Showing posts with label application news. Show all posts
Skip all the gimmick gadgetry and just grab your iPhone, there are a ton of great apps for all your golfing needs. For a list check out 10 Kick Ass Golf Apps ay mygolfspy. I was honestly surprised at all the oolness offered by the various apps so I’ll be loading up my iPhone for a few of these when I hit hit the links this spring. And, to answer the obvious question, there is no app that will drain the pool to clean up the Baby Ruth bar.
One of the main features all TVs must have now is a focus on green tech and these Bravia TVs will all carry the new EU Flower logo. That eco-label is what the European Commission are using to denote a product that complies with certain regulations to ensure they are having a very low impact on the environment for their entire lifetime. In order to meet those green requirements Sony doesn’t look to of compromised on image quality. The new TVs use the Bravia Engine 3 that enhances both HD and SD signals to give the best picture detail it can while combining it with 100Hz refresh. The TVs use Live Color to ensure color reproduction on-screen is optimal. The sets also contain an additional green LED allowing for extra brightness and better white balance. Networked access to media is a key new feature using something Sony have called DLNA. If you happen to own a Vaio laptop, PC, or media center, then the media they contain can be streamed to your Bravia TV and controlled with the TV remote. This is complemented by a USB media player that basically allows you to plug gadgets directly into your TV and access media off them. An included Ethernet connection provides a gateway to Internet access, something Sony have named AppliCast. They are also taking a leaf out of Window Vista’s book by allowing you to have a sidebar of widgets that can be displayed while you watch TV. The list of widgets is sure to grow, but you can get a clock, a calculator, and an alarm. Altogether there are 19 TVs in the new Bravia line-up ranging in size from 22″ right through to 52″. The options are as follows with each model featuring some or all of the new tech mentioned above: The Bravia WE5 is the greenest model and supports the presence sensor we reported about in January that switches the display off if you leave the room. Read more at the Sony press release Matthew’s Opinion The new features are all welcome additions in my opinion. Being able to stream media from other devices is going to become more important as digital download services gain traction. It’s a shame this is limited to Vaio products, however, and allowing for any brand device to stream from would have earned the TVs a few extra points. The USB connection does make up for this somewhat, but total freedom with our media hardware is what we all want. This new range has benefited from R&D at Sony over the past year, but with budgets cut it will be interesting to see if the 2010 line-up sees a similar level of innovation and progress. That is surely something that will affect all electronics manufacturers next year.
Regardless of the economic downturn manufacturers will continue to pump out their new ranges and Sony is no exception. They have just made available the details of their 2009 Bravia LCD TV line-up for the European market and they come with a number of new features and innovations.
There are a dizzying number of models in this new range and you have to wonder why so many? I realize they cater for different price points, but it would be nice to have one or two TVs per size category which are the company’s best. Then we wouldn’t have to figure out which model number a TV is before buying.
Jiyuka is a new audiovisual creative app for the iPhone that lets you create beautiful compositions of randomly generated flowers with complementing generative soundscapes. Jiyuka means “free flower” and is a Jiyuka is unique because it:
* offers an unlimited multitude of beautiful flower shapes and colors,
* lets the user create their own artwork with flowers,
* puts the user into a relaxing mood by generating meditative soundscapes
* has a custom-built User Interface in OpenGL.
This app is available now via the AppStore. A video demo is available at YouTube.
IBM is offering its laid off employees in North America a chance to take a job with the company in India, Nigeria, Russia or other countries through Project Match, a media report said. Citing an internal company document CNN said its Project Match will help interested workers whose jobs are on the chopping block to "identify potential opportunities in growth markets and facilitate consideration by hiring managers in those markets." The company also will help with moving costs and provide visa assistance, it says. Other countries with IBM opportunities include Argentina, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey and United Arab Emirates, according to the document. Only "satisfactory performers" who are "willing to work on local terms and conditions" should pursue the jobs, the document says. CNN said IBM would not immediately confirm if it means that the workers would be paid local wages and would be subject to local labour laws. A spokesman for Alliance at IBM, a workers' group that is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America but does not have official union status at IBM, slammed the initiative. "IBM not only is offshoring its work to low-cost countries, now IBM wants employees to offshore themselves," spokesman Lee Conrad told CNN. "At a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States." New York based IBM has confirmed recent layoffs but has not provided any specifics on the number of people affected. Conrad said IBM has laid off more than 4,000 workers in the US since the beginning of the year, but called that "a conservative number." "This is unacceptable to the Alliance and we are pursuing this by asking our members and all IBM employees to contact their political representatives to demand an accounting and transparency in job cuts and offshoring from IBM," Conrad said.
Samsung unveiled the Mobile Applications Marketplace, a storefront purposed with peddling Samsung-friendly Windows Mobile and S60 applications to consumers while making developers some more cash than they otherwise might. It’s an admirable idea at face value - but is it the beginning of a terrible trend? Centralized application stores are nothing new - third parties and carriers have been providing places to purchase mobile software for ages. After the Apple App Store began reporting monumental numbers, however, there was a significant shift; suddenly, those responsible with making the handsets tick wanted to be the ones vending the wares. Google launched the Android Market. RIM announced the BlackBerry Application Center. Palm will be debuting the webOS App Catalog with the Pre. What do Apple, Google, RIM, and Palm have in common that Samsung lacks? They control the platform for which they’re selling applications. If you’re looking to start an application outlet, you need to be at the reins of the platform; if you don’t, you’re further segmenting an already messy market. With Samsung launching their own boutique, others will likely follow; suddenly we’ve got all sorts of manufacturers all peddling the exact (or nearly exact) same junk in a different way. Some might have an on-device store, while others rely on a web-only storefront - all of which would are likely to have completely different interface. Developers who choose to offer their goods through multiple outlets will need to maintain each one individually, monitoring sales and collecting revenue from each individually. Consumers never get the native, unified experience that makes the App Store so enticing. It’s a step in an entirely wrong direction. That’s not to say that the device makers couldn’t make things better, however. In fact, they’d have to be the ones to do it - but they’d have to work together. Nokia has been surprisingly mum on the S60 app store topic, and Microsoft’s nose is split between the Windows Mobile 6.5 and 7 grindstones right now - so those two are unlikely to have a fix-all solution for the current iterations of their platform any time soon. Thus, responsibility falls to those pushing the devices off the line. If you’re going to get knee-deep in app sales, guys, you need to form an alliance. One store, one common interface, one thing to pitch to consumers as the place to go. Should it happen? Certainly. Will it? Of course not. Every company involved is a direct competitor with the rest. By the time they worked out agreeable terms and managed to get it onto devices, Windows Mobile 7 (which will include SkyMarket, purported to be Microsoft’s official rebuttal) will have launched and penetrated enough of the market that developers likely wouldn’t be interested anymore. Oh well.
MAINGEAR, a boutique PC builder that makes machines targeted at creative professionals has just announced their newest creation, the Remix Cretaive workstation PC. Here is what this beast gets its power from:
The latest in Core i7 45nm chips from Intel
Nvidia Quadro FX or Nvidia Quadro CX (with plugins for Photoshop CS4) graphics cards
M-Audio sound interface cards
liquid cooling from CoolIT Systems
up to 12GB DDR3 RAM
dual RAID storage
This monster of a machine will look pretty nice too, being available in 6 colors with the option of custom branding.
But as expected this thing will cost you a pretty penny. The base price is $1,999 or $3,999 with the Nvidia Quadro CX. So start saving up.
Here is the full release:
MAINGEAR Launches Remix™ Creative Workstation PC
MAINGEAR Extends Lineup of Award-Winning PCs to Creative Professionals
Remix Features NVIDIA Quadro CX, M-Audio Interface Cards, and Liquid Cooling from CoolIT Systems
Union, New Jersey – January 29th, 2009 – MAINGEAR Computers, award-winning builders of high performance custom computers for PC Enthusiasts, announced the availability of the next generation of workstations in the market. MAINGEAR will be arming enthusiasts in photoshop, graphic design, video production, pro audio and other creative professions with the new high performance Remix Workstation.
“With Remix, we’ve leveraged years of experience in high performance computing in the PC Gaming and Enthusiast market and are extending that same level of performance, value and service to creative professionals everywhere with a workstation PC capable of handling even the most rigorous computing tasks” said Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder of MAINGEAR.
Optimized for Photo/Graphics/Video Enthusiasts – By integrating NVIDIA® Quadro CX®, MAINGEAR is offering the fastest creative workstation designed and optimized for Adobe® Creative Suite® 4. This will provide professionals with the tools, performance and reliability needed to maximize creativity. Harness the power of the Remix to encode H.264 video up to 4x faster with the NVIDIA CUDA™-enabled plug-in for Adobe® Premiere Pro CS4*. All this extra performance shaves hours off your encoding and rendering time, offering the power and flexibility needed to be creative during critical crunch times. This powerful system with NVIDIA’s latest graphics technology maximizes a number of visually intensive functions, including:
Bring unprecedented fluidity to image navigation. The Remix enables real-time image rotation, zooming, and panning, and makes changes to the view instantaneous and smooth. Also, on-screen compositing of both 2D and 3D content, ensuring smoothly anti-aliased results regardless of zoom level. Brush resizing and brushstroke preview, 3D movement, high-dynamic-range tone mapping, and color conversion are also accelerated.
Accelerate a variety of creative effects, making it easier than ever to add graphics and visual effects to video, which allows the artist to quickly move from concept to final product and speeds up the workflow. Effects accelerated include depth of field, bilateral blur effects, turbulent noise such as flowing water or waving flags, and cartoon effects. The Remix with the Quadro CX takes advantages of these workflow enhancements.
Accelerate high-quality video effects such as motion, opacity, color, and image distortion. The Remix also enables faster editing of multiple high-definition video streams and graphic overlays and provides a variety of video output choices for high-quality preview, including DisplayPort, component TV, or uncompressed 10-bit or 12-bit SDI.
“NVIDIA specifically designed and optimized the Quadro CX graphics card to significantly enhance the performance of Adobe CS4,” says Tyler Worden, Market Development Manager, Professional Solutions, NVIDIA. “By offering the Remix systems equipped with Quadro CX, MAINGEAR is offering its creative professional customers a complete solution that will have a transformative impact on the quality, image manipulation and processing speed of all Adobe CS4 applications.”
Enhanced for Audio Editing – MAINGEAR Remix’s advanced sound insulation makes it the perfect workstation choice for audio editing in the studio. Remix offers an array of some of the best PCI Audio Interfaces in the industry from M-Audio that offer the fullest range of audio editing capabilities designed to handle the needs of the most demanding project and professional studios.
Reliable and Feature Rich - The MAINGEAR Remix is built to meet the most meticulous specifications and supported by the best team in the industry. The most cutting edge features enable the Remix to deliver performance when you need it.
Studio quality sound insulation – Advanced insulation materials keeps the noise in and dense mesh air filters keep the dust out
Powerful components - Latest technology from NVIDIA, Intel, M-Audio put Remix at the cusp of cutting-edge technology
Skillfully hand-built in the USA - Backed by the best in-house support team in the country
Advanced Liquid Cooling – MAINGEAR partnered with CoolIt Systems to equip the Remix with advanced Liquid Cooling for the quietest, most reliable work experience available to date in a workstation
“The computing demands for creative professionals rely heavily on their processor firing on all cylinders” said Geoff Lyon, CEO of CoolIT Systems. “By incorporating Domino Advanced Liquid Cooling technology from CoolIT, the Remix ensures that Intel Core i7 runs cool and achieves optimal performance so that no task is ever too tall for today’s creative professional.”
Creative Professionals can purchase the MAINGEAR Remix at MAINGEAR’s website www.maingear.com or order by phone at (888-MAINGEAR). The base price for Remix is $1,999.99($3,999.99 with NVIDIA Quadro CX) and is available in Black, Silver, Electric Blue, Inferno Red, Alpine White, and Speed Yellow. The MAINGEAR Remix will also offer the option of custom branding.
Kodak has announced it plans to lay off between 3,500 and 4,500 workers, while AOL is jettisoning 700 more people - about 10 percent of its work force. The tough economic times are slamming every industry—for instance, Boeing and Starbucks both announced major job cuts in the last two days—and technology companies are continuing to feel the pinch. Photography giant Kodak has announced it plans to cut between 3,500 and 4,500 positions during 2009, a move which would represent a 14 to 18 percent reduction in its total workforce. Between 2,000 and 3,000 of those positions will be eliminated through a restructuring plan the company announced today, but the reductions will also include executive positions—and the company announced no execs are getting performance-based compensation in 2009.
"The second half of 2008 will go down in history as one of the most challenging periods we have seen in decades," said Kodak chairman and CEO Antonio M. Perez, in a statement. The company reported an operating loss of $133 million for its fourth quarter of 2008, and blames a sharp decline in its digital and film photography business for the restructuring and layoffs. In addition, industry reports have the one-mighty AOL getting ready to lay off about 700 people, or roughly 10 percent of its staff, due to a downturn in its digital advertising business.
The company is also restructuring around three primary areas: People Networks (sharing, communications, and social networking), MediaGlow (its in-house content studio), and Platform-A (its online advertising unit). In addition, AOL is reportedly looking to sell off portions of its international operations. Most of AOL's staff is located in the U.S., and the company expects more of the layoffs will be completed by the second quarter of 2009.
PhoneFramer makes easy work of framing your photos so you can send them off with a special touch. Choose from hundreds of ready-made frames and personalize your photos with anything from simple borders to blooming hearts.
The iGirl application consists of a beautiful 3-dimensional female model that can be manipulated by the user to perform various actions, including dancing and speaking.
In the last post I talked about utility manager as a good option to maintain list of favorite application but lets check out one more tool called as App Manager which knocks out the utility manager completely.
Features of App Manager Enhanced GUI which shows you the
icon for each of the program you add. Makes it easy for you to recognize the programs. Search Integration : In utility manager, you need to add the path manually but with App manager search comes in core. Just select any path ( Program Files ) and search your application quickly. Allows you to create groups which is good option to manage different kind of applications. Gives you a Filter view where you can sort the applications according to the Group. The application is one of the most fav app now ( Thanks amir ) which I am going to use to manage the programs I use most of the time. How about you ? How effective did you find the program for yourself ?
