This site is the online companion to my book/DVD, "The Macintosh iLife '05", published by Peachpit Press and Avondale Media. If you like this site, you'll love the book and its nearly three-hour DVD-Video disc. Learn more. Have news, tips, comments, or links? Send them along! How to contact me. Get an iLife. Get your own copy of "The Macintosh iLife '05". Patronize your local bookstore or buy from Amazon for just $23.09 (34 percent off). Learn more about the book and DVD. Find out what all the buzz is about: view samples of this beautiful book and watch QuickTime excerpts from the DVD. Upcoming Appearances June 21. Apple Store, San Francisco, 6 pm June 25. Northeast Ohio Apple Corps, 9 am July 23. iLife seminar, Santa Rosa, CA Photo gallery. I love the Flickr photo sharing service; here are some recent shots. (Newsreader users: To subscribe to my photostream, drag this link into your newsreader.)

Gigapixel Photos, Flickr Madness, and the Right Way to Use iPhoto

It's Friday -- must be time for a photography post. Today, I have a rich stew of photography-related tidbits, thanks in large part to friends who have forwarded cool sites on to me.

Gigapixel photos. No, there were no gigapixel digital cameras announced at the PMA convention this week. Maybe next year. In the meantime, there's The Gigapixl Project. By digitally scanning large-format negatives, these fiends are creating images with astonishing resolution.

Elsewhere on the Web and also of note: Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier and The 2.5 gigapixel photo of Delft. (Eat your heart out, Vermeer!)

Exploring connections on Flickr. A friend writes to say, "You have GOT to try this thing out... it's amazing what apps pop out of the ocean of pictures that is Flickr."

"This thing" is Flickr Graph, a "social network visualization." Enter a Flickr member's name and then explore the connections between that member and other members. You can also explore his or her photos and tags. It's astonishingly cool, and a wonderful use of Macromedia Flash.

I love Flickr but I haven't taken the time to add other Flickr members to my contacts list. That's going to change now. In the meantime, check out someone who has: my colleague Andy Ihnatko.

Performance tuning iPhoto. Over at MacOSXHints, people are spending far too much time trying to find the best-performing thumbnail size for iPhoto. The tip boils down to this: To quickly switch thumbnail sizes from the keyboard, click on any photo (or on the area between photos), then type 0, 1, or 2. Pressing 2 gives you a "native-sized" thumbnail that iPhoto doesn't have to work to scale.

But there's another way to performance-tune iPhoto: don't display more photos than you need to. You'll always get the best performance out of iPhoto if you view your library by roll (choose Film Rolls from the View menu), then collapse rolls whose photos you don't need. (Press Option while clicking any visible roll's triangle to collapse every roll in your library.)

It amazes me to see iPhoto users attempting to display and scroll through thousands of thumbnails. Kids! You and your Macs are working way too hard.

Yes, it's all in the book. These and other earth-shattering iPhoto insights are yours in the next edition of the original iLife book. 400 full-color pages and a 2-1/2 hour instructional DVD for a little over $20 on Amazon (34 percent off the cover price). Pre-order The Macintosh iLife '05 now -- while I go finish it.

It's a Wrap! And Meet Me in Santa Rosa Tomorrow

Ahhhhh. That was the mood on the set yesterday as we wrapped up shooting for the DVD that will accompany "The Macintosh iLife '05."

The two-day shoot was grueling but went extremely well. The new DVD is probably going to top 2.5 hours -- the biggest and best yet.

I've posted a couple of photos on Flickr and added some notes that describe what you're looking at. Suffice it to say it was a Mac-centric shoot: besides the Mac that I used on-camera, we had three PowerBooks on the set: two for video capturing and one for teleprompter. It was a great, if exhausting, weekend.

Let's get together in Santa Rosa. Tomorrow, February 15, I'll be speaking at the North Coast Mac User's Group in Santa Rosa, California (directions). I'll be showing off some of my favorite iLife '05 tips. The fun begins at 7 pm -- I hope to see you there!

Pre-order the biggest and best. Amazon is taking pre-orders for The Macintosh iLife '05, and is currently offering a whopping 34 percent discount off the cover price: just $23.09 for 400 full-color pages and a 2.5+ hour instructional DVD.

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Really old stuff (before February 2003)

©2002-2005 by Jim Heid.