A quick reminder: Vera will be at booth P20 (ICT Links Ltd.) next to the Create at BETT booth to answer your questions. Apple Distinguished Educator Oscar Stringer will also demo iStopMotion at the Apple booth. Ask him about his great new interactive guide to animation on CD. (More about this soon on this weblog.)

A stop motion animation with objects and people. Objects, and especially these objects moving about on their own are a bit creepy. Probably not suitable for small children. Watch the movie...

Quite an adventure, even in 21st century, is a trip halfway around the globe. We arrived today at SFO, took a car and are on our way "geekshopping" in Silicon Valley. Off, on to the road! Setting up the booth is the task for monday, lots of other things to do tomorrow.

FotoMagico 1.5 is on the finish line. New in b14 is finally support for songs from the iTunes Music Store, albeit due to restrictions in the DRM, only for a live slideshow. A movie contains just silence where the DRM protected song is supposed to be. (And, by the way, the big new feature of 1.5 is Transitions.)

FotoMagico 1.5b14 is a public beta. For news and information on the download, go to the FotoMagico Beta page...

Michael Capell points us to this article in the Herald Journal (Logan, Utah) about an animation workshop he did this summer with iStopMotion presented by the Alliance for the Varied Arts and the education program of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art.

Amazingly, this event led to more fun for Michael...

For our french speaking friends: "La promesse du têtard" (The Frog's Promise) by Zoé, Louise and Jean-Jacques. After a book by Jeanne Willis. I do not speak french very well but it seems that the frog broke its promise...

BTW, also in french, here is a very thorough review of iStopMotion by David Klaus of cuk.ch: "Les seules limites d'iStopMotion sont votre imagination et votre talent."

"Apple's iPod with video gives filmmakers young and old an exciting new way to get their projects seen, and offers iPod owners a great way to discover new talent and independent content. The Flux iPod video Film Festival brings these groups together by creating the first film festival specifically for content formatted to play on the iPod video." Check the website for more information.

Movies must fit into one of four categories (Student film, Indie film, Family Clips and Music Video) and be less than 10 minutes long. Entrance fee is $15, submission deadline is January 25th, 2006.

If you are visiting Macworld, drop by our booth and find out about great discounts for show-goers. During the show and for a short period after, people who signed up at our booth will be eligible for a special, time limited offer to be announced on the booth.