iPhone, N95 in Canada by summer?...

Two top smartphones may finally be available on an official basis in Canada before the summer, according to separate reports. The Toronto Star cites industry contacts who tell the newspaper that the country's lone major GSM cell provider, Rogers, aims to launch the iPhone in time for it to be included in a campaign promoting touchscreen phones at the company, which will include the upcoming LG Vu and likely earlier devices such as the HTC Touch. The marketing effort will begin sometime between May and July and is allegedly supported by evidence that Apple and Rogers were nearing a finalized deal earlier this year for the latter to carry the iPhone.

Apple looking to license iPhone haptics?...

Apple may be looking to license haptic technology from another company, as the industry looks to develop and incorporate more touch feedback technology into devices. Immersion Corporation, a patent-driven digital technology company, has reportedly hired a former Apple executive and has had talks this week to license the haptic technology for in Apple's iPhone. On Thursday, Immersion Corporation announced that it had appointed former Apple executive Clent Richardson to the position of President and CEO and a new report claims that Apple this week began talking to Immersion about a potential licensing agreement for its technology. [corrected]

dpMatte 2.1 uses Aperture 2.1 SDK...

dvGarage this week released dpMatte 2.1, a greenscreen keyer for Apple's Aperture 2.1 photography solution. Based on technology used in dvGarage's existing keyer, the new background replacement tool is the first plug-in to be released using Aperture’s new SDK. It uses Apple's SDK for Aperture, which allows developers to use existing Cocoatools to develop full-featured applications inside of Aperture's existing framework; it is designed to easily remove green and blue backgrounds used in film and still photography in order to composite subjects into new backgrounds. Still photographers use the same kind of technology to add backdrops rather than commit to a specific backdrop while shooting. With dpMatte, users can select backgrounds that range from simple colors to photographs to complex 3D backgrounds.

Parliant offers professional voice messages...

Parliant is now offering professionally recorded messages for all of its Mac telephony products for small businesses, homes, and home offices. Direct from Parliant's web site, users can enter their message(s), receive a quote, approve the order and then download your recordings 2 days later, professionally produced in an optimal format for PhoneValet and PhoneHerald. Users can then simply import the files into the mailboxes. Over 30 professional voice talents are offered, in a wide range of languages and dialects. Samples of each voice are available (requires Flash) and options for file name as well as file type are available. Users are asked to select which Parliant product the voice should be designed for; sample pricing for "Joan" (17 word count) was $58.

Synchronize! Pro X 6.0 brings performance, options...

Qdea on Saturday released Synchronize! Pro X 6.0, a major upgrade to its Mac OS X system backup and file synchronization utility. Version 6.0 brings three new features: "Fast scan", which uses FSEvents technology in Leopard to dramatically speed up the time it takes to update a backup. According to the company, the folder scan time for a typical update to a "Bootable System Backup" of Leopard is under a minute, compared to over 10 minutes without "Fast scan". The update also brings "Folder Watch", which tracks changes to the contents of a folder to trigger a backup. Two different folders on directly-mounted disks (does not work with remote disks) can be monitored, and a backup or synchronization can be started when changes occur to the contents of the folders.

PDFClerk Pro 3.0 adds outlines, encryption, more...

SintraWorks has released PDFClerk Pro 3.0, a PDF creation tool that allows users to manipulate existing PDF documents, as well as create PDF documents. Leveraging the system defaults, users can quickly create new PDF documents with both basic and more advanced layouts and easily print booklets, while flexible and advanced options offers sophisticated layouts options and page markup options, including joining of PDFs, rearrangement/rotation, addition/deletion of pages, and the addition of hyperlinks, watermarks, and headers/footers. Version 3.0 offers outlines (a.k.a. Boomarks), giving users the ability to create and edit outline items manually or automatically. In addition, PDF annotations (dynamic annotations) allow markup and collaboration on documents as well as creation and editing of PDF forms dynamic forms.