On Technology

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Released Today

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It’s out! Another land­mark day in the Cre­ative world. Adobe Cre­ative Suite 4 is ship­ping and in-stores early this morn­ing. Adobe also announced that for a lim­ited time, own­ers of: CS2, CS1, Macro­me­dia Stu­dio 8, Stu­dio MX 2004, or Pro­duc­tion Stu­dio will qual­ify for up to $200 on eli­gi­ble upgrades to CS4. This spe­cial offer will last till Feb­ru­ary 28, 20091.

You may order CS4 via Ama­zon by click­ing the one that is appro­pri­ate for your line of work:

  1. Upgrade to an Adobe Cre­ative Suite 4 Design, Web, or Pro­duc­tion Pre­mium edi­tion from an ear­lier ver­sion of Adobe Cre­ative Suite, Adobe Pro­duc­tion Stu­dio, or Macro­me­dia Stu­dio soft­ware and save up to US$200 off the reg­u­lar upgrade price. Offer valid on Cre­ative Suite 1 or 2, Adobe Pro­duc­tion Stu­dio, Macro­me­dia Stu­dio 8, or Stu­dio MX 2004 Pro­fes­sional. Offer ends Feb­ru­ary 28, 2009. Prices are in U.S. dol­lars. All prices are avail­able from the Adobe.com store and by call­ing 800–585-0774 and are valid in the U.S. and Canada only. Applic­a­ble local sales taxes and ship­ping charges may apply. Allow 2–3 weeks for soft­ware deliv­ery. Offer sub­ject to change or with­drawal with­out notice. Void where pro­hib­ited. [↩]

Apple Releases New MacBooks

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If you don’t know already, Apple has just announced its new line of Mac­Books1 ear­lier at 10 this morn­ing in Cuper­tino. Today’s line is a com­pletely new build from the ground-up, start­ing with its “uni­body” approach.

Other than the uni­body being totally new to the line as well as the indus­try, I am lik­ing the fol­low­ing on the MacBooks:

  • 13.3-inch LED-backlit dis­play. The 12-inch ones is just to small. Hav­ing that extra 1.1-inch is truly a big step.
  • Upgraded video adapter, NVDIA GeForce 9400M2. Nice upgrade for those want­ing to do more gam­ing on these. But I think this is also nice for those doing photo edit­ing like me.
  • All-new, smooth glass Multi-Touch track­pad. No buttons—it itself is the button!

Though these are nice upgrades, the price went up to $1299 for the Mac­Books. If I was in need of a new laptop/notebook com­puter, this would be the best pick. It’s just too bad it doesn’t have an ExpressCard/34 slot like how the Mac­Book Pros have them. It would be great to have for those peo­ple who take their Mac­Books on vaca­tion or on trips and want­ing to edit/backup/upload their pho­tos from their SD-based media cards (like the one I have for my Canon Pow­er­Shot) along with a card read for the slot.3

You may get more infor­ma­tion and/or watch the video via apple.com/macbook/. If you don’t know which Mac­Book is for you, click here to com­pare them at a quick glance.

Update
If you are lean­ing towards buy­ing a Mac­Book Pro and need the quick run­down of the new bells and whis­tles, click here to read up The Apple Blog’s review about it.

  1. Mac­Book, Mac­Book Pro, and Mac­Book Air [↩]
  2. The Mac­Book Pro has both the 9400M and the 9600M GT. You may switch to either depend­ing on your need for per­for­mance as well as bat­tery life. [↩]
  3. They do have a ExpressCard/34 slot. I don’t know where I read that dif­fer­ent. [↩]

18 Year Old Invents SMS-Based Car Anti-Theft System

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Rock­et­boom Field Cor­re­spon­dent Ruud Elmen­dorp speaks with Mor­ris Mbetsa, the 18 year old inven­tor of a sys­tem that allows you to mon­i­tor your car via SMS.

Con­tinue reading →

SUMO Paint — A Flash-based Photoshop Clone

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SUMO Paint

Dope­ness. SUMO Paint is a free image edit­ing soft­ware that gives you the oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate, edit and com­ment images online with pow­er­ful tools and layer sup­port. I tried it for a quick bit, and I barely noticed any lag using it; then again, I didn’t have so much lay­ers yet.

Being that its a Flash-based application/tool, that’s a whole lot of user-support and mar­ket share. That’s remark­able as Design­ers and non-Designers a like can use it whether they’re away from their work­sta­tions or just don’t have Pho­to­shop or appli­ca­tions like it at their dis­posal. Some of the fea­tured I’m dig­ging are: Shape Trails, Sym­me­try Tool, and it’s sup­port for Cooliris’ 3D Gallery (for­merly PixelLens).

Any­ways, go check it out and let your mind free. You may access the appli­ca­tion directly via sumopaint.com/app/

Obama iPhone and iPod Touch App

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Woah. As if hav­ing the cre­ative likes of Obey Giant (Shep­ard Fairey), ISO50 (Scott Hansen), and Sarah Sil­ver­man weren’t enough, a cou­ple of iPhoneDe­v­Camp alumni vol­un­teered to cre­ate an iPhone and iPod Touch appli­ca­tion for Barack Obama.

You’ll have instant access to Barack’s posi­tions on impor­tant issues, as well as local and national cam­paign news as it hap­pens. Pho­tos and videos from the cam­paign trail are all here, too.

  • Call Friends: A great vol­un­teer­ing tool that lets you make a dif­fer­ence any time you want by talk­ing to peo­ple you already know. Your con­tacts are pri­or­i­tized by key bat­tle­ground states, and you can make calls and orga­nize results all in one place.
  • Call Stats: See nation­wide Obama ’08 Call Friends totals and find out how your call totals com­pare to lead­ing callers.
  • Get Involved: Do more. Find and con­tact your local Obama for Amer­ica HQ.
  • Receive Updates: Receive the lat­est news and announce­ments via text mes­sages or email.
  • News: Browse com­plete cov­er­age of national and local cam­paign news.
  • Local Events: Find local events, share by email and get maps and directions.
  • Media: Browse videos and pho­tos from the campaign
  • Issues: Get clear facts about Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plan for essen­tial issues fac­ing Americans.

I won­der how the McCain camp will fol­low up on this. For some rea­son, every time I asso­ciate John McCain and the web, I seem to refer to Mike David­son pun­ish­ing McCain’s web team for hot link­ing images on John McCain’s MySpace page. Clas­sic.

Any­ways, enough of the rem­i­nisc­ing. I com­mend the iPhoneDe­v­Camp alumni amongst the other 4 who vol­un­teered their time to the project. It truly gives some boost and good press to the iPhone devel­op­ment plat­form and its every­day appli­ca­tion; whether it be check­ing your health, to learn­ing why to vote for a pres­i­den­tial candidate.

The app is avail­able at http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/iphone

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