Hasta La Gadget!

Adobe has just updated its Acrobat lineup, including Pro, Standard and Reader to version 11 — and thrown in two new programs, FormsCentral and EchoSign, to boot. The latter two are cloud-enabled services which permit “web contracting, forms creation, data collection and analysis” according to Adobe, which didn’t yet specify exactly how that works. The company has also added improved tablet capability, and portable versions of Adobe Reader will now let you sign and save forms, as well as annotate and add comments. You’ll also be able to modify paragraphs, images and objects by dragging them around; save PDFs as PowerPoint, Word or Excel files; and add extra security measures to documents. The upgrades will ship within 30 days and cost $449 and $299 for the Pro and Standard versions, respectively — so if you’ve no time for frivolity on that new slate, check the PR for more info.

Continue reading Adobe announces Acrobat XI with tablet-friendly touchability, cloud services

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Adobe announces Acrobat XI with tablet-friendly touchability, cloud services originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A lovely bit of news mixed with a bit of a downer for the first owners of the iPhone 5 has come down today from the NYPost where they’ve got an inside track on deals between Apple and Sony/ATV for streaming music rights. It appears that though Apple had been working on a competitor for the most popular streaming music radio app Pandora, but ran into a last-minute snag in negotiations with Sony/ATV. The Sony/ATV group is the world’s largest music publisher and is currently in the process of buying EMI Music Publishing, this eventually placing them in control of 2 million copyrights that span the globe.

Apple’s negotiations with Sony/ATV were reportedly down to the per-song rights fees which Sony/ATV asked to be higher than the standard tenths of a penny per stream standard. The NYPost also noted this week that “executives close to the matter” have said Sony/ATV will be pulling out of the two main copyright associations Ascap and BMI by January of 2013. If they do indeed pull out of these groups, licensing songs by businesses across the map will be more difficult as they’ll have to go through Ascap/BMI as well as Sony/ATV instead of working with a one-stop-shop, as it were.

Apple’s service would act as a main competitor for Pandora as it would be able to lower costs between free streams and final song purchases as they’ve already got a music store that can facilitate purchases. With iTunes, Apple is already a massively beastly music-toting group, but with a free radio streaming service that could give a more “human” way to the music discovery process, they could move on to a new level.

When word that a Pandora competitor was in the works for the iPhone 5 earlier this year, Pandora company stocks dropped significantly. This new news source notes that “They didn’t put whatever they needed to put in the app,” and that “It seems they were rushed into it.” This same source notes that music streaming from Apple on devices like the iPhone 5 is still a possibility for a software update months in the future – stay alert!

iPhone 5 Pandora rival still possible as Sony sets snag is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 may face cable boxes edging in on their gaming turf if AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and others have their way, with the promise of cloud gaming delivered direct to TVs bypassing traditional consoles. Trials are set to begin later in 2012, insiders tell Bloomberg, with broad commercial launches in 2013 at the earliest; games would be more advanced than the simple casual titles currently offered by some smart TV platforms.

That would rely on the sort of cloud gaming technology already seen from startups like OnLive and Gaikai, where remote servers do the heavy lifting in terms of graphics crunching and powering environment-rich gameplay, and freeing up local devices to merely display the results of that processing. Rather than demanding that each subscriber have a $200-300 console, cable services could use internet-connected set-top boxes to display the streamed gameplay with minimal latency, navigated via simple controllers.

Unsurprisingly, none of the cable companies have been willing to admit they’re building up to an actual launch, though they’re making the right noises. AT&T says it is “exploring unique ways to offer cloud gaming services to our TV and broadband customers,” while Cox echoes that sentiment and claims it too is “exploring” cloud possibilities.

Although all are used to on-demand content delivery, they’re taking no chances getting cloud gaming right. Experts Playcast Media Systems, CiiNOW, and Agawi have all confirmed that they are in talks with US cable companies, though refuse to say which. Some of the cable firms are exploring using smartphones as controllers, further reducing the potential cost of entry to subscribers.

Meanwhile, console manufacturers aren’t standing still as smart TV solutions challenge their home turf. Microsoft already offers video content with Xbox LIVE, and will add SmartGlass to spread multimedia across multiple screens. More recently, Nintendo revealed Nintendo TVii, its new on-demand and TiVo-integrating home entertainment system based on the upcoming Wii U console, which will turn the GamePad tablet-styled controller into an advanced remote.

Cable cloud gaming to challenge Xbox, PS3 and Wii U in 2013 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Gone are the days where we paste our pictures into big bulky photo albums. But what would happen if we didn’t just store our pictures, but our entire memories in the cloud? One day, they could be completely wiped out, which is just what filmmaker Francois Ferracci explores in the short Lost Memories . More »

Data storage and safety is of paramount importance in today’s data-driven world. However, the conventional methods tend to fail in delivering data security, more often than not. ioSafe’s new N2 disaster-proof private cloud caters to this precise need.

The disaster-proof cloud comes with a whole lot of security features. It is fireproof as well as water-proof and ioSafe touts it as ‘an aircraft black box for your data.’  (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google will reportedly launch a new cloud service at Google I/O next week, Google: Cloud is more energy efficient,