There are many wonderful products at the Macworld Expo. These are my four top picks.
iMovie09 has made great improvements since the release of iMovie08 by Apple. On Tuesday they finally delivered on some of the things that were promised last year. (NOTE) I have not had a chance to really take iMovie09 for a test drive, however here are a few of the features that I find worthy of this award.
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Precision Editor is a new feature that makes it easy to fine-tune every edit. It displays a magnified filmstrip that shows exactly where one clip ends and the next begins so you can precisely edit your video. Skim each clip up close and identify how much to keep and where to cut.
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Dynamic Themes let you enhance movie in minutes. Just pick a theme such as Bulletin Board, Filmstrip, or Comic Book and apply it to your project instantly.
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Animated Travel Maps allow you to make delicious video travelogues with eye-catching, animated travel maps . Choose from four different 3D globe or flat map styles and select your location (or locations) — from country to city to points of interest. iMovie09 builds an animated map that flies from point A to point B (Ala Indiana Jones). All of these features an more will make iMoive09 more useful than ever before.
This little marvel allows users to record sound and sync audio with written notes. The pen work together with Livescribe’s dot paper with the tiny dots on the paper being used by the pen as reference points for the audio. The dot paper notepad features pre-printed controls at the bottom of each page which allow users to fast-forward, rewind, jump, pause, speed up, or slow down the audio. Livescribe sells various notebooks and journals with the dot paper, but you can also print your own pages for free on a color printer. I was blown away by the demo they gave me which I recorded on the Mino and will publish here.
The 1GB LiveScribe retails for US$149 while the 2GB models retails for US$249 with the final version of the Livescribe Desktop Mac software becoming available on February 17th.
Simplicity is always in good taste. Have you ever wanted to charge your iPod or iPhone from your computer or some else’s, without the hassle of synchronizing to iTunes, or deleting all your music. Matias has a new product called the Tune Blocker™. that with the flip of a switch allows you to choose whether you want to just charge your your iPod or iPhone, or sync it to your iTunes library as well. This is such a simple concept, but if you are like me it will save you in a pinch. This product will ship late March according to the vendor.
Last year we saw the Ecamm iMage USB web cam and it was a winner. This year Ecamm knocks it out of the park with the first wireless webcam which communicates with your Mac from distances of up to 30 feet away via BlueTooth. The BT-1 Bluetooth Web camera is capable of shooting a H.264 at a 640 x 480 pixel resolution and records AAC audio at up to 48 KHz. This webcam will be available in late Q1 for US$150, and is sure to be another winner for Ecamm
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Why pay $25 for Matias Tune Blocker when you can just disable automatic syncing in your iTunes preferences?
Comment by patput — January 8, 2009 @ 8:28 pm
One reason may be because when you connect to a machine just to charge, you probably won’t remember to set that option. Or you forget to change it back after. rnrnThe first I usually see is the alert asjking if you wantr to replace the contents… and no, dammit I don’t. But am still paranoid of clicking the wrong button. rnrnAlso, I like the idea of a cable that will prvent copying in hardware.
Comment by Philip from Australia — January 9, 2009 @ 3:40 am
It's a valid point, but there may be cases where you can't.
Comment by typicalmacuser — January 9, 2009 @ 3:37 am
It’s a valid point, but there may be cases where you can’t.
Comment by Anonymous — January 9, 2009 @ 10:37 am