애플

Adobe Systems has officially entered the "Web office" game.

The company on Monday is expected to announce that it has acquired an 11-person start-up, called Virtual Ubiquity, that has built a free Web word processor called Buzzword. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The move expands Adobe's collaborative software services and steps up its competition with Microsoft and a host of other Web application providers, including Google.

Adobe also is scheduled to announce a service, code-named Share, that allows people to invite others to view and access documents stored by Adobe. Documents can be embedded inside a Web page as well. The service, which is still in testing mode, will offer users one gigabyte of storage for free.

Adobe executives are scheduled to detail the Buzzword deal and the other initiatives at its Max 2007 developer and designer conference, which starts Monday in Chicago.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is expected on Monday to detail its own document collaboration service called Office Live Workspace, a free online tool for viewing, sharing and storing Office documents online.

In other Max announcements, Adobe plans to release the beta version of its desktop video viewer, Adobe Media Player, which is now being used by CBS, PBS and Yahoo to distribute multimedia content with advertising. Adobe Media Player version 1.0 is due in the first half of next year.

The technology underpinning these applications is Adobe's Flash Player and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), software that lets Web applications run offline. The programs were written using its Flex development tool.

The company's strategy is to assemble a series of collaboration products and services on top of its development platform, said Erik Larson, director of marketing and product management at Adobe. Buzzword will complement its existing online services Adobe Connect and Create PDF, he said.

"Our focus is on document collaboration around a lot of different kinds of documents," Larson said. "There is a lot that can be done with the Adobe platform, and there are still unrealized promises."

Larson said Adobe will focus on online collaboration of "high fidelity" documents, or those that appear the same on-screen and when printed out.

The plan is to make these applications free for paid premium services to businesses.

Rick Treitman, CEO of Virtual Ubiquity, said his company decided to use Adobe developer technologies because they were better than other available programming methods. Adobe invested in the company last year as part of a venture fund set up to promote applications on Flash and AIR.

What sets Buzzword apart from other online word processors is the pagination--it allows people to get an accurate view of how a document will print out as the document is edited. It also has the ability to embed graphics, track changes and organize files.

"Flex and Flash were the means to where we want to go. No one else realized how powerful it was as a virtual machine," Treitman said.

During the Max keynote address on Monday, Adobe executives are expected to show off other rich Internet applications written for Flash or AIR.

One of those will be an AIR version of Pronto, an e-mail application from CommuniGate Systems that is expected to be released next spring when AIR 1.0 is available.

John Doyle, CommuniGate Systems' vice president of business development, said Adobe has the wherewithal to build a line of compelling and simple-to-use rich Internet applications that could lure businesses away from Microsoft Office.

"If anybody has the financial strength, the market reach and the track record of making very good applications, it's Adobe," Doyle said. "They're able to overnight-ship applications through Flash to browsers that will be accessible by 96 percent of the users in the world. That's huge."

IBM last month introduced a beta version of Lotus Symphony, a set of traditional desktop applications that Big Blue is offering as a standards-based alternative to Office.

Adobe's Larson said that Adobe isn't trying to necessarily displace the use of Office. Instead, it is focusing on online collaboration products like Buzzword and Acrobat Connect.

"In general, there is a clear willingness in the working world to accept new applications and accept new ways of working," Larson said.

For example, Adobe and people from Virtual Ubiquity used Buzzword to write a press release announcing the acquisition. Using a shared document model, they were able to eliminate about 200 e-mails and attachments with several different versions of the same release.

Adobe's document-sharing applications are aimed at small- and medium-size businesses, while Microsoft has developed Office Live Workspace for large businesses.

For developers, Adobe intends to release REST-style application programming interfaces for both Share and Buzzword.

Suddenly, it seems even more fitting that a company called Elevation Partners recently took a stake in Palm.

This might be rock bottom for the storied mobile-computing company. The decision to cancel the Foleo even before letting people get their hands on it is an embarrassing admission that Palm's vision of the computing world is way off base from the rest of the world, and it's a black mark on the otherwise stellar career of Palm founder Jeff Hawkins.

It's hard to dump too much on Hawkins. The man invented the Palm Pilot and the Treo. I once invented a novel method of stacking beer cans in a fridge (the key is not to buy any food). But after Hawkins unveiled the Foleo at the D: All Things Digital conference--arguably the most prestigious gathering of the computing elite--with proclamations like "it's the best idea I've ever had" and "the most exciting product I have ever worked on"--Palm's decision to cancel it without even a product launch must be mortifying for Hawkins.

Now, Hawkins has his own company, Numenta, which is trying to develop a computer that works like the human brain. If he pulls that off, we'll forget all about the Foleo.

But what is Palm going to do? Speaking of mortifying, Ed Colligan must be wondering why he gave Hawkins $10 million to go down into the basement and come up with Palm's Next Big Thing, only to emerge with the Foleo. Almost universally panned by analysts and bloggers, the Foleo was a lightweight Linux "mobile companion" that was designed to read e-mail, but didn't work with corporate e-mail software from RIM or Motorola, among a multitude of other sins.

Palm has squandered its position in the mobile-computing world by failing to improve its operating system since 2004, come up with a noticeably different Treo since the Treo 600, or clearly articulate any vision of where the company thinks smart phone development is headed. The company wisely hooked up with Microsoft to ship Windows Mobile Treos, otherwise this post might have been written a year ago. But it has watched companies like Motorola, RIM, LG, Nokia and even Apple pass it by while it tried to make its biggest splash of the year with a product canceled just three months later. Imagine the reaction if Apple had canceled the iPhone in April.

Jack Gold of market research firm J. Gold Associates thinks Elevation Partners is starting to throw its weight around a little. "Hopefully they are coming in and cracking the whip and making them do the right thing," he wrote in a research note distributed Tuesday. After all, Palm clearly still hasn't found what it's looking for.

Palm also announced Tuesday that Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark Partners is resigning from Palm's board, while Scott Mercer will stay. Mercer was going to resign from the board to make way for Fred Anderson and Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, but now Dunlevie (who's also on the board at Numenta) is out. Anderson and McNamee haven't formally assumed their positions yet as the deal hasn't formally closed, but perhaps their impact is already starting to be felt.

While it's embarrassing, Colligan made the right decision. You've got to know when to fold them, and the Foleo wasn't going to beat anything better than a pair of sixes.

You're supposed to have an intervention after the downtrodden hits rock bottom, but Colligan's moment of clarity could still allow Palm to recapture some of its past glory.

However, Palm better think long and hard before the next time it tells people it's about to change the world of mobile computing. The company is in danger of watching a category it helped create leave it in the dust.

Owners of PCs with Intel's 965 chipsets can finally download drivers that will immediately improve the performance of games running on those systems.

The 965 chipsets were supposed to be a dramatic step forward for integrated graphics performance. Most PCs come with graphics technology built right onto the chipset that connects the processor to memory and the rest of a PC. Serious gamers opt for discrete graphics made by Nvidia or AMD's ATI division, but most people save a little money and get the basic graphics.

Intel wanted to make an integrated graphics chipset with more powerful graphics performance that would allow basic PC users to play some of the latest and greatest 3D games when it shipped the 965. But it has been unable to write the drivers needed to enable that performance until now.

Windows XP drivers are available here, but if you're on a Vista PC with Intel's 965 chipset, you'll have to wait a little longer. Intel put together a video here that shows the improved performance of PCs with the new drivers.

Google has acknowledged erring in the way it handled refunds last week after shutting down its video download store.

The company angered some Google Video customers who had paid for movies but were locked out when the store was shuttered.

At first, the company offered to refund customers in credit to their Google Checkout accounts. That idea was widely criticized by many as being self-serving. On Monday, Google admitted the "goof" and announced that it would give credit card refunds to anyone who had ever bought a video on the site.

"When your friends and well-intentioned acquaintances tell you that you've made a mistake, it's good to listen," said Bindu Reddy, the store's product manager in a blog post.

In addition to the credit card refunds, those who received Google Checkout credits for videos can keep those as well.

"Think of it as an additional 'We're sorry we goofed' credit," Reddy said in his post.

Google has said that the company wants to concentrate more of its attention on video search and its video-sharing site, YouTube. The company has also not ruled out returning to video-on-demand in the future.

One day after the spectacular public offering of virtualization company VMware, Citrix Systems on Wednesday said that it intends to acquire open-source virtualization company XenSource for about $500 million.

Citrix makes so-called thin client software that delivers business applications from servers to desktop computers.

By acquiring XenSource, the company intends to move into the adjacent server and desktop virtualization market.

The acquisition will be financed through a combination of stock and cash and includes the assumption of $107 million in a vested stock options.

The company's open-source "hypervisor" software, called Xen, lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously, which is a useful way to replace servers with one, more efficiently used computer.

Xen is included in the two most used Linux server distributions from Red Hat and Novell and also works on Microsoft Windows. XenSource's commercial offering, XenEnterprise, is based on the Xen software.

Gartner analyst Tom Bittman said that the price tag was high for XenSource and the acquiring company is a surprise.

"We wouldn't have expected Citrix to make the acquisition. We would have expected IBM, HP, Oracle, maybe Novell or Symantec," he said.

Virtualization has become a hot technology in IT because it allows corporate customers to lower their computing costs by packing more computing jobs onto fewer computers. The virtualization market leader VMware went public yesterday, with its stock price shooting to $51 from its offering price of $29.

The purchase is a significant departure for Citrix whose focus now is centralized management of desktops, rather than managing corporate data center servers, Bittman said.

Also, the deal raises questions over Citrix's relationship with Microsoft. He said that Citrix could choose to compete head-to-head against Microsoft's forthcoming server virtualization software called Viridian, or Microsoft could choose to use some of XenSource's software rather than develop itself.

"The market needs competition in this area. Customers need strong competitors to VMware...because prices have been artificially high," he said. "If this acquisition makes Xen and XenSource more viable, it's a good thing for the market."

The Xen software and XenSource employees will form a new Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix headed by XenSource CEO Peter Levine. In a statement, Levine said that the company intends to expand further into server virtualization as well as desktop virtualization.

"This move is not about competing for the 5 percent of the market that is already being served. It's about steering into the 90 percent white space that is wide open, both at the server and in new emerging opportunities at the desktop," Levine said in a statement.

The combination of XenSource and Citrix's established distribution infrastructure will make XenSource's software available to a far larger audience, said Nick Sturiale, a general partner at Sevin Rosen Funds and a XenSource board member.

"XenEnterprise (version) 4, which is a tour de force product, just came out. Now it can go through Citrix's 5,000 channel partners which is going to be a very exciting spin-up, making it available to a much broader market," Sturiale said.

In a report, research group the 451 Group said that the acquisition stands to turn the competitive heat up on VMware.

"The virtualization market now revolves around three players: market darling VMware; Citrix's combination of young blood and old money; and the (potential) threat of Microsoft's Viridian, slated to ship in Q3 2008. Both Citrix and VMware have a 12-month window of opportunity before Microsoft shows its full hand," the report said.

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh has the scoop on a News.com survey that asked Google, Yahoo and other major search engine companies to fess up on what they do to protect users' personal information.

A Swedish pro-piracy politician came to the U.S. to raise funds for his fledgling political party, whose platform is a promise to thwart U.S. attempts to enforce copyright law on Swedish soil. News.com's Miriam Olsson spoke with copyright critic Rickard Falkvinge.

And hackers defaced the Web site of the United Nation's Secretary-General over the weekend.

'기즈모도(Gizmodo)'는 애플이 다음 주 개량 판 '아이팟 나노(iPod nano)'를 발매할 예정이라고 보도했다.

플래쉬 메모리 베이스인 디바이스는 '아이팟 터치(iPod Touch)'라는 이름이 되는 것 같다. 블로그에 의하면, 이것의 가격은 4기가바이트가 300 달러, 8기가바이트가 400 달러가 된다고 한다.

새로운 아이팟 나노는 귀엽고 둥근 형태이다. 하지만 이 신제품이 '섹시하고 세련된 자매 제품 아이폰'의 주역 자리를 뺏는 일은, 절대로 없을 것이다.

그러나 기즈모도에 의하면 '새로운 아이폰을 닮은 제 6세대 아이팟(터치 스크린 인터페이스 탑재)도 2008년 초두에 릴리스 된다'라는 소문이다. 단만 지금은 기다릴 수 밖에 없다. @

유비쿼터스 JPEG 이미지 포맷에 대한 MS의 대안이 조만간 표준으로 채택될 가능성이 높아지고 있다. 그리고 이는 비스타 보급을 강화하겠다는 MS의 야심에 중요한 촉매로 작용할 것으로 보인다.

16개국 표준 그룹은 조만간 JPEG 파일 포맷이 명칭을 본뜬 '조인트 포토그래픽 엑스퍼트 그룹(Joint Photographic Experts Group)'이 MS의 신형 HD 포토 포맷을 표준으로 만들어야 하는지 정식 투표할 예정이다.

이 단계에 이른 것은 MS에게 유리한 신호이다. MS 이미지비디오기술 책임 로버트 로시는 "내년 중반까지는 이 모팻이 JPEG XR 표준으로 인정받기 바란다"고 밝혔다.

인포트렌즈 애널리스트 에드 리는 "JPEG 표준화가 포맷의 전망을 개선할 수 있으며 표준의 미래에 든든한 도움이 된다"고 주장한다. 공개 표준이 있으면 카메라 제조사와 같은 우방을 모으기도 쉬워진다.

MS는 이 포맷으로 자사 제품이 디지털 활동의 중심에 서게 될 수 있기를 바라며, 윈도우 비스타는 파일 포맷에 대한 지원을 내장하고 있다.
현재, MS는 JPEG XR의 파트너를 확보한 상태다. 이 기술을 승인한 기업 중에는 첨단 카메라 제조사 '하셀블라드(Hasselblad)', 카메라 이미지 센서 창업회사 '포비온(Foveon), 그리고 카메라 이미지 프로세싱에 사용되는 칩을 설계하는 기업 'ARM'과 '노바텍 마이크로일렉트로닉스(Novatek Microelectronics) 등이 있다. 올 초에는 어도비의 찬사도 받았다.

하지만 표준화가 성공을 보장하는 것은 아니다. 동일한 표준 그룹에서 나온 JPEG의 후속 포맷 JPEG 2000은 압축 품질이 우수했음에도 불구하고 주류 소비자 시장에서 전혀 주목을 받지 못했다.

단 JPEG2000은 디지털 시네마와 의료 영상, 매핑, 지리 정보 시스템과 같은 일부 틈새시장에서 선택되기는 했다. JPEG 조직은 지난 달 31일(미국 시간) 발표문에서 대다수 표준은 암호화 계획과 무관하다고 말했다. 이는 JPEG XR이 JPEG2000의 공업 분야와 재래식 JPEG의 소비자 분야를 통합할 가능성이 있다는 것을 뜻한다.

JPEG 조직은 JPEG XR과 관련이 있는 특허권에 대해 무료 접속을 제공하겠다는 마이크로소프트의 결정을 극찬했다. 조직은 "MS의 무료 약속은 JPEG 위원회가 규격의 채택 확산을 조성하는데 도움이 되고, 폭넓은 수용자에 의해 실행되는 데 도움이 될 것"이라고 말하며, 표준을 정할 때 이 같은 접근법을 택하도록 권고했다.

JPEG XR 포맷은 윈도우 미디어 포토로 개발이 시작되었지만, 2006년 광범위한 채택을 장려하기 위해, MS는 보다 중립적인 HD 포토로 명칭을 바꾸고 로열티 무료 조건을 위해 제한적 라이선스를 철회했다. JPEG XR 명칭 제안은 중립적일 뿐만 아니라 디지털 카메라를 사용하는 소비자라면 누구에게나 친근하다.

명칭에 들어 있는 'XR'은 재래식 JPEG에 비해 포맷이 표현할 수 있는 색조의 범위가 확대되었다는 것을 뜻하며, 이는 MS가 기술에 대해 주장하는 많은 장점에 속한다. JPEG는 적색, 청색, 녹색 컴포넌트를 8피트 데이터 픽셀에 묘사할 수 있다.

카메라는 주로 12비트 데이터로 이미지를 촬영하기 때문에, 이것은 JPEG의 변환은 대체로 그늘진 얼굴의 디테일이나 흰색 옷의 미묘한 주름과 같이 촬영자가 원하는 정보를 버린다는 것을 뜻한다. JPEG XR은 각 픽셀에 대해 컬러별로 16비트나 32비트를 저장할 수 있다.

압축 기술과 디테일 개선
로시는 다이내믹 범위의 확대는 이미지 수명에 중요할 것이라고 주장했다. 지금부터 5~6년 후에는 "프린터와 디스플레이가 현행 JPEG 기술이 접근할 수 있는 수준을 훨씬 넘어설 것"이라는 말이다.

MS가 자랑하고 있는 장점은 아래와 같다.
- 파일 크기의 절반으로 재래식 JPEG와 동일한 품질을 기록하거나 동일한 파일 크기로 2배의 품질을 기록할 수 있는 압축 기술. 뿐만 아니라, JPEG와는 달리 MS 포맷의 인코딩 알고리즘은 '손실없는' 압축이라는 픽셀 데이터 일체를 보존할 수 있다.

- 이미지가 카메라에서 컴퓨터로, 프린터로 이동할 때 풍부한 컬러와 우수한 보존 성능을 허용하는 폭넓은 컬러 범위.

- 압축 이미지가 32GB 사이즈를 초과하지 않을 경우 HD 포토 이미지는 2억 6200만 픽셀, 총 68.6 테라픽셀의 거대 이미지가 될 수 있다.

카메라에서 모든 데이터를 추출하려는 대다수 촬영자는 컬러 밸런스, 선명화, 노이즈 감소, 압축과 같은 인카메라 프로세싱 없이 이미지 센서 정보를 JPEG로 포착하는 '로(Raw)' 포맷을 사용한다. 하지만 독점 포맷에서 JPEG나 TIFF와 같이 쉽게 확인하거나 인쇄할 수 있는 포맷으로 변환하기 위해서는 흔히 로 이미지를 수동으로 처리해야 한다.

하지만 MS는 JPEG XR이 로 이미지 수요의 일부를 수용하기를 바라고 있다.

로시는 "편리한 파일 포맷에 로 성능을 강화하였다. 최첨단 포맷에도 로 이미지에 대한 선호 경향이 있을 것"이라고 덧붙였다.

이럼에도 불구하고 사진작가들이 이 포맷을 사용하도록 만드는 것 자체는 만만치 않은 과제가 될 것이다. 표준화는 친근한 JPEG 용어와 함께 이 과제를 손쉽게 만들 수 있을 것이다.

에드 리는 "더 큰 과제는 장비 제조사가 압축 표준을 선택하여 하드웨어에 이를 통합하도록 만드는 일이 될 것"이라며 "하드웨어에만 들어가면 소비자의 선택을 받는 일이 쉬워질 것"이라고 설명했다. @

영국 노스웨스턴대 로드 루오프 교수팀은 다양한 분야에 응용할 수 있는 산화그라펜으로 만든 종이를 개발했다. 그라펜 종이는 다이아몬드를 제외한 다른 물질보다 뛰어나다. 연구팀은 연구를 거듭해 지름 8cm 이상, 두께 1~100μm의 종이 조각을 제조했다. 산화그라펜 종이는 전기 전도성을 조절할 수 있다는 것이 가장 큰 특징이다. 이는 전도체, 반도체, 절연체로 물질을 조절할 수 있다는 뜻이다. (출처 : 한국과학기술정보연구원)