Deep Tech

Stormy reception for Adobe's Creative Cloud

It looks like Adobe Systems has some more convincing to do when it comes to the Creative Cloud, the company's subscription for software and online services due to arrive later this year.

A survey of creative professionals by analyst firm Jefferies & Co. and CNET showed that people have concerns about the Creative Cloud and its price of $600 per year for individuals and $840 per year for corporate users.

Specifically, 41 percent said that they had a negative view of the Creative Cloud compared to 32 percent who expressed a positive view. Beyond that, 62 percent of respondents had more

Engineers rebuild HTTP as a faster Web foundation

PARIS--Engineers have begun taking the first big steps in overhauling Hypertext Transfer Protocol, a seminal standard at the most foundational level of the Web.

At a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) here yesterday, the working group overseeing HTTP formally opened a dicussion about how to make the technology faster. That discussion included presentations about four specific proposals for HTTP 2.0, including SPDY, developed at Google and already used in the real world, and HTTP Speed+Mobility, developed at Microsoft and revealed Wednesday.

There are some differences in the HTTP 2.0 proposals that have emerged so

Well, that didn't take long.

Less than four weeks after Adobe Systems released Lightroom 4, the company has issued a release candidate for Lightroom 4.1 to squash bugs and add support for one of the hottest cameras going right now, the Canon 5D Mark III.

The 22-megapixel, full-frame SLR brings new low-light sensitivity, faster performance, overhauled autofocus, and other improvements over its 3-year-old predecessor. But until now, Lightroom fans who have the coveted $3,500 camera could only see its raw files by converting them into the Digital Negative format with Adobe's DNG Converter software.

Other improvements more

Photoshop CS6 beta downloads surpass a half million

Apparently a lot of people are interested in the new beta of Photoshop CS6: the software has been downloaded more than 500,000 times, Adobe said yesterday.

That's a big number for a premium software product. But of course, the beta is free, and the final version won't be, so it's hard to guess what the conversion rate will be from beta downloads to actual purchases.

Still, as a marketing stunt alone, it has to be useful for Adobe. Photoshop's price -- $699 for the full standard version and $999 for Extended -- is a big more

Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

Adobe Systems released Flash Player 11.2 today -- along with a plan to make the browser plug-in a direct source of revenue for the company.

In the past, the Silicon Valley company has charged programmers to use development tools such as Flash Pro. But for any games published August 1 or later that use premium features in the new version of Flash Player, Adobe will require programmers to pay.

More specifically, Adobe will require developers to share 9 percent of net revenue beyond $50,000 for using the premium features, Adobe announced today. The premium features are Stage 3D more

Why each Google+ comment should get its own Web address

It's time for Google, as it works feverishly to improve the capabilities of Google+, to add one particular feature to its social-network tool: permanent Web addresses for each comment.

I'd like this ability, and I think it would help expand the Google+ utility to its users. But it's for Google's own sake that I think comment permalinks are important.

Google+ offers what has become a pretty standard interface for social networking: members can post updates, then hold discussions in the comments below. But if you want to direct attention to a particular comment--forget it. Your best more

Australian agency taking Apple to court over iPad '4G' label

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said today Apple is violating the Australian Consumer Law by misleadingly labeling its new iPad as 4G-capable, and it will try to get a court to impose fines and an injunction against sales.

The commission will apply to the Federal Court in Melbourne for orders tomorrow morning against Apple, it said in a statement:

The ACCC alleges that Apple's recent promotion of the new "iPad with WiFi + 4G" is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product "iPad with WiFi + 4G" can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile more

Microsoft: Google's SPDY is nice for a faster Web, but...

Apparently Microsoft isn't content leaving one potentially important speed boost for the Web to Google.

The company last night announced a plan to improve HTTP -- the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that browsers use to request Web pages and servers use to deliver them -- with a technology it calls HTTP Speed+Mobility. Google has proposed an idea called SPDY for speeding up HTTP and won an important ally at IETF, the group that oversees the standard and that's beginning work on a new HTTP 2.0.

But Microsoft wants a piece of the action, too. It thinks SPDY more

The long arm of Microsoft tries taking down Zeus botnets

Microsoft and financial services organizations, with an escort of U.S. Marshals, seized command-and-control servers Friday to take down botnets allegedly used to steal more than $100 million using an estimated 13 million computers infected with the Zeus malware.

After raids in Scranton, Pa., and Lombard, Ill., "some of the worst known Zeus botnets were disrupted by Microsoft and our partners worldwide," Microsoft announced Sunday night in a post by Richard Domingues Boscovich, senior attorney with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit.

The defendants allegedly installed the Zeus malware and close relatives called Ice-IX and SpyEye onto victims' computers, according to more

Nikon's D800 outclasses camera rivals in sensor test

The Nikon D800 is the new king of the heap -- at least when it comes to DxO Labs' test of camera image sensors.

The new 36-megapixel high-end SLR got an all-time high score of 95 on the DxOMark test, which measures a variety of sensor attributes when shooting raw images. DxO Labs said it uses a sensor "with no weak points."

The score is a composite that reflects three attributes: dynamic range, which is the breadth of the span between an image's full black and complete white; color depth, which gauges the vividness and accurate color; and low-light more