Wouldn’t it be great if your home-ripped movies looked the same in your iTunes library as their expensive iTunes Store–bought brothers?

We already showed you how to convert your DVD collection into iPod-compatible clips using MacTheRipper and HandBrake (“Hardcore How-Tos: The Digital Media Edition,” Apr/08, p23). This time, we’re going to take this process a little further and polish up those files to make them look just like iTunes Store purchases, complete with named chapter markers, poster artwork, and a description field containing a film synopsis as well as a short list of its cast and crew.

If you followed our directions in the April issue, you’ll have to re-encode your film in step 1 below if you want to name the chapters. But the rest of these steps can be done to the files you already have. Most of the information for the description field can be gleaned from your DVD covers, but if you don’t own a scanner and don’t feel like typing all that information, the Internet is the best place to search for alternative content. Time to get your DVDs out and start creating a beautiful digital film collection.

AT&T announced today they have developed software that allows iPhones to recognize voice commands.  The software is called AT&T WATSON Speech Mashups based on AT&T’s WATSON technology. WATSON is hosted on the web allowing iPhone access to the software “without the need to install, configure, and manage speech recognition software and equipment” according to AT&T.  

Check out the video after the jump.