iLife 09

iPhoto

• Faces feature is very cool using Face Recognition and Face Detection to help organize your photos
• Places organizes by Geotag
  • Geotagging support
  • Google Maps display of Geotagged photos
• Flickr and Facebook Export
• New themes for books and slideshows
  I really love the books! Super high quality.

iMovie

• Phil recognized that while iMovie 08 had a cool way to work some still wanted to work in a different way and with more control
• Neat editing demo probably better to watch than to explain.
• Image stabilization. Very cool! Hope this helps get some better YouTube videos out there!
• Animated Maps in movies

Garage Band

• Learn to play an instrument
• Guitar or Keyboard
• 9 basic lessons included free
• Artist Lessons Popular Artists will teach you how to play their songs $4.99
• Downloadable so more will be added with a built in store

iLife 09 will be available in late January 09

iWork 09

Keynote

• New animation tools
• Magic Move transitions between slides
• Object transitions
• Text transitions
• Chart animations
• More themes
• Again, watching the Demo will really show these features to good effect.
• Very cool Keynote remote application for the iPhone or iPod Touch .99 in the App Store

Pages

• Full screen view removes distractions from the screen
• Dynamic Outlines
• Mail Merge with Numbers as well as Address Book
• MathType and EndNote integration
• 40 new templates

Numbers

• Table Categories categorize by columns
• Easy formula writing over 250 functions
• New Chart options
• Charts linked to Pages so updates are easy
• Spreadsheet templates

iWork 09 is available immediately

Mac Box set $169 iLife, iWork, Leopard coming at the end of January. Great price!

iWork.com

• Free Beta
• New service to share docs with others by invitation
• Mac or PC browser
• Add Comments and Notes
• Downloads in Pages, PDF or WORD
• Final site will be a paid service

17″ MacBook Pro

• 1920×1200 screen
• Anti Glare options
• 2.93GHz
• Up to 8GB Memory
• Nvidia Graphics
• up to 2 256GB SSD
• New battery technology
• Up to 8 hours
• 1,000 recharges
• Integrated to remove all the overhead of a removable battery
• $2799

iTunes

• new pricing in April .69/.99/1.29 allowing companies more flexibility in pricing

iTunes Plus
DRM-free

• Higher encoding rate
• 8 million songs DRM free starting today 2 million more by end of the quarter so all 10,000,000 songs are available DRM free via iTunes plus.

iPhone version of iTunes

• WiFi and now works on 3G networks starts today

The first thing I noticed at the AstroWings 2009 Ice Fly was the number of rc pilots who showed up on a cold January day to fly RC airplanes! The temperature when I arrived was about 24 degrees and there were 10 cars already lining the road next to our field as is traditional for a winter flying session. The number of pilots was at least 15 and I wondered how the heck the best turnout of the year for a single flying event happened to be a cold winter day. Perhaps golf, yard work, honey-dos and other distractions are less prevalent. Whatever the reason, it was good to see so many pilots participating in an event.

Frankly, it was COLD. I don’t know why it felt so cold but I have flown slope planes on the bluffs of Lake Michigan for years in as cold or colder weather and not felt the bite as much but it was a day to fly so fly I flew. I had my Multiplex Twin Star and flew for about 5 minutes in the 15 mph breeze. The Twin Star, set up stock like mine, is a great plane in light air and, while it flew fine today, the breezy conditions, combined with the cold spelled short flight. Still I managed some rolls and strafing runs along with a nice right-at-the-foot landing.

I saw Ben fly a Profile job and Brad fly another glow plane. I know there were other planes in the air but I split after about 40 minutes.

At least the year started with a flight!

This may not be the first post on the subject but it is the first time I’ve noticed it. Greywolf’s SEO Blog has a short article on a line in the Google Guide to SEO warning against artificially promoting links on popular social media sites.

Well, this goes along with Google’s apparent like for comments on blogs and the ensuing storm of comment spam that just about any blogger has to deal with. Yuck!

Look folks, real links and real comments are very valuable but pervasive and widespread abuse of both social networks and comments by commercial interests just kills the effectiveness and enjoyment of the information. When will it end!

My dad always told me that he’d much rather build high-quality goods for a descerning market rather than junk for a mass market. The CEO of Simplicity/Snapper must have some of that same mojo when, after aquiring Snapper, they decided not to sell through WalMart anymore. I like a story where the CEO really gets what his company makes, who he wants to sell to and where the company is heading. Three cheers for Jim Wier! To quote him “We’re obsessed with having differentiated, high-end, quality products.” Sweet! And, to paraphrase a friend, You can’t get that at WalMart!

Leading up to Christmas Ma Nature has heaped the snow on here. After a few nominal snows in the 3 to 4 inch range we got 14 inches last Friday with more on Saturday and another 5 inches today with more coming. At this rate, with 8 days left in December we are on track to have our snowiest December ever! I like it. A lot of folks have been complaining but snow days, and the ensuing few days after, give us all a very good excuse to slow it down a bit.

Whitefish Bay Snow Day

As far as playing in the snow Garrett only lasted about 10 minutes. I assume he will grow to love it as most kids do. Sydney was another story. While I spent about 6 hours out in the snow on Friday mostly moving it from one place where it was a hinderance to another where it wasn’t, clearing off cars, getting doors unstuck and such, Syd was building a couple of nice snow forts. Between clearing off the sidewalks and the plows clearing the street there is about 4 feet of snow on the parkway between the sidewalk and the road. Perfect for digging out forts.

General Sydney

Sydney also gave her snowshoes a try but it looks like she is ready for the next size. While the snow was very soft and powdery it looked like she was sinking more than we thought she should be.

Saturday greeted us with -8 degree temps and -35d wind chills so outside activity was curtailed and a plan to go sledding was put on hold. It looks like the snow will be here for a while so hopefully we can get out and sled.

I did a dummy and slammed the buckle of my Lowepro Off Trail 2 camera bag in the car door a while back breaking one side of the substantial clasp. I’d thought about getting a new buckle but ended up forgetting after switching bags to a Lowepro CompuTreker AW to accommodate a new lens and my laptop all in the same bag. Well, now it has been a couple of years and I want to use the bag again for a Nikon D50 that I’m using as a backup camera to the D200. So, a quick email off to Lowepro was answered promptly with info and a contact number to order the replacement. Actually, two replacements. They sent me two different types so I could sue the one best suited to the bag. All in about a week. Very cool!

I was looking for a graphing program for a project and found this site in my hunt:

http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

The Applet scans your web page and makes a graph of the result. Looks cool to me! Here is mine:

schmenzer home page as a graph

He’s here somewhere!

Thirty minutes before showtime

Really fantastic photos from the last couple of Red Bull Air Races. I’ve been following this series for a couple of years and it is truly spectacular flying and the crowds watching are HUGE. It brings to mind Air Racing in the US in the 30’s and 40’s. Just wish I would have been there to see it first hand, both then and now!

This is shaping up to be a super election day. The weather in Milwaukee is simply perfect and should lead to great voter turnout. Not good news for the party who wants low voter participation to get their candidate elected! Maybe even the weather knows it is time for change!

A Quick Little Sarah Palin Quote Generator I found while surfing. Pretty funny. Now I just need Tina Fey to do voice overs!