iPhoto ‘09 - Overview

I have to say, I’m very impressed with iPhoto ‘09.

“Faces” has been added to iPhoto as a way to organize and tag your photos. Once you’ve started assigning names to photos, it automatically “recognizes” photos with those other people, and labels them accordingly. Facial recognition is something I’ve seen in other software, but to see it added into iLife/iPhoto is nice.

When you have a new photo or an unidentified photo, it pops up a “corkboard” that shows the faces for people you’ve already named and suggests matches for the new/unidentified photo.

“Places” has also been added as a way to organize and tag your photos. While they emphasized the geotag aspects (GPS coordinates added to a photo’s EXIF information by your camera), it’s also handy to manually do it, and it plots out your photos on maps.

They’ve also added a “Travel Books” feature where you can have books printed out with maps and photos of the places you visited or are interested.

Both of these features could end up being very useful to genealogists in the long run. I have my doubts about how accurate the facial recognition will be when it comes to older or smaller photos, but even if you have to do some manually, it seems like a good way to keep track of everything.

MacFamilyTree 5.3.7, Sale on MacFamilyTree, MobileFamilyTree (Dec 24 -25)

Today, MacFamilyTree version 5.3.7 was released.

Coinciding with the holidays, Synium Software is also offering a substantial discount on MacFamilyTree and the iPhone/iPod touch version - MobileFamilyTree, including MacFamilyTree upgrades from previous versions.

MobileFamilyTree syncs up with MacFamilyTree and allows you to carry much of your MacFamilyTree data on your iPhone or iPod touch.

MobileFamilyTree requires at least MacFamilyTree 5.2.3.

Sale prices/details:

MacFamilyTree: $34.30 USD (Regular Price 49 USD)
Upgrade from an older version: $14.50 USD (Regular Price 29 USD)
Coupon Code MFTXMAS08:

MobileFamilyTree: 2.99 USD (Regular Price 4.99 USD)
Coupon Code XMAS08:

Full Changes in MacFamilyTree 5.3.7:
* Full english user guide added
* Fixes and many performance enhancements in the Virtual Tree
* Minor bug fixes and other minor improvements

As with all 5.x updates, this update is free for MacFamilyTree 5 owners.

Download/Buy: Synium

Keith Wilson Passed Away (iFamily Developer)

Several people have written to inform us that Keith Wilson, developer of iFamily for Tiger and iFamily for Leopard, a respected genealogy program in the Mac community, has passed away from a heart attack. Keith was 65 years old.

Our condolences go out to his family.

Dick Eastman has a writeup on Keith.

Keith’s website: iFamilyForLeopard.com/

Syncing iFamily for Tiger with iPhone

If you are curious about iPhone functionality and genealogy applications, iFamily for Tiger allows you to export certain data to iCal, which can then be synced with your iPhone:

You can now get daily alarms and reminders on your iPhone of when all your long dead ancestors and relatives were born, married and died.

You can read this thread at the iFamilyforTiger.com forums.