At the Macworld conference in San Francisco, Apple announced a new version of its iLife software — iLife '09, which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, and Garage Band, and ships free with new Mac computers this month. Upgrades for existing Mac owners are available for $80, or $100 for a family upgrade pack.

The new iPhoto comes with two new tagging features called "People" and "Places." It recognize faces in the photos you take, and gives you the opportunity to tag them with the name of the person. Once that person has been tagged, it (theoretically) remembers them and automatically tags him or her in all future photos, asking you to confirm its guesses. You can organize your photo collection by people, or search for photos that include specific individuals.

It also includes a geotagging, automatically including the longitude and latitude from your GPS-enabled phones or cameras, or allowing you to pinpoint the location where each photo was taken on a map. Photos will be uploaded to your Facebook and Flickr profiles without any add-ons or plugins. New slideshow options round out the deal.

iMovie '09 is getting a bunch of new themes for titles and transitions. Other new stuff: auto-adjustment shaky camera footage, improved interface features like dragging and dropping and context-sensitive menus, and computer-generated animated travel maps (Indiana Jones-style) for your travel videos.

Finally, GarageBand '09 can now teach you to play an instrument with its included high-definition, interactive video lessons — called "Learn to Play." Some of them are taught by famous music artists like Sting and Norah Jones. Lessons beyond the initial batch can be purchased from within the program for five bucks a pop.

New versions of iDVD and iWeb were also announced, but we don't know what they have to offer you just yet.

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