Apple has updated the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility software used by iPhoto ’11 and Aperture 3 to version 3.9, and with it, added support for 11 more digital cameras. They include:
Canon PowerShot S100
Nikon 1 J1
Nikon 1 V1
Nikon COOLPIX P7100
Olympus PEN E-PL1s
Olympus PEN E-PL3
Olympus PEN E-PM1
Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ150
Sony Alpha NEX-5N
Sony Alpha SLT-A65
Sony Alpha SLT-A77
The software requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or Lion to be installed. You can find it either from Apple’s Web site or through the Software Update system pref.
Black Sabbath on Friday announced in 2012 the band will record its first studio album in 33 years. The band will also headline Download Festival on June 10, 2012 and will follow that up with a worldwide tour.
This is a tool to help you find Unicode characters. Finding a specific character whose name you don’t know is cumbersome. On shapecatcher.com, all you need to know is the shape of the character!Draw your character as best you can in the “drawbox”. You can do this by clicking and holding the left mouse button and moving around. Draw as many strokes as you need to, then click “Recognize” to start the recognition.
Playdead, the Danish indie game developer behind the million-selling title Limbo, has announced plans to bring it to the Mac before the end of the year.
Limbo is a puzzle-based platformer that made its debut in the summer of 2010 for Xbox 360, through Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service. It’s a dark game that features black and white artwork to create an eerie atmosphere.
In Limbo, you play as a boy who finds himself lost in a forest; he must search for his missing sister. He must avoid traps, monsters and other hazards as he makes his way through the two-dimensional environment, moving left and right, climbing up and down, jumping onto ledges and more.
The company announced the million sales mark on Thursday, and indicated they’d release a Mac version to join the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows releases. Playdead counts the million players in 153 countries.
The Windows version of the game has been released using Valve’s Steam platform – recently the victim of a hacker attack that may have exposed user account information. The good news for PC players of the game is that Steam’s “SteamPlay” service will enable cross-platform play between Mac and PC at no additional cost.
We want to see how talented you are! Sourcebits is giving you the chance to strut your stuff in the most epic job hunt ever. We’re looking for two designers, two engineers and one quality assurance/project lead to help us break in our new San Francisco headquarters, and we only want the best.
Sourcebits is a very talented group of people and it’s nice to see them grow and open a new office. This is a very cool way to recruit some of the talented designers and engineers out there.
Henry Bloget [sic] is an easy target. He’s wrong more times a minute than his heart gets a chance to beat blood to his atrophied brain. Which is a very harsh thing to say about someone struggling with that sort of disorder, but I can’t always be the nice guy.
Shattering its own day-one sales records, Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, announced that its highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has become the biggest entertainment launch ever with an estimated sell-through of more than $400 million and more than 6.5 million units in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours of its release, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information.
November 11 is a day of remembrance. In Canada it’s Remembrance Day, in the US it’s Veterans Day — whatever it’s called, today we remember the sacrifices of the men and women that protect our countries. This is not a day to remember or celebrate war, but rather a day to be thankful that so many people believed enough in our freedom that they were willing to fight for us to keep it.
I would like to thank all veterans and currently serving military personnel for your sacrifice.
The Slam Tracks Hard Rock Grooves Pack 1 features 527 MIDI files divided between 10 different groove genres. All grooves come with multiple variations, allowing users of all popular virtual drum instruments like BFD2, EZdrummer, Superior Drummer, Addictive Drums, Cakewalk Session Drummer to create quickly and easily complete hard rock and rock drumtracks. This library also includes multiple drum fills as part of the groove phrases — a dedicated collection of Hard Rock MIDI drum fills can be found in our Slam Tracks Hard Rock MIDI Drum Fills Pack 1.
Looks like Steam, the popular game download service from Valve Software, is the victim of hackers. This message was posted to the service today by Valve founder Gabe Newell:
Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.Gabe.
There’s a bit of a disconnect in what Valve is saying here – a database was accessed that contained encrypted passwords and credit card data, but there’s no evidence the data was taken.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s Gabe Newell’s comment about the password data being “hashed and salted” – salted passwords are much more difficult to decrypt – and the credit card data being encrypted.
RIM lost 1.8m subscribers in the US in the three months to September despite its new BlackBerry 7 phones going on sale in the final month, according to new data from comScore’s MobiLens survey of smartphone users.
That’s what happens when you release shit and you can’t keep your network up.
I was fortunate enough to test a new app from former New York Times digital design director Khoi Vinh before its release today. I also had the opportunity to speak with Khoi about the app and why he made it.
Built for the iPad, Mixel allows users to follow friends, browse, create and share digital collages. Khoi calls these collages Mixels.
What immediately struck me about Mixel is that it was easy enough for a non-artist like me to use, and it was fun. I’m usually not interested in these types of apps because my talent for making a piece of digital art is close to zero. However, I can make a Mixel.
Khoi recognized that there are a lot of people like me out there that may be interested in contributing if the app was simple enough to use. One of the first things he did was look at the other art apps available for the iPad.
“We took a look at as many apps as could get hands on,” Vinh told The Loop. Our conclusion was the apps were either too complex or they really left out the social aspect of it.”
Users can share, like and even love another users Mixel.
You don’t have to start from scratch to use Mixel — you can add or change another user’s Mixel. All of the components can be reused to make your own piece of art.
“We want the doodlers, the photo-book-makers, anyone who loved making art as a kid but along the way, lost the social context that encouraged them to keep creating,” said Vinh. “Mixel is incredibly easy to use and unintimidating, yet at the same time it sparks creativity that many people haven’t tapped since childhood.”
Last night fights, a riot and a police evacuation were the results of a clash between a group of professional South Asian ‘queuers’, whose job it is buy large quantities of new products at launch, and Hong Kong citizens.
The iPhone 4S officially goes on sale tomorrow in Hong Kong.
Investigations into scandal-hit Olympus Corp revealed an elaborate scheme for concealing losses on risky bets behind a facade of inflated bank deposits and securities holdings
Bullshit, Ashton. You weren’t “spreading gossip or rumors” through your Twitter feed. There was no “misinformation.” You were voicing an opinion that turned out to be unpopular. Now, you may have been ill-informed about why Paterno was out, but you weren’t spreading misinformation. He really was gone. You just said something stupid and got shit all over in response. And so now you want to take your ball and go home? It’s an easy and cowardly thing to do.
This goes back to a couple of items Jim and I have posted this week about appropriate behavior for journalists on Twitter. TV show celebrity Ashton Kutcher’s evasive language belies his behavior, and Honan has rightly called him on it.
If you’re going to use a social network to push your agenda or to entertain an audience, have enough sense to know when you’re going to piss people off. Have the stones to stick by your comments, even if you have to apologize later.
By farming out his Twitter account to a PR team, Kutcher is basically throwing in the towel and making a conscious decision to use Twitter as a marketing vehicle, nothing more. I hope his subscribers enjoy their homogenized, pasteurized, sanitized pablum.
Russ takes you step by step showing you things like how to make beats using Boom and MIDI, getting your virtual instrument sounds down onto audio tracks, how to use basic effects to transform the stock sounds and extract grooves from one beat and then use them on other beats to lock their grooves together. Russ also shows you how to pitch shift beats, use gates and side chains to create fantastic new electro drum beats, how to destroy beats and mash them up as well as slice beats and rearrange them using Structure
Imagine you’ve got a shiny computer that is identical to a Macbook Air, except that it has the energy efficiency of a machine from 20 years ago. That computer would use so much power that you’d get a mere 2.5 seconds of battery life out of the Air’s 50 watt-hour battery instead of the seven hours that the Air actually gets.
New amps include models from Jet City: the JCA100H and the JCA20H. Two new amps, one new cab and two new microphone gear models have been added as well: the German Gain amp, HiAmp with Cabinet, Bottle 563 mic and Tube VM mic.
Apple on Thursday released iOS 5.0.1, fixing a number of issues with the operating system.
According to Apple, the update fixes bugs affecting battery life; adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad; resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud; and improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation.
iOS 5.0.1 is compatible with iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch (4th generation) and iPod touch (3rd generation).
The update is available via iTunes and through Apple’s over-the-air update on the device itself.
Everyone who works with Adobe After Effects for any length of time, particularly on a deadline, eventually finds himself (or herself) wanting to improve his or her productivity. In this tutorial, I’ll share five useful tips you may not know about that will help you work more efficiently.
If you’re in your 30s or older, you may remember a time when families took photos using instant cameras like Polaroid’s late lamented SX-70. Polaroid is bringing back a bit of that magic with the Z340, which is now available for $300.
The Z340 sports a wedge shape like Polaroid’s old instant cameras, and even features a built in printer to output pictures instantly (instead of using ink tanks it uses specially treated “Zero Ink (ZINK)” paper, which comes in 20-packs).
Under the hood is a 14-megapixel digital sensor and 2.7-inch LCD viewfinder, which you can also use to edit your photos in-camera. It uses a rechargeable lithium ion battery good for about 25 prints and sports an SD card slot for expanded storage. It connects to your computer using a USB cable.
The 3 x 4 inch prints are borderless, though you can add a “Polaroid Classic Border Logo” if you want to relive the glory days of getting a Polaroid snapshot. Finding a Garanimals shirt and Toughskins jeans that fit may be a bit tougher, though.
The prints are also water resistant and smudge-proof, so you can even shake them like a Polaroid picture (with apologies to OutKast) without worrying about messing them up.
“Whether you‚re a musician, engineer, or mastering pro, Ozone 5 lets you master music and other audio simply and efficiently,” says Nick Dika, iZotope Senior Product Manager. “Ozone 5 is the biggest update we‚ve ever offered, with improvements that will appeal to Ozone experts and new users alike. Ozone 5 Advanced is designed to set a new industry standard for mastering tools. Advanced includes many exclusive features, and offers mixing and mastering engineers an even higher level of flexibility, precision and control.”
I know a lot of people that really like Ozone as a mastering tool.
The argument goes that the layperson does not know what RSS means, how to use it to their advantage, and it does not have the lasting attractiveness to bring in a new audience. While there is certainly validity in this stance, it is flawed.
Specifically, the view that widespread understanding has anything to do with the health of RSS is flawed.
RSS is fundamentally a backbone technology for websites. It allows content to be aggregated and organized. It allows for the syndication and dispersion of content.
In my opinion, RSS, insofar as it is a backbone, is merely returning to its rightful place. It is becoming hidden from the end user.
RSS unofficially stands for “Really Simple Syndication,” and if held to this definition, I would argue that it is in perfect health, and that the “Really Simple” portion of the definition has fundamentally come to redefine and reinvigorate it.
Just as /Library is now hidden from an OS X Lion user, and just as the iOS platform is locked down and sandboxed, RSS is simply dropping off into the background. Content is being syndicated and aggregated just as before. Perhaps even more so than in the past. Virtually everyone with a Facebook, Google+, or Twitter account follows a news-providing entity. Those entities share content feeds. Those content feeds are generally derived from the XML and Atom feeds that comprise the RSS.
Similarly, apps like Flipboard and Pulse have been playing their part in disguising and hiding RSS from the end user.
In essence, RSS has become analogous to just about every other aspect of the modern computing industry, insofar as everything is becoming simplified and tucked away from the average user.
For the lack of a viable alternative, RSS is healthy, working, and active. While you might not see it in the same manner, content is still being syndicated, but presented in a different way.
RSS is not dead, but at the same time, journalists are correct, it is too alienating for the common user. So the owners of RSS feeds are presenting them in a more accessible, understandable manner.
That is not death, that is reinvigoration.
Matt Alexander is the owner and editor of ONE37.net, a writer, a technology enthusiast, and a contributing writer for The Loop.
Dragon Express is the latest member of the Dragon family of speech recognition software that lets people control a computer with their voice. It’s the fast, hands-free way to turn speech into text, whether sending email, surfing the Web or posting an update to Facebook and Twitter. Dragon provides an easy, natural way to get more done in less time. Dragon Express is priced to provide the broadest range of people with an opportunity to experience the power and performance of speech recognition.
Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs was nominated by “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year. If selected it would be the first time the distinction would be awarded to a person posthumously.
