iPhone gets cool slideshows, Keynote Remote app

Feeling let down about the keynote address at MacWorld? Yeah, me too. Phil Schiller did a decent job, but he's not the showman that Steve Jobs is. And the biggest phone-related news had to do with DRM-free tunes and 3G music downloads. (While a step in the right direction, it's certainly not game-changing — after all, Amazon has had DRM-less tunes for ages). Through all this, however, it may be easy to overlook that there were a couple of kinda cool little tricks delivered by Apple (at least for iPhoners with Macs).

iPhoto 09 directly exports slide shows into iTunes for viewing on iPod Touches and iPhones. What's neat here is using the beautiful new templates and transitional effects in slideshows to share on the go. Now, to your delight—and your friends' dismay—you can chronicle the trade-in of your old, but beloved klunker for that lip-smacking new car (backed by Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On"). iPhoto also maps geo-tagged images if you shoot with a GPS-enabled camera (i.e., your iPhone, for example) and sports some seriously cool facial-recognition features.
iPhoto and the whole iLife package ships later this month for free on new Macs. Or you can purchase it for $79 (single user) or $99 (family pack). It's definitely affordable and includes a kickin' edition of iMovie 09 (which blows the sad, sorry iMovie 08 to bits).

Schiller also revealed a Keynote Remote App for the iPhone. If you're a business user, this might be more your speed. Connect the phone via Wifi, and the app lets you view a slide and notes (portrait mode) or the current slide with the next one beside each other (landscape). To move from one slide to the next, you just swipe. It's not available in the App Store yet, but when it does, it'll cost 99 cents.I know, I know — not quite what you were lookin' for. But from the looks of things, with Noah covering the exhibit hall like a kid in a candy store, I have a feeling that's where the excitement is. He's already gotten started with awesome coverage of a few exhibitors (like this).One last consideration: Why would Apple go out with such a whimper at its last MacWorld? Me thinks maybe something's on tap that the company wants to unveil at its own media event later on (at least this is what the pundits are guessing). I sure hope so. Any more disappointments, and I don't know if my heart can go on.