Courtesy of Federico Carthy of Robot Forest

If you’re like me and have an extremely large iPhoto library (I have over 23,000 photos) it can be intimidating to begin organizing your photos. In iPhoto 08 you can organize your photos within Events, but that’s the easy part. The tricky part is not only finding the photos your need, but finding them fast. Welcome to the wonderful world of keywords.

Let’s say for example that you’re looking for every photo with you in it. Not only that, you want photos of you and your friend. With keywords you’ll be able to find exactly those photos in seconds.

The trick to efficiently organizing your photos is to first think of every category you will need. For example, every person you want to tag, every place, etc. To do this, open iPhoto, click on Window, and click on Keywords. If you can’t click on the option, select an individual photo first. Once in there you’ll see a button labeled “Edit keywords.” Click on it and you’ll be able to add and remove keywords as you see fit:

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Ok so I get a lot of questions on how to export video for website streaming. The idea behind this is to create a file size that’s reasonable for download and loads fast. What I will teach you in the next few steps is how to create a great export for your online videos that will load fast and efficiently. Enjoy!

1) Open your iMovie project.

2) Assuming your video your editing is complete you can follow the next few steps. If you are not done then I recommend coming back to this tutorial after you finish cutting the video.

3) Now go up to the menu bar of iMovie and press Share>Export Using Quicktime.

4) This window that appears is where you choose the location of the export and the settings. Once you choose where to export it try not to forget it. I like to export to the desktop for easy finding.

5) Now press the options button towards the bottom right of the popup export window. This is where you edit the movie settings.

6) Click here to see what your settings should look like. The most import thing to remember is what lies in the settings button. When you press it you will get a new popup. Click here to see what you should have.

7) We are done now. YAY! All you have to do is click ok to seal the settings in and then click ok again for the next window. Press save and it will do it’s compression of the video and save it to the location you chose in the beginning.

8) The video should be ready for your website.

The way to create a custom ringtone for your iPhone will require an Apple computer and the use of Garageband. After creating the iPhone ringtone in Garageband it will transfer to iTunes where you can sync your phone with your new creation. If this tutorial is hard to follow stick around because I believe I’ll be creating a video tutorial soon.

1) Open the Garageband application

2) If theirs a prompt for ‘Create New Music Project’ then select that option. Otherwise go to the top menu bar and press File>New.

3) Now there will be a second prompt asking you to name your project and choose a location to save it. For this demo I’ll name my project Test and save it in it’s default location. Keep all the other settings as default. This will work just fine for this specific lesson.

4) Notice when the Garageband window opens with your new project you will have one track named Grand Piano by default. If for any reason there is something other then Piano Track that’s ok. We actually will not be needing this track at all because we will create our own with our own music.

5) Now we need to access our itunes music folder. All the Apple applications in the iLife suite are linked together. That being said we need to access our ‘Media Browser’. You can access it a few ways. At the bottom right of the Garageband window theirs a button which has a music note on it. That’s the’Media Browser’button. The other way is to go up to the menu bar and press Control>Media Browseror command+R.

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I get many questions on how to setup an iChat account. This is fairly easy although it does take a number steps. NOTE: This also helps if you need to brush up on adding a new account. Here it goes…

1) You must have a instant messenger account of some kind. The two common ones used is either an AIM (aol instant messenger) or MobileMe (Apple’s once named .Mac account). AIM is free and you canclick here to sign up. MobileMe is $99 dollars a year.

2) Open the application iChat.

3) When open you choose iChat > System Preferences from the menu bar at the top.

4) System preferences will have multiple tabs you can choose. You should select the tab named accounts.

5) The bottom left of iChat System Preferences > Accounts you’ll see a plus and minus. Press the plus to add a new account.

6) This is where you fill out your user information you created. Make sure you select AIM under account type if thats what you created. Otherwise if your using MobileMe you keep it on .Mac/MobileMe both are the same. Then just fill out your username and password and press the Add button.

7) Now your new buddy list should open up. Unfortunately at this point you have no buddies to chat with. So call a friend and find out there username for AIM or MobileMe. I hope this helped.

So I was asked a question on whether or not you could copy a DVD using your Mac without any 3rd party software. Although, I know Toast 8 could accomplish this type of situation I was stumped for a moment and wasn’t really sure if this was possible. Doing what I do best and using my help resources I found the solution using Apple’s Disc Utility. Here are the steps to duplicating a dvd on your Mac.

Keep in mind this probably doesn’t work with licensed dvd’s (ex: transformers).

1) Insert the CD or DVD disc in the optical drive, and select it in Disk Utility’s list of disks and volumes.

2) Choose File > New > “Disk Image from [name of disc].”

3) Type a name for the disk image.

4) Choose “compressed” or “read-only” from the Image Format pop-up menu.

5) Choose “compressed” to create a smaller disk image, and choose “read-only” to create a disk image that’s quicker to create and open.

6) Click Save.

7) After Disk Utility creates the disk image, eject the original CD or DVD.

8) Select the disk image in the list of disks and volumes, and choose Images > Burn.

9) When the Burn Disc dialog appears, insert a blank CD or DVD, and then click Burn.

And that is it. I hope this helps with anyone that has been wondering about this. I think this is going to end up permanently in one of the tutorial pages so don’t worry about this tutorial going missing through the blog. Just give me some time to make the pages for the Apple section.

Courtesy of Federico Carthy of Robot Forest

One of the great things about the new iTunes 8 is the ability to make automatic playlists from songs you like with the new Genius feature. So if you’re listening to Beck’s new Modern Guilt and want to put together a playlist that relates to that song, all you have to do is click on the Genius button on the bottom right and voila! You’ve got a playlist.

Contrary to popular belief, however, this isn’t some sort of magic or witchcraft. It’s all done automatically following certain rules and crazy codes. And the best part about the Genius feature is that it can get smarter. There are two things that you can do to help it out if the playlists it’s making for you seem kind of random.

1) Rate your music. The star rating system isn’t just for visual purposes. If you tell iTunes what music you like, it will make it easier for the Genius feature to figure out what music to compile for you based on what you like.

2) Make sure to set the correct genre for your music. Even though you may consider Aphex Twin to be Techno music, iTunes has it listed as Electronic. Tagging your music with the correct genre will also help it compile smarter playlists for you. To do this I’ve been looking up artists on the iTunes store and following their genre listings. Just search for the artist you want and see what genre iTunes is listing it under.