With the introduction of the iPhone 3GS back in June of this year, iPhone lovers finally got what a lot of other smartphones already had -- video recording capabilities. A little over a week later, I wrote a post titled "How to make iPhone videos sparkle with iMovie." At the time I remember thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if I could do editing on the iPhone instead of having to do it on my Mac?"

Somebody at Nexvio was obviously thinking the same thing, and the company has introduced ReelDirector [US$7.99, iTunes Link], a video editing app for iPhone. One reviewer noted that "it's not Final Cut Pro," but make no mistake -- ReelDirector is a powerful, easy-to-use, and fun iPhone app for creating videos with titles and effects. It's perfect for putting together on-the-spot vacation videos to send to friends and relatives, making quick video podcasts, and teaching kids (or yourself) the basics of video editing.

Here in the UK, it's getting pretty chilly on the willy compared to a month ago, or so. The warm memories of the summer are slowly dwindling to the reality of earlier, darker evenings (the clocks have just gone forward) as well as tentative first visits from our old friend Jack Frost. Generally speaking, the cold grasp of winter is steadily fastening on us (or not).

But we are blessed with a few heart warming occasions over the winter season (Christmas, New Years Eve etc) that make the cold, well, a little less nippy on the bone. One of these such occasions is, of course, Guy Fawkes night (Remember remember the 5th of November...) And, to me, that means one thing, HOUSE PARTY! And what does a great house party need? An authentic DJ.

So when I heard my main man Dan the DJ couldn't make the party (or at the least lend me his decks) I turned to the next best thing, Sonorasaurus - the first complete deejay setup for the iPhone / iPod Touch.

At this point you may be wondering what a DJ app has to do with 'Count The Beats', or, in fact making music on an Apple platform, but it quite literally has everything to do with it. Come on, we all know that deejays are real musicians too, right?

TUAW may have had the date wrong (we guessed October 9, 2009), but the new iMacs we were looking for finally showed up today. The 20" and 24" models are gone, replaced by 21.5" and 27" iMacs with a true 16 x 9 HD aspect ratio. It's also obvious that Apple intends for the new iMacs to end up on the desktops of a lot of designers, since the line now includes the first quad-core iMac ever.

The pricing for the iMac line starts at the same US$1199, but that's where the similarities stop. The displays are now backlit by LEDs, providing better energy efficiency. The 21.5" model has a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, which is the equivalent of a 1080p HDTV. That screen size is actually 90% of the resolution of the old 24" iMac. Resolution on the 27" model is 2560 x 1440 pixels. Both of the new iMacs use the IPS display technology for excellent color fidelity and a very wide (178°) viewing angle.

For the first time, iMacs now have an SD card slot located below the optical drive slot on the right side of the computer. The systems will ship with Apple's new wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse, or you can get wired models as a configure-to-order option at no extra cost.

All of the new iMacs can be loaded with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2 TB of storage. The new low-end model, at US$1199, is running a blazing-fast 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor and comes with 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce 9400M video card. The US$1499 model of the 21.5" iMac bumps storage up to 1TB and upgrades video to a Radeon HD 4670 card. The US$1699 27" model has the same features as the US$1499 21.5", but of course has the 27" display.

At the high end of the line will be an iMac that won't be released until next month -- a $1999 27" that is powered by a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5 quad-core processor. That model also has a Radeon HD 4850 video card built in. If you wish, you can swap out the Core i5 chip for the even more powerful Core i7 processor.

The Core i5 is based on the Linfield processor, which is part of the same Nehalem family found in the existing Mac Pro line. The Core i5 features a turbo mode, which means that the chip can shift from a slower clock speed with four cores to a faster mode with two cores active. The turbo mode speed of the Core i5 processor is 3.2 GHz, while the turbo mode speed of the i7 is a whopping 3.46 GHz.

What's really incredible is a new feature for the iMacs 27" models that allows them to act as external monitors or HDTVs. You'll be able to attach DVD players, Blu-Ray players, gaming consoles, or even other computers, and display them on the bright, clear, iMac display. Update: The 27" will handle DisplayPort-based input, with adapters to be announced. The 21.5" model will not support video input, based on the spec page.

The last iMacs were released in March of 2009, with a 20" model powered by a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo available at US$1199, and 24" models with 2.66, 2.93, and 3.06 GHz processors at US$1499, US$1799, and US$2199.

Zensify announced its latest app, ZenNews [iTunes link], this morning. It's basically an intelligent news aggregator, using algorithms to find "what's hot" from a variety of sources including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera, the Guardian and more. It parses Twitter and other social mediums to figure out who's talking about what, and then creates a tag cloud of hot topics. There's an aggregated view combining all sources, or you can view a tag cloud for each source. You can toggle sources and/or categories on and off in the preferences.

If a keyword in the tag cloud reveals more than 5 articles, tapping it will drill down into another tag cloud, repeated until the keyword returns a list of 5 or fewer articles. View articles within ZenNews using the built-in webkit browser, or open them in Safari. You can always switch from the tag cloud to a list view for any page, and there's a default view titled "All News" which lists all the aggregated news (in list format) at once. You can drill down to specific topics in the Categories view, and see what's new/hot from all enabled sources for a single category. As you read, you can mark any article as a favorite, and view a list of your marked articles in the Favorites view. You can quickly share articles via Twitter or email, as well.

It's all quite slick, and pretty solid for a first release. I did run into a bug which would bring up blank tag cloud pages if a specific combination of being on a certain view and losing a network connection at the right time occurred. I spoke with the developers yesterday, and I'm confident they'll smooth out any wrinkles quickly.

Zensify is offering ZenNews for free. Their plan is to demonstrate the buzz-detecting algorithms, and then offer white-label versions -- using a subscription model -- to companies with a need for up-to-the-minute buzz tracking. For the rest of us, this is a good-looking and, as far as I've been able to tell, accurate way to see what's happening in the world at any given moment. Check out the gallery below for a preview, and grab a copy on the App Store.

Any musician worth his/her credit knows that accurate tuning is a given. It's a crucial starting point to playing any instrument at home, on the job, in the studio, or on the road, and an embarrassment when it isn't.

Some time ago I was doing an unplugged acoustic gig when my regular stomp box tuner broke down mid-rehearsal. I was in desperate need of a reliable tuner, without a music store in sight. Roll on Agile Partners Guitar Toolkit [iTunes link] for the iPhone/iPod Touch at £5.99

I had heard about various tuner apps on the App Store, but I was reluctant to try any of them. I could not believe that a tuner on my phone would provide the same accurate and reliable tuning that my current (expensive) tuners could. However, I was desperate, so I took the plunge.

Utilizing the iPhone's built in microphone (or the iPod Touch with a microphone headset), Guitar Toolkit's chromatic tuner performed just like using any other quality tuner. It was simple, effective and to my delight, it got the job done.

After the gig, upon further inspection, I soon realized that there was much more than just a common guitar tuner in this app.

Guitar Toolkit comprises a chromatic tuner, a metronome, a chord section, and a scale section too (practice your scales!!).

The chromatic tuner can be used to tune a variety of stringed instruments. By changing the 'mode' selector on the tuner, from standard 6-string EADGBE guitar tuning to 'all notes' tuning, you'll be able to tune almost any musical instrument. Or, you can preselect a particular stringed instrument, from a custom list, for that instruments specific tuning arrangement (guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin, etcetera).

If you're feeling creative, why not come up with your own custom tuning arrangement and input it into the tuner for later reference, or choose one from the alternate guitar tuning selection. DADGAD anyone?

For advanced tuning, you can alter the standard reference pitch from 440.0 Hz to whatever you'd like (some orchestras play at varying reference pitches). I've used it to tune a violin perfectly, and for all you bass players Guitar Toolkit, using the iPhone's microphone, picks up those low notes as well.

There are a few noticeable nice touches here and there. On the tuner, there is the option to alter the display to a 'high contrast mode' for tuning in low ambient light conditions. Also, when the app is open, the power saving/auto-lock features of the iPhone are disabled so the tuner remains usable until you're finished.

Short of being able to plug an instrument line directly in, I can't find a fault with the the Guitar Toolkit tuner.

The company's teaser page still says "coming soon," but eagle-eyed reader Jason spotted the free Zipcar app [iTunes link] in the store today. We've been waiting for this app for quite a while, and it's exciting to see it in action.

The app provides Zipcar members with a location-based search for nearby Zipcar locations, allowing them to drill down to the individual garages via a map view. Reserving a car is as easy as clicking one big green button, and the app allows you to sort available cars by time, type and model to make it easier to find the one you want. You can see your upcoming reservations and cancel a car if you don't need it after all.

Once you get to your car, you can use the virtual keyfob to help find it in the garage by honking the horn (nice touch); while you still need to use your RFID-equipped Zipcard to activate the car's remote unlock and ignition system, once you do that at the beginning of your reservation you can put it back in your wallet and use the iPhone to lock and unlock the car. You can also extend your reservation from the iPhone app, as long as there's open time after your slot ends.

One somewhat quirky thing about the app is that there's no way to adjust your reservation time window except at the 'top' of the car search process; often as not, with the Zipcar website, you may find yourself tweaking the hours of your booking to improve your chances of finding the car you need. The lack of flexibility is noted on the app's iTunes page under "Coming Soon," so a future release will probably improve matters here. The Zipcar app requires iPhone OS 3.0 and works on the iPod touch as well, although most features will require a network connection.

Zipcar members are almost as enthusiastic about the service as iPhone owners are about their devices, so this combination is sure to strike sparks. Once you've got the Zipcar app downloaded, let us know your road trip experiences via the comments below.

The Microsoft of the coffee biz, Starbucks, announced this morning that they've introduced two new iPhone / iPod touch apps to help customers make the most of their coffee addiction. myStarbucks and the Starbucks Card Mobile App [iTunes links] are free apps available in the iTunes App Store today.

These apps were the subject of much speculation, particularly in the Mac Rumors forums, after Phil Schiller showed the myStarbucks app on the screen at the September 9th, 2009 "It's Only Rock and Roll" music event.

While the company could have combined the two apps into one monster app, it's apparent that they're for two very different purposes. myStarbucks is primarily targeted at finding stores (as if there isn't one on every street corner in America...) and educating consumers about the drinks and food items available in those stores. The Starbucks Card Mobile App, on the other hand, is pointed towards the professional coffee slurper who already has a Starbucks Card in his or her quivering hand. Let's look at the two apps in a bit more detail.

myStarbucks starts with a geolocation feature to find the nearest dozen or so Starbucks stores within a few miles of your present location, shown on a map or in a list. If you haven't had your morning coffee fix and need directions, the app will fire up Google Maps and provide you with driving, transit, or walking instructions. For each "official" Starbucks franchise, there are icons indicating whether or not the store is open, as well as whether or not they have Wi-Fi or oven-warmed food.

Aera is a new flight game [iTunes store] from iChromo with beautifully rendered graphics and some challenging game-play. I wouldn't exactly call it a flight simulator, as your control of the aircraft is limited. You can't bank left or right, but you do control your up and down pitch. The game is priced at US$2.99 for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Think of Aera as a 2D shooter with exceptionally good graphics and addictive missions that can draw you deeply into the game.

There are several different mission types. In some, you collect points by flying the plane into floating objects, and in others you need to avoid those floating objects. There are also missions where you have to do both, as well as dogfights and aerobatic flights.

Because the controls do not work in the way other flight games work, it's helpful to go through the quick in-game tutorial so you know how the game works. If you try to exit the tutorial and just start playing, you'll be brought back to the tutorial until you have finished it. It really is necessary, because you'll never be able to fly successfully without going through it.

The game also features multiplayer options for other owners of the sim who are on the same wireless network. Aera also features video replay, allowing you to watch yourself crash and burn.

Mauritius is a minimalist island nation in the Indian Ocean, and from that tiny set of spots on the map comes a new Mac time-tracking application for anyone who needs to keep track of how much time they spend on tasks. Minco, now in public beta from Celmaro, is a minuscule Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard app that works with any application that supports iCal.

When Minco is launched, all you'll see is a tiny clock icon in the menu bar. Clicking the icon opens a glossy transparent black display that shows either the time you've spent on a project or the revenue you've gained from doing billable work on that project. Clicking on the time or revenue counter starts the counter, which then disappears from view. When you stop the timer, a new calendar item is placed into iCal so that you can keep track of how your day was spent.

The iCal integration works the other way as well. Creating a To-Do item in iCal adds it to your Minco timer so that you can start tracking time. When you start up the timer, the iCal item shows up in your calendar with the phrase "...working" attached. Publishing that calendar could be used to show co-workers or clients what you're currently working on.

If you want to keep a log of what you do during your work days, Minco also writes your time log to a standard .csv file that you can import into Numbers or Excel for analysis. The company is considering writing other export adapters, although the existing adapter is amazingly flexible.

Celmaro provides a 14-day free trial download, and the software is available for US$9.95. I found it very unusual for a company to be charging for beta software, but then again, Minco is much more stable and usable than a lot of beta software I've used.

It's not often that I get to write such a delightfully alliterative title to a post. Philipp Mayerhofer, C.O.O. of Dare to be Creative, sent along a note this morning mentioning that his company's file renaming powerhouse had not only been renamed, but that it has a whole slew of new features.

The application formerly known as Renamer4Mac is now simply called Renamer (US$29.00), and there's a new website at renamer.com to showcase the app. What does it do? (Hint: the name should tell you a lot) Well, Renamer is a bulk file renamer. When would you use a bulk file renamer? Here's an example -- often, I bring over a pile of photos from my iPhone 3GS using Image Capture, and I save them to a folder on my desktop. They all have really exciting names like IMG_0771.jpg, IMG_0772.jpg, ad infinitum. Read on for more information about Renamer.

At long last, the official Flickr iPhone app is in the App Store. This free app allows Flickr users to upload their iPhone photographs to their Flickr accounts as well as view photostreams that have been created by themselves and others. The app has the following features:

• Shoot, upload and share photos and videos
• Geo-tag photos or add to a set
• View photos by set and tag
• View photos from friends and family
• Search and view photos by contact
• Make comments on photos
• Search by subject, people or places

I'm not a big Flickr user, but decided to give the app a quick look today. There were several things that I wasn't thrilled with. For example, geotagging in the Flickr app has to be done at the time that the photo is taken. If you try to add a geotag to a picture that's already in your photo library, the Flickr app adds your current location -- not the location where the photo was actually taken.

Flickr does the same thing for the photo date -- if you wait a few days to upload a photo, it marks it with the upload date, not the date that the photo was actually taken. In addition, the Recent button is supposed to show recent activity and uploads, but even after 30 minutes it still didn't show that I had uploaded several photos.

I'd also like to see the app offer the ability to look for photos taken near your current location. While this is a long-awaited addition to the App Store, the app doesn't appear to be very well thought out or executed. At least it's a first release, so we can expect upgrades in functionality down the road.

Yojimbo fans, rejoice! 2.0 is finally here!

Waiting for Yojimbo 2.0 has been a bit like being Linus van Pelt waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, but today the patient and faithful have been rewarded.

Yojimbo is a "digital junk drawer" to put all kinds of information: pictures, bookmarks, web archives, regular text, or (its crown jewel for me) that seemingly endless pile of registration codes for software. My favorite feature is the Quick Input Panel which lets me quickly and easily throw things into the "junk drawer" which means that I use it almost without thinking about it. See the Yojimbo Tour for an overview or checkout the introductory movie (QuickTime) if you haven't seen Yojimbo in action.

The 2.0 version brings several new features and improvements, most notably a new "Tag Explorer" which lets you drill down into items you have saved with various tags. (Yojimbo users will also be glad to know that tag management has been improved too.) The Quick Input Panel, Save to Yojimbo, and Drop Dock have also been improved. (See What's new in Yojimbo 2.0 for more.)

Yojimbo used to be one of my favorite and most-often used applications; however, trouble with syncing via .Mac (which neither the Bare Bones excellent support folks nor the .Mac support folks could solve) eventually led me to abandon it. So my first step today was looking at the detailed release notes. I had to read all the way to the bottom to see: "Miscellaneous changes to improve reliability of MobileMe syncing." And there was much rejoicing!

Current users (individual, family, or educational) can upgrade for $20. New licenses are available for $29 (educational), $39 (individual), or $69 (family) through the Bare Bones online store.

UPDATE: Yojimbo 1.5.2 was also released today. If you are using a 1.5.x version of Yojimbo, use the "Check For Updates" feature to download the update.

A funny thing happened on the way to search Twitter this morning: I saw that Opera 10 was a "Trending Topic" and a smile came across my face. While I don't use Opera as my default browser, I always keep it around (in fact I'm working on a report about how to harness Opera's features for tracking live events online).

In the interval between the time that my last OpenStep-capable computer died and the time I bought my first OS X-capable Mac (a period I refer to as "the Dark Ages") I was using that other operating system... which came with Internet Explorer. Like most of you, I found this unacceptable. But what were my options? "Firefox," you say. It didn't even exist yet. "Safari"? Years away, even for Mac users.

Enter Opera. Opera was my salvation during that time. It was fast, it was powerful, and it did all sorts of really advanced "power user" features. Once, many years ago, I even wrote a series called "30 Days to Becoming an Opera Lover" designed to teach folks all the things Opera had to offer.

If you tried Opera 10 in the past but didn't like how it looked on the Mac, it is time to take another look. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the browser itself looked so good, even before any pages were loaded.

When you go to download it, you will be met with the words "Opera 10 with Turbo." Turbo is Opera's server-side compression technology which is designed to speed up web browsing by compressing text and images on Opera's servers before sending it to your browser. If this sounds a little bit like what AOL, etc used to offer for customers on dialup, it is. The difference is that you can easily toggle this on or off (or set it to "Automatic" and let Opera adjust based on your web connection).

This may not mean much to you if you are sitting on a FiOS or other super-fast connection, but Opera recognizes that more and more people are using mobile 3G cards for laptops (or even, dare one say: netbooks) or sharing a Wi-Fi connection at the local coffeehouse with dozens of your closest bandwidth-hogging friends. As for myself, I spend a great deal of time behind something called "Satellite Internet." If you don't know what that is, consider yourself fortunate. I look forward to testing this feature. If nothing else you owe it to yourself to watch this fun YouTube video on compression that Opera created.

Talking about web browsers is a little like talking about religion, politics, or the best text editor. Everyone has their own take on them and you are more likely to get into a fight than actually change anyone's opinion. That said, Opera 10 is worth a look. It has a lot of excellent features built-in (tabs on the left or right being one of my favorite, especially in these days of "widescreen" laptops).

Opera may not have a giant marketshare, but Mac users in particular ought to be used to the fact that biggest marketshare isn't always best!

One of the things touted in this latest incarnation of Mac OSX was its ability to work with Microsoft Exchange using Apple's Mail, Address Book and iCal applications. Well, I'm happy to report that Snow Leopard does, in fact, work pretty well with Exchange 2007.

Granted, this is only after limited testing, and it doesn't, as yet, work as well as Outlook for Windows, but it is a step in the right direction. One thing to consider before we go on is the fact that Snow Leopard will only play nicely with Exchange 2007 so if you don't have it or are not planning on having it, these new Exchange features in Snow Leopard won't work for you. You'll have the same access to Exchange 2003 from Mail (via IMAP) and Address Book that you did under Leopard.

That said, these new features of Snow Leopard offer a nice alternative to using the previous version of Entourage or the new Web Services Edition. Fortunately, if you are running Snow Leopard and Exchange 2007, setup could not be easier. All you need to do is launch Apple's Mail and select "Preferences" from the "Mail" menu.

Read on for more...

Whenever I'm traveling on business, I rely on my lightweight and compact MacBook Air. There's only one problem with my MBA as far as I'm concerned -- the screen can sometimes seem too small when I have a lot of applications running simultaneously. What I need is a portable monitor that I can just hook up to display a frequently updated window off to the side of my primary display.

That's where the Mimo 710-S USB-powered monitor (US$149) could help out. It's a tiny, foldable 800 x 480 pixel monitor that weighs less than a pound.While this is predominantly a Windows-oriented product, the company provides a place to download a Mac driver. The driver install does require a reboot, which is a bit annoying but to be expected with a proprietary display driver. There's a swivel built into the monitor so that it can be rotated into a portrait configuration. While the monitor doesn't automatically rotate what is being displayed on the screen, it's a simple matter to go into the Display system preference pane for the monitor and choose "Rotate 90°."