Pix Remix isn't yet on the App Store, but I'm hoping it lands soon. If you've ever tried the Ken Burns effect in iPhoto to move photos around during a slideshow, you know how frustrating it is when the effect chops off the faces or other important parts of your photo while moving. Pix Remix does this better, plus more, all on your iPhone with your photos.

With Pix Remix you choose the photos you want (on your iPhone or iPod touch), put them in order, then create a slideshow using a path for the camera. You control the zoom as well, so instead of cutting off faces you can zoom into them instead. As you can see in the video, it's quite simple. This is the "pan and zoom" type of slideshow.

Pix Remix features a collage mode that reminds me of Microsoft's Surface technology -- a set of photos sit on a virtual table, and you can zoom, move and rotate them with your fingers. It looks like someone placing photos on a flat surface, except you can animate them.

Those are a couple of the slideshow options, and there's the option to add captions as well, or you can create a simple slideshow with nothing but transitions and captions. The final piece of the puzzle: export. You can send your slideshows to Twitter or Facebook or via email. I noticed the other day there were inactive links for a "reader" app, presumably to watch Remix slideshows on another iPhone without the full app, but that has been removed.

We'll keep an eye out for when Pix Remix hits the store, so check our Twitter feed for the latest updates.

DreamStream [App Store] is a new piece of software for the iPhone and iPod touch that gives you a personalized wireless portable picture frame. It can access photos you have on your phone, or with internet connectivity provide you with links to MobileMe galleries, Facebook, Flickr tags and RSS image feeds. I tried attaching to my MobileMe account and Flickr images and it worked just fine.

You also get widgets that display the time, weather in cities you select and the date. Happily, the app runs in either portrait or landscape mode.

I thought the documentation was a bit thin, and adding images from your camera roll on the iPhone is a bit time consuming as there is no way to select multiple photos -- you have to add them one at a time.

I'd love to see a method to add scrolling news feeds from selected sources, and perhaps an option to add music from your on-board collection. Remember that iPod touch users will only have Wi-Fi as an option for connectivity.

As it is, DreamStream is a nice, well performing app, and certainly worth the $1.99US asking price. I like the ability to see the photo streams from friends around the country, and now when my iPhone is idling and charging on my desk it has something to do.

Here are some screen shots of Dreamstream in action:

Astute followers of the TUAW Macworld 09 Twitter feed will know that yesterday evening saw us host a small yet fun reader meetup at San Francisco's very excellent Thirsty Bear brewery. In amongst the fine local ales and great food (the roasted apple and cider ribs come recommended), we also gave away yet more swag from the show floor. Thanks to all our readers who showed up!

12seconds.tv is a site that started up a little while ago that seems to be aiming at a "Twitter-for-video" kind of idea -- you upload just twelve seconds of video, whether that's you saying something, video of a short scene, or whatever else you want. The site was in alpha but has recently opened up to beta (so anyone can join), and they've also released an iPhone app, available for 99 cents in the App Store right now.

"But wait, Mike," I hear you saying, "the iPhone doesn't record video!" And it still doesn't, but it does record pictures and audio, and the 12seconds app will combine a slideshow of three pictures you take with any 12 seconds of audio you record, thus creating a close approximation of a 12 second video. You can see my sample upload here, just a few pictures of my apartment's hallway and some Mountain Goats playing from my speakers. You can use pics you've already taken, and the whole process of recording, combining, and uploading works pretty well. You don't have any control over how the images slide across: it's more of a "throw it all into the mix and hope something good comes out" thing.

It's an interesting idea, and while you're paying a buck for a social networking video app that can't actually record video (not that that's 12seconds' fault, Apple), you could probably come up with some pretty creative stuff, from the artistic and witty to the requisite cat videos (because no video site is complete without a cute kitty). It's definitely not a video replacement for the iPhone, but for uploading quick and simple snippets of experience from wherever you are, it does the job.

For a different approach to photo-based videos generated on your iPhone, you can check out the free Animoto app, released last week by the website of the same name. Animoto will take 8-16 photos from your iPhone or iPod touch, let you order them and select musical accompaniment (from a provided but fairly ample list of tracks; you can't use your own music or record a soundtrack). The app then uploads your images to the Animoto site and cranks out a 30 second, montage-style video for you. You can stream the video back to your iPhone, or send it along to friends. If Techcrunch gushes about it, well, you know it must be just awesome, right?

Geezers like me probably remember Polaroid cameras. Before the instant gratification of digital, we stood in the back yard shaking a slowly-developing print of Aunt Shirley sitting with her sheet cake. The result was a square, over-saturated print that would be passed around with calls of "Don't get frosting all over that!"

While the Polaroid corporation stopped production of the bulky cameras in February of 2008, you can still find a few in stores. Or just try Poladroid.

Poladroid creates Polaroid-style images from your photos. The UI is a lot of fun. Drop your photos onto the Poladroid "camera," and after a few seconds, it spits out your unprocessed print. Watch it slowly "develop," or speed up the process by -- you guessed it -- shaking vigorously.

You can create an image at any stage in your print's development by double-clicking and selecting "Take a sample." When your print is fully ready, a red "x" appears on the bottom.

This application, while in beta, is a whole lot of fun. I dropped a dozen pictures onto it in the first five minutes and the results are just great.

I'm really looking forward to the progress of this little app.

If, like myself, you can't tear yourself away from your G4 iBook long enough to upgrade to the latest and greatest consumer laptop from Cupertino, our friend Joe Russell saves you the fuss with his MacBook unboxing pics on Flickr. There are notable changes in the packaging:

"Opening the box, first thing I noticed was that it's virtually identical to the iPhone 3G experience... the back of the lid is black softy foam, and when lifting the black tab it brings the machine up and forward."

Joe describes the box as "small but dense." As we pointed out, Apple is trying to ship more by making less packaging (both economical and green). If you've been itching to see the MacBook unboxing experience, consider yourself gratified.

Thanks Joe!

I was in Anaheim, CA over the weekend (covering BlizzCon for our sister site WoW Insider) and while Macs were in short supply for most of the time, I did notice something Apple-related in LAX on my way out of the city yesterday. Best Buy recently started up a vending machine program which allows you to buy their electronics from staffless machines in various airports around the country, and lo and behold, right there next to the Nintendo DS games and spare USB hubs and mice, were Apple's very own iPods. Which makes sense -- Apple has long sold their stuff inside Best Buy stores, so why wouldn't Best Buy Express do the same?

It was a little strange, though -- at first, I thought there was an iPhone in there, which just would have made the whole activation process even more confusing. But no, it's an iPod touch, in both memory sizes. I also wondered just what you'd do with an empty iPod on a trip, business or otherwise, but I guess people who would really buy their iPods from airports probably don't worry too much about when they'll find the time to get music on there. Not that it mattered much yesterday -- as you can see in one of the pictures, the console's IE version was bugging out, so no one was buying anything anyway (and I couldn't check prices). Still, very strange.

Here's a sweet little treat. Over at ReMoveTheLabels.com, a poster's mom apparently bought an iPhone and found a surprise waiting for her on the onboard camera roll: three pictures. Two were blurry but the third is a real surprise: a picture straight from the iPhone production line. Look at all those luscious phones, waiting to be packed up and to go to good homes. These days, seeing that many iPhones at once is getting rarer and rarer, as they continue to sell out in US stores.

Thanks, Guillermo

Written by Erica Sadun

Missing iCards? Well, SodaSnap hopes to fill the missing hole with their postcards for the iPhone. "SodaSnap Instant Postcards" is a a free application that does just that: creates postcards on-the-go.

Just shoot a picture with your iPhone and SodaSnap lets you send it off as an e-mail postcard. You can choose a picture that is saved in your "Photos" library which allow folks with an iPod touch in on the fun.

The best part of this iPhone application is that it just works, all without creating a pesky account with some company you've never heard of. That being said, your message is clearly passed through SodaSnap's servers, so you might want to be careful of what you write (such as personal information, etc.). SodaSnap provides great access to the address book for picking recipients. Overall, this is a fun application and the results are pretty good for a free application.

SodaSnap Instant Postcards is a free download from the iTunes App Store. Get a detailed look at SodaSnap before downloading by looking at our gallery of screenshots.

BoyGeniusReport (BGR) somehow managed to get their hands on the new iPhone 3G a little earlier than anyone else. They have uploaded several high-quality pictures to show the comparisons between the 1st generation iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

In addition, Paul Thurrott posted some iPhone 2.0 firmware upgrade screenshots to show the upgrade process and some of the new iTunes 7.7 and iPhone 2.0 features.

[via MacRumors]

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.

The guys over at the Google Mac blog have dropped a new little open source application called Visigami, which serves as a more "interesting" and "fun" way to browse and play around with images online. Basically, after installing the app, you can then pull in pics from Picasa, Google Images, or Flickr (iPhoto is just a suggestion so far), and then search, animate, zoom in or out on them, and even turn them right into a screensaver.

It's a pretty neat little application -- not exactly the kind of thing that anyone has probably been hoping for (it seems more fun than utilitarian), but if you find yourself often browsing photos online, this definitely seems like a more fun way to do it. And it's one more reason to praise all the great developers working on our platform -- it's little apps like this that make the Mac user experience so much better.

An anonymous TUAW reader writes: "How can I email more than one photo at a time from my iPhone?" Unfortunately, the built-in Photos app seems to disallow this. There is a workaround. If you use my SendPics application, you can send many photos at a time. SendPics is a utility I wrote that's meant to bypass the iPhone's scale-for-email behavior and send full resolution images.

To make this happen, use SendPics to send an email and then press Home. You'll leave the email program but it will remember the photo you added. Then re-launch SendPics and add another picture and repeat.

The downside is this: if you have an email signature, it will repeat for every picture you add--so you may want to edit those out once you've finished composing the email.

The anonymous reader reports that he was able to send up to 3 pictures at a time. I had no problem going higher than that but I'm running firmware 1.1.2.

Considering the graphical nature of the web, I'm surprised more features and plug-ins haven't appeared to solve the problem of downloading images from sites as well as iPlace does. Operating as a SIMBL plug-in for Safari (including the 3.0 beta), iPlace allows you to specify multiple locations on your Mac for downloading images, but that's not all. It then gives you a contextual menu item when right-clicking an image or a web page that will allow you to instantly download any image to one of your specified locations, or - and here's the kicker - bring up an image downloading window that shows you each image on the page, along with your download locations provided as drag and drop wells in a sidebar on the left. Opening this window on I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER, for example, brings up the long list of images you see above, all ripe for efficiently dragging and dropping wherever I want.

In a word: iPlace is awesome. There are of course enhancements I would like to see, such as the ability to scale these images up and down to make it easier to view more from the page at once, but for a spankin' new product straight out the gate, this is a really handy plug-in.

iPlace is provided as donationware from Tekuris.