Kris Fong

Optical storage consists of a drive that uses a laser to read and write (or burn) data onto optical discs; CDs and DVDs are the most common. A standard CD holds 650MB to 800MB of data, a standard DVD holds up to 4.7GB, and a dual-layer DVD holds up to 8.5GB. Storing stuff on CDs and DVDs is the least-expensive storage solution; discs cost less than $.50 each.

CDs and DVDs are best for storing files you want to hang onto but don't need to access every day.

When it comes to organizing, editing, and sharing photos, most Mac users know iPhoto. But what happens when you don't feel like plunking down $79 for the latest iLife iteration just to get the snazzy Faces and Places features? Google offers an answer in Picasa, a free photo editing and sharing app that rivals iPhoto '09 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), excelling in areas, though it's not without a few shortcomings.

Picasa has only been available for the Mac since January 2009, but it's popular in the Windows world. If you've used iPhoto, Picasa's feature set will be familiar; you can organize and edit photos, add effects, create albums and slideshows, detect faces, tag places, share pics, print photos and contact sheets, and play movies. But Picasa comes with some nice surprises; you can batch edit photos, create collages, sync your Google contacts, set a pic as your desktop, make movies, sync content with Picasa Web Albums, add text to photos, post photos to Blogger, and upload movies to YouTube.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

Scrolling and clicking on Next links through tons of Web pages is not how I want to hunt down an elusive video or photo. Thankfully, there's Cooliris, a super-handy browser plug-in that lets you scope out images and video content in a unique way, displaying everything in a full-screen, horizontally expanded, interactive 3-D "wall" view. It effectively eliminates the repetitive click-and-scroll tedium so you can find what you're looking for fast.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

The playlist, to the music lover, is one of the greatest innovations since the volume knob, thanks to the ease of copying digital music. Instead of spending hours crafting the perfect mix tape, you can quickly create a playlist on the fly in iTunes. Whether you want music for driving, running, soothing your broken heart, or paying tribute to the greatest hair metal bands of all time, if you've got the songs, creating a suitable playlist is easy.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

Apple's iPhoto slideshow presentations are nice--if you're not suffering from Ken Burns effect burnout. Keynote gives you more transitions and provides themes that work well for corporate presentations. But if you're looking to create slideshows that are more engaging, fun, and eye catching, PulpMotion produces professional multimedia presentations that are anything but ordinary.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

You've probably made a few photo collages in your lifetime, whether you laid out photos with the perfect amount of messy randomness in a photo album or magnetized a grouping on your fridge. But in the digital world, there's not a lot out there that lets Mac users do the deed easily. I've painstakingly used Photoshop, Pages, and even iWeb to create collages, but nothing compares to the quickness and ease of Shape Collage.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

Chances are you've probably heard about the Faces feature in iPhoto '09 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) that makes it quick and easy to find all photos of a particular someone in your iPhoto library. But if you don't have iPhoto '09, iLovePhotos can give you a similar result for free, but with more manual effort.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

If you're a photographer or just plain snapshot-happy, you've no doubt experienced the dread of sorting through tons of photos, deciding which to keep or trash. I get this feeling every time I return from a vacation or photo shoot, knowing that I'll need to go through hundreds of images one ... at ... a ... time ... in Photoshop. But with ViewIt, I can simply drop my camera's photos onto the ViewIt window, view and mark what's good with just a key press, and copy only those images to my Mac. Beautiful.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

You could pay $700 for a professional image-editing program like Photoshop ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), but if you're not a photo or graphics pro, it would likely be overkill. Check out Sumo Paint, a free Web-based, Photoshop-inspired image editor and creator that offers many similar graphics-editing tools and inspiring paint tools, first.

[Editor's note: The following review is part of Macworld's GemFest 2009 series. Every day until the end of June 2009, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.]

Ever have one of those moments where you download photos to your Mac and then delete the originals, only to find that some didn't copy over? Rather than curse or cry, just use Klix. Whether you've deleted photos, reformatted your media card, or had a card go bad, Klix recovers photos and movie files despite the vacuous state your media card appears to be in.

A network-attached storage (NAS) drive is a dedicated storage device that uses its own operating system and software to provide centralized storage and file sharing over a computer network. NAS prices have come down to almost standard external hard-drive levels, so if you've thought about sharing one hard drive among multiple Macs or buying an external drive for each, a NAS drive may be more convenient and cost-effective.

NAS, SAN, DAS...Huh?

Whether you use your iPod or iPhone for entertainment, communication, or to amplify your cool quotient, all models share one thing in common: They can function as portable storage devices. Depending on the model, your device features either a hard drive or flash drive that allows you to read and write files to it just like an external drive once you enable it to do so. Here's how.

Enable your iPod