MAXON, the developer of CINEMA 4D -- 3D animation software for film, broadcast and motion graphics professionals -- has entered into a strategic alliance with Adobe to further collaborate on technology "that provides creatives in the motion graphics and visual effects industry with new levels of digital media content creation."

As part of the alliance, both companies are expected to collaborate and engineer a pipeline between Adobe After Effects software and CINEMA 4D.

"CINEMA 4D is a leading 3D solution, and the one After Effects users have come to know and love because of its ease-of-use, speed, stability and especially tight integration with the 2D compositing application," says Harald Egel, co-founder and CEO, MAXON. "We look forward to continued collaboration between our programming and marketing teams to ensure that the interoperability of our software products makes a positive impact on artists seeking to easily and fully integrate 3D into their production...

Smile (www.smilesoftware.com) has announced PDFpen 6.0, the latest version of its all-purpose PDF editing tool. The upgrade of PDFpen features export to Microsoft Word format and a new editing bar for faster access to tools and properties.

PDFpenPro has added document permission setting and automatic form creation. The updated document window appearance is enhanced with a new dropdown menu to access sidebar options for search, annotations, thumbnails, and table of contents. Go to for details.

PDFpenPro 6.0 requires Mac OS X 10.7 or higher. It costs US$99.95 for single user license. Family and office packs are also available. Upgrades from earlier version are $30. Version 6.0 is a free upgrade to the Smile Store version for purchases made on or after Oct.15, 2012; no free upgrades are available in the Mac App Store.

Ergonis Software (www.ergonis.com) has released PopChar X 6.2, an improved version of the company's Mac OS X tool for efficiently dealing with fonts and special characters.

The new version includes usability improvements that make finding and inserting special characters and umlauts easier than ever. The new version also supports Unicode 6.2, the latest release of the Unicode Standard. Plus, it adds a new font matching technique that finds fonts for font family names.

PopChar X 6.2 requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher. It can be purchased on the Ergonis Software website. The upgrade to PopChar 6.2 is free for anyone who owns a valid license for PopChar X 6. Upgrade paths are available for owners of older licenses.

Southern Stars (www.southernstars.com) has released a new iOS app called Satellite Safari. It's available at the Apple App Store (http://tinyurl.com/cjhj9k7) for US$2.99 (40% off the regular price) until April.

Satellite Safari is Southern Stars' "tour guide" to the universe of satellites that have been launched around Earth. Later this year, it can become your personal gateway to a real satellite in orbit that you can take pictures and send broadcasts from.
Satellite Safari is the official app of the SkyCube mission (www.skycube.com).

The SkyCube satellite is scheduled to launch and deploy from the International Space Station in September, 2013. When it does, you'll be able to request your own images of the Earth, and broadcast your own radio messages...

THX has filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computer lineup infringe on its 2008 patent for speaker technology, reports "The MacObserver" (www.macobserver.com).

Here's a summary of the patent: "A narrow profile speaker unit comprises at least one speaker outputting sound towards an internal surface and through a duct with an output terminus, such as a slot, having a narrow dimension, effectively changing the cross-section of the speaker's audio output wave. A pair of speakers may face one another, outputting sound towards a common output slot. Multiple pairs of speakers may be used to form an inline speaker unit for increased sound output. A slotted speaker unit may include multiple speakers facing the same direction, towards a groundplane or reflecting surface, and having parallel apertures for allowing sound radiation. The speaker units may be integral with or attached...

Coding Turtle has announced Scrambler 1.2, an update to their encryption app for the Mac.

It allows users to encrypt their files and folders before sending them to other Macs over untrusted email, instant messaging or cloud-based services. Scrambler resides in the menu bar -- providing a small icon in the upper-right area of the screen. To encrypt, users drag files or folders on Scrambler's icon and type in a password via a small and non-intrusive pop-up window.

Version 1.2 adds a more secure encrypted file format. The new file format also produces more compact files -- about 25% smaller. Scrambler 1.2 adds the optional ability to automatically delete the original item(s) after encryption/decryption.

Scrambler 1.2 is available on the Mac App Store (http://tinyurl.com/d6y5qxk) for US$2.99. It is also available as a shareware from the developer's website (...

An Apple laptop owner lodged a putative class action in California federal court on Wednesday accusing the company of tricking consumers into paying premium prices for MacBook Pro computers with "shoddy" retina display screens manufactured by LG Corp., reports "Law 360" (http://tinyurl.com/anaj9ck).

Although Apple advertises the MacBook Pro's liquid crystal display screens as the best of its kind, some of the computers contain LG screens that suffer from brightness, color and image display flaws while others feature better screens made by Samsung Corp., according to the suit. The suit says Apple has "tricked" some customers into buying MacBook Pros not having Samsung screens.

PCI Geomatics, a developer of remote sensing and photogrammetric software and systems, says it now supports SPOT-6 imagery within its software suite.

SPOT-6, a new satellite built and operated by Astrium was launched on Sept. 9, 2012, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India. SPOT-6 is an optical imaging satellite capable of imaging the Earth with a resolution of 1.5 m Panchromatic and 6 m Multispectral (Blue, Green, Red, Near-IR).

"We have worked closely with Astrium and the European Commissions’ Joint Research Centre (JRC) to validate our software’s support for SPOT-6  imagery," says Dr. Philip Cheng, senior scientist at PCI Geomatics. "PCI’s customers rely on us to provide support when new sensors are launched. Adding support for SPOT-6 was relatively straightforward as the data format is very similar to other PCI supported sensors that have been recently launched by Astrium, such as the Pleiades Constellation."

The support for SPOT-6 will be available...

Hamrick Software, the developer of the VueScan scanning software, has released its latest version 9.2.10. It adds native support for 339 Brother scanners to VueScan Desktop.

Of these, 204 are network capable which means they will also work with VueScan Mobile. VueScan Desktop will work on Brother scanners directly for Mac OS X and Linux, which means that no Brother drivers are required. In addition, VueScan no longer needs a WIA driver on Windows or an ICA driver on Mac OS X.

VueScan Desktop now supports more than 2,100 scanners, and is available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Ed Hamrick, the developer of VueScan, says the software offers a full range of advanced features; including options for scanning faded slides and prints and automatically adjusting images to optimum color balance that reduces the need to manually do it in Photoshop. It includes built-in IT8 color calibration of scanners, producing colors that look true to life, batch scanning and other...

Apple has released version 10.8.3 of Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Apple says it's is recommended for all Mountain Lion users and includes new features and fixes, including:

° The ability to redeem iTunes gift cards in the Mac App Store using your Mac's built-in camera;

° Boot Camp support for installing Windows 8;

° Boot Camp support for Macs with a 3 TB hard drive;

° A fix for an issue that could cause a file URL to quit apps unexpectedly;

° A fix for an issue that may cause Logic Pro to become unresponsive when using certain plug-ins;

° A fix for an issue that may cause audio to stutter on 2011 iMacs;

° A fix for an issue in Contacts that may cause cards to print out of order;

° A fix for an issue that may cause the desktop picture to change after logging out or restarting;

° A fix for an issue in Messages that may cause messages to appear out of order after waking from sleep;

° A fix for an issue that may cause...

Apple has posted MacBook Pro Retina SMC Update 1.0 (http://tinyurl.com/c6gg9e8). It resolves a rare issue where users may experience slow frame rates when playing graphics-intensive games on the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

It also includes bug fixes for Power Nap, wake from sleep and fan control. MacBook Pro Retina SMC Update 1.0 is a 504KB download and requires Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later.

A new tool for iOS and Mac app developers has been released. Deploymate helps developers identify unavailable, deprecated and obsolete API [application program interface] usage in their Xcode projects.

Unavailable API usage will often crash iOS and Mac apps and the only way to find these crashes was manual testing. Deploymate aims to solve this problem by statically analyzing Xcode projects and source files to find such API usage and warn the developer before it's too late. Deploymate is available for all Macs running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later for an introductory price of US$9.99 at http://tinyurl.com/c8or6h9 .

Deploymate is based on Clang/LLVM compiler and utilizes this technology to detect Cocoa and Cocoa Touch API usage in Xcode projects. With its scanner, developers can run analysis on their code and find API usage that may cause problems in their apps.