News Archive for 02/04/11

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NAB Convention boon for Apple

04/11, 8:25pm

NAB Convention boon for Apple

This week's National Association of Broadcasters conference saw a multitude of digital video-related announcements from industry leaders, and a "real fight' over the MPEG-4 video standard, according to NewsFactor. MPEG-4, based loosely on technologies -- including QuickTime -- was slammed by Apple in response to the standard's licensing terms. Despite a minor delay in the release of QuickTime 6.0, Apple announced at NAB that it had entered a positive licensing partnership with Panasonic to offer FireWire technologies in the electronics maker's future devices.

MS plans Office X update for May

04/11, 8:15pm

MS plans Office X update for May

Microsoft plans to offer a modest revision to the Office v.X software suite for Mac OS X this May, as it reiterates its continued support for Apple and Mac OS X, as reported by c|net.

iPodWrap protects iPod from damage

04/11, 6:55pm

iPodWrap protects iPod from damage

BookEndz manufacturer Photo Control Corp. today announced the iPodWrap for use with Apple’s iPod digital music player. Made of a reusable, non-adhesive material, the iPodWrap clings to the iPod’s case to provide wrap-a-round protection from scratches. The iPodWrap is priced at $10 and does not leave residue on the iPod’s stainless steel enclosure.

Oracle releases 9i Thin application drivers

04/11, 3:55pm

Oracle releases 9i Thin application drivers

Oracle has released Mac OS X-compatible client drivers for connecting to the 9i Thin application. 9i integrates the technology needed to build and deploy e-business portals, transactional applications, and Web services. [free registration required]

AudioTools Pro 4.0: commonly needed tools

04/11, 3:55pm

AudioTools Pro 4.0: commonly needed tools

rootsolutions has announced the release of AudioTools Pro v4.0, which is a set of production calculators and utilities that are commonly needed in music production. "Its features include setup help with effect processors, complex calculations for loop and tempo matching, a host of utilities, and reference sections." A demo is available; a single license costs $60.

Quake III Arena 1.3b5 continues improvements

04/11, 3:40pm

Quake III Arena 1.3b5 continues improvements

id Software has released an update for their first-person shooter, Quake III Arena X v1.3.1b5. The update continues enhancements on the Cocoa port, fixing bugs and performance issues.

Arcane Arena beta: turn style based RPG

04/11, 3:20pm

Arcane Arena beta: turn style based RPG

Arcane Arena beta is an online multiplayer RPG style game that is now available for download. The game has a strong influence on combat, but also includes puzzles to solve.

New SuperDrive includes DVD authoring app

04/11, 1:40pm

New SuperDrive includes DVD authoring app

Formac announced today the introduction of its devideon superdrive, a new FireWire DVD-R/RW & CD-RW combination drive that includes Formac's proprietary DVD authoring software. The software's enhanced MPEG encoder, supports NTSC and PAL video formats, converts iMovies and QuickTime files into DVD format and can tune the quality of video and audio output, by defining video bit rates between 1.0 and 9.8 MBit and audio frequencies between 32KHz and 48KHz. It offers the ability to record more than 6 hours of video on a single DVD media. The $550 drive is due later this month and uses a Pioneer-based mechansim with 2x/1x/6x DVD-RW write/rewrite/read speeds and 8x/4x/24x CD-RW speeds.

New iMovie 2 plugins offer overlays, borders

04/11, 1:30pm

New iMovie 2 plugins offer overlays, borders

eZedia has released eZeMatte 1.0, the first in a series of plug-ins for iMovie 2 that allows users to overlay any QuickTime supported image over an iMovie clip to add borders, frames, themes, logos or any customized graphic. The $30 package includes 10 overlays and the ability to create customized overlays, including adding borders or company logos to a movie or clip. It also automatically re-sizes all images that do not already conform to the DV format size (720 x 480) to fit the frame. (The company also sells eZediaMX 3.0, a multimedia application for creating presentations, videos, slide shows, portfolios, animations and interactive CD-ROM projects.)

BitHeadz shipping Unity 3 Session

04/11, 11:10am

BitHeadz shipping Unity 3 Session

BitHeadz is now shipping Unity 3 Session, a Mac-only version of its product that combines and expands upon Unity DS-1, Osmosis, and Retro AS-1. Version 3.0's plug-in architecture allows the combination of sampling, synthesis, and physical modeling, with extensive real-time audio manipulation features. Multi-synthesized sounds, now called 'Instruments,' can be edited and later accessed by third party sequencers via MIDI. It also offers playback of samples loaded into RAM while simultaneously streaming larger samples off the hard drive and will now detect MAS, VST, RTAS, or DirectConnect set-ups automatically and configure itself appropriately. It is $650 and is available for Classic and OS X.

Syslog Gex X 2.0 configures syslog in OS X

04/11, 11:05am

Syslog Gex X 2.0 configures syslog in OS X

Syslog Gex X 2.0 offers an Aqua-GUI for configuring the syslog Unix utility that logs computer events, and can send them to the console, save them to a log file, or send them to a remote machine on the network running a syslog program. The $10 shareware offers "one-click English translation" of the syslog.conf file.

bManager 2.0 adds UI, database, to-do fixes

04/11, 11:05am

bManager 2.0 adds UI, database, to-do fixes

AppMac's bManager 2.0 brings a new interface, new database format, better business management functions, to-do lists, and a client/server architecture to the $60 ("Basic") application for local usage--also available as a $150 server license for up to 10 users.

Proteus 1.6.1b4: multiservice IM client

04/11, 10:55am

Proteus 1.6.1b4: multiservice IM client

Justin Wood continues to update his multiservice IM client, Proteus 1.6.1b4, which now offers the ability to switch between classic and modern looks and correctly saves the positions of "tear-off" windows.

screen dump 1.43 uploads desktop snapshots

04/11, 10:50am

screen dump 1.43 uploads desktop snapshots

screen dump 1.43 is a freeware utility that can take snapshots of your desktop and upload the picture to a webpage. Version 1.4 offers the ability t select the local destination of the screen dump image, manually set the height/width of the image, and other bug/UI fixes.

DragThing 4.3 offers Disk Dock, hotkeys

04/11, 10:50am

DragThing 4.3 offers Disk Dock, hotkeys

TLA Systems has released DragThing 4.3, an update to the popular launcher utility for Classic and OS X. It offers a new dynamic "Disk Dock" which can display all your hard disks, removable media, and connected servers; can now use almost any key as a hot key on OS X to open application/documents, run AppleScripts, and open URLs; and offers a multi-lingual application with support for English, Japanese, German, French and Italian.

ScenicSoft to bring Pandora to OS X

04/11, 10:05am

ScenicSoft to bring Pandora to OS X

ScenicSoft has announced Pandora for Mac OS X, a Java- and PDF-based prepress production tool that will deliver increased performance in automating packaging and label layouts. Pandora 1.5 accepts PDF artwork and marks, as well as DDES2, CFF2, and DXF die files and its color setup allows re-mapping of spot and process colors and conversion of spot colors to process. It supports PostScript Level 2 and PostScript 3 in-RIP color separations can produce PostScript, PDF, Adobe PJTF job tickets, and Creo PCF files.

Pangea re-releases Cro-Mag Rally as shareware

04/11, 10:05am

Pangea re-releases Cro-Mag Rally as shareware

Pangea Software today has re-released its popular video game Cro-Mag Rally as a $20 shareware title, after re-releasing is popular Bugdom game as shareware last month as well. The racing game offers single-player mode as well as two-player and network modes for multiplayer support. [Mirror1, Mirror2]

X Font Manager 1.1 organizes system fonts

04/11, 9:50am

X Font Manager 1.1 organizes system fonts

Vincent Jalby's X Font Manager 1.1 is a simple font manager for OS X that can activate and desactivat fonts by moving them in and out of the Fonts folders. The $12 shareware displays the content of the font file and previews both active and inactive fonts.

Master Spell 4.5b1: spelling drill app on OSX

04/11, 9:40am

Master Spell 4.5b1: spelling drill app on OSX

MacinMind has released an OS X beta of Master Spell 4.5b1, its spelling drill application that uses the Mac's Plaintalk Text-to-Speech and features curriculum for 1st grade through adult-level words. It has also updated Master Key 2.1, its application for learning typing. Version 2.1 now remembers the Window positions, fixes a few bugs, and adds Italian and Swedish keyboard support. [MS, MK Cl, MK OSX]

Aquatik 1.02: tickertape-style messaging/news

04/11, 9:35am

Aquatik 1.02: tickertape-style messaging/news

Aquatik 1.02 is a free messaging/news tickertape-style client that "uses a scrolling one-line window providing users with a wide variety of information from many sources using a minimum of screen space. Messages can be created by people, using Aquatik as a chat service, or they may be generated by programs from a variety sources including CVS, various news feeds[2] (usenet and RSS-based sources)."

Analyst raises rating on AAPL

04/11, 9:25am

Analyst raises rating on AAPL

UBS Warburg has upgraded its rating on Apple Computer to a "Strong Buy" from 'Hold' due to strong new products and "APPL's ability to be a leader in developing pervasive computing opportunities." UBS Warburg cautions that the Apple may miss Q2 expectations (noting that its estimates is below consensus), but says that the outlook for the second half of 2002 should be stronger than expected and that Apple should "be able to outperform Wintel competitors." UBS has raised its 2002 fiscal year estimtes to $0.53 (from $0.49) and its 2002 fiscal year estimates to $0.85 (from $0.72) as well as its price target to $30.50 from $23.

Apple posts NAB 2002 photo gallery

04/11, 2:40am

Apple posts NAB 2002 photo gallery

Apple has posted a small gallery of photos from its NAB 2002 booth, where "Apple demoed Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Cinema Tools For Final Cut Pro, QuickTime, iDVD and Nothing Real Shake to the digital communication professionals gathered in Las Vegas."