At this week's National Association of Broadcasts (NAB) event, Sonnet announced the Echo Express III-D desktop and Echo Express III-R rackmount Thunderbolt-to-PCI Express Expansion Chassis, the newest members of the company's Echo family of Thunderbolt expansion chassis for PCIe cards.

Featuring three PCIe slots, a 300W power supply, and 75W auxiliary power connector, both new Thunderbolt-to-PCIe expansion chassis enable the use of a wide variety of high-performance PCI Express cards -- originally designed for use in desktop computers -- with any Mac with a Thunderbolt port. These Sonnet products support every Thunderbolt-compatible PCIe card available.

Both the Echo Express III-D desktop and Echo Express III-R rackmount chassis feature dual Thunderbolt ports to support daisy-chaining of devices, and are designed for users needing the optimum solution for connecting three PCIe cards to their computer. Each new chassis supports up to three full-length, full-height,...

At this week's National Association of Broadcasts (NAB) event, Blackmagic Design announced the US$995 Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, a pocket sized digital cinema camera that includes features such as Super 16mm sized 1080HD sensor, super wide 13 stops of dynamic range, built in SD card recorder for Apple ProRes, lossless compressed CinemaDNG RAW capture and active Micro Four Thirds lens mount.

The new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera has most of the features of its bigger brother, including its feature film look, but has been redesigned with a smaller size that is less than an inch thick and can be held easily in your hand, says Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design. It's so small that it can be used in situations in the field where a larger camera could be dangerous, he adds.
The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera features an industry standard Super 16 sensor size. The camera includes a SD card recorder that allows the full sensor dynamic range to be recorded in...

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) -- which recently denied Apple’s trademark application for the iPad mini because Apple's patent filing merely described the product -- has now withdrawn its objections, notes "MacRumors."

A second objection related to Apple's use of the iPad mini overview page as its specimen proving that the named product was being offered for sale. "The issue has in fact mostly been resolved without Apple having had to address the examiner's objections," notes "MacRumors" (www.macrumors.com). "Presumably responding to the publicity surrounding the initial decision, the USPTO has preemptively withdrawn its two main objections to Apple's objections."

Avid has announced Avid Pro Tools 11, an update of its digital audio workstation for music and audio production. This latest version enables audio professionals to take on the most demanding productions with new, high-...

Sorenson Media has released Sorenson Squeeze 9, an upgrade of its video encoder that improves the encoding workflow and optimizes multi-screen video encoding.

Benefits of the newest version of Squeeze include industry-first HTML5 optimization; an enhanced, more intuitive streamlined user interface and optimized user experience; enhancements to video quality and speed; and improvements to the product’s review and approval functionality.

According to Mitch Holyoak, vice president of engineering for Sorenson Media, says Squeeze 9 makes encoding video files for playback in HTML5 easy and intuitive. Users simply drag and drop a single HTML5 preset onto a source file, and Squeeze then automatically creates two output renditions of the file -- one in MP4, the other in WebM -- together with a coding of the video onto an HTML5 web page, using the video tag. The two renditions enable native video playback in all major browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and...

A "handful" of Samsung smartphones infringe an Apple patent on text selection, according to the initial determination of a U.S. International Trade Commission judge, notes the "IDG News Service" (http://tinyurl.com/br27qyd).

The patent in question concerns the selection of text on the browser of a handheld device by covering it with a translucent layer, where the layer becomes active for user inputs, the article adds. In his initial decision, Judge Thomas Pender found several Samsung phones did infringe two parts of U.S. patent RE41,922, filed by Apple in 2002.

A federal judge will not allow a lawsuit accusing Apple, Google and other technology companies of conspiring not to poach each other's employees to proceed as a class action, "but left the door open for affected workers to eventually sue as a group," reports "Reuters" (http://tinyurl.com/ckhy4yx)

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, said the five software engineers who brought the case had yet to show that the proposed class plaintiffs had enough in common to allow them to sue together. However, in light of new evidence, she said the nature of the "alleged overarching conspiracy" and desire to litigate it all at once weighed "heavily" in favor of class certification. As a result, she gave the plaintiffs a chance to seek class certification again, notes "Reuters."

Mushkin has announced the worldwide availability of its new line of 1.8-inch Chronos GO SATA III (6Gbps) solid-state drives (SSDs), now shipping in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities.

The new line of 1.8-inch drives feature a smaller, lighter footprint than the previous generation, and offer performance and reliability improvements for power users, according to Nicolas Villalobos, director of Global Marketing at Mushkin. Originally designed as an enterprise-class drive, the new Chronos SSD has been adapted and re-engineered to deliver the highest possible storage capacity in a drive optimized for high-performance and ultimate reliability, even in the most demanding 24x7 environments, he adds. For more information, visit http://www.mushkin.com/ .

Third Street Software has announced the availability of preview releases of Sente 6.6 for Mac and iPad. It's an update to the academic reference manager.

New features include a complete overhaul of the library synchronization engine to make it easier to keep reference libraries synchronized across multiple Macs and iPads. Sente 6.6 also now supports Find-in-PDF on both platforms and there is a new, streamlined PDF annotation interface on the iPad.

Sente 6.6 for Mac is available at http://tinyurl.com/bsk4fqf . The iPad is available in the Apple App Store. The final release of Sente 6.6 will be available later this month.

MAXON -- a leading developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions -- has revealed at NAB 2013 the first step in its strategic alliance with Adobe, aimed at delivering a new level of integration between its 3D application, CINEMA 4D, and Adobe After Effects.

The recently revealed next release of Adobe’s industry leading software will include two MAXON technologies directly within the new Adobe After Effects: CINEWARE and CINEMA 4D Lite. CINEWARE: The New Live 3D Pipeline between CINEMA 4D and After Effects, which eliminates intermediate rendering between applications, is made possible by CINEWARE, which establishes a bridge between the two applications.

CINEMA 4D Lite: Also included in the next version of After Effects is a taste of CINEMA 4D's workflow and toolset. This limited version of CINEMA 4D gives artists access to a selection of the software’s functionality. Since CINEMA 4D Lite launches directly from within After Effects...

From the makers of Localscope, the popular location browser app for the iPhone, comes Phlo for the Mac, a tool for searching your favorite websites.

With a few keystrokes, it lets you jump right to the search results for anything that you need to lookup on a site of your choice. Phlo also lets you customize preferred sites or search engines from which to search.

Phlo can be summoned with a configurable global hotkey from anywhere on the Mac. To search, a user has to type the search phrase and then hit Tab to choose the website that he'd like to search in. Phlo filters the websites and search engines as the user types and automatically bubbles up the most used sites. For example, a user can type "The Hobbit" and then choose the site "IMDb" to search from and the results will be displayed on their default web browser.

Phlo requires Mac OS X 10.8 or later. It's available for US$3.99 exclusively on the Mac App Store in the Productivity category (...

Bare Bones Software (www.barebones.com) has announced TextWrangler 4.5.1, an update to its general purpose text editor for Mac OS X. The upgrade includes various refinements and fixes for specific reported issues.

TextWrangler requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, and is fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. It's a free download.

Coding Turtle has announced Scrambler 1.2.2, an update to their encryption app for the Mac.

The app 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 1.2.2 is a minor bug fix release.

Scrambler is available on the Mac App Store (http://tinyurl.com/d6y5qxk) for US$2.99. It is also available as a shareware product from the developer's website (https://codingturtle.com/scrambler), where a free and fully functional five-day trial can be found.