New Technology Reduces Picture File Size Without Reducing Image Quality

Allume Systems, Inc., an IMSI company (BULLETIN BOARD: IMSI) , today announced plans to introduce a revolutionary new image compression technology that will allow users to reduce the size of JPEG pictures up to 30% -- without altering the quality of the image.

Where existing archive technologies such as zip are unable to reduce the size of compressed JPEG pictures, StuffIt's patent pending technology is able to replace the existing JPEG compression method with a more efficient alternative.

With it's ability to compress JPEG images, this new technology will allow users to fit more data onto CD's, DVD's, and other storage and backup media.

Allume's new technology also provides a significant bandwidth saving for both professional and hobbyists looking to share pictures over the internet or on the network.

Adobe Systems, Apple, Cisco Systems and IBM Facilitate Open Digital Solutions for Business Customers

IBM unveiled an open digital media framework that will include technology from leading partners such as  Adobe, Apple and Cisco Systems to give companies the most advanced capabilities to create, manage and distribute rich media content faster, easier and at lower cost. 

With this announcement, IBM solidifies its commitment to bring open standards-based technology solutions to rich digital media while addressing the need to help companies manage large and complex files that must be integrated with existing business system environments. 

  IBM's open digital media framework now supports many standards in digital media, including Java, J2EE, ISMA, MPEG,  XML, OMA, 3GPP,  Linux, Web services and others.  Standards within the framework give businesses the opportunity to select applications that best fit specific needs independent of existing or de facto systems.

Silicon Graphics and the OpenGL Architecture Review Board have announced the latest version of the OpenGL specification, which now includes core support for OpenGL Shading Language and other enhancements.

Majority of Commercial 3D Applications Now Support FBX

Kaydara Inc., a leader in 3D character animation and motion editing solutions, today announced that the award-winning Kaydara FBX, a platform-independent 3D authoring and interchange format, is now supported by over 30 industry partners, including Alias, Discreet, Maxon, NewTek, Softimage and Strata. With the community of industry supporters continuing to grow, Kaydara FBX is now considered the de facto 3D interchange format.

ìContent reuse and asset exchange between diverse applications is the key to the future of the professional industry, making it possible to eventually expand into the consumer market space,î said Michel Besner, president of Kaydara. ìKaydara FBX opens new possibilities and empowers users to create a best of breed pipeline by removing one of the longest standing barriers facing the 3D industry.î

Modul8 is a revolutionary MacOS X application designed for real time video mixing and compositing.

It has been designed for VJs and live performers. Created by professional VJs and developped by real time imaging specialists, all coming from the video game industry, Modul8 offers a state of the art user-interface combined with very high performances.

Unlike most of the other video mixers, Modul8 really allows you to create the composition you want instead of being stuck with a predefined set of filters. And by composition, we mean both spatial and time composition: In Modul8, you can move, rotate, scale your original medias just like in a simple image editor - but all in real time.

You can download Modul8 demo here.

PearPC is an architecture independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running most PowerPC operating systems.

PearPC is an experimental program not meant for productive use.

There are still unimplemented instructions, mysterious bugs and missing features.

Update!! Read this review with many screenshots on Osnews.com.

Microsoft's surprise decision to submit Windows Media Series 9 as a standards candidate to Hollywood underscores the software giant's ambitions to take its multimedia technology beyond the Net, as well as the considerable barriers it faces.

As new species of XML documents are emerging, vendors are unveiling increased RDBMS support for XML.

When XML came along five years ago, promising to rewrite the rules of data management, vendors of relational databases took note, but they didn't panic. They'd already seen this movie a decade before, when the object database had been cast in the role of paradigm shifter. This new software species did emerge and did popularize the notion of persistence -- that is, the capability of storing and retrieving programming-language objects without arduous translation to and from relational tables. As it turned out, however, the old RDBMS dog could learn new tricks. Relational databases figured out how to store complex types using the SQL:1999 object model. Implementations of JDO (Java Data Objects) exist for relational as well as for object databases. And according to Microsoft, the forthcoming Yukon edition of SQL Server will be capable of persisting .Net objects.

If you have been pursuing Web services and XML based projects, you know they promise tremendous cost savings.

Perhaps you have had some success in wrapping services in XML, but getting to the next level of automation is much more difficult.
Have you been struggling with the complexity of Web services? Have you found the verbosity and static nature of XML to be a problem? Are you looking for a way to add application-level security policies to your Web services?
If so, then you will be interested in learning about a new approach to Web services.

KOMPAKT is a streamlined sampler that ships with a comprehensive library and can import the most common sample formats. Powered by the efficient KONTAKT engine, KOMPAKT combines intuitive handling and a capable architecture with excellent sound quality.