Adobe Systems Inc. today rolled out a beta version of its Adobe Flash Player 10 (formerly called Astro) browser plug-in, which adds features to help designers and developers create special effects and cinematic Web experiences.
The new offering adds support for custom filters and effects created using Adobe’s Pixel Bender tool kit, Adobe said. The Pixel Bender technology is used in the company’s After Effects CS3 tool, which creates motion graphics and visual effects for film and broadcast.
“We’re doing things that really change the game of what’s possible on the Internet,” said Tom Barclay, senior product marketing manager for Flash Player. “The community now has the ability to upgrade the capabilities of the player and create new types of effects and cinematic experiences that are not available with any other browser plug-in.”
The beta version of the player also includes native 3-D transformation and animation capabilities, an extensible rich-text layout, and graphics processing unit hardware acceleration, he added.
The new support for 3-D is “really 3-D for the rest of us,” Barclay noted. “It allows people to take what they know in the 2-D world and transform it into 3-D. It’s native so the performance is very fast, and it will not result in larger file sizes.”
New bit-rate streaming for video links between the Flash Player and intended future releases of Adobe’s Flash Media Server will automatically adjust video quality as bandwidth changes without having to rebuffer, the company said. “This will provide a seamless playback experience with no starting or stopping of video waiting for the stream to catch up,” Barclay said.
In addition, a new text engine in Flash Player 10 allows designers and developers to have more creative control over device font attributes such as rotation and style, Adobe said. The new version also adds more text layouts, like vertical and bidirectional, which support the creation of rich Internet applications like interactive e-books and online publications in additional languages, Barclay added.
The beta version of Adobe Flash Player 10 runs on the Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. The Adobe Pixel Bender Exchange is available for beta users to create custom effects for the Flash Player, according to the company.
The general release of Flash Player 10 is expected later this year.
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The Wii Fit, which comes complete with its own special balance board, is one of the new fitness computer games from the Nintendo stable, which already includes virtual games such as tennis, boxing and bowling…
Sophie, a publicist, shows me the new hardware for Wii Fit at her office in Soho. On the floor in front of a giant TV is a pressure-sensitive balance board about the size of weighing scales. In fact, what the new Wii does is to weigh you straight away. Along with your height and age, the computer then works out your body mass index. Mine is 29.36, somewhere between Medically Obese and About To Drop Dead. “It’s not 100 per cent accurate,” Sophie says, tactfully. “Muscle weighs more than fat.” “Thanks,” I say. “I can see why you’re in PR.”
[Youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=t3pfQdADxEs[/youtube]
Next, after some rudimentary balance exercises in which I am revealed to be fundamentally lopsided, the machine computes my “Wii age”. It is 65 (my actual age is 43). “Oh dear,” says Sophie. I have to choose a “Mii”, an icon to represent myself on screen. I go for a perky little chap with a side part and pot belly. He introduces himself. In Japanese. The English language version is not available yet, but if its success over there is anything to go by – more than a million copies of the game sold in just over a month – this game won’t be sitting on shop shelves for long.
I select an on-screen tutor, wondering if it’s morally or legally OK to lust after a computer-generated fitness instructor. She greets me with what I take to be a provocative pose. “She’s saying, ‘Hello, you fat bastard’,” the photographer says. “Nah,” I say, “she’s saying she fancies me. You can always tell.” “It’s a good alternative for those people who aren’t, er, that confident about going to the gym,” Sophie offers.
For the next hour I submit myself to a series of sometimes gruelling, sometimes exciting, often humiliating exertions. I try some skiing, first slalom, then a jump. Neither is successful. I turn into a ball and try to roll myself down a hole. I endeavour to keep one hula hoop in motion while attempting to catch others. It’s all about minute transfers of weight, rhythm, fluidity of the pelvis, such as dancing, essentially.
I could feel my abdominal muscles taking the strain, so presumably it was doing some good. Improving core strength and stability is the order of the day. Nintendo is to ask Liverpool John Moores University to research the effects of Wii Fit, but anecdotally, I can confirm that you have to make an effort. Not as you would lifting weights or running, but similar to a beginners’ Pilates class, or some semi-serious stretching.
Blockbuster Inc. (BBI) is being sued for its participation in a Facebook advertising program, which highlights the difficulties for social networking companies in using customer data to build advertising revenues.
Dallas resident Cathryn Elaine Harris’ filed a lawsuit April 9 that alleges Blockbuster distributed her rental and sale records to third parties without appropriate consent.
The suit strikes out at Facebook’s Beacon advertising program, which it launched last year. Beacon allowed Facebook to track users’ activities on certain outside Web sites, including online purchases, and in certain cases published updates in online news feeds.
In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Texas, Blockbuster violated the Federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing Harris’ information with Facebook.
Beacon was met with protests by Facebook’s users, and was quickly modified to let users select which of their friends get access to information.
“To this day, Facebook still receives personal identifiable information from participating Web sites with the Beacon javascript; whether the Facebook member has chosen to distribute the information or not,” Harris said in her complaint. “To this day, Blockbuster online members remain unsuspecting victims.”
A spokesman for Blockbuster, Randy Hargrove, on Thursday denied the allegations.
He said Blockbuster’s alliance with Facebook included “numerous levels of privacy protection,” for users.
“We can’t discuss the specifics but we intend to vigorously defend the company,” the spokesman said.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates indicated Friday that the successor to Microsoft’s Vista operating system will be available sooner than the company previously had indicated.Gates, in response to a question during a public appearance in Miami on Friday, said to expect Windows 7 “sometime in the next year or so.” Gates was speaking at the Inter-American Development Bank in Miami, and didn’t elaborate.
When asked to elaborate on Gates’ remarks, a Microsoft spokesman said Gates was alluding to a test version of the new software, and not the full-on commercial version. The spokesman didn’t offer additional comments outside the statement.
“As is standard with the release of a new product, we will be releasing early builds of Windows 7 prior to its General Availability as a means to gain tester feedback,” according to Microsoft’s statement. “We’re not sharing additional information at this time.”
Microsoft last said it expected a follow-up to its Vista software around January 2010. Should Gates be referring to a full-scale release, his timetable on Friday lops at least a year off the wait.
Well, it’s something to keep an eye on. With the messy (and some would say, incomplete) release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, it is no small wonder that Microsoft wants a successor out as soon as possible, if for no other reason than to quiet the masses about wanting to keep XP rather than upgrade to Vista.
Microsoft likely may want to give people something else (positive) to desire and talk about, thus drowning out the XP concerns, driving people to a feeling of more acceptance of where things are and that things are “moving forward” so they might as well accept the direction as it would be futile to swim against the current.
With little known about Windows 7, at this point, it’s difficult to get excited or bothered. So, we are at the point of the process where we speculate and wonder, much like most of us did when Longhorn was initially being discussed. The screenshots I have seen of early Windows 7 builds don’t really show very much as it looks much like Vista. Will it be like what Windows 98 was to Windows 95? Not sure at this point but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing at that time. Well, outside of essentially purchasing the same operating system again 3 years later but with many of the bugs and quirks and lacking or lagging features brought up to spec. If that’s the case it causes me concern for how far Microsoft plans to take Vista as far as updates and tweaking. If Windows 7 will be essentially a better, updated and more fixed version of Vista then what’s the point of updating Vista to any effective degree? Well, for now, we will occasionally wonder and simply keep an eye out and see what we see.
GreenRoad, based in Or Yehuda and with offices in the US and Britain, has developed a monitoring system, called the GreenRoad Safety Center, which supervises drivers’ habits behind the wheel.
Information is gathered into a device installed in the car and transmitted in real time using cell phone technology to a database, where it is collated and analyzed – available for review later on by the driver or other relevant parties.
Data upload is possible anywhere your cell phone has reception, and when it’s not, the in-car “black box” device stores information and transmits it later. When a driver “violates” proper driving policy, they are gently “reminded” by the system that they need to adjust their driving attitude.
The system takes measurements on 120 different driving behaviors, taking into account different circumstances and situations, and is able to describe not only what happened during a driving session, but also build a profile that can predict how drivers will react when faced with a specific situation…
“Until now, estimates of who was likely to be a safe or unsafe driver were determined on the basis of age, experience, etc. There was no real mechanism to examine drivers’ actual habits behind the wheel and correlate them with a safety profile,” he tells ISRAEL21c…
And the system is effective, Fleischman says. “For fleets that use GreenRoad, accidents are down by about 50%,” he explains.
From Greenroad’s website:
* Reduced crashes by 54%
* Reduced at-fault crashes by 42%
* Reduced high risk driving behavior by 50%
* Decreased fuel costs by 7%
There are more stories every other day about this HD DVD war and “who will win?” I loved 300 but… I knew who was winning and who wasn’t. Reality has to settle in at some point as this stand is nowhere near as sexy or meaningful. OK. OK. I know the Giants recently defied great odds and beat the Patriots (I picked them to win by 3 btw : ) ) but this format “war” is ridiculous at this point, IMHO. Today, there are a couple more giants jumping to Blu-ray over HD-DVD: Best Buy and Netflix. The momentum has been growing for a while now and looks to be too fast to stop.
Best Buy, the largest U.S. consumer electronics chain, said on Monday it will recommend that consumers choose Sony Corp’s Blu-ray high-definition video format.
The decision gives Sony yet another victory in the battle with Toshiba Corp’s HD DVD to be the high-definition DVD format of choice.
Earlier on Monday, online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said it would exclusively stock Blu-ray DVDs after some of the world’s biggest movie studios decided in favor of that format.
Best Buy said it believes consumers will benefit from the choice of one HD DVD format.
“Because we believe that Blu-ray is fast emerging as that single format, we have decided to focus on Blu-ray products,” Brian Dunn, Best Buy’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
RALEIGH, N.C. – Apple Inc.’s flashy new iPhones may be jamming parts of the wireless network at Duke University, where technology officials worked with the company Wednesday to fix problems before classes begin next month.
Bill Cannon, a Duke technology spokesman, said an analysis of traffic found that iPhones flooded parts of the campus’ wireless network with access requests, freezing parts of the system for 10 minutes at a time.
A single iPhone was powerful enough to cause the problem, and there are 100 to 150 of them registered on the network, Cannon said. Network administrators have noticed the problem nine times in the past week.
“The scale of the problem is very small right now,” said Cannon, adding that the school is working with Apple and Cisco Systems Inc., Duke’s network equipment provider, to pinpoint the problem. “But the more iPhones that are around, the more they could be knocking on the door for access.” continue reading…
Looks like the rumors were true. Auction site eBay is shelling out $75 million to buy social web discovery service StumbleUpon.
According to the press release, the acquisition gives eBay exposure to StumbleUpon’s growing community of over 2 million users. Still seems like an awkward match to us. In recent years, eBay purchased PayPal, but that was a no-brainer, and Skype, which has an obvious commercial aspect.
The company hardly needed StumbleUpon to build its brand recognition. And if they just start injecting eBay auctions willy nilly into stumble results, they’ll pretty much break the community they bought as members begin to evacuate the spam-laden sinking ship. Still, a separate “stumble to find books, computer parts, or hummels” section could make a lot of sense.
eBay senior director Michael Buhr assumes the post of general manager of StumbleUpon, while StumbleUpon’s current management team remains in place.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Momentum, a division of Momentum Telecom, today announced a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) initiative for new master planned communities via a comprehensive digital community platform (CDCP). Through partnerships with real estate developers, Momentum is providing customers in master planned communities with complete digitally- equipped homes and businesses. Without the hassle of installation after moving, the homes will feature move-in ready access to advanced services, including video, voice, data and security services, as well as dedicated local community intranet sites.
Momentum works in conjunction with residential and mixed-use real estate developers of new master planned communities to readily equip all homes and businesses with the infrastructure necessary for advanced fiber services, giving developers a key competitive advantage while offering consumers a move- in ready, cost-effective communication suite. Momentum’s first FTTP partnership is with the Creekside of Auburn community, marking the Alabama city’s first FTTP buildout.
“FTTP is going to be a key technology that will allow consumers to take full advantage of advanced services, including HDTV,†said Vince Vittore, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “While many large-scale projects by incumbents are focused on building out fiber to existing homes in their coverage areas, there is a tremendous opportunity for CLECs to tap into the new planned community market.â€
Momentum is initially targeting new communities with at least 2,000 homes in the Southeast for its FTTP offering. Because the company is working hand- in-hand with developers on communities still in the construction phase, Momentum’s pure fiber buildouts have minimal effect on home and neighborhood development projects. In addition to added services, customers may also see a $4,000-8,000 increase in property values due to the built-in nature of fiber being directly connected to their future-ready homes. continue reading…