05/25, 10:52pm
New moderation toolbar, speed for iPad
WordPress developer Automattic has updated its iOS WordPress app to version 3.0 (free), bringing support for push notifications as well as a moderation toolbar for comments activated by swiping over any item. The update is said to "vastly" improve performance, particularly on iPads, and language support for Taiwanese, Hungarian and Polish has been added. The app helps users administer both WordPress.com and their own hosted WP blogs.
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05/24, 7:41am
iOS app and browser extension offers image-based search
Update: Axis was temporarily pulled by Yahoo due to a security vulnerability, but has already been updated.
Yahoo has released Axis, which it is calling a 'visual search' application. It has been released as a full mobile browser for iOS and as a cross-platform desktop browser extension that uses page snapshots in live search results instead of text. The iOS app, while having the same tabbed browsing and bookmarking found in Safari, has a user interface focussing on image-heavy search, with cross-device synching possible between iPhone, iPad and the desktop browser extension.
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05/22, 8:05pm
INRIX Traffic 4.0 released for iPad, iPhone
INRIX, an app-enabled traffic data collector, has introduced a new version of its iOS app to assist drivers in daily commutes. INRIX Traffic 4.0 features four new features. The new version of the application adds real-time traffic tracking features to the iPhone such as those found in high-end automobiles from Audi, Ford, and Toyota. INRIX Traffic 4.0 can work Google Maps with a $25 in-app purchase to visually show the fastest routes to home and work, analyzes traffic to give drivers recommended departure with accurate travel times, easy sharing of INRIX arrival times to any contact, and personalized traffic alerts. The new version of the app is available now.
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05/21, 7:14pm
Both will be half-off regular price on debut day
Long-time Mac software developer Panic will be launching a major new version of its web-coding tool, now called Coda 2, along with an iPad companion app called Diet Coda on Thursday. The company describes Coda 2 as an "overhaul of every facet" of the editor, while Diet Coda is seen as a portable tool for making quick fixes to code when a developer is on-the-go. Both programs will be sold at half-price on Thursday, May 24 only.
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05/14, 3:59pm
Sony Walkman docks out in Japan in June
Sony will be releasing two new Walkman docks in Japan on June 9. The CMT-V70B and CMT-V50 will dock with the Sony Walkman range of personal media players, with the V07B variant allowing Bluetooth streaming. Both docks are 5.4 inches thick, have FM/AM radio tuners, and will be available in five different colors. Price is not currently known.
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05/11, 5:30pm
Adobe brings cloud-based content creation, easy website design
Adobe's Creative Cloud has launched according to schedule, bringing cloud-based access to Adobe Creative Suite CS6 to mobile devices, desktops, and notebooks. Adobe is also rolling out Muse 1.0, which allows users to create websites without having to write code, and updating the Adobe Touch Apps for iOS.
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05/10, 2:00am
Price is identical to boxed version
Two months after its official debut, Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom 4 pro-level photo managing and editing software has come to the Mac App Store. The program is priced identically to the boxed version, but is aimed at new users (since owners of previous versions of Lightroom can upgrade to 4.0 for $79 through Adobe). The program competes with Apple's own Aperture, which costs $80.
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05/07, 5:08am
Adobe starts shipping Creative Suite CS6 for Mac and PC
Adobe has started shipping its eagerly anticipated Creative Suite CS6 for both Mac and PC. Its alternative version of CS6 in the cloud known as Creative Cloud will launch on May 11, offering users the ability to access the entire suite of apps for a monthly access fee. Revamped applications now available for purchase include Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Flash Professional in four suite versions. Apps also remain available for purchase individually.
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05/02, 2:00pm
Makeover yields minimalist results page
Microsoft has rolled out a redesign of the search results page for its Bing search engine. Users will now find a less-cluttered results page, bordering on minimalist and dominated by open space.
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04/27, 9:00pm
Each $2 e-book offers 100 Foxtrot comic strips
Syndicated Foxtrot comic strip creator Bill Amend, who two weeks ago took his "first steps into the worlds of e-books and self-publishing," has reported that his "Pad Pack" collection (three volumes of 100 strips each selling for $2 on the App Store) have made in two weeks about 25 percent of what his traditionally-published strip collections make in two years. The artist, who created the books entirely in iBooks Author, called the results "amazing."
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04/23, 1:00am
Adobe CS6 ships within 30 days
Adobe began the week early with official launch details of Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud. The collection of professional tools are available for pre-order as of Monday and should ship within 30 days.
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04/19, 7:50pm
iPad increasing average web page size
Nova Development has launched the Spring 2012 Mac SuperBundle, which offers nine popular Mac apps for $49. Headlined by Roxio Toast 11 Titanium, the package includes software that captures and shares digital media, recovers lost data, creates photo masterpieces, locates important files and much more. The Mac SuperBundle will be remain available until May 2 and includes a full 30-day money back guarantee. Additionally, all included applications have been fully tested with Mac OS X Lion.
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04/19, 4:10pm
Poser 9, Poser Pro 2012 updates available
Smith Micro has posted a major update for Poser, Service Release 2. Poser is the company's flagship software, handling 3D rendering and animation of characters and props. SR2 is mostly a troubleshooting release, but improves many different aspects of the program, ranging from rendering, animation, and the Content Library to rigging tools and the Cloth and Face Room.
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04/19, 1:30pm
AWS to sell app deployment to cloud service
Amazon Web Services has introduced a "one-click deployment" software store for its users. The AWS Marketplace allows customers to buy and deploy web-based software directly onto Amazon's IT infrastructure.
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04/18, 1:20pm
Builds font control directly into Adobe CS apps
Extensis has released Suitcase Fusion 4, an update of its font manager for Mac and Windows. The software handles both browsing and control tasks. New to Fusion 4 is the concept of Font Panels, which integrate functions directly into Adobe's InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. Fonts can be previewed and activated without having to leave Adobe software.
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04/16, 10:40am
Pushes users to Mac App Store
Apple has removed trial versions of Aperture and the iWork suite from its website, reports observe. In both cases, users are now being asked to visit the Mac App Store and pay for full products. "The trial version of iWork is no longer supported. But you can easily purchase Keynote, Pages, and Numbers from the Mac App Store to start creating beautiful presentations, documents, and spreadsheets today," the US iWork page reads.
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04/13, 11:40am
Price drops to $99
MW3D has launched Cheetah3D 6.0, a major upgrade of the company's modeling and animation software. The core update is a new physics engine, Bullet, which handles soft and rigid body dynamics. The technology can potentially save effort in posing and animation tasks, which otherwise require a lot of manual control.
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04/12, 11:30pm
Rare milestone in competitive Mac marketplace
April 12th marks 20 years exactly since Bare Bones Software announced the first public release of BBEdit, its programmer-oriented text editor that was originally offered for free and ran on the Mac's System 6 and System 7 OS versions. Remarkably, the program is still the text editor of choice for many developers and web coders, with the same lead developer. The company has noted the occasion by releasing version 4.0 of BBEdit's "little brother," Text Wrangler.
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04/12, 9:30pm
Now integrates preview with Adobe Edge
Creative software giant Adobe has released a second public preview of its mobile website development tool Shadow. The program allows various iOS and Android devices to "pair" with it so that developers can see real-time previews of web content using any text editor or IDE. The new version now has localhost URL support, preview integration with Adobe's HTML5/CSS animation tool Edge (works with Chrome only), and Retina Display tablet support.
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04/12, 1:05pm
Paper for iPad gets record interest early on
Fiftythree sent word late Wednesday that its Paper app for the iPad (App Store) has crossed the 1.5 million download mark in its first two weeks. The same interval saw a total of seven million pages created at the same time, suggesting that every user made at least one page. It's not clear how many had paid for extra drawing tools beyond what's free.
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04/11, 7:45pm
Adds hardware acceleration for older models
Adobe has released a public beta of it's next iteration of Flash Player, version 11.3.300.214, which features improvements to the desktop player, as well as enhancements to AIR Mobile for developers. In the release notes, Adobe mentions that it has "relaxed" the driver gating hardware acceleration to 2006, which may mean that older cards and Intel graphic chipsets such as the GMA 950 will gain hardware acceleration in the final release.
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04/11, 2:25pm
Resolution 1024x768 not most popular worldwide
Screens with a 1366x768 resolution have overtaken 1024x768 as the most used screen resolution on the internet. According to data from StatCounter (below), the change in popularity happened in March this year based on worldwide data.
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04/10, 11:10am
Double ended stylus available later this month
Today, Wacom has launched the Bamboo Stylus duo for capacitive tablet users. The successor to the Bamboo Stylus solo, the duo has the same rubber tip that will work on most tablets and a ball-point pen on the opposite end.
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04/09, 12:15pm
FlexoStepX gains CS5 support
Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner has undergone a major upgrade that includes a new Grocery Scanner feature. The new tool, available for both Dinner Spinner and Dinner Spinner Pro, allows users to scan grocery barcodes directly from their mobile device to find recipes, add items to shopping lists, or create a virtual pantry. In addition, the existing Shopping List feature has been expanded to the free version of Dinner Spinner in the latest release. Dinner Spinner Pro is available as a $3 purchase in the App Store
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04/06, 1:05am
Can convert comics or books for digital stores
Digital comic-book publisher Graphicly has decided to focus on emerging self-publishing markets for all kinds of visually-oriented digital books, and has consequently pulled its comic-book storefront app for both iOS and Android, though it will still publish graphic novels and comics to the various digital bookstores, including iBooks, Nook, Kindle, Kobo and others. Going forward, it will publish both comic and non-comic books.
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04/05, 6:25pm
iOS version updated last summer
Comixology has updated its self-titled Android app to version 3.0, finally matching the iOS update from August and providing a new, consistent user experience across both platforms. The new version brings a complete redesign of the app, upgrades the speed of launching and most operations, and improves the ability of users to discover new comics they might enjoy. The app features comics and graphic novels from over 5,000 creators.
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04/04, 2:35pm
Moves to startup to fill gap from Picnik closure
Flickr has announced that Aviary will be its new photo editing web app. The division of Yahoo had been using Google's Picnik, but had to scramble to find a replacement after Google announced plans in January to shut Picnik down on April 19 as part of a streamlining of operations that Google began last August.
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04/03, 5:20pm
Previews looks for webpages and blogs
Mozilla developers have posted their latest progress update for their efforts to create a working prototype for Firefox running on Windows 8. In it, for the first time, they have hinted at what the app could ultimately look like under the new Microsoft operating system. The team acknowledges that there is still a lot of work to do, but has said nothing altering their schedule to develop the proof of concept.
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03/30, 3:00am
Demonstrates difficulty of copyright enforcement
Broadcaster NBC has put up a temporary "casting" and promotional web page for a forthcoming show called Home Transformers that is modelled on the current home-construction and remodeling trend in reality TV shows. In putting together the site, however, the web developer the network is using appears to have "borrowed" a graphic straight from the most valuable corporation on the planet -- Apple. The page is using the icon for Xcode as part of its layout.
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03/29, 4:45pm
Mac, Windows versions debut simultaneously
Autodesk has launched AutoCAD 2013, a major update of its flagship design software. New to the program are links with the Autodesk 360 cloud service; this lets a user access a project anywhere with Internet access, as well as collaborate with distant coworkers. The emphasis on sharing in fact extends down to posting content on Facebook and Twitter.
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03/29, 1:00am
Emulates different pens for finger or stylus
A new drawing app exclusively for the iPad debuted at midnight Thursday called Paper, intended for iPad owners who want to create and share sketches, hand-drawn diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings. Thought not explicitly required, users of styluses will have more natural control, as the app enables the stylus to function as a pencil, pen, marker and coloring tool. The emulated tool's sensitivity works in conjunction with user movement to create different strokes without adjusting settings.
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03/28, 9:45pm
Video shows off new pattern-creation mode
Adobe has been focusing their attention on Photoshop CS6 in most of the advance publicity so far, resulting in a reported half a million downloads since the public beta become available. The company has, however, posted a single video to Adobe TV and YouTube featuring one element of the new Adobe Illustrator vector-drawing tool, which like Photoshop will be gaining an optional "dark" interface. The video shows off a new, simplified pattern-creation mode.
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03/22, 12:40am
Adobe Photoshop CS6 gets test version
Adobe gave a peek at its future suite Thursday through a limited-time public beta of Photoshop CS6. The early version shows off a new, dark interface with more consistency, presets, and both redesigned tools like crop as well as returning features like PDF presentations. A new Content-Aware Patch lets artists grab a sample and then use it to patch the affected area while blending pixels to create a more natural look.
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03/19, 7:40pm
Aimed at small and new BIM firms
Graphisoft is now shipping copies of ArchiCAD Star(t) Edition 2012 for the North American market. The program is a powerful Building Information Modeling (BIM) authoring tool that allows users to create and manage a virtual building model of the physical and functional capabilities of a building. The information is useful for construction, engineering, maintenance, and expansion of facilities even before they are built.
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03/14, 8:05pm
Organizer provides easier drag and drop ordering
Google has updated the way its Google+ social networking service handles photos in albums. The company has added an
album organizer. With it, photos can be sorted, reordered, moved or deleted.
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03/14, 4:45pm
GeForce GTX 680 to get 2GB of RAM, have 195W TDP?
Some early specs and an image of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 680 graphics card have been leaked thanks to China's PCOnline and ChipHell. It will be the company's first based on the 28nm architecture and reportedly sport a clock speed of 1,006MHz, but can be overclocked to 1,058MHz for short bursts. There are also said to be 1,536 visual processing cores onboard, along with 2GB of RAM on a 256-bit memory bus.
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03/13, 5:35pm
Includes over 150 preset skies
e-on has released Ozone 6, a new version of its atmosphere plugin for various 3D rendering suites. Users can simulate realistic-looking skies filled with volumetric clouds and appropriate lighting effects, such as rays and dispersion. The v6 update brings the ability to treat cloud layers as standard objects, which can be moved, rotated or resized using a 3D suite's normal controls.
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03/13, 9:55am
Tweak lets desktop users see enhanced images
The official Apple website is gradually being updated to support the Retina Display on the third-generation iPad, notes AppleInsider. Images on the site's home and iPad pages are now accessible in higher resolutions, though the only way seeing them ahead of the new tablet's launch is a desktop browser tweak. In Safari, for instance, they can be turned on by enabling the Develop menu in the menu bar, choosing "Inspect Element" at Apple.com or Apple.com/ipad, and then inserting two lines of code.
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03/12, 6:00pm
Offers users a way to collect, display interests
As part of a profile on Pinterest, a recent social-networking startup that lets users collect and share images they have taken or found on the web in a kind of curated "collection" that reflects an interest, The New York Times revealed that the company is working on an application for the iPad. The site, which offers a carefully-cultivated "clean yet busy" look, has caught on, particularly with women.
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03/05, 8:35pm
Pressure-sensitive design uses BlueTooth 4.0
Ten One design has unveiled a prototype of a pressure-sensitive stylus for iPads in hopes that it would be an ideal fit for the next iPad. The writing implement, codenamed "Blue Tiger," that uses Bluetooth 4.0 to automatically connect to the iPad. The app that drives the stylus has embedded palm rejection, which prevents anything but the pen itself from being used to input information.
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02/29, 4:35pm
Deal brings VoD service to Lumia in Europe
Voddler is bringing its video on demand (VoD) streaming service to Nokia Lumia smartphone owners. The two companies have crafted a partnership through which Lumia phones will have access to an exclusive Voddler Lumia Movie Night app which integrates streaming content with social networking features. The service will be made available to Lumia phone owners throughout Europe.
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02/27, 1:05am
Photoshop Touch goes live for real
After a brief false start, Adobe has posted Photoshop Touch for the iPad 2 ($10, App Store). The finished app provides many of the requested creative features from the desktop version, such as layer editing and filters, while adding in elements that wouldn't be possible on the desktop. Artists can scribble or trace to select objects or even fill content with content from one of the iPad's cameras.
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02/24, 7:45pm
Gives some speed uplift, app links, and beaming
Google has posted a new update for its Chrome browser beta running on Android mobile devices (free: Android Market). The latest release promises faster loading and the ability to recognize links associated with applications. It also supports Android Beam, an application that allows users to transfer webpages between devices just by touching them together.
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02/24, 2:25pm
Provides events details under group's homepage
Music buffs checking out their favorite bands an artists with Google Search can now find out when they will next be performing on stage. Google's search engine will soon be displaying events for a group as part of the search results for their homepage. Initially this additional information will be included in English searches, but will be expanded to more countries over time.
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02/22, 2:00am
Manages, protects fonts from being copied
Enterprise font software maker FontGear has debuted FontPad Server, an internet server that both manages and protects web fonts used on web pages. The software allows users to specify what domains or pages are allowed to use which fonts, and then serves encrypted font data that prevents viewers from copying the commercially-licensed fonts used. The program gives designers the freedom to use custom fonts without worry.
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02/16, 6:20pm
Parts could find their way into competing browsers
Last July, Mozilla acknowledged that it was planning to build a mobile operating system. Today, the non-profit development organization that created the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email system provided an initial view of what that foundation, named
Boot2Gecko (BTG), will look like. Mozilla is promising to demo it at the upcoming Mobile World Congress later this month.
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02/15, 1:00am
Users to have more control of smart fill in CS6
In the latest of the series of "Sneak Peek" videos for Photoshop CS6 (all of which have been done on Macs so far), Adobe Photoshop Senior Product Manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes demonstrates a substantially improved Content-Aware Fill technology that allow users to make easy, loose selections but still pull off substantial changes (such as moving people from one place to another or removing objects like power lines) and better choose how the fill works.
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02/14, 2:00am
Bugs fixed, release notes truncated
Over the last week, Mac and Windows utility maker Koingo Software has been updating most of its Mac and Windows product lines, fixing bugs and updating requirements. Almost all programs for the Mac now require OS X 10.5 or later, though in many cases older versions that are compatible with previous OS releases are still available. All are minor upgrades that are free for registered users. The company has been on a tear of updates since February 7th.
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02/09, 11:40pm
Eolas sees web patent lawsuit claim tossed
Eolas' attempt to patent the "interactive web" may have been dealt a permanent blow after a jury in the normally patent lawsuit-friendly town of Tyler, Texas ruled that the patent was invalid. The decision negated both any attempts at claiming damages and also negated three future trials. The rejection came in part after testimony from the spiritual creator of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, as well as individual creators whose work predated that of Eolas owner Michael Doyle.
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02/07, 9:45am
Should allow access to Creative Suite apps
Adobe has uncovered more details of Creative Cloud, its upcoming online service. The service was originally announced in October, but until now has been largely kept under wraps. Access will cost at least $50 a month under a one-year contract, but grant users access to the apps in Creative Suite 6; by comparison, current CS5.5 bundles start at $1,299 up-front, and can cost as much as $2,599 for the complete collection.
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