Motion FX from Autodesk is a free and fun app that lets you use your Mac's video camera to create stunning visual effects in real-time. There are more than 80 presets you can apply to an image you capture with your camera. You can apply effects to motion detected by your camera, detect faces (OS X Lion or later only), or select specific colors. You can also use your mouse or trackpad to paint effects on the canvas created by your camera.

Motion FX

Motion FX can save your real-time video as movies or snapshots that you can easily incorporate into just about any project.

Motion FX is free.

See other software choices from Tom's Mac Software Picks.

More and more rumors about new and updated Apple products are making the rounds. As I pointed out last week, this is par for the course for this time of year. Every summer Apple unveils new hardware and software, either at the Worldwide Developers Conference, or a bit later in the summer.

Courtesy of Apple

Many of you will be wondering if you should upgrade your existing Mac, or go for something new. The answer depends a great deal on what model Mac you currently own, as well as on what you do with your computer.

To help you understand what upgrade options are available to you, here are our guides to upgrading your Mac:

iMac Upgrade Guide

Mac mini Upgrade Guide

MacBook Pro Upgrade Guide

MacBook Upgrade Guide

Upgrade Your Hard Drive

OS X Memory Usage

Apple is planning quite a few changes for iChat when OS X Mountain Lion is released sometime this summer. Along with these changes comes a new name: Messages. Messages includes many of the core features of iChat; it also adds many features from the native iOS 5 messaging app, including the ability to send unlimited iMessages to any Mac or iOS device.

Apple has been providing a beta version of Messages for Lion since earlier this year, but the beta will probably be pulled sometime soon, once Mountain Lion is released. Installed versions of Messages beta will probably continue to work for a while, although clearly there will be a point when the installed betas will stop working.

So, with an end of life for the beta looming, this may well be your last chance to download and try it out. You can find installation and use instructions, along with a link to the download, in the following guide:

Installing Messages Beta in OS X Lion

Seagate has made an offer to purchase 64.5% of the company stock of long-time Mac peripheral manufacturer, LaCie. The percentage represents LaCie CEO Philippe Spruch's entire stock holdings in the company. Once the acquisition is complete and government regulators approve the purchase, Seagate would complete the purchase of LaCie with an all-cash simple tender offer.

Seagate already competes with LaCie in the low-end external storage market. The purpose of the acquisition may be mainly to acquire patents and access to LaCie's high-end storage systems. Once the acquisition is complete, it's likely that Spruch will join Seagate to oversee the new consumer storage products division, which will continue to offer existing Seagate consumer external storage devices along with new high-end storage systems based on LaCie designs.