In Depth: 5 reasons to be excited about Creative Suite 5
Does your job involve creating content? Then you're probably running software from Adobe.
It's hard to match the power of Photoshop, the depth of InDesign or the intricacy of Illustrator – though Apple is having a pretty good crack at Premiere Pro with Final Cut. Dreamweaver is in a world of its own, and Flash can make iPhone apps (but Apple may be about to prevent this).
Creative Suite 5 is due out next month and as always, it comes in a choice of editions. We've had a thorough play with the popular Design Premium apps, so let's look at why you should be getting excited.
Oh, and you can read a longer version of this article and find out what's new in the other CS apps in the June 2010 issue of MacFormat.
1. Photoshop Content-Aware Fill
Blemish removal like you've never seen it before – if only it was real life Photoshop has been around for 20 years now, and it's getting hard to imagine what more Adobe could add. But it always seems to come up with something, and CS5 is no exception. One of the cleverest features in CS4 was Content-Aware Scaling.
This lets you change the proportions of a picture – say, a landscape – without squashing key features within it, such as people. It does work, with a bit of help, but if we're honest there aren't all that many occasions when it's actually needed.
CS5 introduces a similar concept that we reckon will see a lot more use. It's called Content-Aware Fill. Select any area of an image (with the Lasso or any of the usual tools) and press ∫. You're offered various fill options, the default being Content-Aware, which does what you'd otherwise attempt with the Clone Stamp: borrows surrounding areas of the image to fill the selected area seamlessly.
WOW: Content-Aware Fill completes a wonky image with no trouble at all – spooky!
Does it work? Well, all right, not always. Sometimes it looks too far afield, so part of the foreground might get filled with sky; sometimes it behaves like a clone tool newbie, creating obvious repeats and leaving hard lines around edits. (You can help avoid the latter by feathering your selection.) And it can take half a minute or so to complete.
So why are we excited about it? Because when it does work, it saves loads of time on a very common task. A quick drag and a click removes unwanted elements from irregular surroundings. You might have to fix a glitch here and there, but the donkey work is done. And it's not only good for patching over objects.
When you've rotated a picture or stitched it together from multiple shots, you'll have an odd-shaped empty area around it. Instead of cropping this off, you can Content-Aware Fill it. This sounds mad, but often it works miraculously well, as you can see on the right.
Although we've picked Content-Aware Fill as our most exciting feature of Photoshop CS5, it was a close race: Puppet Warp is a new reshaping tool that's more precise than Liquify, and HDR Toning creates stunning tone-mapping effects.
The new Refine Edge tools may finally make it practical to cut out impossible subjects like wispy hair without third-party add-ons; the Mixer Brush brings wet blending to Photoshop for the first time; and for Extended users, Repoussè is a 3D extrusion tool reminiscent of Adobe Dimensions. Oh, and DSLR snappers not only get Adobe Camera Raw 6, but also smarter lens correction filters which can be profiled for any lens.
2. Greater control in Illustrator
For original artwork, scalable logos and eyepopping technical illustrations, vector drawing is an essential pro graphics skill.
While Illustrator has never pretended to make it easy, it has offered a growing range of ways to bring life to your basic skeleton of vector paths. But the devil is in the detail: ironing out the kinks and achieving perfection can prove almost impossible – and vector artists are nothing if not perfectionists. That's why they're going to like CS5.
ALL ANGLES: Illustrator CS5 can deal with perspective impressively
Among its innovations is a bunch of ways to tweak what you've drawn. First among them is variable width strokes. It's long been possible to draw lines that vary along their length by applying a tapering brush. Now you can click to add width points to any path and drag handles to widen it at that point.
Effects scale to follow. Dashes, arrowheads and complex brushes gain comprehensive controls, ensuring they stretch and repeat as you intended.
And with 9-slice scaling, you can draw objects such as labelled buttons that scale intelligently: for example, preserving the roundness of corners and proportions of text while adjusting in length to fit another space.
3. Introducing Flash Catalyst
Flash is popular with graphic designers as a way to get into interactive media through their creative skills rather than from a programming background. But the more capable Flash gets, the harder it looks to newcomers. If you just want to make a simple animation that displays stuff when a user clicks buttons, help is at hand.
Flash Pro itself comes with Code Snippets to help you do more without having to write your own ActionScript.
And new to Creative Suite is Flash Catalyst, which adds interaction and animation to artwork you create in Photoshop, Fireworks (the graphics optimiser and web prototyper included with CS) and Illustrator, or indeed video from Premiere Pro and AfterEffects.
The end result can be an SWF file or an Adobe AIR app, both compatible with a variety of platforms. Flash Catalyst lets you design interactive content without the code. It does have a code view for tinkerers; it also integrates with Flash Builder to add more technical functionality, such as accessing database content.
And finally, it gets away from Flash Pro's timeline-based approach, which can confuse simple projects. Promising.
4. InDesign layout aids
Of all the Creative Suite apps, InDesign probably has to work hardest to impress. Not to keep up with the competition – QuarkXPress is a worthy rival, but it only gets a major upgrade once in a blue moon.
No, InDesign's problem is simply that many users of desktop publishing (DTP) software would rather stick with what they've got. Upgrading is a hassle, and when it comes down to it, how many new ways can there be of sticking text and pictures on a page?
Quite a lot, as it turns out. Like other DTP professionals, we don't like to have to change our habits; but what Adobe has done, rather sensibly, is add smarter ways you can work if you want to, while letting you carry on exactly the same as before if you prefer.
COLUMNS: With the new InDesign, you can vary text column formats within a single frame
For example, it's always been easy to re-crop pictures by repositioning an image within its frame using the Direct Selection tool. Now you don't even have to switch tools: moving over a picture shows a bullseye (a bit like the split-image focusing circles in an SLR camera) which you click and drag to reposition the image. Similarly, you can rotate an item without using the Rotate tool, and scale multiple items as one without having to group them.
Previously, you could set a radius numerically to round all the corners of a frame. Now you can drag handles to adjust the roundness of any corner or all at once. When creating a frame, you can press the cursor keys to divide it horizontally and/or vertically into a grid of equally sized and spaced items. It even works with ellipses and polygons.
Best of all are the new options for multi-column text. Having set a number of columns within a text frame, you can tell each paragraph to flow between the columns as normal or span multiple columns. This means you can set a headline within the same frame as a story, and more.
Above, within a single six-column frame we've spanned paragraphs to vary the text between one, two and three columns. Once set up, this gives you the flexibility to make each story longer or shorter without having to reposition any frames. But how? With the longawaited automatic column balancing. Layers, central to Photoshop and Illustrator, are sometimes overlooked in InDesign.
Now, though, the Layers panel is well worth a visit even if you don't use layers, because it lists every item on your page and lets you name items to help keep track of content. Finally, InDesign now makes use of multi-threading to compile your work into a PDF in the background, while you get on with what you're doing. Consider us impressed.
5. The Flash app packager
Anyone involved in creating content is probably wondering about developing apps for the iPad – not forgetting the iPhone and iPod touch. But that means knowing how to code in the Apple SDK, or finding someone who can. That's the barrier Adobe is trying to break down with Flash Professional CS5 although, Apple has recently changed its developer terms and conditions to try and prevent this.
Flash content runs on a variety of devices via Flash Player in web browsers and Flash Lite on phones, but Apple's mobile devices don't support it. To get around this, Flash Pro CS5 now has an option to export your project as an iPhone/iPad app. And it works.
Using the beta version, Adobe and a number of independent developers have already released iPhone apps created this way. Some are typical Flash games, but the scope is limitless. For example, CavityFree 3D is a toothbrushing tutor for iPhone from US healthcare firm ICE Dental Systems. Peter Hoven at Essentialtalk, which produced the app, explains: "We're very familiar with Flash, so we found the process straightforward and we expect to develop more apps using CS5."
CONVERTING APPS: Adobe wanted to enable developers to port apps to the iPhone and iPad
For example, dentists might check patients' radiographs on an iPad. Is Flash the right tool to make apps? We found expert opinion divided. Mike Jones, Flash Platform Consultant at FlashGen.Com, thinks the ease of repurposing existing content will drive adoption: "A lot of Flash developers and designers will be looking to deploy games.
There will be work to remodel them for a different form factor, but the game mechanics in most cases will remain the same. Then they can start to harness features like Multi-Touch, the accelerometer and location." For more practical applications, it's significant that Flash can't access the iPhone's own user interface, so apps will look non-standard.
Jones acknowledges the issue, but says: "At the end of the day, if a client wants to deploy to iPhone, this is a way to achieve that. I don't see the lack of native UI support being a barrier, although I'd like the ability to plumb this."
Matt Gemmell at Instinctive Code points out: "The bulk of apps for the iPhone are toys, games and utilities with custom UIs, so Flash seems perfectly acceptable."
Ian Betteridge, an editor at Redwood working on interactive publications for BT, is sceptical. "History is littered with 'write once, deploy anywhere' frameworks, and they never offer the performance or flexibility of native development." Hockenberry's forthcoming book, iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual, encourages native coding.
But Flash Pro demands little or no coding at all. You can even add animation and interaction to your artwork in InDesign CS5 and import from there. Transferring Catalyst projects is possible, though fiddly, via Flash Builder in the Web and Master editions of CS5.
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Seagate and Paramount team up on pre-loaded movies
Seagate and Paramount have teamed up to offer pre-loaded movies on portable hard-drives – offering the user the chance to unlock them for around $10 (£6.50).
In a move that the more cynical among you may liken to next generation bloatware, Seagate will fill its FreeAgent Go hard drive with movies that the user will only be able to access by paying.
As a sop, the new Star Trek movie will be unlocked for your viewing pleasure..
Jump-starter for 10 (dollars)
"We have teamed up to create what we think is a unique offering that will help jumpstart the creation of digital home movie collections," said Malik Ducard, senior vice-president of Paramount Digital Entertainment, who is in charge of digital distribution in the Americas.
"This is a big step for Seagate, we believe we are addressing a real customer need to get movies and view them wherever they want," added Darcy Clarkson, Seagate's vice-president of sales and marketing.
Although we presume that the data can be overwritten should you not want to pay £6.50 for a digital movie which will, presumably, be locked to the device, it seems a slightly odd solution to encouraging people to start a digital film collection.
Currently, new movies iTunes cost around £10.99 and new releases on DVDs around £12, but with VOD becoming more prevalent costs could well fall.
Paramount has also tried a different digital solution in the past - offering a USB stick with the Star Trek movie on.
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Motorola outs 'brainy' 3D TV set-top boxes
Motorola has dipped its toes into 3D waters with the introduction of its DCX line of set-top boxes.
The set-tops are primed for 3D content and have been made idiot-proof, doing away with the nuisance of manually switching between 2D and 3D using a remote.
Motorola is claiming that a nifty bit of software processing brings "an exceptional and seamless 3D TV experience in their home".
Cutting through the press release speak, this means that the set-top will automatically reformat on-screen text and graphics to suit the 3D signal and also make sure that whichever EPG you use will be 3D-friendly.
Straightforward solution
The DCX range also includes the automatic detection of the 3D format used and readies your TV to display the feed correctly.
And the boxes will also support 3D TV over both MPEG4 and MPEG2 audio and visual compression formats.
With 3D TVs still in their infancy in the UK, it's unsure how much a problem switching between 2D and 3D signals will be for consumers. With this in mind, the DCX set-top box could be a 'fix' for something that's pretty minor.
Motorola believes it's latched on to something big, though, announcing that: "The development of this 3D software enhancement gives our service provider customers a straightforward solution for deploying high-quality 3D TV services today using their existing video delivery infrastructure.
"By focusing on the customer's viewing experience Motorola has taken 3D TV to the next level and helped our industry to bring the experience of 3D from the theatre into the living-room."
The 3D TV-enabled set-tops are being shown off at this week's NAB Show in Las Vegas, with no word if the sets will be making their way to the UK.
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Guide: 10 tips to protect your privacy on Facebook
How to block prying eyes (and you boss) from your personal profile
Facebook has a labyrinthine set of privacy controls - and it keeps changing them.
Thankfully, in the last revision of the site it put most of its privacy settings in one place, under the 'Account' link.
This set of tips for Facebook privacy settings shows you how to take full control of your profile, applications, contact details and wall posts under the latest version of Facebook.
These 10 tips are all you need to block prying eyes from your personal profile.
1. Create Friends Lists
Friends Lists allow you to filter Facebook content more easily. Fastest way to create a list: click 'Home' on the main menu bar, then 'Friends' in the sidebar on the left. You'll see the 'Create a List' button at the top of the page. Enter a name for your list – 'Work' or 'Mates', for example - and select friends to add to it.
2. Add people to existing lists
As well as adding people to a list when it's first created you can select and add them after. Click Account > Edit Friends then click 'All Connections'. You'll see your entire list of friends, with an 'Add to List' button next to each. You can also add new friends to lists when inviting them or accepting invitations.
CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS: Friends Lists are your friends. Both literally and metaphorically. Use them to control your privacy settings
3. Protect Facebook status updates
By default, Facebook has three levels of privacy: Friends, Friends of Friends and Everyone. Everything you can see on your Facebook page, from wall posts to photos is restricted to one of these groups. But, you can also exclude people from, seeing content using lists.
Try this: go to 'View my Profile' and go to your Wall. Type in a status update but, before posting it, click the Privacy menu button. It looks like a padlock with an arrow next to it. Choose 'Customise'. In the 'Hide This From' box and type the name of a list. Click OK and your update will be hidden from all the folks in that list...
4. Hide Facebook Wall posts
To hide wall posts from a list, go to Account > Privacy Settings and click 'Profile Information'. There are four entries that affect wall posts, 'Posts by Me', 'Posts by Friends' and 'Comments on Posts' can be filtered by list. Click the Privacy drop down next to an item and choose 'Customise'. Type the name of the list in the 'Hide this From...' box.
CLEAN THE WALL: You can't control what your friends say on your Facebook wall, but you can hide posts from sensitive eyes
5. Prevent Facebook notification spam
There are few things more intrusive than applications that spam you automatically every time they update. The next time someone's annoying Farmville update or Mafia Wars notification appears in your feed, move your cursor over the post. A 'Hide' link appears. When you click it, you'll be given the option to hide all posts from the chosen application or even from that specific friend.
6. Stop embarrassing photo tags
You can't stop people tagging photos of you drunkenly dancing the conga, but you can stop others from seeing the tag. Go to the Privacy Settings section again and choose 'Profile Information'. Next to 'Photos and videos of me' choose 'Custom' from the drop down, then choose 'Only me' from the 'Make this visible to' menu.
NO TAGS: Your boss probably won't be impressed by photos of you passed out in a pool of your own fluids - so hide picture tags from your friends
7. Go invisible
Did that bloke who used to flick spitballs at you in Double Physics find you on Facebook and send you a friend request? This could have been prevented if you'd removed yourself from searches. In Privacy Settings, go to 'Search'. You can configure this so only your current friends can find you.
8. Remove your Facebook profile from search engines
What if your old nemesis is more persistent, turning to Google next to find your Facebook listing? No worries. In the very same 'Search' section of Privacy Settings, untick the box labelled 'Allow' in 'Public Search Results'. Give it a few days and your Facebook profile will quietly disappear from search engines.
SEARCH SETTINGS: You can preview how your profile will appear to people searching for you using Google or Bing - or block search altogether
9. Block intrusive applications
Some applications - including apps that only your friends have installed - use your image and even your profile data in updates. Stop 'em from accessing your information by going to Privacy Settings and choosing "Applications and Websites". The crucial configuration tools are in "What your friends can share about you". The list of available data is a bit unnerving - but don't worry, untick any entry and your info will stay private.
10. Hide your Facebook contact details
As with the majority of Privacy Settings, you can choose to hide certain contact details from specified lists of people. For example, if you don't want work colleagues to see your home number, first make a Friends List of the folks you want to exclude. Go to 'Contact Details' in Privacy setting. Choose 'Other Phone' and 'Custom' to hide the number from that list.
CONTACT MANAGEMENT: Facebook encourages you to enter every contact address you have... Fortunately, you can restrict visibility to a privileged few
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New Sony Walkmans include iPlayer-ready A845
Sony has added three very different Walkmans to its portable audio range, with the high-end and BBC iPlayer compatible A845, the ultra-portable B150 and the wearable W250.
Headlining is the A845, which boasts the rather nice addition of iPlayer compatibility and is apparently the first to support 720 x 404 pixel downloads.
The A845 is 7.2mm thick and weighs 62g – sporting a 2.8 inch OLED screen that delivers "superb colours, high contrast ratio, wide viewing angle and super-fast response time."
W250 and B-series
Next up is the W250 – wearable, water-resistant and obviously made for those who like to listen to music whilst running.
"Designed for today's active lifestyles, the Walkman NWZ-W250 series is the first wire-free MP3 player from Sony that resists rain splashes or the sweat of a gruelling gym session.
"After exercising, just rinse under the tap – or even continue listening to your Walkman during a refreshing post-workout shower."
Finally, the B series (with added bass) is designed for 'young music lovers' and brings bass boost button 'with flashing red LEDs'
The teen-friendly headset is compact (for hiding from the teachers we reckon) but, when combined with leaky headphones, will produce enough sound to annoy an entire bus-load of commuters.
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Google snaps up UK visual search engine Plink
Google has bought its first-ever British start-up – visual search pioneers Plink.
The company has only been around for four months, but the head bods at Google has obviously seen something pretty special in Plink's visual search algorithm.
In some way, Google can pat itself on the back for Plink's success as it 'discovered' the company through an Android Develop Challenge, where Plink's founders won $100,000 in funding for the search application.
Visual search for all
Mark Cummins and James Philbin, founders of Plink, wrote about the acquisition on their blog, explaining: "The visual search engines of today can do some pretty cool things, but they still have a long long way to go.
"We're looking forward to helping the Goggles team build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers, but for everything you see around you. "There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision – it's going to be a lot of fun!"
Cummins and Philbin will be working on Google Goggles which does mean that their app PlinkArt is to take a backseat.
PlinkArt will still be available as a download but it looks likely that it won't be updated.
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Panasonic reveals world's first Micro Four Thirds camcorder
Panasonic has announced that its revolutionary Micro Four Thirds sensor has broken free of its camera confines and is to be included in its upcoming AG-A4100 camcorder.
The professional cam is the first to house the Micro Four Thirds format, something that Panasonic claims will: "deliver the shallow depth of field and wider field of view of a large imager, with the flexibility and cost advantages of use with a growing line of professional quality, industry standard micro 4/3-inch lenses, filters, and adapters."
This is big news for Panasonic – which it has built in collaboration with Olympus – as it widens the reach of Micro Four Thirds into the lucrative sector of movie making.
The camcorder does have an interchangeable lens system, so both film lenses and stills camera lenses should work with it and its native 1080/24p footage will be recorded on to either SDHC or SDXC cards. To make sure you aren't constantly changing cards, there are two slots included on the chassis.
Broadcast standard
As Panasonic is pitching the camcorder at pros, there is the choice between 60Hz and 50Hz shooting (depending on which broadcast standard you are filming for) and there's also a choice of frame rates.
Other features include a built-in ND filter, time code recording, USB 2.0 and mic ports and two-channel digital audio recording.
The Panasonic AG-AF100 has no confirmed UK release date, but will be out at the tail-end of 2010. Pricing is also TBA, but it looks likely to be in the region of $6,000.
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DirectX founder says OnLive is 'doomed'
Alex St John, one of the key founders of Microsoft's DirectX and founder of WildTangent, says that much-hyped cloud gaming service OnLive is "doomed" as the business model is based on "false assumptions".
St John thinks cloud gaming is a great idea for a business, but sees OnLive and other similar offerings failing to understand in how traditional game publishers are still hampered by their ties to traditional offline retail channels.
"The hard to accept reality is that traditional games designed for retail distribution are simply dead in an online world and frankly the publishers of these games will ultimately die with them because they can't afford to adapt," says St John.
"Streaming the same content 'on-demand' won't save them."
Next-gen EAs and Take-Twos
St John adds that we are at the beginning of what he thinks to be "a brave new world for new companies to step in and create the next-generation EAs and Take-Twos.
"I'd list Activision as well, but they've already effectively been bought by World Of Warcraft," he cheekily adds.
The DirectX founder still sees a viable future for cloud gaming, noting that: "I would not be surprised to see successful future games that are designed to be delivered as streaming video, but a new streaming delivery technology will not create a new online second life for this dying genre of content.
"What's exciting to me about this year is that this is the first time in many years that the game industry's future has been so wide open that it's difficult to predict."
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Global tech spending gets a boost in 2010
Global IT spending is set to increase 5.3 per cent in 2010 to $3.39 trillion (£2.20 trillion), according to research and analytics firm Gartner.
The rise is down to a growth in consumer demand for PCs and a weakening US dollar, says Gartner.
Unseasonably robust supply chain
"Following strong fourth quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth," says Richard Gordon, Research Vice President at Gartner.
Nearly 4 percentage points of the growth is down to a projected decline in the value of the US dollar, states the report.
Gartner also sees worldwide software spending rising 5.1 percent to $232 billion (£150 billion), and global IT services spending is rising 5.7 percent to $821 billion (£532 billion).
"The industry experienced some growth in reported outsourcing revenue at the close of 2009, an encouraging sign for service providers," Gartner said, adding it sees this spreading to consulting and system integration in 2010.
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Video: Jailbroken iPad running N64 games
It was only a matter of time, before we saw pictorial and video evidence of Geohot's infamous Blackra1n jailbreak hack hit the iPad.
You can see from the picture right here, that jailbroken iPads are now circulating with the Cydia app installed.
Again, it is only a matter of time before idiot-proof online guides to jailbreaking your new Apple iPad start doing the rounds, much to the dismay of Apple and its teams of lawyers…
Cydia on iPad
Apple has of course issued no comment on the latest iPad jailbreak news. Nor is it ever likely to.
The video below is also bound to send hardcore Nintendophiles into a trance whereby they are immediately living in that dream geek-heaven they pictured in 1994…
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Tesco Mobile cuts the price of its iPhone tariffs
Tesco has announced that it is to cut the price of its iPhone bundles, just four months after introducing the handset to its mobile phone range.
The grocery giant has revealed that it is knocking a full £15 off its unlimited package, meaning that Apple addicts can now get an iPhone 3GS 16GB, with unlimited calls, texts, data and WiFi on a 24-month contract for just £45 per month – a tariff that used to cost £60 a month.
Tariff's revealed
For those who don't want to be locked in for two years (and bearing in mind a new iPhone is just around the corner) customers will also be able to snap up an iPhone 3GS on a 12-month for the knock-down price of £35 per month. For your mullah, you get unlimited texts, data and WiFi, and 750 free voice minutes each month.
The only caveat for this is that you will have to pay either £100 (for an iPhone 3G 8GB), £200 (iPhone 3GS 16GB) or £275 (iPhone 3GS 32GB) up front for the phone.
The new tariffs come after news that Apple is to introduce its iPhone OS 4.0 update to handsets this summer.
This will bring multi-tasking to 3GS handsets and the iBookstore to the device.
To find out more about the new tariffs, flick your browser to www.tescomobileiphone.com.
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In Depth: How Foursquare turned life into a game
Foursquare isn't really a location service at all; it's a way to turn your life into a game and keep track of your score.
It started as a way to make running more fun. He was already tracking his progress with Nike's iPod add-on but as he jogged past a Super Mario graffiti on his regular route around New York future Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley mused that if the real world was a game, he'd have just got extra points.
When the Dodgeball location service (for telling your friends where you were) he built and sold to Google languished (because telling your friends where you are isn't that much fun after the novelty wears off), he decided to see if he could turn life into more of a game.
The points and trophies and maps in Nike's system "take the regular old run of exercising and make it more interesting," says Crowley.
"How can you do that for nightlife and socializing? How do you use software to encourage people to see more movies, read more books?" His answer is "digital candy".
When you 'check in' to a location in Foursquare you get rewards; initially these were points and badges you could earn – Crowley calls them "the equivalent of giving grownups gold stars". And yes, he agrees "you can say this is silly and stupid; it is - but people like it".
They also change their behaviour because of it. When Foursquare created a 'gym rat' badge, users said it made them go back to the gym more. "We're using game mechanics to push people in different directions, pushing them to live more interesting lives. You went across town, you hung out with some new people - you should be levelling up for this."
CHECK IN: When businesses like Foursquare enough to give users special offers, you know it's hitting the mainstream
Whoever checks in at a specific location the most becomes the 'mayor' (this writer was recently the mayor of Heston Services) and Crowley thinks the competitiveness this can cause is no bad thing.
Some users will travel back to a location to reclaim their mayorship, even if it means getting out of bed to do it. "That's crazy," agrees Crowley, "but in a good way. It can knock you out of your regular routine."
Foursquare users started leaving each other suggestions about what to order at a location or where to go next – and they started using the service for practical things like checking to see where they'd left their credit cards the night before.
And business owners saw the opportunity to reward repeat customers by offering free gifts (ranging from burgers and fries to a taxi ride from JFK to free legal representation from a Miami lawyer if you've checked in at five major jails).
Leaving aside the sillier offers, Crowley sees this as a sign that Foursquare is going mainstream; getting partygoers at SXSW to switch to another venue if their party doesn't show up as the most popular in town is one thing but Planet Hollywood is putting free offers to the mayor of the Miracle Mile on a giant billboard on the Las Vegas Strip and a Foursquare user recently proposed to his girlfriend through a checkin.
Scraping the surface
In fact, Crowley thinks the current popularity is "just scraping the surface" – "there's something brewing here that's bigger than the checkins," he claims. "This is the tipping point where you see people get it."
To support that, Foursquare introduced the 'swarm' badge for being one of 50 or more users to check in to the same place, plus a coupon system for businesses to use.
The service also offers venues some basic demographic information about the customers who are checking in to the location, which is something that only the biggest businesses with loyalty programmes have been able to get before. "It's like Google analytics for bricks and mortar."
Tools like that will help Foursquare keep the loyalty of businesses as competition comes along from Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp, AT&T (with its new Buzz.com service) and others.
Usage is still growing: "we're going to hit a million users in the next couple of weeks," Crowley predicts. And the 60-plus apps based on the Foursquare API will also help it fend off rivals. Crowley is complimentary but not about to give up on the Foursquare app; "the apps these people are building are almost more important than the ones we're making".
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Facebook meets UK child protection agency
Facebook execs are set to meet with representatives of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre in Washington this week to discuss ways of making the online social networking service safer for youngsters.
Ceop's director Jim Gamble said there is an urgent need to discuss the possibility of installing 'panic buttons' on Facebook, following the recent murder 17-year-old student Ashleigh Hall by Peter Chapman, a man she met via the site.
Chapman, 33, has been jailed for at least 35 years for the killing.
Hit the panic button
Facebook has previously said that it would not install a panic button on its main pages for users, but it looks like it may well re-consider that view.
"If you're going to operate a business that encourages people to frequent your public place so that you can advertise to them, then let's look after them while they're there," said Mr Gamble.
Ceop received 252 complaints about Facebook during the first three months of 2010 – 40 per cent of which were about the potential "grooming" of children.
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Summer launch for Sharp's new 3D TVs
Japan's Sharp Corporation is set to release its own range of 3D TVs this coming summer.
Sharp is the world's fourth-largest TV manufacturer behind Samsung, Sony and LG.
The news follows the recent launch of Sky's 3D TV service, with the broadcaster showing football matches in 3D in pubs across the land to promote the new telly tech.
Quality 3D content
The industry is clearly gearing up to promote 3D as the next major mass market tech revolution in television. Though whether or not there will be enough quality 3D content later in 2010 to really help sell the service to consumers remains to be seen.
Sharp has said it would launch 3D TVs this summer in Japan, following up with plans to launch later in 2010 in China, the United States and Europe. Just in time for Christmas!
Panasonic and Samsung have already released 3D TVs, while Sony plans to launch its own 3D TVs in June.
Research firm DisplaySearch predicts that demand for 3D TVs will likely grow to 27 million units in 2013, estimating that around 2.5 million units will be sold in 2010
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Opera hits 100 million users
Opera is celebrating after hitting the 100 million mark in global users of its browsers.
Opera has been boosted by the Windows ballot screen, which was brought in by Windows following the company's high-profile complains to the European Commission.
And with a 50/50 split between PC users and people who use Opera on mobile devices, the company is celebrating a 30 per cent year-on-year growth for its flagship desktop browser, according to March figures.
On the right track?
"Opera's record growth shows that we are on the right track, and that as user needs grow, we are growing right along with them," said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software.
"Opera for Desktop delivers the fastest browsing experience on the planet, with a visionary approach to features and a user-friendly design."
Opera's total percentage of the global browser market remains small, although its place in the top six browsers means that it gets a prized place on the first ballot screen from Microsoft.
The company's strong mobile presence and, of course, deals with the likes of Nintendo where Opera is used as the browser on the Wii console, certainly help the company's profile.
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Twitter buys Tweetie, develops official iPhone app
Twitter has announced that it has acquired the developer of Tweetie – one of the leading third-party apps for the popular microblogging service.
Twitter announced earlier this month that it has acquired Atebits, maker of Tweetie, following the huge take-up of Tweetie on Apple's iPhone over the last two years.
Twitter for iPhone
According to a post on the Twitter blog, the app will soon be renamed Twitter for iPhone and will also now be free.
Atebits developer Loren Brichter confirmed on his own blog that he is joining Twitter's mobile team and will be developing Tweetie for the iPad.
Commenting on the acquisition, Hunch Co-founder Chris Dixon noted: "Wow, weird coincidence! a Twitter board member blogged about killing twitter apps the same week Twitter released/bought 2 clients!"
The real question now is, what does the future hold for third-party Twitter apps such as Tweetdeck, Twitterific and Echofon? Only time will tell.
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Party leaders sign up for Facebook and YouTube debates
Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and David Cameron - the three main political party leaders in the UK - have agreed to take part in digital debates on Facebook and YouTube, causing some commentators to suggest we are seeing the beginning of a new era in digital democracy.
Facebook and YouTube users will be able to suggest question on the sites, which can then be voted on by the public.The leaders will then answer the most popular questions.
Post video questions
Users can post questions in text or video in the categories of economy, health and education, law and order, foreign policy and miscellaneous.
The three leaders have pledged to post video responses 10 days before election day.
Google's Director of Communications Peter Barron said: "Although the televised debates will be a historic first, we feel that that there is an opportunity for a different type of platform that allows voters to be in charge of the questions.
"By collaborating with Facebook to put together one initiative we hope to enable as many voters as possible from across the UK to take part."
Facebook's Director of Policy Richard Allan added that: "The dawn of the digital election this year is a transformative moment for democracy in Britain. By allowing voters to cross-examine their leaders, these digital debates will put the voters firmly in charge.
"This marks a decisive shift away from the constraints of top-down traditional media and will take full advantage of unique scale and reach of Facebook, thus changing the way that politicians campaign for good."
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Palm reportedly puts itself up for sale
Palm has apparently put itself up for sale following less than positive financial results in recent times.
The news was broken by Bloomberg, which states that Palm has employed the services of Goldman Sachs to help it find a buyer.
An unnamed source within the team said that the while the sale isn't public, both HTC and Lenovo have tentatively enquired about making a bid for Palm.
Pre-failing
Palm has been ailing for years now, despite belief of a strong renaissance with the unveiling of the Palm Pre based on a radical new operating system in 2009.
However, a long time to market and only one other device, the Pixi, meant that the new webOS didn't get the backing it needed, resulting in a small application store, which is crucial for today's smartphones.
Palm has a long history in the smartphone market, especially in the US, and could still be seen as decent asset for another brand looking to expand its operations, which is why the likes of HTC appear to be interested.
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In Depth: 8 stunning new features in Adobe Creative Suite 5
Adobe has officially announced its Creative Suite 5 software and is offering a sneak peak of the new packages online today.
Our friends at Computer Arts have been testing new versions of the core applications for the past month. It will be putting these powerful new tools in the hands of creative professionals including João Oliviera, Matt Booth and Alex Donne Johnson in issue 175, on sale May 6 in the UK.
You can check out Computer Arts' 40 favourite new features over at the magazine's site, but here are our favourites for each key app.
1. Fireworks CS5 enables you to constrain object proportions, edit gradients and adjust stroke alignments using the Properties panel, with a single action.
2. Flash CS5 has an iPhone Compiler: whether Apple likes it or not, it's in Flash, and it enables Flash designers to output ActionScript 3 projects to run as native applications for iPhone.
3. Create paths along 1-, 2- or 3-point perspective in Illustrator CS5, for elaborate street scenes, visualisations and so on.
4. Rather than masking objects frame-by-frame in After Effects CS5, train After Effects to do it automatically with a few strokes of the new Roto Brush, shaving hours from rotoscoping jobs.
5. Dreamweaver CS5's support for PHP-based content management systems means you can now tweak and test live sites based on Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla! or other PHP-based deployments from within Dreamweaver.
6. Photoshop CS5's Content-Aware Fill is awesome. When you cut objects out, Photoshop can automatically fill resulting space with surrounding scenery or patterns.
7. A fully functional layers panel in InDesign CS5 enables you to lock, reorder or hide text frames, images or shapes on your pages.
8. Premiere Pro CS5 now supports an expanded range of direct-to-disk formats including Sony XDCAM HD 50, Panasonic AVCCAM and AVC-Intra
Now find out about the other brilliant new features over at Computer Arts.
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Adobe Creative Suite 5 officially announced
Adobe has officially announced its Creative Suite 5 software and is offering a sneak peak of the new packages online today.
CS5 has over 250 new features and capabilities with Photoshop getting some radical updates and moving over to 64-bit on the Mac.
Photoshop CS5 makes it simpler to detect the borders of objects within an image, making it far easier to remove that object or apply effects.
The best feature has to be the Content-Aware Fill - when you cut objects out of the image, Photoshop can automatically fill the resulting space with scenery or patterns.
There are also new brush tools that are similar to those found in Corel Painter, with the ability to merge "wet paints" and different strokes created by the angle of a brush.
The other key apps such as Illustrator CS5, Dreamweaver CS5 and Flash CS5 have also been updated and are all incorporated in the Web Premium version of the suite.
There's also a brand new tool - Flash Catalyst – that's designed to help traditional print designers move into interactive design.
It also seems that Flash CS5 will enable developers to convert Flash animations into HTML5 Canvas code. That means that HTML5-supporting browsers won't need the Flash plug-in installed to display Flash-based content. Now that's cool.
Adobe hasn't had the best of weeks after the revelation that a clause in Apple's new iPhone OS 4 developer contract will forbid developers from using conversion tools to prepare non-native apps for sale in the App Store.
And that will have major repercussions for the much-touted Packager for iPhone app within Adobe Flash Professional CS5.
"We are aware of developer concern that has arisen around the language in Apple's new iPhone OS v4 SDK agreement which affects multiple developer ecosystems, of which the Flash developer community is one," said Roger Risdal, Partner Product Manager at Adobe on his blog.
"We are still in the process of trying to understand exactly what the new language means for both Adobe and Apple customers and other developer communities that could be affected by the update to the SDK."
CS5 also includes technology from web analytics firm Omniture, which Adobe bought last October for $1.8 billion.
The suite will be available within the next 30 days.
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