If you are a sometime PC user you probably know about Orb, a multimedia sharing tool that allows you to access your media from anywhere you have an internet connection and a browser. Now, Orb has come to the Mac and it's got great possibilities -- but it's a mixed bag in terms of reliability.

You can download Orb for free, and set up a no-cost account. The software will index your iPhoto libraries, as well as your iTunes library, both audio and video.

You can then log into your Orb account on any other computer, fire up a browser, and play your media files. Orb has also had an iPhone app that logs you in and gets your media as well. It's been available for a long time, but only would work with a PC-based host. Now your Mac is accessible too.

Orb still lacks a few features you can get on the PC version. One big one is it won't talk to a TV tuner, so you can't look at live video from home on another computer. I expect this will be coming in short order. You can share media with others from the Orb website. They will need a free account, but they can watch a movie or listen to music or view photos just as you do.

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]

Courtesy molenlavapit.com

If you're the proud owner of a multi-camera/single Mac household then you've probably run into the problem of what happens when you plug in a camera not necessarily being what you intended. For instance, my wife used to have an issue where iPhoto would always launch when she plugged in her iPhone. This was because her Canon camera launched iPhoto whenever it was plugged in via USB.

Creig Sherburne has discovered that in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, however, camera/application management woes are tackled via an Apple utility that comes with the system. The latest iteration of Image Capture (version 6.0 at least) includes a preference setting for specifying which application to launch when connecting a camera. There's an even option for having no application launch, which is a nice feature if your Mac is running on scarce resources and some rogue program is taking up memory when trying to open.

Lest you think that by not upgrading to Snow Leopard you're in the lurch (though if you can, you should, it's only 30 bucks) fear not. There is a third-party solution for this issue; Cameras prefpane from Flexibits, which we noted back in July, beautifully (and freely!) solves this problem for Tiger and Leopard users.

Got any other handy, camera-related tips? Let us know in the comments!

[Via Daring Fireball]

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about backing up photos, removing a Boot Camp partition, Snow Leopard and Windows 7, Bluetooth menus, iPhone search results and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.

Han asks:

What is the best way to archive photos without using iPhoto? I have about 100 GB of original photos and I have been saving them on my NetGear ReadyNAS Duo. Sometimes I leave the photos in the folder and just copy it to the NAS or sometimes zip them before I put it in the NAS. What I am worried about is if I zip the folder and somehow the zip file itself gets corrupted, is it harder to recover them? Is it better to just not zip and leave it as a folder then copy it to the NAS?

Because photos are pretty important and almost impossible to recreate I take my photo workflow and backup seriously. First, I never import photos directly into iPhoto and instead, using a card reader, copy the files to a folder I have labeled specifically for these photos which resides in my main "Photography" folder.

The Pixelmator team has released another update to my favorite little photo editor. Pixelmator 1.5 Spider brings a host of web exporting and sharing options, including a new "Save for Web" feature and the option to send a picture straight to Mail or iPhoto. Additionally, there's a new Trim tool that will cut off transparent or background pixels, and a new Slice tool that will let you cut an image up into pieces and optimize each for the 'net. There's also the usual round of bug fixes, including support for full compatibility with Snow Leopard.

As usual, the new version is available for update from right within the current app. For new users, Pixelmator is available for $59 over on their website, complete with a free trial if you want to check out this photo editing powerhouse before buying. I really enjoy using Pixelmator -- it's lightweight and easy to use, and while it's not quite as full-featured as Photoshop (though with every big version release like this, they get closer), it's a great app to do a little image editing in.

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.

Many of us are forgetful in some form, and this trait is especially magnified when one proceeds to show others an "awesome photo" on your iPhone that, sadly, didn't get synced. Instead of telling your friends that you'll show or email them the photo later -- assuming you even remember to -- you can use Simplify Photo to view your entire iPhoto collection.

While increased megapixels in digital photography brings with it the promise of better picture quality, in most cases it comes at a file size premium. And because storage space on your iPhone is a finite resource, you can choose to set aside dedicated space for those really important photos and use Simplify Photo for those that are not as important but would nonetheless like to have access to just in case.

Simplify Photo is available for 99 cents on the iTunes App Store, while the required desktop client (available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux) is available as a free download at the Simplify Media site. The desktop app allows you to not only specify which iPhoto albums and events to sync, but the people as well -- via integration with the app's "Faces" facial detection feature. And if you're not exactly sure which album or event a photo is stored, you can use the app's search feature, which searches your photos' tags, titles and comments.

But the standout feature of Simplify Photo is its geolocation support. Like iPhoto '09's places feature, Simplify Photo displays a map with various dropped pins; and tapping on the pins will display the photos taken in the vicinity.

If a picture can say a thousand words, then Simplify Photo's desktop syncing capabilities have the potential to make your iPhone speechlessly filled with photos.

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.

Doxie is a USB-powered 600-dpi photo, document, and receipt scanner designed to integrate with a number of undisclosed Web and Mac apps. While I'm personally disappointed that Apparent didn't go with the pink and white Good & Plenty candy color scheme, the Doxie is heart-friendly and comes emblazoned with a number of pink hearts. The biggest heart is on the single scan button, which is just visible in the top right of the photo above. I was shocked to find a mistake in the press release, in which they said there were 9 hearts on the device. There are actually 10: one above the "i" in the logo, 8 after the logo, and one on the scan button.

A cool thing about Doxie is that it will automatically know when you're trying to scan a photo, clean up the photo (straighten it and trim if necessary), and then politely offer to put the photo into your iPhoto Library, Flickr pool, or other web apps. As an Apparent spokesperson noted, the company isn't interested in coming out with yet another piece of software to store your receipts and documents. Instead, they want Doxie to work with as many existing Mac, Windows, and Web apps as possible.

One comment from the developers that may point to some rather unique functionality is that they recommend using Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Doxie will retail for $129, and you can sign up for updates and early release information at the new website, which went live today.

The Eye-Fi Memory Card sends photos wirelessly from your camera to the destination of your choice, like a computer or the web. Back in January of '08, the product gained Mac and iPhoto support, and support for MobileMe was added in September '08.

This week, Eye-Fi announced the Eye-Fi 2GB Geo, which is currently exclusive to Apple retail, both online and brick-and-mortar stores. As you've probably guessed, the Geo adds geotagging to the mix. Once snapped and tagged, photos will be sent to a folder on your Mac or directly to iPhoto, all tagged and ready to go. This makes great use of iPhoto '09's Places feature.

It's $60 for a 2GB card, which is cheaper that most of the geotagging add-on hardware we listed a couple months back. If you pick one of these up, let us know how it goes.

Additionally, there's a Eye-Fi app for the iPhone [App Store link] that lets you send photos to your Mac or certain online services direct from your phone.

[via MacDailyNews]

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).

While I'm frequently called upon by friends and family to assist in cleaning up their iTunes duplicates, I was recently asked by a friend to help clean up duplicates of a different sort: an iPhoto library. At first glance, I knew this was going to be a tough job: duplicates were littered throughout my friend's library, and there was no visible pattern to it.

So, rather than manually sifting through what was, at the time, a 10GB iPhoto library -- which would've tested the limits and accuracy of my eyes, as well as taking me through my AARP years to complete -- I decided to think different -- 'cause that's what us Mac users do. After doing some research, I stumbled upon Brattoo Propaganda's Duplicate Annihilator (link). The end result was a 10GB iPhoto library trimmed down to 6GB.

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.