Software & Web

16 March 2008 - Apple today introduce Aperture 2, the next major release of its groundbreaking photo editing and management software with over 100 new features that makes it faster, easier to use and more powerful. With a streamlined user interface and entirely new image processing engine, Aperture 2 also introduces new imaging tools for highlight recovery, color vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning, and lets users directly post their portfolio on the .Mac Web gallery for viewing on the web, iPod touch and Apple TV. At a new low price of S$328, anyone can easily organize, edit and publish photos like a pro.

21 November 2007 - Starting today, users can backup and restore both physical and virtual servers using a single application with the general availability of Acronis True Image™ Echo from Acronis®, Inc. (http://www.acronis.com), a provider of affordable, scalable storage management and disaster recovery software. Acronis True Image Echo operates seamlessly with all Windows® and Linux®-based servers or desktops, whether they are physical or virtual. Acronis also supports major virtualization operating systems such as VMware®, Microsoft®, and Parallels®.

12 October 2007 - ASIA PACIFIC; October 12, 2007 Acronis, Inc. (http://www.acronis.com), a provider of affordable, scalable storage management and disaster recovery software, has collaborated with Advanced Micro Devices® Inc. (NYSE: AMD) to help its customers more effectively recover their information on servers and personal computers running on AMD processors.

6 September 2007 - With the forthcoming Catalyst 7.9 software release in September, AMD will add Linux support for the ATI Radeon(TM) HD 2000 series of graphics processors. The Radeon HD 2000 series offer a number of compelling new features for Linux users including AMD's patented unified shader architecture. In Q4 2007, AMD's Catalyst software package for Linux will add support for Accelerated Indirect GLX (AIGLX).

13 March 2007 - NVIDIA today announced the release of NVIDIA® Gelato® 2.1 high- quality, GPU-accelerated rendering software, which now includes support for Joe Alter's Shave and a Haircut software for computer-generated hair and fur effects. Other enhancements in this newest release of Gelato include support for Autodesk® Maya® 8.5 and 3ds Max® 9.0, improved stereo rendering, fog lights, and significant performance improvements. Gelato Pro 2.1, priced at $1500, offers advanced rendering features and greater scalability for professional production pipelines. Gelato 2.1 and Gelato Pro 2.1 currently support the Windows XP and Linux operating systems and run on NVIDIA GeForce 5200 or higher graphics, or any NVIDIA Quadro solution.

29 January 2007 - ASUS has just updated the BIOS of 965P MB series which enables FSB 1333MHz support to be found in Intel next generation 1333FSB Conroe E0 CPUs. In their email, they mentioned that ASUS 965P MB only needs some simple BIOS tweaking to do that unlike other brands which require hardware modifications in order to support FSB 1333MHz. It is pretty obvious that they are referring to GU. Basically Gigabyte did the hardware modifications with the release of the revision 3.3 boards while ASUS did the software (BIOS) method. Gigabyte has mentioned in our recent interview that it is better to do it the hard way. Gigabyte told us the key benefit of doing the hard method is that the memory frequency will be selectable from 667 to 1066MHz while the soft method locked it at 667MHz. If you have tried the new BIOSes, do leave your findings in our forums. Click on to download the BIOSes.

23 January 2007 - Creative today announced the launch of a public beta, dubbed Creative ALchemy, to ensure that popular legacy game titles such as World of Warcraft, Rome: Total War and F.E.A.R. sound as awesome with a Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ sound card on Windows Vista as they do on Windows XP. The removal of the audio hardware abstraction layer from Windows Vista will compromise audio in legacy game titles that use EAX or DirectSound3D (DS3D), usually resulting in stereo output without any effects. Creative ALchemy is a simple download which will detect the presence of a number of top PC games and convert their DS3D and EAX calls into OpenAL calls, allowing users to continue enjoying their legacy titles the way they were meant to be enjoyed – in full, multi-channel sound with hardware effects. A beta version of the Creative ALchemy software is available for immediate download from http://preview.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx

30 November 2006 - Futuremark Corporation today released free updates to its 3DMark06, 3DMark05 and PCMark05 benchmark suites. Downloadable patches update 3DMark06 to version 1.1.0 and PCMark05 to version 1.2.0. A downloadable full installer updates 3DMark05 to version 1.3.0. Only scores obtained via these new versions, using approved drivers, will be used in official statistics, comparisons and services provided by Futuremark. To support performance analysis on PC's running Microsoft® Windows Vista operating system Futuremark's 3DMark06 and PCMark05 will be Vista enabled. Updated benchmark performance results on Windows Vista systems have been tested and verified by Futuremark as valid and fully comparable. Next generation benchmarks from Futuremark slated for 2007, will be the official native Vista benchmarks from Futuremark.

3 March 2008 - Version 2 Singapore Pte Ltd, a dynamic IT distributor has announced the news of the official launch of ESET Smart Security in this coming IT show 2008 starting on 6 March. For those who are still unaware, ESET NOD32 has been in the lead in pro-active threat detection for the past 9 years. Till date, ESET NOD32 Antivirus has received the most number of VB100% awards bagging a total of 48 awards, with no record of missing any viruses-in-the-wild. However, receiving the most awards is not the key for ESET to be the hot favorite of the league; ESET is currently the most sought in terms of memory resource efficiency, scanning speed, and its high detection for known and unknown viruses.

15 October 2007 - Acronis, a global provider of affordable, scalable storage management and disaster recovery software today announce the appointment of the New Era Group of Companies as the distributor for its entire range of home products for the South East Asia region covering countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Brunei last week. At the same time, Acronis also announced the release of the latest version of Acronis' file and system disk imaging backup and restore software for home and home office users, the Acronis True Image® 11.0 Home.

5 October 2007 - W1zzard has a nice little utility called GPU-Z that detects your graphics cards and the layout is similar to the famous CPU-Z program by Franck. The version is at 0.02 which is still at very early beta stage therefore some information is still incorrect. It is pretty intensive to keep GPU-Z updated as more GPUs and platforms are rolled out constantly. Download and post your screenshots here.

14 August 2007 - This release of Catalyst 7.8 introduces an enhanced version of ATI Overdrive for the ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 Series and ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series. Users can now Over-clock both GPU engine and graphics memory clock speeds in single and Crossfire mode. There is also a new stress test application. However, in CrossFire configuration, the OverDrive 5.0 test application will run only on first GPU and any unlinked GPUs. Missing support is due to a limitation in current driver implementation and will be resolved in upcoming driver release. There are also performance improvements in Lost Planet DX10 with anti-aliasing improves 11% or greater on Radeon HD2900XT, in 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark2005 as much as 6% on Radeon HD2600 and HD2400 and Serious Sam 2 with HDR enabled improves as much as 14.5% on Radeon HD 2xxx series. Download here : http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeonx-xp.html (32-bit XP) http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp64/radeonx-xp64.html (64-bit XP) http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/vista32/common-vista32.html (32-bit Vista) http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/vista64/common-vista64.html (64-bit Vista)

7 March 2007 - The game development industry is currently in the middle of one of the biggest transitions in its history with the introduction of Microsoft DirectX 10. To help the development community transition quickly to DirectX 10, NVIDIA today introduced a definitive new platform for advanced game development. The platform also consists of: NVIDIA GeForce® 8 Series graphics cards, NVIDIA nForce® 680 motherboards, and DirectX 10. The new NVIDIA Developer Toolkit makes it easier for developers to create Microsoft DirectX 10-compatible games by offering instructive code samples, advanced shaders, performance tuning, and more. The Toolkit delivers significant performance gains and saves developers time in developing and optimizing games.

25 January 2007 - Havok announces today the official release of Havok 4.5, the latest update to its modular suite of artist tools and run-time technology. Fully optimized for Sony PLAYSTATION®3, as well as Microsoft Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii, Havok 4.5 dramatically accelerates the development of cross-platform, cutting edge electronic games, meeting the needs of the world’s top developers and producers. Havok 4.5 allows game developers to scale game content to thousands of dynamically-driven game objects and characters, harnessing the full power and speed of next generation architectures. Game developers using Havok Physics and Havok Animation products to develop for PS3 will be able to harness the full power of all the SPUs, while maintaining the complete flexibility of the Havok SDK. Havok architecture now scales strongly across all SPUs and runs between 5 and 10 times faster than Havok 4.0 for a typical game scene on the PS3.

16 January 2007 - Saratoga, CA - January 16th, 2007 - Futuremark, publishers of the world's most acclaimed benchmarks for handhelds and PCs, announced today the release of VGMark07, the OpenVG(tm) Benchmark. This new benchmark will provide unbiased vector graphics performance data for handset manufacturers, ODMs, semiconductor companies and network operators within the handheld industry. VGMark07 is the first product that will enable the handheld industry and media to make objective and accurate cross platform performance comparisons of OpenVG 1.0 API enabled hardware and software solutions. VGMark07 is targeted for devices that are fully compliant with the OpenVG 1.0 API specification and which pass all Open VG conformance tests.

4 November 2006 - Microsoft and Novell announced the deal under which Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server and Desktop customers need not fear Microsoft will assert patent rights against them. In addition, Microsoft pledged not to assert patents against unpaid open-source programmers or against any open-source programmers contributing to Novell's OpenSuse. The partnership can be interpreted as an attempt to inject Microsoft's patent values into the open-source world. That move is an affront to open-source businesses that generally share intellectual property, an approach anathema to the proprietary ways of Microsoft.