Publicspace.net has announced Vitamin-R 1.06 (http://www.publicspace.net/Vitamin-R/index.html), an update of its Mac OS X compatible productivity tool for creative professionals. The new version delivers an integration with OmniGroup's popular OmniFocus to-do list manager.

Vitamin-R is a collection of tools and techniques for managing attention and maintaining motivation. According to the folks at publicspace.net, it complements the task capturing and organizing features of modern to-do list managers by forcing you to concentrate fully on one task a time and keeping distractions at bay. It breaks down large, vaguely defined tasks into a series of short "time slices" of between 10 and 30 minutes, each with specific and actionable objectives.

Vitamin-R provides you with the "Now & Later Board," complete with FastType magic, to give you a place to...

Canon (http://www.shop.usa.canon.com) has released the PowerShot SD4000 IS Digital ELPH camera. It's the first of the Digital ELPH series to offer a high-sensitivity system, known as Canon’s HS SYSTEM, with a CMOS sensor and bright f/2.0 lens.

The PowerShot SD4000 IS Digital ELPH camera also has high definition (HD) movie-shooting capabilities and a 10-megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor, in conjunction with the DIGIC 4 image processor that purportedly creates Canon’s HS SYSTEM to enhance image quality in low-light situations and helps reduce noise at high ISO speeds. Along with Canon’s HS SYSTEM, the f/2.0 lens allows more light to enter, permitting higher shutter speed.

The combination of Canon’s HS SYSTEM and the f/2.0 lens enables users to take photos without a flash, resulting in a more natural look while providing greater depth of field, making it an exemplary tool for portrait...

Aquafadas (http://www.aquafadas.com) has released its latest application, BannerZest Fun Pics, which enables people to create and share animated slideshows on Facebook. It's free.

To use you select a theme, add photos, customize titles and colors and publish to Facebook wall. BannerZest Fun Pics gives its users access to a wide range of themes. When downloading the app, users get one theme and a hundred credits will be credited to their account so that they can go pick their favorite theme for free.

Twenty-three themes are available for purchase for 100 or 200 credits. BannerZest Fun Pics integrates seamlessly with social networks and provides the opportunity to invite friends or even to become a fan of the application.

At the 2010 Streaming Media East Conference, Adobe announced major new advancements to the Adobe Flash platform (http://www.adobe.com/go/flashaccess), the company's design and development platform for creating and delivering content, video and applications that run across operating systems and devices.

Highlights include the immediate availability of Adobe Flash Access 2.0 software, a content protection solution that enables the distribution and monetization of premium video content, which can help create new sources of revenue for media publishers. In addition, Adobe is also showcasing HTTP Dynamic Streaming, a new protocol support for media streaming on the Flash Platform; and the Open Source Media Framework, to accelerate development of custom media players.

These powerful new Flash media delivery tools come in advance of the releases of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2...

Sorenson Media (http://www.sorensonmedia.com) has launched the Sorenson 360 v2 online video platform (OVP) at the Streaming Media East 2010 conference.

Coming to market exactly one year after the platform’s initial launch, Sorenson 360 v2 has been created specifically to address the needs of the enterprise online video marketplace and to compete aggressively in the space by offering customers a rich differentiated set of powerful features and the highest-quality video in the marketplace, according to Sorenson CEO Peter Csathy. An enhanced feature set enables Sorenson Media to compete for leadership in the enterprise marketplace, anchored by the ability to integrate a full range of custom solutions for any size client, he adds. New features in Sorenson 360 v2 include:

° Video management capabilities that enable customers to manage any number of videos in folders and subfolders, and to...

Kensington Computer Products Group has released the US$79.99 Wireless Presenter Pro with Green Laser Pointer (http://us.kensington.com/html/13361.html). It provides an "ultra-bright" green laser, an extended 150 foot wireless range, four intuitive control buttons, a USB receiver that stores inside and a travel case.

According to Bill Rathbone, Kensington global product marketing manager, studies have proven that the human eye is naturally more sensitive to green than red light, thus making a green laser presenter brighter than a standard red laser. Green laser technology, which is as much as 10 times more visible than comparably powered red lasers, will also stand out more against today’s brighter projectors, plasma displays, LCDs or bright rooms, he adds. The Kensington Wireless Presenter Pro with Green Laser Pointer will work on virtually any screen or surface.

...

The gang at "Engadget" (http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/confirmed-apple-and-atandt-signed-fiv...) say they can now confirm that Apple and AT&T entered into a five-year iPhone exclusive in 2007, based on court documents filed by Apple in California.

"An ongoing California class-action lawsuit filed in 2007 claims that Apple and AT&T illegally exerted a monopoly over iPhone service by telling customers the iPhone's required service contract was two years long when the Apple/AT&T exclusivity deal was actually for five years -- thus requiring buyers to re-up with AT&T for three years (and not, say, T-Mobile) if they wanted to keep using the iPhone," the article says. "Obviously Apple had to respond to these allegations, and in addition to...

The iPad version of the iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are already on track to potentially generate more than US$40 million in annual sales, according to an analysis of Apple App Store sales so far by "Silicon Alley Insider" (http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-sales-revenue-pages-keynote-numbers...).

In face, sales of the app have "probably" already passed $3 million in sales so far, the article says. And "Silicon Alley Insider" predicts that Apple's overall iPad revenue could top $1 billion just this quarter.

"Also, the article says "it shows there is a real appetite for serious apps on the iPad, a device that many have shrugged off as a toy." It also suggests that Microsoft and Google may want to make sure their office suites -- whether Web-...

The first crop of iPad apps may draw user approval for being "beautiful," but they also create user frustration as people try to figure out where to touch in order to interact with them, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen whose user-experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group today released results from a usability study of 34 iPad apps.

Not only are users' hard earned web-interaction skills not transferable to iPad apps, the learning for one app does not necessarily apply to the next one. Early iPad apps are marked by inconsistent interaction design.

"It's the Wild West all over again in interaction design," Nielsen says. "We're seeing the same thing we saw 17 years ago in web design when anything a designer could draw could be a user interface whether it made sense or not. That's happening with the iPad apps. Anything you can show and touch can be a user interface on this device. There are no standards or expectations, and users just don't know what to...

The online security experts at Sophos (http://www.sophos.com/) have identified a fake Apple US$50 iTunes certificate that spreads malware currently doing the email rounds, reports "Macworld UK" (http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.cfm?olo=rss&NewsID=3223005).

Sophos's Graham Cluley, writing on his blog, warns the malware email attachment can infect Windows computers. "Clearly the hackers are hoping that in your excitement about receiving a $50 iTunes gift certificate that you will throw caution to the wind and open the attachment," Cluley notes.

Sophos detects the malware, contained inside a ZIP file as Troj/BredoZp-AM and Mal/FakeAV-BW.

eMedia Music Corp. (http://www.emediamusic.com) has released version 3.0 of eMedia Piano and Keyboard Method. New advanced audio recognition software technology works not only with electronic keyboards but with acoustic pianos.

And an Instant Feedback feature actually listens to the student playing melodies and shows whether the correct notes are played. In addition, the new Note Tracker shows the actual note being played in standard music notation.

Over 300 lessons are now presented in scalable full-screen resolution for viewing. The over 70 videos can also be viewed in full-screen.

Piano instructor, Irma Irene Justicia, who has taught at the Juilliard School of Music, starts with the basics -- including hand position, rhythm, and playing on black keys -- and moves on to reading music notation, scales, sight-reading, and more. You will learn over 100 popular classical, blues, pop, and...

In order to support its revMobile customer base, Mirye Software (http://www.mirye.com) says it submitted an in-depth proposal to Apple that it create an iPhone-only product that uses native Cocoa objects, supports 100% of their application programming interface (API), "works perfectly with multitasking and battery life, but uses a variant of the revTalk language to use these objects and APIs, and then translates those into native code.

"While a significant engineering departure for us from the current revMobile path, this solution would have resulted in perfect-quality iPhone-only applications impossible to distinguish from native applications," says Lynn Fredericks of Mirye Software. "Apple clearly and distinctly turned down the proposal with a very clear message from Steve Jobs himself."

he says RunRev is regrouping from this set back, and revMobile as it is planned will be re-engineered into a...