Primordial Ooze

I’m not sure if I blogged about this before, but when iLife ‘08 came out I found it very annoying that you could not password protect movies that you upload to your .Mac Photo Gallery. This worked for photos, just not movies.

I knew this was simply an oversight so I have been checking the feature out every time I receive an iMovie update. About two or three weeks ago, I noticed the password-protection worked.

This was doubly confirmed today when I got an e-mail from the .Mac Team describing all of the new features added to .Mac.

Apple TV viewing. Web Gallery is now integrated with Apple TV so you can view any .Mac member’s public photos and movies right on your widescreen television. Just choose .Mac in the Photos menu and enter a .Mac member name.

Full-size JPEG downloads. Using iPhoto ’08 7.1.2, you can now choose to let visitors download your full-size JPEGs (highest resolution), or images optimized for 16-by-20-inch prints (smaller file size).

Standalone photo albums. Also using iPhoto ’08 7.1.2, you can publish standalone albums that do not appear on your Web Gallery home page. These are ideal for sharing photos intended for a select audience.

Password-protected movies. Using iMovie ’08 7.1.1, you can now require visitors to enter a password to view or download specific movies from your Web Gallery.

Web Gallery subscriptions. Visitors can now subscribe to your entire Web Gallery with a single RSS feed. The feed is updated any time new photos or movies are added, so subscribers can stay up to date automatically.

Aperture support. Aperture 2.0 users can now publish directly to .Mac Web Gallery. You get all the publishing features of iPhoto ’08, plus an option to allow visitors to download your original RAW files.

I’m not a user of Aperture, but they do have a new version out. Since my camera records RAW files, I might be able to get some benefit out of it. That said, I think I heard rumors that Picasa is coming to the Mac. If Picasa works like it did on the PC and integrates well into the iPhoto/.Mac/AppleTV world, I might switch. Picasa is free, after all.

If you own a Mac, I recommend trying .Mac out. Apple offers a 60-day free trial. .Mac has tons of cool features.

• Web Gallery
• Website Hosting
• IMAP Mail
• Sync
• iDisk (though I use Jungle Disk, too)
• Groups (Think of it as a project site, with email distribution)
• Back to My Mac (remote desktop, essentially)

Check it out.