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Adobe Is Totally Over Apple, They Swear

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen wanted to work with Apple, he really did. But Apple didn't want to work with them. These things happen!

Here's the full quote, from an interview with the Telegraph:

Apple made some statements about the suitability of our technology for mobile devices. I think we've proven that the technology is not only suitable but it actually significantly enhances the value on these mobile devices. They've chosen to keep their system closed and we'd rather work with partners who are interested in working with us. We believe in open systems. We believe in the power of the internet and in customers making choices and I think a lot of the controversy was about their decision at that point. They've made their choice. We've made ours and we've moved on. It's a business decision. With the energy and innovation that our company has, we'd rather focus on people who want to deliver the best experience with Flash and there are so many of them.

All in all, a reasonable position. But you know that in his most private of moments, he still has hurt feelings. No one likes getting shunned, after all. [Telegraph via SlashGear]

Send an email to Adam Frucci, the author of this post, at adam@gizmodo.com.

Typekit, a company doing its part to help bring better typography to the web, has just announced an new partnership with Adobe.

The partnership means that Typekit users can now integrate famous fonts like Myriad, Cooper Black and Adobe Garamond into their own sites and designs.

Adobe took the time to optimize and hint its collection of fonts for the screen, ensuring that type looks its best. The web fonts support the same languages and scripts as their counterparts on the desktop.

We spoke with Bryan Mason from Typekit and he expanded more on the process of making these fonts web-ready: “Adobe has been working on the hinting and screen rendering of these (and others to follow) for months. On a pixel-specific level, Adobe reviews each font character-by-character, weight-by-weight. It is amazingly meticulous work — and the results show.” Mason also said new Adobe fonts will be added to the service as they are web-ready.

We also spoke with Jeffrey Veen from Typekit about what the company — which is celebrating its one-year anniversary — has planned going forward. He said in part: “We’re also adding more and more features that help designers focus on creativity and not compatibility. Soon, we’ll be launching some amazing CSS3 tools that not only focus on webfonts, but all of the new browser capabilities.”

These are the Adobe fonts that are now available to Typekit users:

• Adobe Garamond
• Adobe Text
• Bickham Script
• Caflisch Script
• Chaparral
• Cooper Black
• Cronos
• Garamond Premier
• Hypatia Sans
• Minion
• Myriad
• Myriad Condensed
• News Gothic
• Poplar
• Rosewood
• Rosewood Fill
• Trajan
• Voluta Script

Not all fonts and weights are available for all user plans, but select Adobe fonts are available at every tier.

What do you think of Adobe and Typekit’s announcement? Do you plan on integrating Myriad Pro in your designs? Let us know!

For more Dev & Design coverage:

• Follow Mashable Dev & Design
• Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

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Beneath those four headings there are a variety of functions. Here's a complete list (don't worry, there aren't many): crop, straighten, rotate, flip, exposure, saturation, tint, black & white, contrast, brightness, soft focus, effects, and borders. Most of these are self-explanatory, and they all do the same thing as their desktop software equivalent. The 'effects' are nice, providing you with a bunch of pre-programmed filters that'll make your mundane on-the-way-to-work photos less boring.

There's a couple of handy undo/redo buttons at the bottom — and no, you can't make those two annoying bars disappear while you edit the photo. The only way to see the final result is to save the image (thus losing your undo/redo history… awesome!)

Finally, the app has the ability to upload your edited photos to Photoshop.com, Facebook and TwitPic. You can also set it to 'auto upload' your photos, which is a rather cool way of keeping your phone synchronized with your Interwebs. [If you're interested, you can see my awesome full-size photo on Photoshop.com!]

Photoshop Express for Android Tech Specs

• Installed Size — 2MB, but it has a cache that will grow as your library of images expands!
• Speed/Responsiveness — Snappy and smooth (Android 1.6 @ 600 MHz, LG GT540 Swift)
• User Interface — Pretty and very intuitive, except for the complete lack of buttons on the 'Online photos' tab, grrr
• Configurability & Extensibility — Nope, nothing like that (but being able to upload to other non-Photoshop.com services is cool)
• License — Free, closed-source

Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.

One of the cool things about Corel MediaOne Plus is the option of applying frames to your photos. In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to use that option. I will show you how to apply the different frames to your photos using Corel MediaOne Plus. You will need to load your program and open the photo you want to use with this tutorial. Then we will get started with applying frames to your photos.

To begin, you will need to place the photo you want to use in the Photo Tray. Then double click the photo in the tray to open it in a new tab. Next, you will need to click the Enhance button in the left panel. When the Enhance menu expands look for the Apply Effects button and click it. That will expand the Effects menu and in the menu you will see the frame option.

Click the Add Picture Frame button to get started. A box will then open and this is where you will select your frame for your photo and adjust the options. The top drop down box is where all of your frames are. Click the arrow on this box to open the box. In the top of the box that opened, you will see the category box. You can drop this box down and select the category you wish to see or you can select the All option and view all of the frames in the box. When you are ready to select a frame for your photo, simply click the frame you want to use. The drop down box will then close and you will be returned to the other box you started with.

In the bottom of the original box, you will see a preview of your photo and the frame you chose for your photo. Beside the preview, you will also see two options. Option number one places the frame inside the image and option two places the frame outside the image. So, make your selection by ticking one of the options. When you are ready to apply the frame and close the box, click the OK button.

Your frame will then be added to your photo. From here you can save your new edited photo. You can also add text to the frame if you want. If you wish to change the frame, click the Add Frame button again in the left panel and the frame box will open again. From there you can make changes to the frame you have applied to the photo.

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I'm an attorney too, and I share your frustration. I do not think that there is a magic bullet out there. (I'll follow this thread just in case, though, because if there is one, sign me up!)

The one thing I've learned is that you have more time than you think. Your boss would rather have you get it right, so ask if you can have one more chance to read it through before it gets filed/sent.

And I second the suggestion to read your work aloud. You would be surprised how many errors you can catch that way. (And although you may feel dumb, you can always hold up your phone so it looks like you're talking on the phone.) You won't need to do it forever – it's kind of like training wheels. It gets you to the point where you can see your mistakes as you're making them.
posted by slmorri at 5:29 PM on July 25

Honestly, I cannot see how you can really be so ignorant. If you're trolling then well done for bringing the other side down by making them look so bad, though I'd prefer to do without your help.

Sorry, are you that stupid, I mean, can you not understand that there are OTHER methods for gaining IP and copyright protection for your works.

Yes, that might include “sweat of the brow” OR,

OR being a subsitute or means that something *OR* SOMETHING ELSE can be used as a defense.

So yes, sweat of the brow, AND/OR original (but not creative) input can be considered of Value, and is considered in many places as INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY..

So, I was saying you CAN create a copyright works, that contains essentually NON-copyright information.

This could be because (in europe) it might be sweat of the brow, ,,,

******* OR **************** (meaning either / OR )

It can be because of the creative input from the Author, or the work in collating the information.

So again, my physics text book is a book full of NON-copyrightable information, FACTS, EQUATIONS and so on.

But the book itself is protected by copyright

Can you understand that yet, or do you want me to try to making it simplier for you..

Mabey you can ask someone else to explain it to you, mabey Mike can explain it to you.

At least in this case he seem to understand what im saying,

Even though he could not get beyone disagreeing with me, then stating the exact same thing as I said.

And 'formatting, narrative, layout, research in finding the information”.

IS Sweat of the brow…. Geeeezzzzzzzz..

Are you saying it can only be sweat of the brow, or creative input,, geezzzz.. how that world would really SUCK..

Honestly, I cannot see how you can really be so ignorant. If you're trolling then well done for bringing the other side down by making them look so bad, though I'd prefer to do without your help.

Sounds like your running out of arguments, ive shown several ways, and LEGAL methods of gaining copyrights over material that is not itself copyrightable.

At least two examples, one is sweat of the brow, and the other is creative input to non-copyrightable works.

1. is the effort in gathering data (usefull data)

sweat of the brow,/B>

But so far you are just showing a major lack of understanding of even the most simple concepts.

(reply to this)
(link to this)
(view in thread)

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I am a longtime user of Paint Shop Pro, and have been using the program since it was a Windows 3.1 application. I am currently a licensed user of Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8.1, and I adore the program. I use it for all my image editing for eBay and Associated Content. In fact, I was so happy with my old version of Paint Shop Pro I felt no desire to upgrade.

Recently, though I decided to take the plunge and download the trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI. There are not very many differences between Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8.1 and Corel Paint Shop Pro XI. That's what I've liked best about the program, is that it has tended to remain stable and consistent throughout its many upgrades. However, there a few improvements, and a few things that were in Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8.1 that I sorely missed in Corel Paint Shop Pro XI.

One thing I noticed about Corel Paint Shop Pro XI was that it ate a lot more memory than its predecessor. It also crashed several times, whereas Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8.1 was a very stable program which almost never crashed. Still, I stayed with it, using Corel PSP XI to edit almost all my photos and scans.

A few of the menus in Corel PSP XI were rearranged from Jasc PSP 8.1, but I didn't have much trouble finding them. The Undo command was in the Edit menu, where I remembered it being in the earlier version. However, I was disappointed to find that the Command History was gone. The Command History in Jasc PSP 8.1 and earlier allowed the user to undo a long sequence of actions with one mouse click. Without the Command History, you've got to undo each separate action, one at a time. I really did not consider this an improvement over the previous version.

Browse was now called Organizer, and had a few more organization options. For example, you could organize your images by Date Taken – Newest, Date Taken – Oldest, Date Modified, Folder and Filename, Filename, Rating, File Format and File Size. It also tended to seclude several images in one smaller section when Date Taken was chosen. This is a significant improvement over the old version, which when you right-click on the browser, offers a sort menu of Name, Extension, Date, File Size, Type, Width, Height, Bits Per Pixel or Size.

I was, however, very sorry to see that the Move, Delete, Rename and Copy options were now missing from Organizer. In Jasc PSP 8.1, you could move images from one folder to another, copy, rename and delete them in the Browse window just like in Windows Explorer. It was an extremely useful function which I used often, and which never let me down. I can't understand Corel's reasons for removing it.

There were also several new options under the Effects menu. These were the Photo Effects, which offer some functionality which was not available in Jasc PSP 8.1. The first is Time Machine, which ages the photograph to make it look like a daguerreotype, albumen print, cyanotype, platinum print, early color – autochrome, and other older photographic techniques. Also there was Film and Filters, which would allow the user to make a photograph look warmer or cooler with a series of Film Looks and Creative Filters. The Black and White Photo Effect simply removed the color from the photograph. Infrared Film had effectively the same effect with more options to customize. Sepia Tone made the photo a uniform brown.

In the Layers menu, there was a New Art Media Layer option. This created a new media layer which could be used as a Dry Art Media Layer or Wet Art Media Layer. I tried out the Wet Art Media Layer along with the Oil Brush Tool from the toolbar to see how close I could get to the effect of real oil paints. Well, don't expect to create a masterpiece anytime soon with these tools. However, I can imagine a number of uses for these tools, and you may be able to create attractive art with them. However, if you want the look of real oil paint, you're better off sticking with the real thing.

The Picture Tube, which is also present in Jasc PSP 8.1, had a lot of new and different images which were not present in the earlier version, including Beverage, Bugs, Buttons, Flare, Flowers, Metal Balls, Metal Spiral, Metal Tube, Nuts and Bolts, and Stitch. Picture Tube is a very fun tool which reminds me of KidPix Deluxe 3, which my son uses on his computer and loves. It does really lean towards childsplay, but is useful for creating your own wallpaper and wrapping paper, should you be so inclined.

There are a few other minor differences, for example, new additions such as One Step Photo Fix, Smart Photo Fix, One Step Noise Removal, and Digital Camera Noise Removal. However, the major difference which jumped out at me upon first using the program was that the Clarify tool was significantly improved over the earlier version. In Jasc PSP 8.1, the Strength of Effect of the Clarify tool goes up only to 5. In Corel PSP XI, it goes up to 20. I was able to achieve a much more dramatic clarification effect with this tool than I was ever able to get with Jasc PSP 8.1. Details which had previously been obscured in darkness now burst out of the screen. This was by far my favorite part of Corel PSP XI. As yet, though, it isn't sufficient motivation to upgrade.

I would say that if you already use an older version of PSP which is compatible with your current operating system, keep on using it. However, if you have never used PSP before, Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI would be an excellent investment.

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PhotoGenetics by QBeo is a program that allows you to modify your digital images by comparing and altering it to other preset images rather than manually altering the digital images by yourself. It works by presenting you with alternate modified versions of your images, which you can then rate. Your ratings will then make the program select which modified versions are best for you.

Picture Window is another digital photograph software. It caters to amateur photographers and experienced photographers alike. It isnft as expensive or sophisticated as other digital photograph software, which makes it suitable for photography-related businesses. It feature common tools for photography manipulation which are easy to use, such as adjusting brightness and contrast, retouching, correcting color balance, embossing, and global or selective blurring.

Among the most popular photography software is the comprehensive Adobe Photoshop. When it comes to having an immense number of technical features you can manipulate in order to organize and modify your digital photography Adobe software is the prime choice. It has nondestructive image editing tools which allow you to edit photographs without altering the their basic pixilation. It has the capability of rapidly blending and aligning multiple layers seamlessly. The recent Adobe Photoshop interface is adjusted to the preferences of the user by means of customized workflows and a streamlined work environment. Third-party support is more than sufficient, as Adobe Photoshop has plug-ins, books, and training from an expert Adobe community.

Picstore Digital Photo Album by Handprint software allows you to store and view digital photographs in JPEG format. It has an interface similar to a web browser and also allows you to view you photographs in slide shows.

Artborders, by Artistic software, is excellent for people who would like to make the borders of their photographs look fancier. It adds frames to photographs. Artborders has a wide selection of frame designs and frame sizes to choose from and add to digital photographs. There are currently over 200 borders available for download over the Internet. Artistic software also has the Arteyes product, which allows users to eliminate the •red-eye- effect from photographs and also has the common modification features of other digital photography software.

Starsoft slideshow (by Starsoft Computer Systems), as its name implies, allows the user to use incorporate his digital photography into slideshow images. The slide shows you create are put together in a single file for easy distribution. Starsoft slideshow is appropriate software to use for presentations with images.

Vistametrix by Skillcrest is for the more technically astute and technologically literate digital photographer. It allows photographers to view, access, and operate the parameters of an image when the data used to make that image is unavailable.

The Digital Photograph Recovery Tool 3.0.1.5 is used, as its name implies, to recover missing image data. It works with the file formats BMP, JPEG, AVI, and PNG. It also restores data stored in cameras, phones, memory sticks, and other such paraphernalia. It even recovers data from factory-reset hardware. It works with most of digital cameras. It can recover corrupted data when hardware is accidentally pulled out.

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If you've used a computer for any time at all, you've surely run into PDF (Portable Document File) files. People publish manuals, magazines, rebate forms, e-books, and a host of other documents using this file type which is readable by the free Adobe Acrobat program (as well as other pieces of software). Why distribute PDF files? They provide several important advantages. In particular, a PDF file will appear the same on just about any computer. The availability of a free viewer means that just about anyone in the world on any kind of computer can read a PDF file and you know ahead of time what it is going to look like. Even most handheld computers and smart phones can read PDF files along with just about any desktop platform ranging from OS/2 Warp to Microsoft Vista.

There are other advantages too. PDF files can have indexing, forms, and security settings that allow you to restrict printing or other operations. So if you have a newsletter, a church bulletin, or even a family Christmas letter that you want to send out, PDF is a great way to publish it. There's only one problem. PDF's biggest disadvantage is that the official tool to create PDFs from Adobe (Adobe Acrobat Pro sometimes called Distiller) is very pricey – as much as $400 or $500 depending on the features you need.

However, if you are on a budget there are numerous ways to legally create PDFs for free. Exactly which method is best for you depends on what content you want to distribute and how you create it. For example, if you use the latest version of Microsoft Word (2007), you can download a free plug in from Microsoft to save PDF files directly. Just go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads and search for “pdf office add-in” (don't include the quotes).

Of course, Word's not free either. But there are plenty of 100% free options for creating PDF files. If you aren't using Word, you are probably using the free program Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org or an alternate version at http://go-oo.org/). These programs – which include a word processor, spreadsheet, graphics, and more – can all save directly to PDF with no trouble. Many online office suites (for example, ThinkFree and Zoho Writer) can also save directly to PDF.

The official software from Adobe that creates PDF files fools Windows (or whatever operating system you use) into thinking it is a printer. That means it can take anything you can print and convert it to a PDF file. There's free software that can do that too. In particular, PDFCreator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) can do that job for Microsoft Windows.

There are many other free programs, although you need to be careful. Some “free” programs you find on the Internet aren't really free. They add a watermark to your PDF file (and may have other limitations such as a limit on the number of pages) and want you to upgrade to a paid version of the software. While these programs might be worthwhile, there are truly free alternatives like PDFCreator that will do the job. Of course, there are some free products (like PrimoPDF; http://www.primopdf.com) that have “upgrades” without crippling the free product. Since these products are free, you can always try them and settle on the one you like best.

Another “sort of free” option is PDF995 (http://www.pdf995.com). This program creates PDFs for free, but shows an ad to you when you create a PDF. It doesn't, however, limit or interfere with the PDF file itself — someone reading the PDF file won't notice any difference. The reason it is called PDF995 is that for $9.95 you can have the ads removed.

So next time you need to send a document, think PDF – even if you are on a budget. There are many high-quality free tools and plenty of good reasons to use this versatile and popular format.

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has denied a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to a complaint filed by Adobe against Apple, stating that the release of the information would impede the commission's “law enforcement” duties.

Nearly 200 pages of records regarding Adobe's complaint were requested by Wired this week, and rejected. Adobe filed the paperwork with the FTC after Apple announced it would not allow iOS applications ported from other languages or development environments, such as Flash.

The FTC justified its decision to keep the documents, stating that making them public “could reasonably be expected to interfere with the conduct of the Commission's law enforcement activities.” The FTC said that 189 pages are related to the case, but the records are exempt from the FOIA request. The response strongly suggests that the FTC is currently conducting an investigation into the matter.

“The FTC never publicly confirms or denies when an investigation is open or closed, except when it sues or reaches a settlement with a company,” author Ryan Singel wrote. “However, both Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal reported in May that the FTC had gotten a complaint from Adobe and opened a formal investigation.”

The fight between Apple and Adobe came to a head after Adobe announced it would create an application that would allow developers to port software written to Flash to the iPhone. That software would allow developers to circumvent Apple's ban of Adobe Flash from iOS devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

But Apple changed its developer agreement, banning applications written in non-native languages and ported to the iPhone. That prompted Adobe to abandon development of its Flash-to-iPhone porting software, and file a complaint with the FTC.

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs publicly commented on the matter in an open letter published in late April, in which he slammed Adobe Flash as a Web tool that is unfit for the modern, mobile era of computing. He also said that an intermediary tool for converting Flash applications to the iPhone would produce “sub-standard apps,” and would hinder the progress of the platform.

Jobs said he knows from “painful experience” that allowing developers to become dependent on a third-party tool, such as Adobe Flash, rather than writing natively for the iPhone is restrictive. “We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers,” Jobs wrote.

This is the sixth of a series of reviews that will cover what is contained in the Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5) Master Collection. When Adobe released CS5 this year, they not only released single version products, but also five separate suites of products. They are Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection. You can go online to compare what is contained in each version. The goal of this series it to define what each product does and provide information of what the new version brings to the table.

First introduced in 1999, Adobe InDesign CS5 is the publishing platform of the creative suite that is targeted at designers, publishers and those whose job it is to design professional layouts including periodical publications, posters, print media, and more.

In effect, InDesign is a page-composition program that lets you take a variety of elements from different sources and combine them to make multipage documents. Once you have all of the objects together, InDesign will let you put them together on the page to create your composition. While you can also create single page documents, InDesign is really meant to create larger multipage compositions. Many people use InDesign to create for standard print, it can be just as useful for electronic delivery via PDF, Web page generation, and mobile devices.

So What is New with InDesign CS5?
• Interactive documents – and presentations will help you to engage and inform readers and clients with documents and presentations that integrate interactivity, animation, sound, and video. By creating interactivity directly in InDesign you will also reduce the cost and time to develop rich media using other application. New intuitive panels like the Animation, Object States, and Timing panels help you add rich media to your page layouts much easier than ever before.

• Object selection and editing – gives you the ability to perform repetitive layout tasks much more efficiently in InDesign CS5. Numerous improvements can help make tasks such as aligning and distributing objects or customizing frame corners faster and easier. These include a Gap tool to adjust the white space between objects, a Live Corner Effects to change the shape of a frame, and the ability to make multiple transformations with the Content Grabber.

Adobe Systems make programs that allow computers to “read” graphics. Back around 2000, Adobe Acrobat was a popular program, and deserved to be. You could download it free from many web sites. It worked well. The pictures usually came through quickly and looked good.

What a switch to find obnoxious ads for Adobe software popping up, repeatedly, here on AC. I don't know whether AC is responsible for allowing this, or aware that it's been done. I don't know whether Adobe Systems is. I do know that products worth buying don't have to be “sold,” so whenever anyone takes a lot of time and trouble to push a product at me, I know it's not a product I want.

Internet software used to include “pop-up blockers.” I looked for that function on the computer I'm trying to use during the limited time I have today to try to catch up with my favorite ACers' latest work. Possibly because Internet Explorer, on this computer, goes straight to Yahoo rather than a system the owner would have to pay, I don't see anything about “pop-up blockers.”

However, are “pop-up blockers” an adequate way to transmit a badly needed message to companies that advertise their products in truly obnoxious ways? I think not. I think it's time to boycott all Adobe products until the company sees the error of its ways.

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Adobe is showcasing the new Motorola Droid 2's ability to play Flash 10.1 out of the box in a new demo video (below). Other handsets, including the HTC Evo and Motorola Droid X, are currently in the process of getting the software update. The Droid 2 has hardware acceleration for Adobe's plugin, making for smooth videos and games shown off in the clip.

The Droid 2 will give users the ability to quickly share videos with friends or followers on the popular social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. Other Flash content commonly found on the web includes animations, rich Internet apps, e-commerce, music and other audio apps.

Verizon is due to start selling the Droid 2 on Thursday and should upgrade both the original Droid and Droid X to Android 2.2 in the near future.

Unica is a company that describes itself as one that helps customers understand what makes their “customers tick and leverage that understanding to engage buyers in highly relevant, interactive dialogs across digital, social, and traditional marketing channels.”

It is one of the more well-established marketing automation companies. Founded in 1992, the company has 1,500 customers.

In its announcement, IBM cited how Unica fits well with previous acquisitions:

The acquisition of Unica supports IBM's recent acquisitions of Coremetrics
and AT&T's Sterling Commerce. This expanding portfolio, combined with
IBM's WebSphere Commerce software aims to help companies automate, manage,
and accelerate core business processes across marketing, demand generation,
sales, order processing and fulfillment.

IBM is preparing a portfolio that they hope will appeal to the chief marketing officer who faces one of the most disruptive times in modern marketing history. Television changed marketing in the post-war boom; today it's the Internet that is driving change. To adjust, companies are relying more on services to manage the business processes that go with cultivating online relationships.

Altimeter analyst Ray Wang was quoted in Computerworld as saying:

IBM's move to buy Unica will help round out a portfolio of software that captures the “digital transformation” chief marketing officers and service providers face.”

Over the past several months we had two opportunities to interview Steve Mills, senior VP of the IBM Software Group. He has lead IBM's software group since 2000. Since 2003, IBM has acquired more than 65 software companies. IBM projects its software business will become almost half of IBM's profits by 2015.

Last Spring, we spoke with Mills at IBM's Rational Software conference. Mills pointed to the deep impact that the Internet is having on IBM and its customers. He called social media a megatrend, expressed further commitment to RESTAPis and referred to the need for more tools in interactive marketing.

That view of the market points to why IBM acquired Unica. Companies will increasingly need high powered systems to keep track of the online campaigns that will only become more numerous.

Marketing automation is also getting the attention of a number of vendors besides IBM.

As Business Week points out:

“Vendors such as Adobe are making similar moves. In support of its “customer experience management” strategy, Adobe has purchased Web analytics provider Omniture and more recently, Web content management vendor Day Software.”

Salesforce.com is pursuing the marketing automation market. It's noticeable at its events. Companies such as Pardot and Marketo are there in force.

There is no shortage of offerings for the chief marketing officer to choose from. Part of the diffferentiation will come down to how IBM's analytics platform can leverage customer data. If analytics can be tied in effectively, the real-time capability to create micro campaigns will even further accelerate demand for these kinds of marketing automation products.

When people consider moving from Windows or Mac OSX to Linux, one of the first questions asked typically has to do with compatibility. Will I be able to play my mp3 files? Can I watch YouTube movies? Will I be able to open my Microsoft Office documents? What about using an iPod with Linux?

In almost all circumstances, the answer to those questions will be “yes you can.” There are certainly exceptions. When a new model of iPod or document format or version of a program comes out, it may take a little while for Linux to support it, but it usually will be able to, given some time.

One of the programs I struggled with for a while was Adobe Reader. I enjoy downloading books (as I wrote in a previous review), from the Wowio.com website. And while Adobe does make a version of Adobe Reader for Linux, installing it usually ends up taking up more than 100 MB of hard drive space. It's worth it, in my mind, especially because that installation also allows me to open up PDF files right in my web browser.

There is a program already distributed with Linux, however, called Evince, that can likely take care of most of your PDF-viewing needs.

Evince is an official part of the Gnome desktop project. It is able, out of the box, so to speak, to view PDF files, Postscript files, djvu files, dvi files, and TIFF files. There is also optional support for Impress (the OpenOffice presentation format), as well as for viewing comics and images (although as is mentioned on the Evince website, the images features is “currently included as a toy, but needs work”). Evince even has the ability to open encrypted files (assuming you have the password, of course).

Evince has a simple interface. A large area for your PDF file, a toolbar above, a search bar below and an optional thumbnail bar to the left, so you can get a miniaturized view of each page, then quickly navigate to exactly where you want to go. And if your PDF file has been indexed (for chapters in a book, for instance), Evince will show this to you so you can – again – immediately navigate to exactly where you want to go.

One complaint I'd heard in the past about Evince was that it wasn't able to support filling in forms in a PDF. That's no longer true (I just checked). Although Evince does not have the ability to save a PDF with forms, you can print it, and even print to PDF. The PDF will no longer be editable in this case, however.

I mentioned above that one of the advantages of using the official Adobe Reader was that it included a plugin which allowed for viewing PDF files within Mozilla browsers. If you want this feature, there is another way to get it. Simply install a package called “mozplugger” and you'll be able to do this exactly as if you'd installed Adobe Reader. But you can also use Mozplugger to view office documents, images, videos, sounds, and more, right from within Firefox! Mozplugger works by effectively opening up whatever you have installed as your default viewer for that file type inside the Firefox window. So in addition to being able to play/view the item, you can also edit and print. I'll talk more about Mozplugger in a different article.

So all in all, I'm happy with Evince. I almost always install Adobe Reader, but after a few weeks, find myself using Evince for my PDF viewing needs. It's faster to load, feels more like a native Linux application, and suits my needs perfectly. I can see instances where Adobe Reader might be necessary (it should have more accurate and wide ranging support, after all, and there are some PDF files with multimedia content embedded that Evince doesn't support), but in my experience those instances are few and far between. So check out your computer, you might already have Evince installed. Otherwise check your distribution's software installer; Evince is probably only a few clicks away.

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The Microsoft Mac team has posted the first in a series of videos that show off some of the new features in Microsoft Office for Mac 2011.

The next version of Office for Mac, which includes the valiant return of Outlook for Mac, is due out by the end of the year. The Mac Office team has been posting about some of the new features and some of the changes to the interface.

This Mac release is a big deal because it will finally put the Mac and WindowsWindows versions of Office on more equal footing. In addition to bringing back Outlook (no tears will be shed over the death of Entourage), the next version of Office for Mac will include the ribbon interface first introduced in Office 2007. Although Office for Mac 2008 had some of these elements, the next version will really take things a step further.

Additionally, some of the newest features from Office 2010 — like conversation view for Outlook — will be coming to the Mac version. Even better, the new database system for Outlook for Mac will be compatible with both Time Machine and Spotlight. This is actually a pretty big deal because one of the problems with Entourage is that it doesn’t work well with Time Machine.

You can check out the video of the Office for Mac team explaining some of these new changes below:

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Valve's Steam for Mac has boosted developers' interest in releasing Mac versions of their games, but according to Valve, that interest won't translate into more new Mac releases until next year. Still, Valve believes that 2011 will mark a sort of renaissance for Mac gaming.

Valve director of business development Jason Holtman said in an interview with GamesIndustry that, while hard numbers weren't available to share, there are plenty of Mac users on Steam. Even users with both PCs and Macs are using the Mac to buy games, instead of thinking of their PC as the sole machine for gaming. 

“They're not thinking about their PC and Mac being separate anymore, they're really thinking about both of them being together and the platform just being there,” Holtman said.

That behavior is driving new interest in delivering Mac versions of current game releases from publishers, as opposed to considering ports after the Windows version has shipped. “Developers who weren't thinking about the Mac a year ago are coming to us and saying, 'Wow! How could I make a Mac version of my game?'” said Holtman.

Graphics performance is still an issue on Mac OS X, though, and so is OpenGL coding for developers more accustomed to DirectX. Apple still has plenty of work to do to support newer versions of OpenGL and better optimize graphics drivers to achieve performance parity with Windows. But to help developers accelerate development schedules and work around these issues somewhat, Valve is making code it has developed for the GL layer available to Steamworks partners. 

Those developers “will have access to some of the hard work that we do to get our games up on Mac, and they'll be able to incorporate that into their games,” Holtman told GamesIndustry. “And our hope is it gets them there faster.”

Even with Steam for Mac making a great distribution platform and Valve providing OpenGL graphics tools, though, Mac gamers shouldn't expect a bunch of simultaneous releases from other top-tier developers just yet. For games already in the development process for 2010, adding a Mac version could ruin current schedules and cause release delays. Valve vice president of marketing Doug Lombardi said that publishers are instead looking at releases planned for 2011, and looking at how to incorporate making a Mac version from day one.

“The interesting thing we're seeing from publishers and developers alike is… they aren't thinking about porting their games to Mac,” Holtman said. “They're thinking, 'I need to write for a Mac. I'm not going to do a port six months later or maybe a year later, I should bring that in and do that now because there's a fair amount of people out there.'”

While gaming has never been one of the Mac's strong suits, Valve's efforts to bring more developers to the platform and generate interest in first-class Mac OS X versions of top-tier games is certainly welcome. 

Adobe has just released it's newest addition to the budget line of it's photo editing and organizing programs with Photoshop Elements 4.0. This great program can not only edit, crop and do so much more with your photos but is a great photo organizer and presentation software.

Adobe is one of the largest photo editing software companies. They have such a broad range of programs and prices for photo, digital and now even video editing software. Newest in the field of photo editing is the just released Photoshop Elements 4.0. It has a wide range of photo editing, organizing and presentation features that you can spend many hours of fun with your favorite digital photos.

Photoshop Elements 4.0 costs about $100 at most stores but you can find it at Walmart for $80. If there are any sales or rebates I would say to go for it. The program is new and will probably not be going on sale for awhile. The program is also available in a bundle package with the video editing software Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. I found prices for this package at $150, you might wait to see if Walmart will be selling this sometime soon if you would like this package deal.

I bought the program because I was tired of the limitations of the cheaper programs I had purchased in the past. I had limited my cost for other editing programs to around $50 and wound up with what I paid for. I had last purchased a program more than a year ago and there were things that I and my wife wanted to do with our pictures that we just could not do with the other programs. Now we can, and so much more.

When you first load the program which is pretty easy, just follow the few questions in the setup. You will have to restart the computer and open it again, it will first open to it's welcome screen. I suggest you start the photo organizer and load all your computers pictures into it to start, and go do the dishes or watch some TV. The program takes awhile to load all the pictures on your computer, depending on how many you have. It will ask you to search your computer or just parts of it for pictures to add to the photo organizer. I suggest and recommend to just do all the hard drives on your system to search for pictures. It will take longer but the program will then have any pictures, even ones that are part of games or other programs in one handy place.

You just need to make sure that you or whoever uses the program does not alter and then save any pictures from games or other programs that use those pictures as part of another program. Save any altered pictures in a new location and with a new name to make sure you don't save over ones those programs need. For instance when I look through the pictures I find all kinds of maps and pictures of stuff for parts of a game I recently bought, Half Life 2. If I altered any of these and then saved them back to their original location the game might be messed up because of it. And then again I can already see some interesting fun with some of these pictures and other things. For instance I now have a handy way to look at all the maps that are a part of these games with out having to go to an editor for the game.

The photo organizer automatically loads and sorts the pictures you have by date, and it can be a lot of pictures. I loaded the program on my desktop and found out I had over 7000 pictures on it. I knew I had a lot but not that many. For games there are things like icons and splash screens so that accounts for some, then my wife takes a lot of pictures for her daycare, the kids and special events with them. My kids are in 4-H and they take a lot of pictures of the things they do, projects and the fairs. Vacations, family holidays and all the other things we have in digital format are now organized by the date they were put on the computer in one easy to find place.

When you go to use Photoshop Elements there are three areas of the program it can start up in; the welcome screen which you can then go to any of the various areas for, the photo editor or the photo organizer. The last two are probably the most used areas of the program so they gave those two as separate options. In the welcome screen you can go to those two areas or a few of the others. There are several different areas of the program and for using the editor that you can go to from the welcome screen. Product overview, organizer, quick editor, editor, photo presentation and blank editor to create from scratch a photo creation. There is also some tutorials on this page for you to learn how to use each section of the program from Adobe.

The organizer is probably one of the best and handiest ways to use the program when you are finding and editing photos you have downloaded from a camera, disk or the Internet. Across the top of the organizer is a bar graph showing a representation of the dates the pictures were edited or saved on the computer. If you know about when a picture was saved you can quickly search there or just scroll down the page of all your photos. You can also organize them by attaching tags to any photos you want. You can organize the photos with these tags by favorites, hidden, people, places, events or others. You can make up your own tag categories or sub categories and add them to this list to organize the pictures however you want.

You can also create what is called a collection, a totally different area to save and organize photos that is separate from the main area. This is kind of like a photo album where you can group photos to keep them separate from the other groups on your computer.

From this organizer you can download photos from your camera or scanner and even order photos from Kodak's website. Those special family photos or favorite pet pics can be professionally printed and sent to you via snail mail for a reasonable cost. You can go here for more information of this service: http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/services_overview.html#orderprints .

The editor for photos can be as easy or as detailed as you would like to get into it, and I suppose I'll just have to get into it. I have a lot of photos I want to do things with. There are simple tools such as one step touch up which will automatically enhance a photo or simple red eye reduction. Then there are whole areas of the more complex tools that I still have to get into. The program is a better way not only to edit and enhance photos but is definitely a very good photo organizer and I have not even gotten into the presentation portions of the program yet.

Well, more to come on the other parts of Adobe's newest Photoshop Elements 4.0.

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Reading between the lines, Apple may face an FTC investigation into its refusal to allow Flash support on the iOS platform. This is speculation based on a recent refusal on the part of the FTC to grant Wired access to the 200 pages of complaints against Apple filed by Adobe.

The FTC declined to make these documents available because it said doing so “could be reasonably expected” to interfere with its “law enforcement” duties.

In full, the FTC statement reads:

“We have located 189 pages of responsive records, all of which are exempt from the FOIA’s disclosure requirement,” wrote Joan A. Fina, the FTC’s assistant general counsel. “These records are exempt… because disclosure of that material could reasonably be expected to interfere with the conduct of the Commission’s law enforcement activities.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs in April explained the ban as follows:

“We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

“If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.”

Of course, despite years to develop the solution, Adobe still hasn't delivered a version of Flash which delivers across devices on performance and battery life.

Meanwhile, RIM execs yesterday revealed the BlackBerry Torch 9800, which doesn't support Flash, though the company said RIM and Adobe “continue working on it”.

Computerworld tells us the two firms are trying to optimize Flash 10.1 for BlackBerry hardware so devices provide good battery life, performance and efficiency on wireless data transfers, said Tyler Lessard, vice president of global alliances and developer relations at RIM.

“We don't want to deliver an experience that users are going to get really excited about — perhaps buy a new device just because it supports Flash — and then find it doesn't work as they hoped it to,” he said.

Palm in June said it has no idea 'what the hold-up is' with getting Flash Player to webOS, even though Adobe promises to get Flash Player into shape for all smartphones by the end of the year.

Which says it all, really.

@Anatidae U know, as much as people think “cross-platoform development” is the goal, it rarely works out that way. Most “platforms” have different requirements and obviously different UIs hence interacting with it is different. Now I won't say one is better than the other, but the different platforms suite the user (and their expectations) differently.

Embracing a development platform for the sake of it's “cross-platform” compatibilities without thinking about the uniqueness of different platforms is a mistake. Look at Java, the prime example of “cross-platform” development. Yes Java applications typically work in both Windows and OS X (if they are written correctly) but do they suck most of the time? YES. (IBM Lotus Notes?)

The only good cross platform app in java that I think is decent and fairly ubiquitous is probably Eclipse. and even THAT has memory management issues.

Besides, who says that Adobe automatically = “cross platform” and other standards are not?

As a developer, cross platform development is a loose goal, not something u necessarily following 100% of the time.

LightZone is an image editing software completely designed for photographers. It's is designed for the photographer who would like to retouch and enhance photos in a more natural intuitive way. From editing RAW, JPEG, TIFF or DNG photos, LightZone's nondestructive, intelligent editing features help adjust exposures, boost overall color, correct color shifts and white balance errors, selectively sharpen or blur images or parts of images, remove dust spots and reduce the noise often found in high-ISO digital images.

LightZone has two main operating windows, the Editor View, and the Browser View. Browser View provides access to the directory structure, thumbnails and a preview. All editing and enhancing is done in the Editor View where there is access to LightZone 's many tools. The basic concept in LightZone is based upon the Ansel Adams Zone System, familiar to all photographers. Instead of the 10 zones in Adam's system, LightZone is based on 16 zones, each ½ stop apart.

The LightZone ZoneFinder provides a map that shows which parts of an image are in a specific tonal zone.

The ZoneMapper tool works with the ZoneFinder so, as the user moves the mouse over the zones in the ZoneMapper, the corresponding zones in the ZoneFinder are highlighted in yellow. See Figure 3. Basically the user then clicks and drags a zone that needs adjustment in the ZoneMapper to make the corresponding zone in the image lighter or darker. Brightness, exposure, and contrast can be adjusted by dragging in the ZoneMapper. Both the white and black points in a photo can easily be found allowing the user to fix the exposure and get deeper blacks. This means that instead of adjusting histograms, or curves the photographer simply says that this zone should be lighter, this darker or this should have more detail.

There is a tool for limiting adjustments to a specific area by creating Regions using a simple to use tool. Each new adjustment is added as a new layer and there is no limit to the number of layers. There are tools for cloning, spot healing, adjusting color balance and hue/saturation. Additional tools include the crop tool, noise reduction, red-eye correction, rotate, sharpen, and white balance. There is a powerful tool called Relight that is similar to Shadow/ Highlights in other photo editing programs but with more control. The History tab shows you the complete history of all the edits you have made to your photo since opening it for the current editing session. All edits or enhancements in LightZone are completely non-destructive.

Additionally, you can select any edit within the history to go back to that point in time. This is the same as selecting Edit > Undo multiple times.

A style is adjustments that were originally created for one photo that can be applied to other photos. Using styles is the same as copying and pasting adjustments from one image to another except that a style is saved with a name for use at any later time. In addition to styles that you can create, LightZone comes bundled with many ready-made styles that you can use and learn from.

Although LightZone is designed to be intuitive, Light Crafts provides a variety of video tutorials on their web site that help the user learn how to use the software for editing and enhancing photographs.

Photoshop Lightroom (from Adobe Systems) allows you to select another application as an “external editor” for editing your photos. You can configure LightZone to be such an editor. Additionally, LightZone integrates seamlessly with Lightroom via the Direct Save preference.

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A developer at Adobe Systems figuratively dislodged his tongue from his cheek on Tuesday after demonstrating a video calling system that carried a name strikingly similar to Apple's FaceTime.

The software prepared by Mark Doherty, Adobe's Flash platform evangelist, was called FlashTime. The name is a combination of the Adobe's Flash multimedia system and Apple's proprietary video conferencing program for the iPhone 4.

Doherty has since changed the name of his concept software to the less amusing P2P Video Calls on Android.

An Adobe spokeswoman said the app is not officially supported by the company and is rather a demonstration to developers that Adobe's AIR platform for Google's Android can be used to make video calls. Existing apps not associated with Adobe, such as Fring and Skype, already allow some Android phones to video chat.

"Mark initially used the name 'FlashTime' for his demo so developers would understand that his app had similar functionality to other video applications," an Adobe spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. "Mark changed the name of his demo because this was causing confusion."

Apple and Adobe have had a very public battle over the last year. Despite pleas from Adobe, Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch products do not support websites using Flash or apps programmed on Adobe's platform.

Apple says it intends to open its FaceTime framework to outside developers in the hopes of allowing iPhone owners to connect with users of non-Apple devices.

– Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Photo: Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, right, with Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola. Credit: PR Newswire

Reading between the lines, Apple may face an FTC investigation into its refusal to allow Flash support on the iOS platform. This is speculation based on a recent refusal on the part of the FTC to grant Wired access to the 200 pages of complaints against Apple filed by Adobe.

The FTC declined to make these documents available because it said doing so “could be reasonably expected” to interfere with its “law enforcement” duties.

In full, the FTC statement reads:

“We have located 189 pages of responsive records, all of which are exempt from the FOIA’s disclosure requirement,” wrote Joan A. Fina, the FTC’s assistant general counsel. “These records are exempt… because disclosure of that material could reasonably be expected to interfere with the conduct of the Commission’s law enforcement activities.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs in April explained the ban as follows:

“We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

“If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.”

Of course, despite years to develop the solution, Adobe still hasn't delivered a version of Flash which delivers across devices on performance and battery life.

Meanwhile, RIM execs yesterday revealed the BlackBerry Torch 9800, which doesn't support Flash, though the company said RIM and Adobe “continue working on it”.

Computerworld tells us the two firms are trying to optimize Flash 10.1 for BlackBerry hardware so devices provide good battery life, performance and efficiency on wireless data transfers, said Tyler Lessard, vice president of global alliances and developer relations at RIM.

“We don't want to deliver an experience that users are going to get really excited about — perhaps buy a new device just because it supports Flash — and then find it doesn't work as they hoped it to,” he said.

Palm in June said it has no idea 'what the hold-up is' with getting Flash Player to webOS, even though Adobe promises to get Flash Player into shape for all smartphones by the end of the year.

Which says it all, really.