Technology - Macworld.com

Are your photographs suffering from a decided feline shortage? There's a cat for that.

Red Giant Software has released Holomatrix 1.0, a new After Effects plug-in designed to let you easily recreate holographic special effects with a few mouse clicks. The package—which features effects such as animated sci-fi holograms, ghosts, bad TV reception, and realistic digital signage—includes 30 presets and lets you control the look, timing, and placement of random effects.

OnOne Software has released Photo Essentials 3, a suite of five add-ons for Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Two scanning apps have been upgraded (finally) for use with Snow Leopard.

Google has announced an update to its popular Google Earth iPhone app. Version 2.0 lets users view personalized maps created on a desktop machine. The upgrade also adds 13 new languages to the mix, bringing a total of 31 supported languages.

This just in: Adobe Labs has some new toys up for grabs. As part of Adobe's poorly-named Open Screen Initiative to put Flash on every popular platform known to mankind, Adobe has released beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Antwerp, Belgium is well known as one of the diamond capitals of the world (host to at least one major heist in the past decade). But the latest place in the city to be pilfered wasn't a vault full of gems, but a warehouse full of iPhones.

What kid of the ’80s didn’t see himself as Luke Skywalker, valiantly manuevering his X-Wing fighter down the Death Star trench, the fate of the whole galaxy resting upon him and his loyal astromech droid? Seeing as most of those ’80s kids probably have an iPhone now, we imagine that THQ Wireless didn’t even consider the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field when producing the $5 Star Wars: Trench Run (iTunes link).

If printer drivers for Snow Leopard set your heart a-racing, then Christmas arrived a month ahead of schedule. Apple posted printer updates for Canon, Brother, HP, and Lexmark on its Support Downloads site Monday.

Runtime Revolution has released version 4.0 of its self-titled application-authoring software. New in this release is the ability to deploy applications directly to the Web in any of the major browsers running in Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

Location-based social networking got a bit more interesting with the recent release of Loopt 2.0 for iPhone and iPod touch. This major new upgrade puts businesses, events, and even shopping coupons on the map, all while making it easier to stay in touch with friends and make new ones.

I debated whether the headline for this story should be about the fact that Apple has now approved Bobble-Rep, an app that the company had previously rejected. The other option was to make the headline "Macworld contributor Lex Friedman can predict the future."

On Tuesday Dell announced the 5130cdn ($1549), a workgroup color laser printer that the company claims is the “world’s fastest single function letter-size office color laser printer.”

Apple won a key victory in its legal battle with Psystar, as a federal judge has ruled that the clone-maker violated Apple’s copyright when it sold PCs with Mac OS X pre-installed.

Looks like there some people out there could use some schoolin’ on how to do business. A rather surprising admission from a Microsoft exec gets us kicked off this week but, as silly as Microsoft is, the App Store takes the cake yet again. And last, a well-reasoned, polite discussion about Apple’s strategy, featuring the Macalope and two knuckleheads.

Since its inception, Google Voice has offered a wide range of features for managing your phone calls, with one glaring exception: calls passing through Google Voice have to be directed to another phone number if you actually want to answer them. This gap may now have been closed with Thursday's announcement that Google is acquiring Gizmo5, also known as the Gizmo Project.

Apple’s latest iPod nano got a firmware update Friday, aimed at fixing a few performance issues for the miniature MP3 player.

Stories about App Store submission woes have become standard fare in the tech media of late, which has understandably led to some readers groaning “not another App Store sob story” whenever they come across one. But, as Dan Moren so ably put it, iPhone developers are entitled “to a little respect,” and constantly being on Apple’s case with regard to the App Store approval process is the only way to get them to do something substantial about it.

John Carmack didn’t need a lot of time to figure out whether he wanted to develop for the iPhone. It “wasn’t a major strategic decision,” the game maker says. “I just really like my iPhone.”

The world’s most popular video-sharing site is planning to offer content in all of its high-resolution glory. YouTube announced that it will allow users to upload and view video in full HD; a 1080p test video is now available. All of you viewers with fast computers and even faster broadband connections will soon get to indulge in much more.

On Monday, we covered a pending class-action lawsuit filed against Storm8, developer of numerous popular iPhone games. The suit alleges that Storm8's games used “backdoor” methods to snag players’ iPhone numbers.

In an interview with PCR at last month's Microsoft Partner Network conference, Microsoft partner group manager Simon Aldous was asked whether Windows 7 was a more agile operating system than its predecessor, Windows Vista.

Nothing adds to a slideshow like a little music—or at least, that’s what Panasonic thinks. The company announced its first audio system with both an iPod dock and digital photo frame.

Apple may have only opened 26 stores throughout the 2009 fiscal year (which ended in September), but get ready, because they’re about to unleash between 40 to 50 more stores by the end of 2010. Just this week, Apple will have opened three brand new stores around the world: one in Paris—at the Louvre no less, one in Upper West Side in New York City, and Australia’s sixth store in Westfield Chermside mall in Brisbane.

Live streaming video on the iPhone and iPod touch is neither "madness" nor the exclusive domain of the heavy hitters anymore. Livestream on Thursday unveiled its free service for streaming live video to the popular Apple devices.

iTunes. You know it. I know it. We all have some sort of a relationship with it, whether it’s love for the things it does or hate for how bloated it has become.

The app store is overflowing with great tools that can turn a photographer's iPhone or iPod touch into a photo assistant (though it falls short in the heavy lifting department). Taking pictures of children? Use the PandaCam app to make them smile. If you're working with models, bring up the iPoseU app for posing inspiration. Still life photographers can take advantage of the A Level app to make sure their images are properly aligned.

It's 2 AM. Do you know where your iPhone is?