HoudahGeo 2.8

HoudahGeo has been updated to version 2.8.

With this release, Houdah Software is dropping support for Mac OS X 10.4. Houdah Software has also improved and enhanced the error handling for errors occurring during exporting or uploading of photos.

HoudahGeo is a geocoding application that works with your photos and GPS information to help you manage location information for all of your photos. HoudahGeo can actually write latitude, longitude, and altitude information to your image file, with no alteration of the image or its quality – it uses EXIF, XMP, and IPTC tags to store this information.

If you want to do more than add the geocoding information, you can take those photos that have been geotagged by HoudahGeo and work with them within Google Earth, as well as export to Flickr, Locr, or EveryTrail.com. There is also a built-in map that can be used to display the photo locations.

If your photos were taking with an iPhone or other device that has integrated GPS hardware, it can use that information. It can also work with dedicated GPS devices, and can read GPX/NMEA files.

It does integrate/interface nicely within Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture as well as Adobe’s Lightroom, and you can browse and work with those images from within HoudahGeo. It can also update the Places database in iPhoto ’09/’11 (as of HoudahGeo 2.7.1) and Aperture 3.

Many of us work with a lot of photos and a lot of location information and this might be useful to try out.

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Bee Docs Close to Releasing Timeline 3D v3

Bee Docs Timeline 3D v3 is nearing completion! Bee Docs Timeline 3D is what it sounds like – timeline software for Mac OS X that allows you to create charts. These can be interactive as well as 3D. Full motion 3D versions of these timelines can be downloaded to your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or AppleTV, as well as imported into Apple’s Keynote or exported into HD video. It’s useful for genealogists – it goes above and beyond the timelines that can create with genealogy software.

In the meantime, Easy Timeline is available in the Mac Apps Store (Update – Timeline 3D – BEEDOCS).

Timeline 3D v3 is a major upgrade over previous version, and it will be a paid upgrade for owners of previous version. There is a new blog post up on Blog.BeeDocs.com detailing some of the changes to 3D presentations:

Our interactive 3D presentation feature was designed for storytelling to a live audience. Most timeline charts designed for web sites, touch screens, or printing are not simple enough to see across a classroom or a courtroom. Giving a three dimensional perspective to your timeline is the best way to show both the context and detail of your events during a presentation.

With that in mind, we’ve made some improvements to the 3D presentation interface that will make it an even better tool for storytelling with a live audience.

Among the presentation changes:

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Mac OS X 10.6.5 Released

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.6.5 for Snow Leopard today. For a full list of fixes, updates, and additions, see the links below. Some of the Mac OS X 10.6.5 highlights * Addresses performance of some image-processing operations in iPhoto and Aperture. * Addresses stability and performance of graphics … Read more

Skype 5 Beta for OS X

Skype, which is a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) and Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) application has released beta 5.0 of the Mac OS X client.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. While the previous versions of Skype for Mac were 2.8 and below, the new 5.0 number reflects a couple of major updates and is now at the same version number as the Windows client.

The first major update is that Skype for Mac now supports group video calling, a feature that is present in Apple’s iChat client, but has’t been available to Mac Skype users. In order to use this feature, everybody on the video chat needs to be using version 5.0 or newer. I’m not sure about this feature when using an iPhone.

There is another major update, but it’s overshadowed (in my opinion) by the group video calling. The user interfaace has been overhauled and is now a single, unified window. You’ll no longer have your chats, video calls, etc., in different windows. I’ve got mixed feelings about this, but there is a “call control bar” that can sit on top of other windows you have open. With the unified interface though, it makes for a larger overall window. I understand the reasoning behind it though, and I’m going to use it – I’ve been really looking forward to the group video calls. A lot of us use Skype to keep in touch with family and friends.

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iPhoto 11 Update with Calendars

Apple has released iPhoto 9.1, which is actually iPhoto 11 9.1. iPhoto 8.0 is the version number of iPhoto ’09, so iPhoto 9.1 is iPhoto ’11 . Anyways, it’s an update for Apple’s iLife ’11 that resolves a few issues, and adds some additional letterpress holiday greeting card themes. The … Read more

Thoughts on “Back to Mac”

Earlier today I provied some live coverage of Back to Mac and now I want to mention a few things. I was curious to see if there would be an iWork update. There was not. Not too surprising. iLife ’11 – iPhoto ’11 This was the big thing to me … Read more