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Survey: What Was the Best Announcement of Macworld 2009?
“Click Here to take our post-Macworld keynote survey!”:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ruYoNEgHQtJlmUhGxQtbtA_3d_3d
iWork '09: Numbers
Noted features:
* Easily create formulas, using *visual placeholders with plain language text.*
* Perform calculations using *over 250 functions.*
* Organize your data instantly using *Table Categories.*
* Check your calculations at a glance with *Formula List view.*
* Create two-axis charts and combine line, column, and area series in a single mixed chart.
* Choose from *twelve new Apple-designed templates* (30 total).
* *Open, save, and email Microsoft Excel files* from within Numbers.Picasa for Mac – Better Late Than Never!
On Monday, Google finally released a public beta of Picasa for the Mac. Picasa is a free desktop app for importing, editing, organizing and sharing digital images–particularly digital photos.
Picasa for Macs is a free download from “Picasa.google.com/mac/”:http://picasa.google.com/mac/. You need an Intel Mac running OS 10.4 or later.
Picasa has been a popular photo app on the Windows side for years. It shares some features with iPhoto, and adds some unique killer features. These include the ability to sync your Picasa desktop and Picasa Web Albums edits, screen captures, create and edit movies within Picasa, add text/watermarks to photos, manage folders on your computer, a collage creation, screensaver creation, and Facial-recognition technology. Privacy and sharing settings can be adjusted for individual photos, collections or for your entire library.
Preliminary tests show Picasa to be as fast or faster than iPhoto and easy and elegant to use. We’ll test further and review Picasa in detail in the future.
Google also offers Picasa Web Albums, which is an excellent web service for sharing and organizing photos. This has been Mac-compatible for years. There is an iPhoto plugin if you want to use Picasa Web Albums without necessarily using the desktop version of Picasa. “Click here to download this.”:http://picasa.google.com/mac_tools.html
Also, the new version of iPhoto ’09 looks amazing. News about Picasa for Mac has been swept under the rug with the announcement of iPhoto ’09.
Picasa Web Albums integrates tightly with Google’s Blogger service, along with many other blog platforms and web services. Picasa Web Albums is very easy to use, uploading is a breeze, and photos are nicely displayed online. Picasa Web Albums offers up to 1GB (“enough space for 4,000 wallpaper-size photos”) of photo hosting for free.
Flickr is still more popular and has deeper social network components then Picasa Web Albums. Again, we’ll do a detailed comparison in the near future.
Correction!
In “6GB of RAM in your MacBook?” published last week, my description of eligible computers included 2.33GHz MacBook Pros. Unfortunately, these models have a capacity of three gigabytes, not six. If there is any question whether your machine can handle the upgrade, give us a call at 800-511-MACS and we’d be happy to confirm for you. Sorry for the confusion!
iWork '09: New Features
Some big changes were announced to the iWork suite of productivity applications today. Like iWork ’08, iWork ’09 includes Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Integration and sharing have been vastly improved across the suite, and it still offers excellent Microsoft Office compatibility.
The addition of iWork.com is huge. Much like Google Docs, you will be able to collaborate on projects by accessing your files online. Apple has not launched this yet in its full form, but it is available as a public beta once you have purchased iWork ’09.
In the following articles, you’ll find an overview of the highlighted new features.
“Read more about iWork here.”:http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/
“Check out our coverage of Macworld 2009 on our blog.”:http://blog.smalldog.comiWork '09: Keynote
Featured updates:
* Easily create sophisticated animations with *Magic Move.*
* Add dramatic object and text transitions using *new visual effects.*
* Visualize your data with *new styles and animations* for 3D charts.
* Dramatically *reduce file size* without compromising quality.
* Create dynamic flowcharts and diagrams using *connection lines.*
* Choose from *eight new Apple-designed themes* (44 total).
* *Open, save, and email Microsoft PowerPoint files* from within Keynote.