 and I’m impressed. Most face recognition features in other applications/phones/cameras aren’t really that good, but Faces is just above average. It needs some improvement, sure, but it works as a charm… for now. I didn’t get through tagging faces in my 1,500+ pictures, though. And Places is pretty standard, nothing new or innovative… If you really need to tag your family album from when you went to Italy to the Places feature, then please spend your money on education rather than iLife ’11.

Facebook Enhancements

I’m not the type of person that stalks other people’s albums if I’m not in them, so this feature wasn’t that big of a deal to me, but I know there’s tons of you that will find this useful out there. You can share your photos and browse through comments without leaving iPhoto, and this is pretty convenient if you don’t feel like going on Facebook to be spammed by their endless advertisements (did you know there’s AUDIO ads now? They’re annoying.).

Emailing Photos

It gets really annoying when you want to send photos to someone via email and you have to bounce back and forth between applications to do so. That’s why this is so useful; you can now create and send ‘beautiful’ emails without leaving iPhoto, and you can also use one of the 8 themes iPhoto provides you with. iPhoto supports email services like MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, and AOL. I find this a great feature, especially if you have a four year old Mac that doesn’t work well when you have over 10 applications open and you have to bounce between two of them back and forth. My friend Jeremy McSpadden (@jeremymcs) brought to my attention that one fault of iPhoto 11 is the Mail app integration. He uses Outlook and Exchange; which means he can’t email a photo. If any of our readers finds some magical way to fix this, do share!

New Slideshows

The question for this feature is why create a standard crossfade slideshow when you can create a fun, interactive animated slideshow? My translation of the question is why create a crossfade slideshow with the images being full screen rather than creating a noisy animated slideshow that won’t let you concentrate on the content? This is a nice feature for girls people who like making their stuff look nice, but it’s definitely not something I’d use too often.

Big Leap in Books

This is amazing. It’s one of the features that makes iPhoto what it is. As explained above, you can choose from the many book templates provided to you and create your own picture book rather than a photo album, and when you’re done, buy it and it will be shipped to your house. How professional-looking is that? Having an epic soft or hardcover (your choice) family photo book won’t disappoint. I played with the themes a bit, and it’s not bad. Not bad at all.

Letterpress Cards

Much like the book feature mentioned above, letterpress cards lets you create custom letterpress cards personalized with your photos and text. You can also include a matching envelope. This feature is great for holiday/birthday postcards, I like it a lot.

Final Verdict

iPhoto ’11 isn’t a giant leap forward, but it’s definitely getting there. This is probably the best version of iPhoto I’ve tested so far, all its great features are set to impress. So fear not- iPhoto ’11 is the solution to (almost) all your photography (printing and slideshow-making) problems.

iMovie makes it easy to turn your home videos into your all-time favorite films. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll watch them over and over again. And you’ll share them with everyone.

Movie Trailers

If you thought the movie was great, just wait until you see the trailer. Now you can make one yourself in iMovie ’11. Choose from 15 movie trailer templates in almost every genre: adventure, drama, romantic comedy, and more. Graphics and titles flash across the big (or small) screen. The legendary London Symphony Orchestra performs an epic original soundtrack. And suddenly your home video goes Hollywood. Movie trailers are easy to create. Just click your clips to drop them into the storyboard. Add character names and personalize the titles. Then iMovie works its magic. It trims your clips to fit and adds transitions, titles, and special effects. The result? A trailer tour de force.

All-New Audio Editing

Go from indie filmmaker to master sound editor with new audio editing tools in iMovie. Sound effects, voiceover, and music — you control them all. iMovie shows you detailed audio waveforms for all your clips. They’re color coded, so you can see where the audio is overpowering. To adjust the audio levels of a clip or part of a clip, just drag the volume slider. To shorten or extend fades, drag the fade edges. As you make changes, waveforms update immediately so you always see what you hear. And the new single-row view shows you your entire movie project in one horizontal row, so it’s easier to preview and edit your soundtrack.

One-Step Effects

A dog running in slow motion. A wedding ceremony sped up. Pee Wee baseball instant replays. Home videos are even more entertaining with visual effects, and you can make them happen with a click. Add jump cuts and flip effects perfectly timed to music. Transition parts of clips from color to black and white, sepia, or a dream haze. Choose a clip, choose from over 12 effects, and click to apply.

People Finder

What’s a movie without a great cast? iMovie makes it easy to find your stars without digging through all your footage. By analyzing your video for faces, People Finder identifies the parts with people in them and tells you how many are in each scene. It also finds the close-ups, medium shots, or wide angles so it’s easy to grab video clips as you need them. People Finder is great to use while you make movie trailers. You can quickly find the right shots and drop them into the movie trailer storyboard.

Sports and News Themes

Today’s headlines: whatever you want them to be. Turn your video into a broadcast news segment complete with sophisticated graphics, sleek transitions, and hard-hitting titles you write yourself. The News theme is a fun way to announce a graduation or a new baby. Want to report real-life news? Share your story with CNN iReport directly from iMovie. With the Sports theme, you can turn a Pee Wee baseball game, a round of golf, or skateboarding at the park into sports video highlights. Add sports graphics and transitions. Choose from dynamic animated titles, such as game score, team face-off, and player stats. The Sports theme even includes a Sports Team Editor that seamlessly integrates your own player photos, rosters, statistics, and team logos into any Sports theme movie.

Your World Premiere

iMovie ’11 lets you publish your movies in more ways to more places. You can export movies to iTunes and watch them on your iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Apple TV. Share them with your friends on Facebook. Premiere them with a YouTube or Vimeo audience. Publish newsworthy content to CNN iReport. And you can create a video podcast in iMovie and send it directly to Apple Podcast Producer. When you export HD video at full 1920-by-1080p resolution, whatever you share will stun everyone.

For full descriptions, photos, videos, and more on iMovie ’11 click here. If you have no idea what iMovie is then click here.

My Review

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. YES. YEEEEES. YeS. Finally. Thank you. My first real & decent movie was made on iMovie HD. iMovie HD was actually pretty darn good, I gotta admit. It was easy to use and you had a high level of control over your movies/videos. Then came out iMovie ’09. It was good. Better than iMovie HD? In a way, yes. It was faster, smoother, and had a nicer interface. But audio editing sucked big time, unlike iMovie HD’s, and it was hard to get a hang of at first. I adapted to it, and it wasn’t mind-blowing at all, except for the fact that your project was auto-saved.

But the angels have listened, and they have decided to bring us iMovie ’11. Thank you very much.

Movie Trailers

If you’re too lazy/a newb/a beginner and don’t know how to actually make your own trailer, than this feature will come in pretty handy. Just create a new project and select the Trailer option. Even if you’re an advanced iMovie ninja, this is a great feature. I loved the possible intros and how they reference real life movie industry intros. There are 6 intros provided; Black Background, Spinning Earth in Space (Universal), Sun Rays Through Clouds (Lionsgate), Snowy Mountain Peak (Paramount), Glowing Pyramid, and Signals Across the Globes. So if you want to create an awesome looking movie trailer, I highly recommend using this feature. The only downside will be when every single person uses these themes and it will no longer be original/impressive. I tried every theme, and I’m impressed at how awesome they look.

All-New Audio Editing

Out of all the new features, this is the one that stands out the most to me. You’ll finally be able to properly edit your video’s audio! You can adjust the layers, add effects, and mix them up. I tried it out and it’s just perfect. This is a feature that for some reason wasn’t included in iMovie ’09, and I’m just glad the Apple team noticed how big a mistake that was and decided to fix it. This… is wonderful.

One-Step Effects

This is something you could do in more than one step in the past version of iMovie, but now it’s automatic. The effects are Instant Replay, Flash and Hold, and Jump Cut at Beats. Since it was possible to do this in earlier versions, I am not at all impressed… But this is a great feature for lazy editors!

People Finder

If, unlike my movies, your movie’s cast is made up by more than one person, this feature fits you. What this does is it analyzes your video for faces and uses the keyword filter to find your shots with the people you’re looking for faster. There’s not much more into it than that, though.

Sports and News Themes

Two new themes have been added to the theme repertoire- a Sports theme and a News theme. The titles are pretty self explanatory, and if you’re making a video for your sports theme, thinking about starting a news network or doing a school project, this suits you. I like them a lot, but this is just the same as trailers; once it’s overused, it won’t amaze as much as it did initially.

Your World Premiere

Finally, 1080p resolution exporting! Yeah, that’s pretty much it. But it’s definitely something!

Final Verdict

The team behind this update hasn’t failed to amaze me at all. iMovie technically has all you need to make a good home-made movie now. This is a wonderful and much needed update that has boosted up my interest in making movies with iMovie again. I can guarantee you will love your final product if you decide to use it!

Welcome to the school of rock. A Mac-size practice space. Your own recording studio. If you want to learn to play an instrument, write music, or record a song, GarageBand has everything you need.

Flex Time

Your performance is about to get even tighter. Flex Time is a new tool that lets you quickly change the timing of your recording, so your song has perfect rhythm. Something sounds a little off? Use Flex Time to fix timing mistakes on the fly. Just click and drag any part of a waveform to change the timing of a note or beat. You can move, stretch, or shorten individual notes without changing the good parts of your recording. And Flex Time is great for creative inspiration: Extend guitar riffs, alter vocals, try different rhythms, and get new ideas. Your Flex Time edits are highlighted so you can easily see your changes. Click the Flex Time button at any time to compare your edits with the original performance.

Groove Matching

If you’re working with a bunch of different tracks — like a guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion, and a drum loop underneath it all — chances are that one (or all) of them could be a little out of rhythm. Groove Matching brings all your tracks together beautifully. Just select any track in your song and make it the Groove Track, and all other tracks instantly match it. If not every track needs adjusting, you can choose only the tracks you want. Groove Matching helps Apple Loops fit the feel of your song even better, too.

Guitar Amps and Effects

GarageBand brings you seven new guitar amps for a total of 12. They’re modeled after the most revered gear in the world — from clean sounds to heavy distortion and everything in between. You can also reproduce the sound of classic foot pedals with five new stompbox effects, making 15 to choose from. Mix amps with stompboxes and find thousands of ways to rock. And with the Apogee GiO (sold separately), you can control GarageBand hands-free, so you don’t ever have to stop playing. The GiO lets you control stompbox effects, recording, and transport controls with your feet. Plug an electric guitar into your Mac, crank it up, and let it rip.

“How Did I Play?”

First GarageBand taught you how to play. Now it tests your chops. As you play along with any lesson, record yourself. GarageBand listens in real time and tells you how you’re doing. You’ll see how well you played with colored notes, a progress bar, and a performance meter. You can check your rhythm and note accuracy, keep track of your progress, and beat your best score — all while perfecting your skills.

New Basic Lessons

With 22 new genre-based lessons (40 in all), you can pick up the basics of piano, guitar, or even both. Video demonstrations, synchronized notation, and instrument animations make lessons fun and easy to follow. And you can learn at your own pace. You’ll jam with the Blues Guitar and Rock Guitar series. You’ll master classical piano pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, or Chopin. And you’ll play Top 40-style piano with the Pop Piano series. The new built-in glossary is a great reference for tuning your guitar, changing strings, reading music, finding basic chords and scales, and more. With the Chord Trainer, you’ll master the most important guitar chords by shape, which makes it easier to keep them straight.

For full descriptions, photos, videos, and more on GarageBand ’11 click here. If you have no idea what GarageBand is then click here.

My Review

I used to use GarageBand a lot; for movie soundtracks, when I was bored, birthday presents (don’t ask), and anything you can possibly imagine. But slowly my interest for it just faded away; I don’t see anything that’ll really help that much in it. So when this update came out, I wasn’t thrilled (I’m still not thrilled). I feel that this was just put together to complete the iLife pack, since the new features are fairly basic.Technically, this update helps your musical methods improve both technologically and in real life. Doesn’t sound too exciting unless you’re a music mixer (which I’m sure you’re not). I didn’t really test it that deeply since I would have had to follow through the guitar and piano lessons and I don’t even own a piano.

Flex Time and Groove Matching

Both of these features help you make your tracks sound better together. And that is it. It’s as simple as that, really, not much to say about it. I tried it and it was standardly okay. Not beast, but not weak either.

New Guitar Amps and Stompbox Effects

I find this uselessly cool, since all the new guitar amps sound epic. If you’re mixing a cool track for one of your iMovie generated home videos, then this will fit perfectly into it. That’s not all though- If you own an electric guitar, then you’ll be able to make your own manually! How fabulous is that?

“How Did I Play?”

After learning how to play (below), you are tested on your skills. You record yourself and GarageBand listens to you real-time and tells you how you’re doing. It helps you improve thanks to the fact that it informs you with extreme detail how you’re doing. I have not tested this out yet since I don’t play any instrument, so I can’t say if this is good or bad.

New Basic Lessons

Title says it all- GarageBand now offers basic lessons to those of you who want to learn to play the guitar or piano.

Final Verdict

This may not be as interesting to me as it is to some of you, but I don’t feel like this was a needed update. Demanded, maybe, but an update we could have done without.

iDVD and iWeb: Are they dead?

You may have noticed how there was no update for either iDVD or iWeb in iLife ’11. You’re probably wondering why. I’m wondering the same thing, too, to be honest. But I can tell you this- iDVD is as good as dead.

The last major iDVD update was back in 2006, and it got minor fixes in 2008. Since then, not a single update except for code changes to make it compatible with the new apps has been released. Don’t expect one, though. Why’s that? Mostly because since iDVD was to burn your movies into a DVD and DVDs are becoming more and more obsolete by the second. Remember how even the CD on the new iTunes logo was dropped? Jobs’ explanation was that iTunes isn’t about CDs anymore. Neither are movies. Why do you need a bunch of DVDs with your projects when you can have all of them in one place online? I don’t like the idea of iDVD not existing anymore at all, but maybe (hopefully) a feature will be added to iMovie one day that will let you burn DVDs of your movies.

Let’s move to iWeb. You’d expect a relevant iWeb update after all the HTML5 vs. Flash drama between Jobs and Adobe, but apparently you’ve got no such luck. I doubt they’ll kill it, though, so don’t start crying quite yet.

FINAL VERDICT ON THE WHOLE PACKAGE

If you’re reading this, let me thank you deeply for getting up (or down?) to here. This is a long post, I agree, but I think it’s worth it. Hopefully it will help you decide whether or not to spend about $50 on this update. If it doesn’t, well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you make up your mind.

I consider iLife ’11 an update for filmmakers and/or photographers rather than for musicians. iPhoto was the app that was most worked on, even if its new features are mainly just interface appearance or minor tweaks like the Facebook enhancements. The iMovie app was improved greatly, this was the update it needed all along. I recommend spending your big bucks on this package if you’re a filmmaker or a photographer, or both, but not a musician. I’d say be patient and wait for iLife ’12, for GarageBand isn’t that big of a deal with this update. But do buy it if you use iMovie and/or iPhoto a lot, you will be greatly pleased.

UPDATE: Thanks to one of our wonderful reader, Oliver, we now know that there is a way to incorporate an Exchange account to iPhoto ’11. Here’s how:

1. Set up an account in iPhoto (Type of account: OTHER).

2. Put in the internal name of you Exchange Server (you will find it in “Mail Accounts” in Entourage).

3. Change the port to 25 (do not use 587) and do not use SSL.

4. Vóila!

Thanks, Oliver!

I have not yet tried it myself since I don’t use Exchange, so I don’t know if it works or not, but do let me know in the comments if it did for you!

Thanks to @jeremymcs, I know now it was a mistake to post the above. I had no idea if it would work or not since I don’t use Exchange, but according to him (he’s an MCSE and Apple Developer, so he’s a pretty reliable source), the above is not a recommended solution, since the “work-around assumes the sys-admin has opened up IMAP/POP3 access on the exchange server. Port 587 is ISP dependent.” and “port 25 is blocked by 95% of ISPs who have home accounts.” Bottom line, don’t use that solution. Wait for an official or better solution. Sorry for the inconvenience!

So once you’ve launched the application, you’ll be greeted with this screen. The bar at the bottom shows how much free space you have left on your device. Now all you need to do is hit start.

Once you hit start, the upper bar will generate an IP address. This can either be just typed right into your computer’s URL bar or shortened using the “short” button to the right.

After entering the IP address into your URL bar, you’ll see this site. This is where you can upload, download, and all around manage your files. So, you can upload your files here on your home computer, and then download them using the same basic process on your work computer.

Overall, this app is definitely worth buying. It’s a really handy tool that can give you access to quite a bit of storage. It’s also a lot cheaper than buying a whole hard drive or flash drive. Thanks to TapTouchClick for providing me with a promo code for this tutorial. Simple Drive can be purchased here: http://simple-drive.com/.