MacMost: Archives

While iMovie doesn't really have any audio effects, its sibling app GarageBand allows you to take video clips, or an exported iMovie video and apply all sorts of effects. You can change voices, echo, distort, and so on. You can apply the change to the whole video, or only a portion. You can use the same techniques in regular audio projects.

A science class at Curtis Creek Elementary School in Sonora, California needs a MacBook for journaling and research. Join MacMost in supporting this project.

Apple released Safari 5.1.2 on Tuesday, improving stability and adding new functionality. The update fixes a bug that caused white flashes experienced by many users. It also uses less memory. A new feature is the ability to display PDF documents inside of web pages. You can get the new version through Software Update in Lion and Snow Leopard. Or, you can download it at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070.
Today Apple is observing World AIDS Day by promoting RED products in Apple Stores. Some of the revenue from these products, such as the red cover for the iPad, go to The Global Fund To Fight AIDS. You can also buy these in the online Apple Store.

“Captain Earl E. A. Dopter became the envy of his crew when he was the first to get the new iPatch.”

Uninstalling apps is easy in Mac OS X Lion. If you have purchased an app in the Mac App Store, you can use Launchpad to quickly remove them. Otherwise, you can still use the basic techniques of simply dragging an application to the trash, or running its uninstaller program.

Preference files store your preferences and data for each application. Find out where they are and what they look like. In some cases you may want to delete or restore an old copy of a preference file.

You can buy gifts in iTunes for your friends and family. You can gift songs, albums and iOS apps. They would get a code and use that to purchase the specific item in iTunes. You can also buy them Apple and iTunes gift cards. You can send them via email, or order a physical one with a special message.

A recent tradition at Apple stores has been to hold modest sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Tomorrow may prove to be slightly more than that, with some Apple Stores opening as early as midnight, and several products having decent sale prices.
To check to see when your local Apple Store will be opening, go to Apple’s retail section and look up your store. A special list of holiday hours should appear on that store’s page.
Reports of sale prices include as much as $101 dollars off MacBook Pros and the Air, and also up to $61 off iPads.

A school in New York is looking to get one iPad to share between six classes of students with autism. Many of the students can benefit from computers, but cannot use a mouse. The teacher already has apps in mind that could be used on this iPad Join MacMost in supporting this project.

“You’ve heard of turducken? Well this is a MacPadTV. I’m streaming a video
from my Mac to my iPad and then on to the Apple TV with AirPlay.”

One feature of Siri is the ability to dictate text instead of typing on your iPhone. Siri recognizes words and needs no special training. You can also type punctation and special symbols and commands.

There's a lot you can do with the calendar creation feature in iPhoto 11. You can use your own photos and iCal calendars to order a printer calendar from Apple, or print it yourself. You can also export the pages from a calendar to a PDF or even create an image from it.

You can use Siri like a personal assistant by creating notes simply by speaking. You can create new notes, or even add to existing ones. Siri can also search your notes. In the Reminders app you can create different lists, and then use Siri to add items to that list.

Apple took iTunes Match live this week. The new service allows iTunes users to store their entire music collection on Apple servers and then access it from any desktop or iOS device. The service only uploads songs not available in the iTunes store, simply giving you access to the iTunes store versions of others. The result is all of your music appears to be “in the cloud” and accessible anywhere. It is only available in the U.S. for now, and costs $25 per year. You can find out more about iTunes match in this episode.

An elementary school in Bakersfield, California wants to get an iPad to help students learn how to read. The teacher already has several apps in mind that will help, they just need to get the iPad. Join MacMost in supporting this project.

“Hmmm. The iPhone Cards app. That’s way better than my idea of sending a handwritten card by mail that is scanned in and emailed to someone.”

The new iTunes Match service from Apple allows you to keep your entire music collection in the cloud. You can access all of your songs from any Mac or iOS devices you own. Find out what it does and how it works.

If your internal drive is getting full and you want to move your iTunes music to an external drive, you can do so by using functions built right into iTunes. Keep your iTunes Library on your internal drive, but move your music to an external drive. That way you move the bulk of your files to your external drive, but keep all of the primary functionality of your iTunes Library on your internal one.

On the iPhone 4S you can use Siri for a variety of time-based functions. You can create simple alarms in your Clock app with Siri and even change alarms. You can also start, pause and stop timers. You can also create more complex reminders that then sync across your devices with iCloud. Reminders can be location-based as well as time-based.

Apple updated its flagship New York store on 5th avenue with a new glass cube. The new structure uses only 15 panes of glass. The store is often seen on television worldwide during major product launches.
Every year Greenpeace ranks technology companies based on products and their manufacturing processes. Years ago Apple was as the back of the pack, but has made major strides forward. It now ranks fourth behind HP, Dell and Nokia. You can check out the full report.