iPhoto name tags - 2 questions

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the answer to both your questions are "No." I'm assuming by "tagging them with names" you mean identifying the people using iPhoto's Faces feature.

There's no standardized metadata for facial recognition, and I'm sure Faces is implemented using a machine learning algorithm that learns faces specifically to each iPhoto install — it's meant to learn over time, but unless there's standardized metadata for facial recognition tagging, there would be no way to transport this without Apple using some proprietary format for the photos. The idea is, ideally, after doing it enough times, iPhoto will be able to tag everyone automatically. It takes a lot of photos before this is very accurate, though.

For question #2, I guess the answer is more like "no, but there's a workaround if you want." You can't delete individual people from the official Faces corkboard view without deleting the Faces data. Again, due to the fact that this is implemented by an iPhoto-specific algorithm and database metadata, rather than any kind of standard, means you have to rely on iPhoto's implementation, and that particular view is tied to the whole Faces algorithm and all data that iPhoto has so far.

However, one thing you could do is make a Smart Album that contains only the Faces that you want. Just create a new Smart Album where it says "Match the following conditions" add a new condition for every person you want as "<Face> <is> <______>" and add his or her face.

To be honest, iLife '11 wasn't too much of an upgrade. There were a few new features added to iMovie and GarageBand, but I can't remember anything added to iPhoto other than an improved UI. I do like the UI in iPhoto '11 a little better, but it's probably not worth upgrading unless you use it very extensively and have the disposable income lying around to do it.