April 26th, 2010 Post Comment ( 0 )
Using Apple’s Photo Booth application as inspiration, the idea was to take the 2D image that it manipulated and create a tangible face in a real environment, then in turn bring it back into a 2D image. Using Photo Booth on the mask itself may create some sort of paradoxical shift where I cease to exist.
Source: http://www.maticart.com/
December 1st, 2009 Post Comment ( 0 )
It’s been more than eight years since Apple released the first version of iTunes. And although it’s expanded to incorporate many smart features since its January 2001 debut, it still looks remarkably similar to the way it did when it first appeared, running on OS 9. Back then it was just a jukebox, but over the years came enhancements like CD burning, the iPod, smart playlists, the iTunes Store, video support, and, most recently, the iPhone.
Apple has gradually turned iTunes into a hub for managing and playing all the music and movies on your Mac and mobile devices, while continually adding support for new devices and services like the Apple TV, movie rentals, and much more. In 2003, Apple made the smart move of developing a Windows version of iTunes, opening up the iPod market and the iTunes Store to a much wider audience. iTunes remains one of Apple’s most important applications, and it’s capable of far more than just playing music.
Whether it’s converting movies to watch on your iPod, building party playlists, getting album art online, buying music, renting movies, or backing up your iPhone, there’s an awful lot under the surface–and even more than ever with the release of iTunes 9 in September. Many of the tips and tricks we show you throughout this feature will save you time and even reveal a few things you didn’t know you could do.
Take control of your music collection with these time-saving tips and tricks.
Apple introduced smart playlists in iTunes 3, and it’s one of those features that, once you make using it a habit, you’ll never go back to plain-vanilla “dumb” playlists again.
To create a smart playlist, go to File > Smart Playlists (or press Option-Command-N). You’re presented with a dialog in which you’ll set the “rules” for your smart playlist. When you’re first starting out, it’s best to keep it relatively simple. But once you have the hang of it, you can go bigger, creating much fancier smart playlists to capture only specific types of content, weed out other content types, and so on.
Smart playlists take the manual drudgery out of creating dynamic playlists out of iTunes media libraries of any size–and they’re not limited to music.
If you specify that the playlist should show all songs with the Artist tag “Rolling Stones,” for example, all tracks in your library by the Stones will appear in the playlist. You can go a step farther and add all Rolling Stones tracks that have certain star ratings. By using the Match Any Rule option plus other options, you can have playlists that display different sets of tracks–a playlist, for example, where the genre is both blues and rock, as well as a bit rate greater than 128kbps. Be sure to check Live Updating, so iTunes will watch the library and automatically add any new files that meet the criteria you’ve specified.
With more music than ever available in the iTunes Store, it can be time-consuming to find new artists and albums you might like. The Genius feature in iTunes sends information about your musical tastes to the iTunes Store and recommends new music based on similar artists and other people’s listening habits (if you haven’t already, you need to turn Genius on by choosing Store > Turn on Genius). If you select a track from your library and click the Genius button in the lower-right corner, iTunes will create a list of recommended albums and tracks that you can buy from the iTunes Store to complement your chosen track. Then you can preview and buy these songs directly from the sidebar. Since it knows what music is already in your library, Genius won’t recommend anything you already have.
By activating the Genius feature you can have iTunes recommend new music based on your listening habits.
With iTunes 9, Apple expanded Genius to include mixes using songs already in your iTunes library. To get the Genius Mixes feature to appear in iTunes 9, turn on Genius if you haven’t already, then update Genius by selecting Store > Update Genius. Now, to see what Genius Mixes iTunes recommends for you, click Genius Mixes in the left-hand pane (under Genius) in the iTunes window. You’ll see a grid view of album cover-style graphics. When you mouse over one, you’ll see a name for the mix and a brief explanation of what it’s based on–for example, “Rock/Pop Mix 6: based on: The White Stripes, Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers & others.” Mouse over each mix and click the Play button to hear the mix. We just wish that once the Genius Mixes are created you could do more with them than just sit and listen–once a mix starts playing, there’s no way to tell what song is coming next. And, most frustrating of all, there’s no way to capture the mix as a regular or smart playlist.
Genius Mixes in iTunes 9 auto-create mixes using songs in your own library on the fly.
You can duplicate an entire consolidated iTunes library by simply copying the Music folder on your Mac. But with libraries frequently running into many gigabytes in size, this is a slow, inefficient method. iTunes can share your library over a local network, so it can be accessed by anyone on your Ethernet or wireless network. Go to Preferences > Sharing and turn on sharing of the whole library or specific playlists. You can password-protect access and also tell iTunes to look for other shared libraries. Since the music is streamed–not copied–it takes up no disk space on the machines of those who tap into your library.
iTunes can share selected playlists or your whole library, including videos, over a local network, with optional password protection.
Go to Preferences > General and select “When you Insert a CD, Import CD and Eject.” As long as this setting is active, whenever you insert an audio CD, it will capture track names, encode tracks based on your import settings, and your Mac will then eject the disc. Next click the Import Settings button and choose the quality setting you want iTunes to use to convert the CD tracks as it imports them (192kbps AAC or MP3 files will offer good sound quality at reasonable file sizes). When you insert an audio CD, iTunes will now retrieve all track names and artwork from the Internet and import the tracks using the quality settings you chose.
To set the bit rate for the AAC encoder, in the Import Settings dialog, choose 192kbps, leave the other options on Auto, and click OK.
iTunes is just as good with video as it is with music.
iTunes can display videos from your library in many ways. If you go to Preferences > Playback, you can tell it to play back videos in the small artwork viewer, in iTunes’ main window, in a separate window, or in full-screen mode. You can have anything from a small, unobtrusive window to a full theater presentation, blanking out additional displays. When it’s in a floating window, video can be resized during playback, and if you right-click, you can select any preset size. If you have more than one screen, move the floating window onto the display you want to use as the main screen. This is handy if you have a digital TV connected as a second screen.
Use the Playback settings to control how video screens are arranged on your main monitors or multiple displays.
iTunes is picky about what video file formats it can read and play back. It doesn’t like AVIs, WMVs, or other non-Apple formats, for example. If you have a movie that’s already been digitized into one of these incompatible formats, the best course of action is to convert it with QuickTime Pro ($29.99, www.apple.com/quicktime) into an MP4 or M4V file using the File > Export > MP4 or Apple TV options. You will also need to install Perian (free, www.perian.org) to enable QuickTime to open the videos in the first place. You should be able to drag the converted movies into your iTunes library, holding down the O key if necessary to override automatic copying of the file. Then choose Advanced > Create iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV version, and iTunes will convert the video using the optimum quality and screen-size settings for the device that you plan to view the video on.
Combining QuickTime Pro and Perian, you can convert video formats that iTunes doesn’t favor (such as .AVI) to .M4V files, so you can watch them on your Mac, iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV.
If you use iMovie ’08 or ’09, you can export a project directly into iTunes using the Share menu. Or, choose Media Browser and check the iPhone and iPod options. For each option you check, a different version will be compressed and exported.
However, if you’re still using iMovie HD 6 or your movie has come from another source, such as straight from a camera, you can use a third-party compression tool like ffmpeg (homepage.mac.com/major4/) to convert most kinds of video files.
If you have QuickTime Pro and Perian installed, you can opt to export directly for iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV within QuickTime Pro.
November 19th, 2009 Post Comment ( 0 )
by Dan Moren, Macworld.comAs impressive as the iPhone has been since its debut two years ago, the device has never been without its flaws. Apple’s regular updates to the software have polished some of these rough edges, while other needs were addressed when Apple opened the platform up to third-party developers in 2008. But much of what makes the iPhone such a revolutionary mobile device is more or less the same today as it was two years ago.
During that time, we’ve also seen increased competition from other players, such as Google’s Android platform and Palm’s webOS. While both platforms have some catching up to do, they’ve also introduced some original features along the way. And with software updates and new models of their own, they aren’t sitting still any more than Apple is.
Calling any of these devices an “iPhone killer” would be simplistic–not to mention silly. Still, Apple clearly can’t afford to rest on its laurels. With more competitors like the Motorola Droid appearing what seems like every week, somewhere in the sanctum sanctorum of Infinite Loop Apple is surely hard at work on the next version of the iPhone.
Of course, any major revision to the iPhone is certain to bring features cooked up by Apple’s engineers that we can’t anticipate, but we tapped our own staff of experts to speculate on what kind of capabilities could help the iPhone maintain its pole position.
Hardware wars
To date, Apple has only rolled out major hardware changes to the iPhone once per year since the device’s original release. But each version has brought significant improvements and, if Apple’s going to keep up with the Joneses, it should be looking in a few specific directions for its next model.
New screen The latest and greatest iPhone competitor is the Motorola Droid and most who have seen it agree that its 3.7-inch, 480-by-854 resolution screen puts the iPhone’s to shame. Of course, there’s nothing to stop Apple from incorporating a higher-definition display in the iPhone and, if the costs become competitive enough, we might even see a low-power OLED screen, such as the one in Microsoft’s Zune HD.
Better camera Apple took a big step forward with the iPhone 3GS’s camera, not only increasing it to 3 megapixels, but also adding a host of software features, such as auto-focus, macro mode, and improved low-light performance. Though not universally acclaimed as superior to the iPhone, the Droid does sport a 5-megapixel camera and also adds a few features the iPhone doesn’t have, such as image stabilization and–most important–an LED flash. Right now, the iPhone’s camera gets used because it’s the one most people have with them, not because it’s the best they own, but paying it some attention could make that built-in feature much less of a compromise.