Adobe’s Creative Suite 4, which was officially unveiled today, is huge. There are actually six suites: Master Collection, Design Premium and Standard, Web Premium and Standard, and Production Premium, each offering a different selection from around 20 individual applications; the Master Collection has the lot. So what’s new? The first thing you’ll notice is a new look and feel across all the main applications, making them more attractive and more consistent than before. Tabbed documents in applications like Flash and Dreamweaver are great to work with. The 2005 merger, which brought Adobe’s Photoshop, Acrobat and InDesign together with Macromedia’s Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver, is now mature and there is deep integration.

You can see this in the new Photoshop Smart Objects in Dreamweaver, which lets you insert a Photoshop image and have it stay up-to-date if the source changes, and in the way Acrobat PDFs can natively host Flash content. The second thing to note is that most web and design professionals will need some parts of CS4, if only to keep up with the growing use of standards like H.264 high-definition video (and its consumer variant AVCHD), which is supported in Flash 10 and in Adobe Media Encoder, or authoring for Acrobat 9. There is also the usual price hike for UK customers versus those in the US: the Master Collection is £1,969 versus $2,499 before tax, around 45 per cent more expensive at today’s rates.
Source: Vnunet
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The first mobile telephone using Google’s Android software has been unveiled. The T-Mobile G1 handset will be available in the UK in time for Christmas. The first device to run the search giant’s operating system will feature a touch screen as well as a Qwerty keyboard. It will be available for free on T-Mobile tariffs of over £40 ($80) a month and includes unlimited net browsing. Other features include a three megapixel camera, a ‘one click’ contextual search and a browser that users can zoom in on by tapping the screen. The handset will be wi-fi and 3G enabled and has built-in support for YouTube. Users will also have access the so-called Android Market, where they will be able to download a variety of applications.

Google announced its plans for the Android phone software in November 2007 with a declared aim of making it easier to get at the web while on the move. To help develop Android, Google also unveiled the Open Handset Alliance – a partnership of more than 30 firms that would work to make phone software easier to work with. The group includes operators such as Telefonica, handset makers such as HTC and Motorola as well as chip makers such as Intel and Qualcomm. The Android software is squarely aimed at the smartphone segment of the handset market which adds sophisticated functions to the basic calling and texting capabilities of most phones. Current estimates suggest that only 12-13% of the all handsets can be considered smartphones.
Source: BBC
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Faced with growing criticism about the way its newly released game Spore (SPORE-RELOADED) is activated on computers, gaming publishing giant Electronic Arts did a little retooling of its own. EA has increased the number of computers that can be loaded with the game to five from three, despite earlier precautions with its digital rights management (DRM) policy intended to reduce piracy of its copyrighted software. Spore, released two weeks ago featuring unlikely creatures that can be tailored to the user’s liking, has altered other DRM limitations embedded in the software, the company announced.

Frank Gibeau, EA Games Label president, said in a statement:
We’ve received complaints from a lot of customers who we recognize and respect. And while it’s easy to discount the noise from those who only want to post or transfer thousands of copies of the game on the Internet, I believe we need to adapt our policy to accommodate our legitimate consumers.
EA announced it will not only increase the number of computers that users can load one copy of Spore onto, but will also offer ways in which users can receive additional activations of the gaming software if warranted.
The game publisher also plans to fast-track its development efforts on creating a system that will allow consumers to de-authorize machines and transfer authorizations to new computers. EA said it believed at the time it created Spore that its DRM policy would not present any problems. The company noted that 75 percent of its customers tended to use only one computer for running their games and that less than 1 percent of its users relied on three or more computers. It also added that it told consumers that they could receive more than three activations if warranted by calling into the company’s customer service.
Source: Cnet
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HTC today introduced their latest handset, the HTC Touch HD, a multimedia handset running Microsoft’s newest Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. Featuring a 3.8-inch WVGA (800×480 pixels) touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and a standard 3.5mm audio jack, the Touch HD makes a great entertainment device.

At only 12 mm thick, HTC’s handset comes equipped with a Qualcomm MSM7201a 528 MHz processor, secondary VGA camera for video calls, mini-USB, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, quad-band / HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and GPS/AGPS. Memory-wise, the Touch HD features 512 MB of internal memory, SDHC capable microSD memory card slot and 288 MB RAM. HTC will be launching the Touch HD accross Europe in the fourth quarter of 2008 and will start shipping globally shortly after. Price was not revealed.
Source: MobileGuerilla
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Back when THQ first announced that they had acquired the UFC videogame license back in January 2007, I honestly thought that they would crank out a quick and dirty game by Fall ’07 and call it a day. But they didn’t. THQ is putting in a ton of effort into their first UFC game, and from the looks of it, it should definitely do the sport justice. UFC 2009: Undisputed is due out in early 2009 on PS3 and Xbox 360.
UFC 2009 promises an authentic re-creation of the real UFC. It will feature all of the real announcers, commentators, octagon girls, referees, and more. And, more importantly, it will showcase more than 80 real fighters across all weight classes. Basically, anyone that has made any impact at all over the last several years should be in the game.
Not much else is known about UFC 2009: Undisputed at this time. It will have a create-a-fighter mode. A career mode. And promises an emphasis on simple, yet deep, controls. The graphics and animation should also be top notch by the time the game comes out. As we get more information, this page will be updated.
UFC 2009: Undisputed Official Website
UFC 2009: Undisputed Videos
UFC 2009: Undisputed Screenshot Gallery
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