QuickTime 7.6 is in the wild. Released today via Software Update and on Apple's support site, the new version "includes changes that increase reliability, improve compatibility and enhance security." It also makes your whites whiter and your brights brighter while helping you avoid embarrassing social situations.

More details via the update page:

Video: Improves single-pass H.264 encoding quality; Increases the playback reliability of Motion JPEG media

Audio: Improves AAC encoding fidelity; Audio tracks from MPEG video files now export consistently

Application Support: Improves compatibility with iChat and Photo Booth

As far as the security updates are concerned, the word from Ryan Naraine at ZDnet is that this patch closes several potentially serious holes that could have been exploited by malicious URLs or custom-payload movie files to execute code on target machines. Four of the seven issues addressed in this update were reported to Apple via the Zero Day Initiative, which encourages responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities by providing cash bounties for the researchers involved.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

We're in the middle of gift guide season right now, but here's a gift that would fit great on any Mac user's list: Throwboy has designed a set of throw pillows after some of the Dock's most famous icons, including iTunes, iPhoto, Dashboard, and the Finder. They're 100% fleece, hand-crafted, and look cuddly as all get out.

Sure, a computer icon might seem like a strange thing to squeeze, but hasn't Finder been there for you in the worst of moments before? No reason that shouldn't remain the case outside the computer as well. You can pick up a pillow (for yourself or anyone else this holiday season) for $29 each, or $149 for the whole set. They ship in about 3-6 weeks, so there's no guarantee you'll get it by Christmas, unfortunately, but as their order page says "handmade takes a while."

We love the quick tips that Tekzilla brings everyday. The other day they showed off a tip that we just couldn't turn down spreading. When you're in PhotoBooth you can use two key combos to either turn off the flash or temporarily disable the count-down.

Hold down the shift key when you press the take picture button and your picture will be taken without using the flash. If you hold down the option key when you press the take picture button your picture will be taken without using the count-down delay. If you hold down both the shift and options keys, your picture will be taken immediately and without the flash.

We covered FlickrBooth a while back, when it was first released. FlickrBooth is a plug-in for Apple's PhotoBooth that allows you to instantly upload your creations to Flickr after taking the snapshot. The best thing about FlickrBooth 1.2 is that it now runs on Leopard. Some of the new features include:

• Automatic photo uploading now strips .jpg from the title
• SIMBL updated to 0.8.2
• Growl updated to 1.1.2

FlickrBooth is available as a free download from the developer's website.

iGlasses, the software-based iSight video enhancer, has been upgraded to version 1.4. iGlasses is basically a bundle of video filters that allow you to process the iSight signal to enhance brightness or add special effects (like "night vision").

There are several new features of note introduced in version 1.4. First is the iGlasses Manager. It allows you to switch iGlasses on and off on a per-application basis, so you can use the filters in, say, iChat, but not in iMovie. Second, you can now use iGlasses in many more applications. Version 1.4 includes support for Comic Life, Delicious Library, Camfrog, jmeeting, WebcamTweaker, CamSpinner, Funny Photographer, CamGrabber, and more. Finally, 1.4 introduces enhanced AppleScript scriptability. I'm sure you can use the scriptability for some sort of twisted April Fool's prank, but I'm unsure as to what else it might be helpful for.

You can buy a copy of iGlasses for $8 at the ecamm website, which isn't a huge amount of money, but be aware that a lot of this same functionality looks like it will be built into Leopard's iChat when it bows later this year.

Soon after the announcement of the MacBook Pro at Macworld San Francisco 2005, Chris Messina sent out a call to the Mac community to develop a hack for PhotoBooth that would allow him to automatically upload pictures to his Flickr account. Almost a year later, Tristan O'Tierney has answered that call in the form of FlickrBooth. The easily installed plugin enables not only the basic functionality called for originally, but has support for photo tags, title, description, privacy settings, and even sets. FlickrBooth is available as a free Universal Binary download.

Planet Crimson has a nice how to up reminding us about iPhoto's built-in PhotoBooth effects. The article shows you how to create a sketch-like rendering of your photos by combining filters such as "Colored Pencil" and "Fade Color". The "Sharpen" slider enhances and defines the "pencil" strokes.

Yes, you can do this in Photoshop and yes, it's not ground breaking new image processing research but it's nice to be reminded once in a while about a feature you may have forgotten or overlooked.

Wishingline, a web design studio, has done .Mac members a favor and collected most of the QuickPicks that are available on the web for Apple's Backup 3. There are quite a few QuickPicks out there for everything from ecto to PDF documents, Photo Booth pictures to Shiira bookmarks, OmniOutliner documents and much, much more. Wishingline went so far as to list a number of the QuickPicks individually, or simply offer an encompassing package of everything they could find (scroll down about midway on the page for these goodies).

The QuickPicks package is offered free from Wishingline, but remember: they didn't have anything to do with creating these (as far as I know); they just tracked them down and zipped them. If you want a QuickPick for one app or another, you should probably consult the app's author or check out these resources for creating your own.

[UPDATE: Scott from Wishingline dropped us a comment to let us know that the QuickPicks linked from Wishingline are, in fact, home grown. Thanks for some rockin' QuickPicks Scott!]

Here's a useful tip for those that want to test the batteries of their Frontrow remote, or any IR remote for that matter. Use your iSight! Just fire up Photo Booth (or a test video window in iChat), aim the remote at the lens and press a button. The iSight can detect the infrared light just like other video cameras.