Since iWeb comes with just about every Mac, it's surprising that it isn't used by more Mac users. For some people, coughing up US$99 a year for MobileMe hosting is the barrier, but there are other ways to get your iWeb pages out where the world can see them.

Last night, while participating in a recording of the MacJury podcast, one of my gift ideas was to sign somebody up for a free trial of Dropbox and show them how to use it for syncing all sorts of things. While I was touting all of the things that Dropbox can be used for, I pulled up the Dropbox wiki for reference, and I noticed a link for Tips and Tricks. One of the tips was "Use Dropbox to host a website."

iWeb is one of my personal specialties, so I immediately wondered if someone could use Dropbox to host an iWeb site. Within two minutes, I had my answer and an idea for a how-to post. Follow along as I show you how to publish your iWeb site on a free Dropbox account.

Note: As our commenters point out, even though the suggestion for website hosting comes direct from the Dropbox wiki, the service is not intended for 'production' web hosting. A few personal pages or a testing site shouldn't cause you any grief, but Dropbox does reserve the right to turn off your public links if the system detects unusual levels of bandwidth consumption.

Like smart playlists in iTunes, smart albums in iPhoto provide a way for you to better organize your photos. Whether it's a list of your most recent photos or photos with a specified aperture range, there are countless smart albums you could create to fit your needs. Here are a few of my favorite.

Recently added: I always like having my most recent photos with me, and this is the smart album that gives them to me.

• Match the following condition.
• Date is in the last "90 days" (or whatever date range you prefer).

The smart family album: Say there are three family members in a family -- Tobias Fünke (dad), Lindsay Fünke (mom) and Maebe Fünke (daughter) -- and you want pictures of all of them in one place.

• Match any of the following conditions.
• Face is "Tobias."
• Face is "Lindsay."
• Face is "Maebe."

The camera-specific smart album: We've recently added a new member to the camera family, the Canon EOS 40D. But, like many a household, ours is one with several different cameras, and sometimes it's nice to see where each photo originated from.

• Match the following condition.
• Camera Model is "Canon EOS40D"

A smart album for videos: Some digital cameras these days can also function as "good enough" alternatives for camcorders. Here's a smart album that collects all of your videos imported from your digital cameras.

• Match the following condition.
• Photo is "Movie."

The best of the best: Your highest rated photos in one place

• Match the following condition.
• My rating is greater than "*" (or however many stars you desire)

Readers, tell us about some of the iPhoto smart albums that you've created.

Just last week, Verizon released Media Manager for the Mac. While many customers are saying it's less powerful than its Windows-based counterpart, it received significant changes this week. Namely, users can now stream content from their iPhoto and iTunes libraries to a FiOS DVR (something TiVo did three years ago, but let's not nit-pick).

With the desktop app running (configured as a simple preference), you can browse iTunes playlists as well as your entire library. From iPhoto, browse your library, events and slideshows. Keeping events intact is nice for when you want to show Aunt Shirley pictures from your trip to Scranton.

Note that this requires a FiOS TV DVR Set-Top Box, Mac OS X 10.4 or greater, iTunes 7 or greater, iPhoto 6 or greater and QuickTime version 7 or greater. For an unnecessarily enthusiastic demonstration of the software, check out the video after the break.

(Screenshot courtesy of Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny)

[Via Engadget]

I love podcasting.

My first podcasts weren't really podcasts, just recordings that I made and uploaded to a website in the late 90's so that other people could listen to them. Unlike the podcasts we know and love today, there was no way to subscribe to all of the episodes that I recorded. When podcasting as we know it hit the world in 2004, I started hosting podcasts through one of my companies.

Despite creating two long-running podcasts between 2004 and 2007, I finally gave up because of the time involved. Part of the problem was due to me being a stickler for perfection in my podcasts, while the rest was due to the fact that I was stuck with podcasting when I was near my iMac and could edit and update a feed file on a regular basis.

Earlier this month, I decided that I wanted to start up a personal podcast again. Yeah, I talk about tech, but for the most part I wanted this to be a free-form podcast that could talk about photography one day, music the next, and the joys of being a cat owner the third. Since my calendar is already pretty well jammed, the only way I was going to be able to commit to doing a podcast every day was to get the podcast workflow down to as little time as possible.

It looks like another day with another update from Apple. This time, iMovie has been updated to version 8.0.5. This updates fixes some minor issues, as well as improve compatibility with the 5th generation iPod nano and some camcorders

These fixes include:

• Improved compatibility with camcorders using the iFrame video format

• Improved compatibility with importing video captured on the iPod nano

• Fixed problems with resizing the iMovie window during playback

This update available and recommended for all users of iMovie '09, it's around 36MB, and it's available through Software Update or the Apple Support Downloads page.

Thanks Mike for the tip!

Blue Crowbar Software is a small Belgian Mac development firm that is quickly making a name for itself for its innovative iPhoto and Aperture plugins. We've previously covered iPhoto2Twitter here on TUAW, and now Blue Crowbar has announced a new iPhoto plugin for adding watermarks to pictures in your iPhoto library.

Watermarks are those faint, transparent designs that websites often use to mark exclusive photos when breaking a big story. For example, many of the great fake iTablet "photos" that we've received during the past few weeks have been emblazoned with a watermark for one Mac site or another. Impression (€9.90 -- about US$14.10) works in iPhoto to put watermarks onto your iPhoto pictures. If you're worried that a watermark might ruin a perfectly good picture, don't be. Impression makes a copy of the picture, then creates a watermarked version which is also saved into your iPhoto library.

Along with the many software updates released lately, Apple today released an update for iPhoto. The new version, 8.1, adds several new printing options for the iPhoto print service. According to the update notes, these include:

• Hardcover books can now be ordered in a new extra-large (13ʺx10ʺ) size
• Includes three new book themes with travel-oriented designs: Tropical, Asian, Old World
• A variety of new holiday greeting cards themes are now available

This update is available to all users of iPhoto '09 and it weighs in at 161 MB. As always, this update is available for download through Software Update, or it can be downloaded on Apple's Support Downloads page.

On what seemed like a somewhat slow Monday, Apple has updated GarageBand '09 to version 5.1. This update adds a few new features, improves compatibility and stability, and also fixes a security issue.

The changes include:

• GarageBand track effects and Audio Units can now be added to a guitar track.
• Improved support for Apogee audio interfaces.
• Faster switching to full screen in Magic GarageBand.
• Improved access to audio monitoring settings.

This update weighs in 139.29MB, and is available to download in Software Update or from Apple's support download page. If this updates improves or fixes any problems you might have in GarageBand, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you've ever thought about giving up Google for your photo management, David Alison has good tips on moving from Picasa to iPhoto. For the unfamiliar, Picasa is the big G's photo-management software, originally available only on Windows and now made for Mac (since the beginning of 2009). When my sister the Windows user came to me for an equivalent to iPhoto, I set her up with Picasa and she's been happy since. Combined with Google's free Picasa Web Albums option, the app makes it easy to get your photos online for far-flung family and friends.

When installed on a Mac, Picasa will let you store images wherever you like, and it takes a "hands-off" approach to images in your iPhoto library, as the app's authors know some users will want to run both. Instead, if you ask it to edit a photo that's in your iPhoto library, it will ask to make a copy first.

Windows users who are switching to the Mac and looking to jump from Picasa to iPhoto ought to check out David's article. He lists the basic differences here, and explains how to switch here. His instructions are simple and readable and should have you up and running in short order. Enjoy iPhoto!

Back in June, TUAW reported on iPhoto2Twitter, an iPhoto plugin that provides an easy way to send photos from your iPhoto library to Twitter via TwitPic. Now the developer, Blue Crowbar Software, is back with an update that adds support for sending photos and movies from your iPhone or digital camera to Mobypicture.com.
Mobypicture is an online service that lets you upload a photo or movie once, then distribute the media to a number of different social sites and blogging tools. At this time, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, Vimeo, WordPress, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Vimeo, Jaiku, Hyves, and BrightKite are all supported.

As before, iPhoto2Twitter is available for €4.95 (approximately US$7.03) directly from the developer's website. Blue Crowbar's Aperture2Twitter has also been updated to add various social media and blogging sites through Mobypicture, and it's now available for €5.95 (about US$8.47).

Apple has just released an update for iMovie '09. The new version, 8.0.4, improves overall stability and fixes a number of other minor issues.

According to Apple, these issues include:
• Fixing a problem with incorrect rotation when working with video created by iPhone 3GS.
• Resolving instability when adding multiple beat markers in some languages.
• Correcting an issue where iMovie could become unresponsive after using fine-tuning controls beyond the stabilized portions of a clip.

To download this update, open Software Update (Apple Menu > Software Update) or visit the download page on the Apple support website.

Constant reader Joachim Bean alerted us that the an update to iPhoto '09. Version 8.0.4 is ready and available via Software Update.

Apple states that 'this update addresses a rarely encountered issue involving photos imported into a previous version that could affect overall stability, and corrects references to a few points of interest and location names that were labelled incorrectly. It's recommended for all users of iPhoto '09.'

The update also fixes the installation bug in 8.0.3 that we covered a few weeks back. The update screen contains a link to an Apple article explaining the fix of this problem.

For me, iDVD has always been the redheaded stepchild of the iLife suite. While I've used Garageband to make songs, iPhoto to manage photos (until I got Aperture), iWeb to make websites, and iMovie to make movies, until recently I'd never once tried to use iDVD to put together a DVD project. I've spent the past week trying to put together a DVD of our first year in New Zealand to share with our family back in the States, and while the movie's turned out great, getting there has definitely not been half the fun.

Creating the movie itself was somewhat of a chore. Because I haven't yet upgraded to iLife '09, I'm stuck with the much-maligned tinker-toy interface introduced in iMovie '08. I couldn't use iMovie HD instead, because it's not compatible with my hard disk-based camcorder. After several days of wrestling with iMovie '08 to get it to do what I wanted it to do, I finally had a 95-minute project ready.

At "professional quality" in iDVD, that 95-minute project left me with almost a third of the DVD unused, so I decided to add more content, including a slideshow with 300+ pictures and two more short movies in an "extras" menu.

This turned out to be my downfall. Suddenly, iDVD no longer wanted to co-operate with me.

Yesterday I tried to open up iPhoto '09, and was greeted with a screen telling me that my iPhoto library needed to be updated. This was sort of odd, since I had run the program many times since the software update of June 4th bringing the program to version 8.0.3, but what the heck. I clicked on upgrade and the program crashed displaying one of the wonderfully unclear error screens of hex numbers.

After trying all the usual things like rebooting, resetting the PRAM and saying 'Candyman' three times in front of a mirror, I sheepishly gave up and called Apple. It turned out that this has been happening to many people. Up until two days ago, Apple had been capturing reports to find the source. I was told that they stopped capturing reports when they numbered around 3,000.

What Apple found was a bug in the 8.0.3 updater, and apparently the bug could bite just about anytime since it didn't necessarily rear its head directly after the update. The bug, in various incarnations with various solutions, is to be cursorily found in the support forums, but here is the authorized Apple fix:

Hold down the option key as you boot iPhoto and you'll see a screen like the one displayed here. Just choose your library (there should only be one) and iPhoto will boot normally. Problem solved! As of now the problem hasn't resurfaced for me, and according to Apple tech support, it shouldn't. This bug will be squashed in a future iPhoto update but for now it's easy to get around.

Apple just released some updates for iLife '09 via Software Update. In a very un-Apple fashion, the release notes are actually sort of descriptive!

Here's the breakdown:

• iLife Support -- this is for iLife '09, iWork '09 and Aperture 2 users and it addresses some memory leaks, custom folder issues with Media Browser and maintaining the correct image date when importing from iPhoto to Aperture.
• iDVD gets an update to fix an issue where iDVD is unable to add a title/comment to an image. Recommended for all iDVD 7 users.
• iMovie now supports 720p AVCHD Lite cameras and camcorders and some other issues.
  
• iPhoto -- some fixes to publishing to MobileMe, Flickr and Facebook, slideshow playback and location GPS in emailed and exported JPEGs See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3532
• Digital Camera RAW update -- RAW support for iPhoto '08, iPhoto '09 and Aperture 2 for various Canon, Nikon and Olympus cameras.

This all looks like good stuff. I'm off to install/restart. Head to Software Update on your computer or hit up Apple Downloads to get the individual installers.