News for Friday, 23 February 2007

German online news website heise.de originally announced that Apple will be present at CeBIT 2007, the world's largest trade fair for digital IT and telecommunications (Hanover, Germany, March 15th-21st).
Then later on, Apple while not being part of the exhibitor list was reported to be part of the lifestyle@CeBIT show to present some of its product including the iPhone.
Last information about this story: an Apple representative denied both claims, indicating that the iPhone will be available in Europe only at the end of the year.

Nichia Corp, one of the company that develop and manufacture blue laser diodes, unveiled a new laser able to burn single and double layers BD and HD-DVD media at a record speed: 10x. This laser could also burn 4-layers based media at 2x. Of course the power of this laser is higher than those currently available, but 2 majors problems remain:
- The lifetime of this laser diode would only be 1000 hours.
- One will also have to find the way to build burner able to spin at much higher speed, as well as media able to support such acceleration.
This new laser diode should arrive in H1 2008.

To promote Vista on TV in France, Microsoft decided to ask Flavie Flament, a popular TV moderator. But Microsoft probably forgot to ask her a simple question: “What computer do you use?”
The online French newspaper, l'Internaute published photos of French TV stars taken in their respective offices... and clearly visible on Flavie Flament's desk is an iMac G5 20".
Of course this is not important as it simply illustrates why the Microsoft marketing team might "Think Different" too.

Do we really need a blue laser-based media for HD video? No. A DVD9 media can be used to store more than 2 hours of HD video 1080p. The real problem lies in the high data transfer speed required by HD video.
A company, DCA, decided to launch a product based on a DVD format, named 3X DVD-ROM, and registered to the DVD Forum in 2005. This format aims to triple DVD data transfer to 36.55 Mbps, more than enough to support HD video stream.
However, all current DVD burners and players are not compatible with the 3X DVD-ROM media, and lack codec required for HD (VC1 MPG4) as well as management of the AACS DRM.
If this new DVD format would have a really strong advantage concerning the price over current blue laser media, BD and HD-DVD, for sure neither SONY nor Toshiba will let DCA to invade the HD video battle field where both companies are already intensively fighting.

As you might know, the PS3 is powered by the IBM Cell processor. If this CPU is extremely powerful, programming it to take advantage of its parallel and asymmetric computing features seem to be a nightmare.
To help SONY, IBM will deploy some of its engineers to help game developers. The main task is to transfer the "Know-How" for optimizing codes to better integrate instructions in order to benefit from Cell computing power.
Game developers will have to learn how to take advantage of the Cell power to unveil the real potential of the PS3; and the faster the better, as sales of game console units is often linked to the availability some "blockbuster games".

Quark launched in Europe its Quark Volume Licensing Program (QVLP) allowing the purchase of several licenses of Quark's applications at a reduced price. The QVLP is valid from only 2 purchased licenses.
A QVLP option allows also license owner to get all updates for free over a 24 months period.
Last but not least, Quark extends its free technical support to French- and German-speaking consumers.

Second update in a week for Final Cut Pro!
The update is available via "Software Update" (39.3 MB).

Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 provides important bug fixes to resolve plugin issues. This update is recommended for all Final Cut Pro 5.1, 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and 5.1.3 customers.
For more detailed information, go to http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Final_Cut_Pro_5.0_lbn_z.pdf