Acclivity has announced AccountEdge 2011 for Mac and Windows. The latest version of their small business accounting software marks a new era for the 20-year old desktop application, with a feature list including an app for iPad and iPhone, a new time-tracking web application, and advanced retainers and progress billing capabilities. “We’re happy to announce our iPad and iPhone app will let people take their business on the road,” says Managing Partner Tom Nash. “You will be able to enter sales and expenses from anywhere and sync that data with your company’s Mac or Windows desktop version of AccountEdge.” AccountEdge Mobile is currently available in the Apple App Store (iPad only, with the iPhone version soon to be released). The free app syncs cards, items, activities, and jobs, to create quotes and orders, and service and time billing sales, activity slips and expense transactions. Time Tracker is a web application that lets employees and sub-contractors enter time sheets and...

An unofficial iPhone and iPad app that let you view WikiLeaks site content and follow the WikiLeaks Twitter account on the go has been pulled from the Apple App Store, reports "TechCrunch" (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/apple-removes-wikileaks-app-from-app-st...). The Wikileaks app cost US$1.99 and promised "instant access to the world’s most documented leakage of top secret memos and other confidential government documents.” "Its entry into the app store on December 17th was actually surprising, as Apple is usually quite strict and somewhat vague about its app approval standards," says "TechCrunch." "WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange are quite controversial, to put it lightly but I’m not sure if the app directly violated anything in Apple’s TOS."

The former Flextronics International manager accused of leaking details about the iPad and iPhone 4 won release on US$150,000 bail in the insider-trading case, reports "Bloomberg" (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-20/ex-flextronics-manager-appears-...). Walter Shimoon was granted bail Monday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard G. Skomal in San Diego on conditions that included securing his bail with $120,000 of the equity in his home. Shimoon, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Canada according to his lawyer, has owned the home since 2003 with his wife, Linda Awdishu, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, reports "Bloomberg." 
On Dec. 16 it was reported that former employees at major tech companies like Apple, Dell, Advanced Micro Devices, Flextronics International and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, sold inside information about their companies to hedge funds through an expert-networking firm, according to a criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors in...

Apple has released iAd Producer (http://developer.apple.com/iad/iadproducer/) for developers and designers who want to "design and assemble high-impact, interactive content for iAd." iAd Producer automatically manages the HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript behind your iAd. For advanced developers, iAd Producer offers sophisticated JavaScript editing and debugging, along with a powerful extension mechanism that enables them to create and re-use their own page templates and components iAd Producer is available for download on Apple’s developer web site. It requires Mac OS X 10.6.5, Safari 5 and iOS SDK 4.0. iAds combine the emotion of TV advertising with the interactivity of Internet advertising, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Apple has iAd commitments for 2010 totaling over US$60 million, which represents almost 50 percent of the total forecasted US mobile ad spending for the second half of 2010, says Jobs.

He adds that iAd, which is built into iOS 4, allows users to stay within their app...

Ottawa is considering offers iPads to federal bureaucrats to cut down on paper and printing costs. In fact, about 20 treasury board workers are already using the high-tech device as part of a pilot project, reports "The Niagra Falls Review" (http://niagarafallsreview.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2897516). The senior officials, including several deputy ministers, have been using the Apple tablet computer since the fall, with the cost of the project at $23,500, the article adds. The officials says the gadget could save hundreds of dollars a year in paper and printing costs for each staff member equipped with the device.

The top 50 CEOs delivered an average total shareholder return of 73.3% since June 2007, according to a new study published by "Chief Executive" magazine and calculated by Applied Finance Group. That performance handily beats the 14.9% average of the S&P 500 during the same period. Priceline CEO Jeff Boyd took the spot as the #1 value creator based on the success he has had in taking his company's online travel services to international markets, expanding market share and growing the top line -- while keeping tight controls on costs. Apple CEO Steve Jobs ranks number four on the list. Others in the top 10 are: Aflac's Daniel P. Amos (#2), Federated Investors' J. Christopher Donahue (#3), Amazon's Jeffrey P. Bezos (#5), Colgate-Palmolive's Ian M. Cook (#6), Ecolab's Douglas M. Baker Jr. (#7), DeVry's Daniel Hamburger (#8), Fastenal's William D. Oberton (#9) and C.H. Robinson Worldwides's John P. Wiehoff (#10). "The past 12 months have not been an easy time to grow - or for...

ComScore (http://www.comscore.com), a company that measures the digital world, says holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 47 days of the November-December 2010 holiday season is looking good, thanks, in part, to the iPad and laptops. For the holiday season-to-date, US$27.46 billion has been spent online, marking a 12% increase versus the corresponding days last year. The most recent week (week ending Dec. 17) reached $5.15 billion in spending, an increase of 14%versus the corresponding week last year, with four individual days surpassing $900 million, led by Green Monday (Monday, Dec. 13) with $954 million and Free Shipping Day (Friday, Dec. 17) with $942 million. Free Shipping Day achieved a 61% increase versus the corresponding shopping day last year, highlighting the appeal and success of the promotion in which more than 1,500 merchants offered free shipping. Computer hardware ranks as the top growing category for the holiday season to date with a 25% increase...

On the night of Dec. 20-21, a total lunar eclipse will dress the moon in holiday red for more than three hours. For 72 minutes of that eclipse, the Earth's shadow will hide the moon in complete darkness. This unusual celestial event is visible for hundreds of millions of viewers across North America. The last year North America saw a total lunar eclipse on the winter solstice was 1638. The next is 2094 -- making this event a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

 To ensure people can track this eclipse, Southern Stars is releasing the latest version of its SkySafari LiteT iPhone app for free through Dec. 22. SkySafari Lite is an app that correctly predicts and displays this eclipse. It features research-grade accuracy, the largest celestial database of any mobile planetarium app, and descriptive content written by experts. To download SkySafari Lite now, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skysafari-lite/id321419308?mt=8. More info, including video and a link to the app, can be found at...

Application Systems North America has updated ContaxCRM Suite 2.1.5, an update of its contact management solution for Mac OS X (10.4 and higher) and Windows. ContaxCRM allows individuals and companies to better manage their day-to-day contacts and relationships, and build a detailed contact history for customers, suppliers, prospects, members and other contacts. To celebrate this release Application Systems is offering the coupon code XMAS25 which will give a 25% discount on any purchases made from the Arten Science store. iPhone and iPad integration with ContaxCRM Suite will be available next spring. This will be available as a free upgrade to all existing customers. ContaxCRM Suite consists of four modules, which can be used individually or together as a fully functional Contact Relationship Management Solution.

"The Daily," publishing mogul Rupert Murdocks's newspaper developed specifically for the iPad, will launch the week of Jan. 17, reports "All Things D" (http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20101217/rupert-murdochs-daily-ipad-news...). "The Daily" will be published (well, daily), will sell for 99 cents a week, will use lots of video, will have "cool multimedia bells and whistles, including some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about," the article adds. What's more, Apple CEO Steve Jobs might participate in a launch event. What's more, "The Daily" is supposed to use a new “push” subscription feature from Apple, where iTunes automatically bills customers on a weekly or monthly basis, and a new edition shows up on customers’ iPads every morning, reports "All Things D."

Singular Software has launched a DualEyes for OS X public beta program. DualEyes is a standalone application for the automatic synchronization of video and audio clips in dual-system audio production. Designed to work alongside any video editing application, DualEyes is streamlined to accomplish the task of replacing in-camera scratch audio with separately recorded high-quality audio. The DualEyes for OS X public beta program is available for Mac OS X 10.5 and later. To download the DualEyes for OS X public beta, go to http://www.singularsoftware.com/downloads.html .

iTunes' share of the paid digital download market rose to 66.2% in the third quarter of 2010 from 63.2%, according to new data from the NPD research group (http://www.npd.com). Amazon's share of the paid digital-download market rose to 13.3% in the third quarter, from 11% the year earlier, Distribution executives at record labels say the disparity between the two may be even steeper, with Amazon commanding just 6% to 10% of the market in any given week, and Apple closer to 90%, notes the "Wall Street Journal" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870407380457602391388953637...). Steep discounts are a cornerstone of Amazon's strategy to gain traction in a market in which iTunes remains the dominant player, though a debate has arisen among music labels about whether such discounts risk undermining the value of their products, the article adds.

Apple has posted AirPort Utility 5.5.2. You can obtain it via the Software Updates component of Mac OS X's Systems Preferences app. The 10.29MB download requires Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later and contains bug fixes and improvements, including the following: ° Resolves an issue that caused the DHCP settings tab to display incorrectly; ° Resolves an issue that caused the application to quit unexpectedly when automatically launched; ° Resolves an issue that prevented the network password from being stored in the Keychain when the network on the 5GHz band was named differently.

Akvis (http://www.akvis.com) has released Akvis Refocus 1.0 for Mac OS X and Windows systems. The US$39 app improves the sharpness of out-ofocus images. The program can process the entire photo or bring into focus only the selected part to make the subject stand out against the background. To achieve a more realistic selective focus effect, you can sharp one part of the photo and blur the rest. Akvis Refocus is also helpful with landscape photos. When shooting an object or a landscape at a distance, you may notice that the picture looks hazy. Akvis Refocus will make the photo more distinct. The program is available in plu-gin and standalone versions. The plugin version is compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64-bit.). The software runs on Mac OS X 10.4 and higher. Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/Win7 and on Macintosh Mac OS X 10.4-10.6. Registered users of Akvis Enhancer can get this program for free. Other users can benefit from the Christmas offer (minus 30% on all programs, coupon code...

Apple has released Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 3.5 for Aperture 3 and iPhoto ‘11, adding raw image support for certain Canon, Leica, Nikon, and Panasonic cameras. The 6.3MB download requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher. You can obtain it via the Software Updates component of Mac OS X's Systems Preferences app.

Celmaro has updated Minco (http://www.celmaro.com/minco), its time tracking solution for Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard"), to version 1.2. The upgrade adds two new customizable output adapters. The URL connection adapter allows to publish work times to a web server via GET and POST requests. The task note adapter add the functionality to log the work times in the note of the task itself. Minco integrates with iCal and allows to write time logs in self specified formats to the file system. It can also visualize the daily spend time in iCal and hereby allows sharing with others. The software runs in the system menu to give access via shortcuts. The iuser interface is consequently optimized and focused on tracking, adding, and editing tasks. Minco shows the elapsed time or the acquired revenue in a display that can focus on a task, day, week, month or year. Revenues for tasks can be calculated based on calendars and tags, which allows you to build complex billing schemes. The iCal...

Corner-A today has released LightFrame 2.2 (http://corner-a.com/lightframe), an update of the app for Mac OS X 10.6 and higher. The new version offers batch processing, new built-in resources and user interface improvements. LightFrame is a solution for framing digital photos with your Mac. It supports all image formats that are supported by Mac OS X, including RAW images. LightFrame costs US$30. Version 2.2 is a free update for registered users of version 2.x.

MacTech has posted a preview of its latest benchmarks for virtualization, comparing Parallels Desktop to VMware Fusion. You can see the findings at http://www.mactech.com/2010/12/16/preview-virtualization-benchmarks . This project isn't a product review; it's a benchmarking analysis. You should use it as part of your decision in choosing virtualization software combined with other factors such as product features, interface preferences, and support to make your product choice. "MacTech" will soon be releasing comprehensive results on the tests of VMware Fusion 3.1 vs. Parallels Desktop 6 and the January issue of "MacTech Magazine" in print will be talking more about virtualization. If you want to get that issue delivered to your door, you can subscribe at http://macte.ch/subscribe now . Virtualization is also one of the key topics at MacTech Boot Camp (http://www.mactech.com/bootcamp) in San Francisco on Jan. 26, 2011.

Here are the latest iPhone/iPod touch/iPod/iPad apps announced. You can find 'em at the Apple App Store (http://www.itunes.com/appstore/). Aquafadas has announced Xmas Alphabet for the iPad. The US$1.99 app lets children "discover the amazing world of words and letters in a Christmasy spirt." It comes with backgrounds with Christmas characters, letting kids to learn to spell words from a Christmas themed choice of vocabulary. Amazing Books has released My First Trip to Washington DC 3D 1.0, an interactive 3D travel book that showcases Washington DC. In the $4.99, you join the Lil' Travelers, Hanna, Tommy and Arthur as they take a vacation in Washington DC over the Fourth of July holiday. The first in Amazing Books new Lil' Traveler series, "My First Trip to Washington DC 3D" is designed for children three-plus, is 43 pages in length and packed with fun facts and animation. AX apps has revealed Funky Fish 1.0 for iOS, a $0.99 side-scroller game set underwater. In landscape mode the...

The mobile operating system designed to save Microsoft’s mobile business is struggling.  A month and a half after its launch, Windows Phone 7 is outnumbered over 100 to 1 by both Android and iPhone, based on traffic through the Chitika ad network (http://chitika.com/). Over the past three weeks, for every one Windows Phone 7 impression Chitika saw, there were 110 Android impressions and 172 iPhone impressions.  That number is remaining relatively stable, with very little significant market share growth in WP7, according to Chitika. "Given that both Android and iPhone see their biggest spikes in usage during weekends, Microsoft may do well to position Windows Phone 7 as a BlackBerry nemesis rather than an iPhone/Android killer – the corporate worker’s smartphone of 2011," says Daniel Ruby, research director, Online Insights, Chitika.

Other World Computing (http://www.macsales.com) has expanded its storage solution line with the new Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini bus powered portable hardware RAID storage solution. It features 14 pre-configured models with hardware RAID-1 “mirrored” redundancy for “live activity” data protection -- or RAID-0 “stripe” for maximum data transfer speed. The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini contains two 2.5-inch hard drives or OWC Mercury SSDs for up to 2TB of capacity, a “quad interface” of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA connections for plug and play data transfer speeds up to 300MB/second with Mac and PC computers. Measuring the approximate size of a portable CD player -- 5.6 x 6.1 x 1.1 -- the bus powered (no AC adapter is needed) Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini’s flat side by side two drive design enables it to fit into laptop, photography, and other gear carrying bags. It's an under two pound, fanless solution The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual mini is available from OWC...

Apple is set to launch upgraded MacBook Pro and iMac models in the first half of 2011, according to a "DigiTimes" report (http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20101215PD223.html), quoting "sources from upstream component makers." But don't look for a 7-inch iPad. The sources told "DigiTimes" that Apple plans to launch at least four upgraded MacBook Pros, as well as an iMac that features a new panel size and a price point for the mainstream market. No details are given on the latter, but, per "DigiTimes," the upgraded MacBook Pro notebooks will feature a slight change in chassis design and an upgrade to the new Mac OS X Lion operating system, which should help Apple's notebook shipments grow 30-40% on year in 2011. (Note that Lion isn't expected to ship before summer.) Additionally, "Digitimes" reports (http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20101215PD214.html) that pple has reportedly added two additional touch panel makers, Chimei Innolux and Cando, to its touch panel supplier list for the iPad 2...

Nokia has filed suit in the U.K., in Germany, and in the Netherlands, alleging Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod infringe on 13 patents held by Nokia relating to numerous functions, including touch user interfaces, on-device app stores, signal noise suppression, antenna structures, message functionality and chipsets, caller ID, and the integration of multiple radios. "Nokia inventions protected by these patents include several which enable compelling user experiences," Paul Melin, Nokia's vice president of intellectual property, says. "For example, using a wiping gesture on a touch screen to navigate content, or enabling access to constantly changing services with an on-device app store, both filed more than ten years before the launch of the iPhone." The whole legal brouhaha has a convoluted background. In September, Apple sued Nokia in Britain, reiterating the claims it had already made in a lawsuit in the US. In May Nokia announced the filing of another lawsuit against Apple, in...

DVDxDV (http://www.dvdxdv.com/rip-dvd) has released DVDxDV 2.0 for the Mac. DVDxDV is software that rips unencrypted standard definition DVDs for importing into iMovie, iDVD, Final Cut Pro, and Avid Media Composer. This new version features an iMovie 11 export preset for both widescreen and full screen projects. While most DVD converters produce low quality MP4 video, DVDxDV transfers the video to a new QuickTime movie that is identical to the original DVD. Version 2.0 features an improved user interface designed to make it easy to select a certain scene on a DVD. Instead of extracting the entire DVD, you can pick out a specific scene by using the "Edit Points" feature. In the DVDxDV Timeline, position the slider to the place where you want the video to start and press the "in point" button and then move the slider to the where you want the video to end and select the "out point" button. When the video is extracted, it will contain only the part of the video between the "in" and "...