PLX Devices has released Yaba X, a portable speaker and guitar amplifier specifically engineered to turn any surface into a speaker. It utilizes the surface as an extension of the speaker itself.
 
The pocket-sized Yaba X is made from cast zinc. It measures only a few inches and is still able to deliver room-filling sound equal to the performance of speakers 10 times its size, according to Paul Lowchareonkul, Yaba’s inventor. With a core composed of neodymium magnets, Yaba X is powered by three lithium polymer batteries capable of playing your music for up to eight hours on a single charge

Yaba X is exclusively offered through Kickstarter as a special promotion. It's available in blue, red, black, white and a fifth color that will be selected by backers. Yaba X will retail for US$99.99, however, exclusively through Kickstarter, backers can receive the Yaba X for as low as $39. For more info go to www....

PrivacyScan 1.2, Seek and Destroy Privacy Threats on the Mac from SecureMac (www.securemac.com) is now available in the Mac App Store with enhanced and updated privacy cleaning features and support.

PrivacyScan protects online and offline privacy by shredding files that can be used to track your web browsing habits and computer usage. It's shred functionality is able to overwrite sensitive data up to 35 times, helping you wipe your tracks to ensure privacy.

PrivacyScan 1.2 is available for US$14.99 and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Utilities category (http://tinyurl.com/d97pm83). It requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher.

Noise Industries has introduced Tokyo Chrominator, designed exclusively for Final Cut Pro X. Now available for FxFactory, the plugin can be found under Tokyo Chrominator in the FCP X effects browser.

Especially useful for adding production value to logos and text, Chrominator lets editors instantly give images a glossy, beveled 3D look complete with animated lighting. In addition to the basic version of the effect, which can be customized, there are six presets available including gold, silver, brass and more, making it easy to instantly achieve an interesting look or to use as the basis for one's own unique variation.

Tokyo Chrominator is available now in FxFactory for US$49. For more info go to http://www.noiseindustries.com/info/chrominator .

Louder Than Ten, in collaboration with Padraig Kennedy, has launched Pupil, a menu bar utility for Mac OS X. It lets users label and order their favorite display settings, so they can switch resolutions quickly and easily without having to go into System Preferences.

Pupil unlocks the native 1:1 pixel resolution for Retina displays, giving Retina screens access to non-Retina modes for testing compatibility on apps, sites and more. The app also lets users name and organize their favorite display settings; they can choose the resolutions they want to see in their menu.

Pupil costs US$5. A demo is available at the product web site (http://pupil.io).

PCI Geomatics has released GeoImaging Accelerator (GXL) 2013, the latest version of the company’s scalable image processing solution.

The upgrade provides new tools that allow users to generate Digital Surface Models from large data sets of hundreds to thousands of stereo pairs, and apply new 2.5D hybrid editing techniques. Other key development areas include a redesigned true-ortho capability, as well as improved automated cutline generation methods that model the presence of features in overlapping imagery (such as buildings, trees, vehicles, etc.) to avoid them, resulting in cleaner, nicer-looking ortho-mosaics.

For more info go to www.pcigeomatis.com/gxi .

ExactCODE has released OCRKit 2.0, an update of the OCR solution for Mac. It's a drag and drop document converter software.

According to the folks at ExactCODE, OCRKit 2.0 offers up to eight times higher speed conversion on the latest Macs, improved auto-rotation for high-resolution documents, a new compressed PDF option, enhanced recognition accuracy and stability, improved text positioning accuracy in PDF, and more. It's available for US$49.99 at www.OCRKit.com and in the Mac App Store.

Ludei, a HTML5 platform that brings native performance and features to mobile game developers, says it's adding 3D support to its game development platform, finally making it possible for developers to deliver WebGL 3D games to virtually any mobile device.
 
"We’ve already made HTML5 cross-platform 2D game development a reality," says Ludei CEO Eneko Knorr. "Now we are unlocking the door for the thousands of Web game developers who want to publish great 3D games on mobile and reach consumers through the most popular app stores. Our 3D rendering allows today’s most popular mobile devices to run a 3D HTML5 game with the same great user experience and performance that native gamers are used to."
 
Ludei will support 3D game development via the open WebGL standard. WebGL is the browser equivalent of OpenGL, the industry standard for deploying powerful 3D animated games. The addition of 3D rendering on the Ludei platform means for the first time, WebGL runs on...

Apple has paid US$20 million to buy WifiSLAM, a company that develops ways for mobile apps to identify a user's whereabouts in a building using Wi-Fi signals, reports "The Wall Street Journal" (http://tinyurl.com/antm4gf).

An Apple spokesman confirmed the deal, telling the "WSJ" that the company "buys smaller technology companies from time to time” and generally doesn’t discuss its plans. He declined to comment further. WifiSLAM could not immediately be reached for comment.

This week Apple, Microsoft and Adobe appeared before a federal parliamentary committee hearing into the pricing of their products in Australia and defended the high prices that Australian consumers are paying for their products, reports "ABC" (http://tinyurl.com/b8u72pk).

Labor backbencher Ed Husic has accused some information technology companies of "ripping off" Australian consumers. However, Apple Australia Vice President Tony King defended his company's Australian prices . He said part of the reason was higher costs charged by the entertainment industry for content destined for the Australian market.

"Price considerations must go well beyond simply looking up a currency exchange rate," King said."For example, Apple must consider differences between countries in product costs, freight charges, local sales taxes, levies, import duties, channel economics, competition and local laws regarding...

.com Solutions (www.fmpromigrator.com) has released FmPro Migrator Platinum Edition 6.97 with support for FileMaker Auto-Enter calculation fields and FM query operators when using the PHP conversion feature.

This release also adds support for the CakePHP 2.3 framework providing improved functionality and performance. Most FileMaker database solutions make use of Auto-Enter calculation fields. The automated conversion of this functionality by FmPro Migrator speeds the PHP conversion process and enhances the functionality of the generated PHP web application.

Auto-Enter calculations are implemented within beforeSave() and afterSave() functions within the model files. Some calculations rely upon having the value of PK column for a newly written record, therefore they are implemented within the afterSave() function.

FmPro Migrator Platinum Edition is priced at US$600 per developer and...

Troi Automatisering has released Troi Activator Plug-in 3.5 (www.troi.com/software/activatorplugin.html) for FileMaker Pro 12. It's a tool for triggering scripts across the network, even over the Internet.

Troi Activator Plug-in 3.5 has the following new features and fixes:

° Added two new functions, which can shutdown and restart the computer.

° The Actr_Sleep function now works on Mac and Windows. Also added a new switch "-sleepnow" to put the computer to sleep directly.

° Extended the Upload Server functionality to be able to handle only text: you no longer need to include an image in your upload.

° The Actr_GetIPAddress function can now return the IPv6 address.

° Completely rewrote the plug-in for 64 bit. The plug-in now runs as a 64-bit plug-in under Custom web publishing under FileMaker Pro 12 on Mac OS X.

°...

Apple has rolled out a new two-step verification service for iCloud and Apple ID users, reports "9to5Mac" (www.9to5Mac.com). This functionality greatly enhances the security of Apple accounts because it requires users to use a trusted device and an extra security code.

This security code can be sent via SMS or via the Find my iPhone iOS app (if it is installed). Users can now setup two-step authentication on their devices via the Apple ID website. Users need to access the security tab on this website to conduct the setup process.

Read more at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5570 .