I (Brian Peat) run the site in my spare time with the help of Ken Drake. Neither of us have very much free time these days, and mine in particular has just been drastically reduced. As of the beginning of September, my wife Jen and I moved from our comfy (and safe) home near Columbus, Ohio and moved to a tiny town in Pennsylvania (McConnellsburg if you’re interested) to be near some friends of ours, and to attend a ministry school in Mechanicsburg, PA. I closed down my Mac Consulting business of 11 years and we’re selling our house. We’ll be going to school until early 2011, after which we’ll be moving to Brazil to be missionaries (our friends are headed down about this time next year to get things started).

As crazy as it sounds, we’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while. The plan is to open a center in Curitiba, Brazil that will be a safe haven for the prostitutes, homeless, drug addicts, etc. It will be safe and welcoming center, not a place of condemnation. I won’t go into more detail here because I know some of our readers are touchy about religion, but I will say this…our goal will be to share love and to support those who want or need help, not to force some agenda down their throats in a time of need. Love, support and no strings.

Anyway, you won’t see any more posts about this on the site, but I just wanted to share just a bit of my private life with our readers. If you want to find out more about the ministry, check out www.shoresofgrace.com (we’ll be adding more Brazil info to the site soon). You can find info on me and my wife Jen on the staff page for now.

Thanks, and now back to your regular scheduled Keynote news.

Enter BeLight Software and the first version of what’s sure to be a welcome addition to many Keynote users’ tools, Art Text. A quick trip over to their samples page will show that it nicely covers a lot of what TypeStyler used to do plus it should even be welcome to those familiar with Photoshop’s Layer Styles. In seconds, you can turn any text into a graphic element with the 50+ pre-designed styles. It also includes 300 pictograms covering a wide range of subjects and designs. You can copy and paste into Keynote as a PDF image or export as TIFF, JPEG, PDF, PNG and other formats for use anywhere.

Art Text is available for download starting at $29.95 and academic pricing is available. Find out more at BeLightSoft.com

Download and try out a demo of the software (limited to encoding approximately 2 minutes) from their “Try It” page to see if it will work with your content. Also review the detailed changelog to see all the most recent enhancements that have been added in the previous point releases. VisualHub is available for purchase for $23.32. Find out more at Techspansion.com.

MacBreak #34

What you’re going to experience is a Keynote presentation running automated via tags in eaceh slides notes, and being read by the Mac default voice (or the voice of your choosing). You’ll also hear a demo voice from Cepstral that makes the built-in OS X voices sound like a joke, and a very cool shouting voice that lets you create your own “Monster Truck Rally” type voice overs. Call us impressed.

Other links of interest:
Cepstral.com
Automator.us/self-prezo

New in 2.1 is the ability to apply shear, skew, stretch and rotate distortions to images and other graphics. Also new are soft bitmap shadows for even higher quality drop shadows. Arrows support has been expanded with the inclusion of over 20 new arrow styles and the introduction of user defined arrow parameters. The Dash palette has seen similar refinements which allow users to define any sequence of line-space patterns. Shapes can now be applied along the path of any graphic as a “brush” (including a progressive sequential distortion transform applied to successive shapes). All this configuration is made easily accessible with the ability to save named settings for not only the arrows and dashes, but gradients, shadows and transforms as well. Users primarily creating large drawings and drawings with groups of thousands of graphics will see a significant performance increase and Smart Zoom has been added to the toolbar to display the zoom percentage.

EazyDraw is available via a 9 month trial license for $20 (which can be applied towards a purchase during the first two months) or a single user licensed digital download for $95. A download with CD is $115 and Classroom/Site licenses are available. Read more about the new features at EazyDraw.com

As with version 1.1, you can create iPod, PSP, DV, AVI, MP4, WMV, MPEG-1, and Flash video with the click of a button from many common (and uncommon) formats. You can even burn hours and hours of video onto a DVD suitable for standalone DVD players. While 1.1.3 brought the first H.264/640×480 compressed video (outside of QuickTime/iTunes) at 640×480 to the iPod, it has been further refined since then (along with numerous bug and performance fixes). Now, your “backup” presentation on your iPod will look even better if you ever need to use it OR you can always be prepared for that impromptu meeting (be sure to ALWAYS carry your audio/video cable with you!)

Download and try out a demo of the software (limited to encoding approximately 2 minutes) from their “Try It” page to see if it will work with your content. Also review the detailed changelog to see all the most recent enhancements that have been added in the previous point releases. VisualHub is available for purchase for $23.32. Find out more at Techspansion.com.

They’re available for download now at KeynoteAdventurer.com

(Because they utilize Flash within a QuickTime movie, if you’ve recently upgraded to iTunes 7 and QuickTime 7.1.3, you’ll have to perform the steps listed in this Apple infobase article.)

Patterns are now much easier to use. The new menus include dozens of predefined patterns and simple foreground/background color controls have been added to the pattern editor. Also new is basic slideshow presentation capability (integrated with ClarisDraw import). Supported formats have been beefed up with added support for CMYK and extended dynamic range images. New bitmap import and export formats include GIF and OpenEXR. Improvements have also been made for PICT image export for QuickDraw based applications such as Microsoft Word and graphics caching (for increased performance).

You can find out more at the company’s website. Intaglio is available for purchase online at PurgatoryDesign.com for $89 and is also available in five and ten license packs. The upgrade is free for all existing users and includes localizations for English, French, and Italian.

One of the more practical features included in Workstation are the scaleable countdown timers in the form of progress bars. These QuickTime movies sport transparent backgrounds for a seamless look when used with any Keynote theme. Countdown to the start of a presentation or to mark how much intermission time is left before your lecture resumes. Timers come in 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 minute lengths.

Workstation can be purchased from Divine Fiat for $19.95. For more information or to purchase Photo Options visit DivineFiat.com.

If you’re interested in what went on during the Keynote address, check out this page from Engadget

Here’s a link to the sneak peak of the new iChat, including the mention of showing Keynote projects inside iChat.

iChat sneak peak

You can create iPod, PSP, DV, AVI, MP4, WMV, MPEG-1, and Flash video with the click of a button from many common (and uncommon) formats. You can even burn hours and hours of video onto a DVD suitable for standalone DVD players. You can get around some problems when using non-standard video (AVI’s) in Keynote by reading in the file and exporting a QuickTime compatible MP4 file. The list of features new in this release includes:

Conversion from unencrypted VIDEO_TS folders

New MPEG output formats-
• TiVoGoBack – Use TiVo Desktop to put presentations on a TiVo.
• SVCD
• CVD
• Generic Transport Stream
• HDTV 720p
• HDTV 1080i

PSP enhancements-
• If a memory stick is chosen as the destination, the necessary video directories are created automatically
• Choose custom titles for PSP videos
• Volume slider upped to 300%

AutoCrop globally or video-by-video.
Conversions can be paused/resumed.
Common encoding “cheat codes” are selectable within the Advanced panel.
Non-interactive Flash 6 (and lower) animation converted when QuickTime decoding is forced.
Limited support for converting EyeTV and iMovie project files.

Download and try out a demo of the software (limited to encoding approximately 2 minutes) from their “Try It” page. VisualHub is available for purchase for $23.32. Find out more at Techspansion.com

As their names imply, Darkroom is well suited to darker backgrounds and Light Box looks great with light backgrounds. Both are made up of 76 different text and photo layouts with 4 aspect ratios for the photo cutouts; portrait, square, landscape, and panorama. Designed with flexibility in mind, the themes can be changed by simply altering the fill attribute of the cutout and background masters. Alter the color or use one of the included substitute backgrounds (11 designs, each in 7 colors) to give your presentation a personal touch.

The Photo Icons begin with a collection of photorealistic icons from the world of photography such as photographic media and hardware. Each icon includes a palette of colors and textures that help to ensure your charts, tables and other created elements match its subtle hues. Also included are primitives of each of the custom icons that are editable Keynote objects allowing control over their fill and stroke. Rounding out the shape collection are a set of shapes perfect for use as buttons and image backgrounds. Since all of the shapes are editable, you can mask your images with them using Keynote’s “Mask With Shape” and you can copy and paste them for use in Pages and iWeb.

Darkroom, Light Box and Photo Icons can be purchased individually for $19.95 or as part of the Photo Options collection for $44.85. For more information or to purchase Photo Options visit DivineFiat.com.

Like the previous version, bins are deleted by clicking the delete button and clicking an arrow on the interface can store or retrieve contents from virtually anywhere in the OS. You can copy and store files, images, text and shapes from programs like Keynote, Pages and iWeb. New to version two is a Clipboard Recorder you can use to have iClip lite automatically record whatever you copy to the clipboard. Also new is an increase from 20 to 25 bins (25 bins were previously only available with iClip lite SE) and the widget can now be resized to fit the width of your screen.

iClip lite is a free download from Inventive.us.

Version 2.8.1 adds several “Arrange” options, a basic Bézier curve polygon tool (similar to what users may be used to from ClarisWorks and MacDraw), and an Intensity mask option for groups. Also new is a user defined conversion table for importing Classic fonts when opening ClarisWorks and MacDraw documents. Drawing scales can now be exported with graphics and graphics can scale to the drawing on import.

It’s highly recommended that Intel users running Mac OS X 10.4.7 upgrade to 2.8 as there are bug fixes in the OS for Intel processors that are supported in the latest release. You can find out more at the company’s website . Intaglio is available for purchase online at PurgatoryDesign.com for $89. The upgrade is free for all existing users and includes localizations for English, French, and Italian.

Keynote Stills 3.0 requires Apple Keynote or Pages. the package is available as a download for $39. Buyers will also get the prior edition, Keynote Jam 1.1, for free with their purchase of Keynote Stills, over 260 objects total. Upgrading from Keynote Stills 2.x is $19. Keynote Stills is also available as a part of Keynote Quartet for $99 which also includes Keynote Themes 4, Keynote Animations 3, and Keynote Photos 2. Find out more at Jumsoft.com

Photos 2.0 gives uses the selection they need when photographic backgrounds are an asset to creativity. Their high quality photos (all at 1024×768) give users the image they need for that special layout. They span subject from feathers to flowers, wood to metal, fabric to frost and many more giving you plenty of options for almost any situation.

And, Photos 2.0 is not JUST for Keynote. These images are great to use as shape fillers or backgrounds for Pages, PowerPoint or even other themes that can use the graphic as a part of theme (like KeynoteThemePark’s KeyFX series).

Keynote Photos 2.0 can be purchased for $39 and is compatible with any version of Keynote. You can purchase it as a part of Keynote Quartet (which adds Keynote Themes 4, Keynote Animations 3, and Keynote Stills 2) for $99. The upgrade for Photos 1 users is $19 and for those who purchased Quartet ’05 after March 2006, the upgrade is free. Find out more at Jumsoft.com

We’ve tried the application with fullscreen Keynote presentations (once you activate “Allow Exposé, Dashboard and others to use screen” in the Slideshow Preferences) and if your graphics card has the power for it, it could become yet another way to stand out when giving a presentation. The included plug-ins are

Bullseye – places a a red and white target at your cursor point
Comic – places cartoon sound effects (that you personalize)
Cutout – allows you to draw shapes that join to highlight certain areas
Flashlight – follows your cursor like a spotlight
Focal Point – follows the current screen activity (requires Assistive device access to be turned on)
Footprints – follows your cursor with footprints
Pixie Dust – follows your curser with a shower of sparkles
Scribble – allows you to draw onscreen with 4 different pen colors
Sonar – overlays the screen with a green sonar that “pings” the cursor point
Waves – sends a wave pattern out from the cursor
and
Zoom – select an area of the screen and zoom into it

You can purchase OmniDazzle for $14.95. You can download a demo (limited to 1 hour) and find out more information at the OmniDazzle website.

In version 2, a shape copied from Keynote and stored by PopCopy would be pasted as an un-editable bitmap. If you needed to alter the fill or stroke, you would have to re-create the shape. With version 2.1 you can now copy shapes to and from Keynote, Pages, and iWeb and still edit them.

You can try out a demo of PopCopy for free (your history will be limited to the last five items). You can purchase a full version for $14. Find out more at PopCopy.net.