Shooting photographs of fireworks can be a real challenge. The good shots happen quickly, cameras don't always get the focus right, and there is a lot of movement that can make for blurry pictures. The iPhone is not the best camera in the world for demanding photo jobs -- that's true for all cell phone cams, with the possible exception of digital cameras that happen to include phones as a bonus feature.

Nevertheless, we asked our readers around the U.S. to send us their fireworks images, and that they did. Actually, the iPhone acquitted itself pretty well, both with still images and in movies done with the new 3G (plus one movie done with a jailbroken 2G and Cycorder).

Look below for a gallery of some of my favorite stills. Many were sent anonymously, so we can't always credit the photographer. Some were uploaded directly from their phones to MobileMe and YouTube.

Thanks to all who participated and made our 4th of July sparking and colorful. Visit this link to see the full collection of entries, check out comments in our request for pictures article yesterday for more YouTube links, and view the gallery below for our selection of some great images from around the country.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

If we applied Shakespeare's logic to today's digital age, then it would also mean that watching mis-tagged or untagged videos on your Apple device (be it a Mac, iPhone, iPod or Apple TV) would be just as enjoyable. Okay, you got me, they'd probably be just as good. But this doesn't mean you're excused from tagging your videos appropriately.

First, a bit of background. The vast majority of videos purchased from the iTunes store, as well as "digital copy" (iPod/iPhone pre-formatted videos that are sometimes included on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs), will come pre-tagged. So, the situation for those in this camp (myself included) is peachy, especially when using an Apple TV. Your videos show up on the screen screen with proper titles, season and episode numbers, actors, and descriptions. Just the way Steve likes 'em.

But what if you already own the DVD and want a version for your iTunes library? For those of you with the time and patience to rip an MPEG-4 version (and believe me, this takes some patience, especially if you use H.264 encoding) of your favorite videos, a HandBrake-MetaX martini make tagging your videos a bit more of a pleasurable experience - as if it wasn't fun enough already.

Being the Disney-Pixar fanatics that we are, my wife and I went to see Up Saturday night (in Disney Digital 3D, of course) at our local theater. Remembering the appearance of the Mac startup sound as Wall-E's waking noise in last year's Pixar epic, and the brief shot of an Apple-themed racer in Cars, I decided to look for Apple-themed Easter eggs in the movie.

By the time we were at the end of the film, I was beginning to think that there weren't going to be any love letters to Apple in Up. The credits, featuring Russell's Wilderness Explorer merit badges floating by on a typed page, began to look somewhat promising. Sure enough, I spied a stylized and stationary "Spinning Pizza of Death," the dreaded Mac OS X wait cursor, on a merit badge just about at the end of the credits.
For those of you who are either Windows users or have been lucky enough to have never seen this infamous Mac icon (seen 3 times lifesize above), it's the Mac OS X equivalent of the hourglass in Windows. The SPOD (officially known as the Spinning Wait Cursor, A.K.A. the Beach Ball of Death or the Marble of Doom) appears when an application is not responding to events.

If you go to see the movie (which you should; it's funny, action-filled, and great for absolutely any audience) be patient and sit through the credits. You'll be rewarded by the sight of a SPOD on the big screen (it's after the two nuclear merit badges). If you're an Up-aholic, you can also check out the Mac game or the $4.99US iPhone game (link opens iTunes).

Update: Slashfilm has a photo of the SPOD (BBOD, MOD, take your pick...) merit badge in a detailed post about all of the Easter Eggs in Up.

Check the old Software Update, folks: there's a 68 MB iTunes 8.1.1 upgrade awaiting, or you can get it direct from Apple's site. The notes on the new version are as follows:

iTunes 8.1.1 adds support for renting HD movies and provides a number of bug fixes, including addressing issues with VoiceOver and syncing with iPhone or iPod touch.

The recent influx of HD movies onto the iTunes store (full list of titles here) promised but did not deliver rentals for HD titles; this update should take care of that detail. Let us know your mileage if you update.

Thanks Bruce!

I have no idea how much of this is spoilers, but if you want to walk into this summer's Star Trek movie with a completely blank slate of expectations, you should probably move on to the next post. Spoilers ahead!

Ok then. Apparently J.J. Abrams, who's directing the new Star Trek movie, has worked with some comic book creators to (get this) bring a prequel of the prequel to the small screen before it appears on the big one. Whew. They're releasing a series of iPhone apps, which are actually "mini-comics" telling the pre-story of the movie. And here's where it gets really confusing (and spoilerific): apparently, while the movie is a prequel featuring a young Kirk and Spock, the story's villian is actually a time-traveler from Star Trek: TNG times. Which means the iPhone comics actually star Picard and his TNG crew, and tell the story of the movie's villian, a Romulan named Nero. I originally though the film was a non-canon reboot of the series, but no -- apparently even though we've never seen this era on film before, it is still mean to fit right in the Federation's universe.

Still with us and interested? You actually are a Star Trek fan! (I prefer Star Wars myself.) The comics are going for 99 cents each (you can apparently pick up the same comic in print for $3.99), and are available in the App Store right now.

Hot on the heels of Fandango, AOL has released Moviefone [App Store link], a free application for the iPhone and iPod touch. Moviefone can find your nearest theaters, movie times, trailers, and in some cases you can buy tickets.

The app is fast, and the trailers are nicely encoded for the iPhone. It has links to your address book, and you can invite friends to join you at the theater easily. It's a clever idea. You can touch a link and call the theater (good luck getting past voice mail) and there is some info on the stars of the movies. Like Fandango, it can display a map to your nearest theater, and that links out to MapQuest to get you directions.

Here in Southern Arizona, the app worked quickly and efficiently. The only caveats I have are the 'buy tickets' function was not available on many of the theaters I tried, and the closest theater to me was listed about the 5th nearest. It also did not understand my zip code (it's a fairly new one) but made an appropriate substitution.

Moviefone also contains a search function so you can search by movie title, and a favorites option so you can save your favorite movie palace to a list.

The app also has a feedback option, so I sent some along with my email address. It will be interesting to see if I get a response. Update: They did respond. I'm impressed. They said the 'buy' feature only works where Movietickets.com is supported. Moviefone is a nice app, and other than my inability to buy a ticket at some theaters, it looks pretty solid. The price is right, and competition is a good thing. It's certainly worth a download and a tryout. If it lets you buy tickets, you're ahead of the game. While you're at it, be sure to get a look at Now Playing, i.TV (which includes TV and DVDs), and Hot Popcorn. See you at the movies.

Has your favorite movie gone missing from iTunes or Netflix lately? The reason could be television, says CNET -- apparently a slew of movies on iTunes and Netflix's streaming service have recently fallen prey to television exclusive agreements. With the onset of Apple TV and apps like Boxee making it possible to stream Netflix, TV networks with exclusive showing agreements have made sure that while they've got a lock on a movie, we can't watch it anywhere else.

Of course, as CNET notes, it's about the money (isn't it always?). If studios can make more money from the TV networks than they can from online rentals, then obviously they're going to go with television. The only problem with that, however, is that with an exclusive agreement, they'll never know, will they?

And of course the other issue here is the actual definition of places like iTunes and Netflix -- obviously, retail stores aren't barred from carrying these movies, so does that mean that Netflix and iTunes are actually content channels rather than retailers? Tough issue. You have to think that it'll eventually be settled in favor of digital distribution (what consumer wouldn't want to watch a movie on their own time rather than sticking to a TV network's schedule), but until studios are convinced otherwise, exclusivity agreements will likely be the rule.

[via Apple Insider]

Update: As the commenters have noted -- this service is currently only available for US customers. I truly apologize for my US-centric slant.

Last month, Netflix finally started to roll out its Watch Instantly service to Mac users. You needed to opt-in to use the feature, but it was available for those who wanted to access it. Today, Watch Instantly is available for Mac users without having to opt-in -- as long as you meet the minimum system requirements (Intel Mac running OS X 10.4.8 or higher, and at least one GB of RAM).

Watch Instantly is a great way to catch up on a movie, TV show or documentary without having to wait for the movie to come in the mail. You don't get the extra features or super surround sound, but it's fast, the quality is good and it is free to use. If you have a Netflix Unlimited plan, you can watch as many movies a month as you want. If you have a limited plan, the number of films you can stream is also limited.

You can access Watch Instantly from the tab on the main Netflix page and browse through the selection of movies and TV shows. You still need to install the Microsoft Silverlight plugin, if you don't already have it installed. Watch Instantly works in Firefox 2 or higher and Safari 3 and up.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Oh man -- finally, we're getting an app that fulfills the promise of the iPhone. Ever since we knew the iPhone would have a camera and an internet connection, we've been waiting for SnapTell Explorer, and now it's here and free. Download and install it on the iPhone, and then snap a picture of any book, CD, movie, or videogame, and bingo, you've got links to listings for it (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Wikipedia, Google, etc.) around the Internet. I have no idea how it works (some type of picture comparison script hooked up to a database, surely, though it's amazing that it works that well with just the iPhone's camera), but that's fine, because it makes it all the more indistinguishable from magic.

The main drawback is that it takes a bit to search their database -- while wifi or 3G are much faster (obviously), Edge will have you waiting a few minutes for a find. And at this point, all they have are links to pages -- it would be nice to see a price comparison right away and/or a quick rating (to see instantly what people think of a movie if you happen to be standing in a video store making your choice). Finally, it would be nice to see this extended to all sorts of items -- I tried scanning a few groceries that I might be price shopping, but for now it's just books, movies, and music.

But otherwise, it's awesome -- even in low light/bad light situations, as long as you can get a recognizable picture of the case, it works. This is exactly the kind of thing the iPhone is made for, very cool to finally see it in action.

[via Waxy]

iPhone media guides may be a dime a dozen (or, in the specific case of What's On TV, $0.99), but the free i.TV listings and lookup tool is starting to follow through on some of the promises for future feature development we heard when it was launched.

The new version, on the App Store now, includes third-party partnership integration with Netflix. You can manage your DVD rental queue and your instant-viewing list (if you have a supported target -- Mac streaming is "still in the works" but as we know you can sneak your way in), search the Netflix catalog, or check for DVD availability from any TV schedule listing or movie details screen.

Other new features include the addition of Wikipedia links from most movie, show and actor listings; new TV channel listings, along with an option to only show new/unaired episodes; and location-based searching for movie theaters.

i.TV says that the Netflix integration is the first of several third-party ties for the app, with more announcements coming through the end of 2008 and into 2009. Can't wait!

Last night, Perian was updated to version 1.1.2. If you need to extend the capabilities of QuickTime, the free Perian plugin allows QuickTime to play back all kinds of popular video formats (.AVI, .MKV, .FLV and more). It's a handy utility for anyone who watches a lot of video on their Mac.

Here's a list of the bug fixes/improvements in 1.1.2:

• Fixed update checker never running - this version requires a manual install
• Enabled frame-dropping on AppleTV
• Fixed some frames being lost in AVCHD/.mp4 with newer versions of QuickTime
• Fixed another ffmpeg crash on G3s

You can download the update to Perian from the project's website. You can also see the version history list on their support website.


Thanks for the tip, Chris!

Danny Gorog at APC Magazine has written a really nice analysis of something that's rather strange when you think about it -- why aren't there any high definition DVD drives on Macs yet? It has been asked for by a few folks, but by and large, Apple has pretty much ignored the whole high definition debate. And even now, when we supposedly have a winner in Blu-ray, Apple hasn't pulled the trigger, and consumers, as Gorog notes, haven't even really cared much.

In fact, across the entire PC market there's not a lot of wholehearted support for Blu-ray or any major high definition formats. It's not that DVDs are "good enough" -- HDTVs are selling by the truckloads -- it's more that consumers, apparently, just don't want to settle on another format. And that may be the key to this whole thing -- Apple has a vested interest in selling content, and implementing some other content producer's format into their machines will take away from their best HD content channel yet: iTunes.

And customers, happy to not have to buy yet another permanent format of their favorite movies, may be satisfied with having no next-generation disc format. I, like many users, have already watched tons of HD video without ever having bought a Blu-ray disc. If Apple doesn't need the drives to deliver the same quality content, why should they bother?

They may be first to see the sun, but they've been waiting quite a while for movie rentals and purchases from the iTunes store -- now that patience has paid off, as movies have now arrived in a land down under. Aussie and Kiwi iTunes users can purchase and rent movies to their hearts' content. New releases on DVD will premiere day-and-date on the iTunes store at the same time as they're on sale in physical form in the two new countries of service.

iTunes movie purchases in Australia will kick off the price tier at A$9.99 for catalog titles, A$17.99 for recent releases and A$24.99 for new releases; rentals will be A$3.99 for library title rentals and A$5.99 for new releases. iTunes movies in New Zealand start at NZ$9.99 for catalog title purchases, NZ$17.99 for recent releases and NZ$24.99 for new releases, rentals are NZ$4.99 for library titles / NZ$6.99 for new releases. As in the US store, getting the high-def version costs an additional dollar. Rentals can be held for 30 days before you start watching and then you have 48 hours to finish (a whole day longer than US customers? Must be the International Date Line).

Thanks to everyone who sent this in

KavaMovies is an interesting database application aimed squarely at all the movie fanatics out there. It allows you to catalog all the movies you have seen, own, hope to see or want to buy. It connects to online sources like the IMDB and Amazon to download cover art and other information.

Once you've entered your selections, KavaMovies offers recommendations based on your collection. Finally, it also keeps track of video files already on your Mac and facilitates downloading from iTunes or via bittorrent.

KavaMovies is $35US and requires Mac OS X Leopard. It's presently in beta and a demo is available for download.

Positive Spin Media's media search tool, Pandora (formerly NetScrape) has been bumped up to version 2.3. The new version primarily fixes some issues that Pandora had with reading some pages with non-English languages or encoding. The update is free to registered users, and you can download the update today.

If you haven't seen Pandora before, it's worth a look. Pandora uses a plug-in architecture to wander the big image search engines (i.e., Google and Flickr) or your hard drive, and supports finding and fetching any type of media -- not just images. Once you've found the media, Pandora provides easy slide show creation so you can show it off. I like the fact that you can start off multiple searches simultaneously and have them run

The Pandora demo is limited to 50 image viewings, and if you love it you can buy it for $29.95.