multimedia

A California jury must once again decide whether Apple is infringing another company's patents.

Apple, along with fellow defendant LG Electronics, begin a trial today with Multimedia Patent Trust in a San Diego, Calif., court.

Multimedia Patent Trust, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, sued the two companies in December 2010 for alleged infringement on three of its patents covering video technology.

The lawsuit targets both Apple's portable iOS devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, along with computers such as MacBooks and iMacs -- effectively, anything that includes Apple's QuickTime video technology. For LG, it's nine … Read more

Evernote for Android lets you keep track of your ideas using multimedia notes with text, voice clips, pictures, attached files, even location stamps. Also, it automatically backs up to your cloud-based Evernote account for easy access from any data-connected device.

Evernote's interface is incredibly sleek and easy to navigate, which is a big accomplishment, considering the myriad features the app offers. On the Home screen are four large buttons to get you started creating notes: New note (for text), Snapshot, Audio, and Attach. At the bottom of this screen, you can choose to view your notes, notebooks (folders for … Read more

Bottom line: Version 10.6 of iTunes brings a handful of enhancements to Apple's ubiquitous media software, and adds support for 1080p video.

Review: As one of the most popular programs for managing music and video content on a personal computer, Apple's iTunes software has become an indispensable part of our digital life.

Interface The look and layout of iTunes 10 is essentially identical to that of iTunes 9, with just a couple of noticeable differences. The first is that Apple has updated its logo for iTunes. Rather than the old-school music note-over-CD icon, you'll see a … Read more

Gone are the days of walking over to the bookshelf, grabbing an Encyclopaedia Britannica, and flipping through the pages to look up whatever piqued one's curiosity. The leather-bound print edition set of reference books is now defunct, the company announced today.

However, Encyclopaedia Britannica is also quick to say that this change isn't its swan song. Now, in the digital age, the company will focus on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools.

"In spite of our long history with print, I would like to point out that no single medium, neither books nor bits, is … Read more

What if your favorite sci-fi or fantasy character broke loose from the book you were reading and went on a rampage?

Your first step (after scrambling under the bed) might be to call the police. And they, of course, would want the suspect's description--to hand off to their sketch artist.

That's where Brian Joseph Davis comes in.

In a mashup of high and low culture, the writer and artist has been creating police composites based on descriptions of characters in novels: Dr. Robert Vaughn from J.G. Ballard's "Crash," Gary from Colson Whitehead's "Zone One," Aomame from Haruki Murakami's "1Q84," even Humbert Humbert from Nabokov's "Lolita" and Edward Rochester from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre."

The unconventional portraits form the basis of Davis' Tumblr blog/crowd-sourced art project "The Composites." … Read more

Sometimes a painting is so beautiful you just want to reach right into it.

Of course, if you happen to be in a museum, that impulse could get you tackled by a security guard.

But Greek multimedia artist Petros Vrellis seems determined to let people satisfy the urge. He's currently at work on a project that would let viewers stir the skies of one of the West's most iconic paintings: Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night."… Read more

VLC (download), everyone's favorite Swiss-Army-like media player for Mac, is about to make the jump to version 2.0, and oh what a big jump it appears to be.

Apparently being rewritten from the ground up, the new and improved application is set to offer features like native full-screen mode in Mac OS X Lion and experimental Blu-ray playback support. It's also worth noting that the change log mentioned porting to Android and iOS platforms to be in the works as well.

And of course, expect some dramatic (and long overdue) changes to VLC's interface. Playlist and … Read more

CyberLink, maker of some of the most popular multimedia software titles for Windows, today released a massive update to its PowerDVD line.

PowerDVD version 12 Ultra brings with it increased 3D support and improved playback controls. At the same time, it switches its game up by offering tools for organizing and managing all of your media. Now you can use your desktop PC as a server for all of your content (regardless of type), and with PowerDVD Mobile 4 for Ultra, browse and play that content from any of your supported Android devices.

PowerDVD's bread and butter has always … Read more

iFFmpeg is a free, easy-to-use front-end for the powerful--and also free--command line tool FFmpeg, which lets you easily convert media files between different formats. (Note that you must also download an FFmpeg binary to use iFFmpeg, but the developer's Web site has simple, drag-and-drop instructions for doing so.)

The iFFmpeg interface is straightforward enough for even beginners to use, with a sparse menu bar that lets you add a file to convert, or preview, start, or merge files. You can also look at FFmpeg binary information, choose a codec (from an almost overwhelming array, from basics like AVI, MOV, … Read more