Published on
February 28, 2006 in
Software.
Sony and NEC are to merge their respective optical drive divisions into a single ¥220bn ($1.9bn) jointly owned company, Sony NEC Optiarc, the two Japanese giants announced today. The move may pave the way for reconciliation between the two next-generation optical disc formats, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD.
Sony will be the bigger of the two stakeholders in the joint venture. It will own 55 per cent of Sony NEC Optiarc, to NEC’s 45 per cent. Indeed, the JV will be run by Sony staffer Shinichi Yamamura, currently deputy president of Sony’s Video Business Group.
The two parents will spin out their respective optical drive businesses on 1 April before establishing the JV on 3 April. Sony NEC Optiarc will then take over the two spun out divisions.
Both Sony and NEC sit on separate sides of the fence when it comes to next-generation optical disc formats. Sony back Blu-ray, while NEC is an HD DVD supporter. Indeed, just as Sony was one of the minds behind its chosen format, NEC co-developed HD DVD with Toshiba. NEC has been instrumental in developing some of the earliest HD DVD reader and writer drives, and the division responsible will now be part of a company mostly owned by Sony.
Of course, the optical drive market extends much, much further than next-generation formats – the two divisions that will make up Sony NEC Optiarc yielded combined revenues of ¥220bn ($1.9bn) during their respective FY2004.
>> Read the article @ The Register
Published on
February 22, 2006 in
Software.
” Several months of network abuse by advertisement agencies to deliver unwanted search results have only slightly hindered Gnutella’s reputation. Previously, when the user attempted to download one of these “Sponsored Results”, FrostWire would launch the URL associated with this file. The original intent was to allow artists to send users to their own website to promote the content they served on Gnutella. As time went on, advertisers picked up on this functionality and soon began sending massive amounts of unwanted results to the large Gnutella community while using the network as its tool of choice to cloud search results.
We now hope to stop these intrusive advertisements in its tracks by disabling the very function they use to promote themselves. We do not see any benefit for a Gnutella host to send a user to any URL they wish. The removal of this feature not only increases the number of real results displayed within the FrostWire client, it also prevents malicious hosts from sending users to unknown URL’s that can exploit any number of vulnerabilities within a web browser. The magnet protocol is not effected by the removal of this function in any way. ”
>> Download FrostWire 4.10.9
Published on
February 22, 2006 in
Software.
* Improved playlist management: all playlists are editable without being active, multiple playlists with the same name, Autoplaylists
* Field remappings in titleformat scripts: see Titleformat Introduction and Titleformat * Reference for details
* Tag merging: combines information from multiple tag formats on the same file
* ID3v2 support with padding for fast tag updates
* Cleaned-up preferences
* On-line help system for preferences pages (uses the HA wiki)
* Playback queue (contents are currently not viewable)
* Instantaneous volume changes
* User interface selection: if a new user interface is detected at start-up, you can chose which one to use
* File type associations editor in preferences
* Ability to reset individual pages in preferences (if supported by the component that provides the page)
* Enhanced playlist generator syntax; also used in other components like Autoplaylist (details)
>> Download foobar2000 0.9 rc
Published on
February 21, 2006 in
Software.
Nullsoft Winamp is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows. Winamp supports playback of many audio (MP3, OGG, AAC, WAV, MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MIDI, etc) and video types (AVI,ASF,MPEG,NSV), custom appearances called skins (supporting both classic Winamp 1.x/2.x skins and Winamp 3 freeform skins), audio visualization and audio effect plug-ins (including two industry dominating visualization plug-ins), an advanced media library, Internet radio and TV support, CD ripping, and CD burning.
The Full version Plays MP3s, AAC, WMA, and more; Compatible with Winamp 2 Plug-ins; Full Support for Classic and Modern Skins; Plays Videos; has a Powerful Media Library; Browse Internet Radio & TV Stations; Integrated Internet Music Videos & Songs; Bundled Visualizations; and Burn & Rip CDs.
>> Download Winamp 5.2 final full
Published on
February 21, 2006 in
Software.
Exact Audio Copy allows you to get audio tracks off a CD and save them to your hard drive. It uses the Windows ASPI Interface, so both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported. It supports hidden sector synchronization and has a secure, fast and burst extraction method selectable. Fast extraction should get the same speed as other grabbers, but is probably not exact anymore. Burst mode just grabs the audio data without any synchronization. It allows you to output of time positions of all non-exact corrections and listen to these positions. You can also copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks. Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards ensures that your music will still sound decent. It uses the Windows Audio Compression Manager for direct compression to MP3 or WAV. It also supports external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic compression after extraction. Filename editing is easy with local and remote CDDB database and CDPLAYER.INI support and more features like ID3 tagging.
>> Download Exact Audio Copy 0.95 beta 4
Published on
February 19, 2006 in
Software.
“Khaled added support for displaying UTF-8 text as unicode to mIRC. This works in status, channel, query, and other windows, and in nickname listboxes, window titlebars, switchbar, and tooltips. The display of UTF-8 can be enabled by default for all windows in the Options/IRC/Messages dialog, or individually for any window you like via the Fonts dialog. Use the /font command to open the Fonts dialog. Make sure you select a font that contains the characters or script (hebrew, arabic, greek, cyrillic,…) you want to see!
The Fonts dialog also has an “Encode” option that encodes outgoing text in UTF-8 based on the script/codepage selected for that window. The Encode feature is selective, ie. it only encodes the parts of an outgoing message that are not already in UTF-8 format. It also takes into account if the IRC server is fully UTF-8 enabled or not.
Various other changes:
* mIRC now has a ‘check for timed out connections’ option in connect/options dialog. When this is set mIRC pings the server every so often if it hasn’t heard form the server for a while to test your connection.
* Support for initiating passive dcc send/chat connections has been added.
* Changing the default font for a window type now affects all open windows of the same type immediately.
* Most file dialogs are now resizable.
* You can disable the $decode identifier (and various other “dangerous” commands) in the Lock options dialog. (The $decode is of course disabled by default.)
* Lots of SSL things have improved and mIRC now also supports SSL connections for sockets
This new version has extended support for MP3 id3v2 tags, better invite and except lists, and heaps of other little thingies and identifiers like $findfilen/$finddirn, $qt(text)/$noqt(text), $locked and $mouse.key improvements. Of course also some UTF-8 related identifiers like $utfencode(), $utfdecode() and $isutf() have been added.
Some changes are obvious, some need getting used to – please take your time to play with them and see how they work. May we invite you to the Message Board on the website with all questions you might have? The board offers great help with everything related to mIRC!”
>> Download mIRC 6.17
Published on
February 16, 2006 in
Software.
The BBC is reporting that the British Government is working with Microsoft in order to gain backdoor access to hard drives encrypted by the forthcoming Windows Vista file system. Professor Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, urged the Government to contact Microsoft over fears that evidence could be lost by suspects claiming to have forgotten their encryption key. This smells fishy …
Published on
February 6, 2006 in
Software.
- Compressing speed and Memory requirements were increased. Default dictionary size was increased: Fastest: 64 KB, Fast: 1 MB, Normal: 4 MB, Max: 16 MB, Ultra: 64 MB.
- 64-bit version now supports 1 GB dictionary
- 7z/LZMA now can use only these match finders: HC4, BT2, BT3, BT4
- Compression ratio in Zip/GZip/Deflate in Ultra mode was increased
- Some bugs were fixed
>> Download 7-Zip 4.33 beta
Published on
February 5, 2006 in
Software.
“CNet News has an interesting look at where digital camera technology is headed now that the megapixel buzzword can be put to rest. From the article: ‘In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over,’ says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon’s camera marketing group. ‘Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate. We can easily go up to a 13-by-19 print and see very, very clear detail.’”
Published on
February 5, 2006 in
Software.
XnView is an efficient multimedia viewer, browser and converter. It exists for Windows, MacOSX and Linux. To me it beats ACDSee on all fronts, and above all: it ’s free. The Windows version just got a new release: 1.82, the other OS’es have to wait a bit longer. The changelog will follow soon.
>> Download XnView 1.82 for Windows