Adobe shows off six flavors of CS3

Since Adobe bought Macromedia nearly two years ago, rumors have flown about what mutant offspring might emerge from this marriage of software makers.

Although a leak on a blog revealed bits of this closely guarded secret about a day early, Adobe has officially taken the wraps off the pricing and packaging of its Creative Suite 3--most of which will work on Intel-based or PowerPC Macs, as well as with Windows Vista and XP. (See our coverage of the CS3 Master Collection to start.).

The six flavors of CS3 are built for different types of digital designers. So far, we've … Read more

Office 2.0 mashup tools: Longjump, Proto Software, Teqlo

Under the Radar's start-up group kicked off this morning with presentations from Longjump, Proto Software and Teqlo. The general theme of this group was building business solutions with easy-to-use mash-up tools. For small businesses, it's a little bit like buying lumber verses chopping down a tree.

Longjump is a subscription-based marketplace of customizable Web-based apps. Each app can be built-up and edited with drag and drop creation, and custom tailored for small groups. Longjump also provides tools and utilities to upload and integrate the data you already have. Longjump breaks down applications by category, and users can comment … Read more

Piping in with Yahoo Pipes mashup builder

Ever think that we're just scratching the surface when it comes to mashing up Web data feeds? Yahoo apparently thinks so, too.

On Wednesday, the Web giant released a beta of Yahoo Pipes, a hosted development tool meant to make it easier to build mashup applications that combine different Web feeds. (See this CNET News.com story on Yahoo Pipes for more information.)

The idea is that people use a visual layout form to wire together a series of structured data feeds. Mashups, obviously, can be developed, but Pipes is supposed to make the process of developing them easier, … Read more

Adobe Kuler: a tool for some, fun for me

Kuler is a free tool from Adobe Labs that lets users design and share color schemes for use in Web sites or other projects. If you've ever designed a Web site or PowerPoint presentation before, you know that choosing a color scheme is often trial and error. Kuler lets you tune up to five different colors at once and makes the process surprisingly easy, allowing users to simply adjust selectors over a large color wheel. Users can then go deeper, adjusting the finer details of a color, and Kuler makes small adjustments to make sure the other colors will … Read more

Help build the world with Google Earth 4

Google Earth 4, released January 8, continues to improve the landscape of Google Earth's digital globe with 3D representations of famous buildings from the Eiffel Tower to Fenway Park. Along with the free application Google SketchUp 6, the latest model of Google Earth helps star modelers create the thriving, textured 3D metropolises you see with the 3D building layer turned on. If you've got a yen for accurate modeling, some of those contributions could come from you.

Contributors to Google's digital landscape start their modeling magic in Google SketchUp. An intuitive toolset and a new feature lets … Read more

Will Outlook 2007 break your e-mail?

Some digital publishers are complaining that the new Microsoft Outlook rolls back design standards by half a decade. The 2007 edition of Outlook, the most popular e-mail client for big businesses, ditches Internet Explorer's technology for that of Word 2007 to display HTML messages.

The result? In your Outlook 2007 in-box, background images may not appear within dressed-up HTML messages. Forget about filling out certain forms. Animated GIF images won't play, and a red X will mark the spot where a Flash movie would be. ALT tags, which describe pictures and help blind people to "see" … Read more

Adobe's Chizen pursues 'heart and soul' of Web

SAN FRANCISCO--Adobe is seeking to balance openness with commercial interests as it tries to "push the envelope" of what's possible on the Web, said company CEO Bruce Chizen on Wednesday.

Chizen spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit here where he defended the company's decision to acquire Macromedia last year, the company best known for its Flash Player and Web authoring software.

Images on the Web are routinely created with Adobe's Photoshop or Illustrator and documents are presented with its Acrobat Reader. But that wasn't enough for Chizen, one of the chief architects behind … Read more

Bezos: Amazon Web Services will be 'meaningful business'

SAN FRANCISCO--Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is convinced that the company's nascent hosted computing service will yield dividends for the retail giant in time.

Bezos spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit on Wednesday where the publisher and conference host queried him on Amazon's Web Services business.

Financial analysts have voiced some concern about the level of technology spending that Amazon is doing and whether its foray into hosted computing services is a distraction from its online commerce business.

Bezos was unapologetic about investing in Amazon Web Services--a collection of 10 hosted services which give software developers … Read more

oDesk finds qualified programmers for you

From the Web 2.0 Conference:

oDesk is all about outsourcing. It's an online market where people can hire programmers and other information workers. In addition to making matches, the system also takes screen captures of contract workers at frequent intervals so that hiring managers can ensure they're billed only for actual work performed.

New at the Web 2.0 conference is a pretty new interface that should make it quicker and easier to search for workers with specific skills, experience, and fees. Also new: the official rollout of the company's skills tests and certification programs, which … Read more

Hack your cell phone

If you think your cell phone's software is lame, stop complaining and do something about it. That, at least, seems to be the philosophy behind this Linux handset from FIC, as seen on Slashgear.

Other manufacturers--most notably Motorola--are taking steps toward adopting the communal software philosophy, and standards are in the works. But FIC seems to be forging ahead on its own, going measurably further to make its phone a true open-source device that will allow anyone to build custom applications and share them with other hackers through a wireless repository.

And if you're not interested in … Read more