Date Time Calc (http://www.pomola.com/products_datetimecalc/datetimecalc.html) is a new Mac OS X utility for calculating future and past dates using a given time interval from an assigned date. It requires Mac OS X 10.6.6, costs US$2.99 and is only available at the Mac App Store. This app is intended for users needing to calculate expected dates after a specific number of days as in a typical business use. An example of periods often used in business: 15, 30, 60, 90, 120 or 150 days. The dates can be selected using standard calendar controls. The time interval is expressed in days or in a more precise way also using hours, minutes and seconds. A PDf user guide is embedded in the app.

Mariner Software has released StoryMill 4 for Mac OS X, an update of the software for writing a story or novel. Mariner President Michael Wray says there are several new features in StoryMill 4 that every writer will appreciate, including: ° Snapshots -- the writer can capture a snapshot of any scene or chapter in order to make changes and refer back to that snapshot at any time, comparing new and old versions; ° Novel View -- a story can be viewed and printed in its entirety; ° Redesigned Timeline View -- supporting timelines ranging from minutes to centuries, the new timeline view also offers navigation tools for developing the flow of your story. StoryMill 4 also now offers a trash feature just like the Mac OS X Finder. The software requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher. StoryMill costs US$49.95 and is available for trial as a download only from the Mariner Software website (http://www.marinersoftware.com). Current registered StoryMill users can purchase the upgrade version for $24.95.

FileMaker Inc. (http://www.filemaker.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, has shipped Bento 4 for Mac, now available on the Mac App Store, and Bento 1.1 for iPhone, and Bento 1.1 for iPad. New features include the ability to print labels, export libraries with data, automatically add geographical locations to records and lock down forms, says Ryan Rosenberg, vice president of marketing and services for FileMaker, Inc. For the first time with version 4, you can export Bento libraries populated with data and share these with other users. Sending a complete library to another Bento user is as easy as emailing a file. You can also share your ideas with the world by sending your custom Bento templates directly to the Bento Template Exchange from within Bento 4. The Bento Template Exchange features over 800 free downloadable templates. Rosenberg says Bento 4 is faster and easier to use. With faster launch times, the new version allows you to lock forms to prevent unwanted changes to...

In a note to clients, as reported by "Barron's" (http://macte.ch/Rch6o), BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk has raised his price target on Apple shares from US$375 to $450 from $375, saying the iPad will probably generate US$24 billion in revenue this calendar year. That's $4 billion more than he’d originally expected. Piecyk writes that the introduction of the iPhone 4 at Verizon in February had “tempered” his expectations, as "the CDMA iPhone 4 initially generated a disappointing response which not only surprised us but apparently also surprised Apple." However, the iPad 2 "appears to be putting our doubts to rest." The analyst predicts that 40 million iPads will be sold this year, up from 33 million in his previous estimate.

Parks Associates (http://www.parkassociates.com) says 3G subscribers will double over next five years, with global 3G+ tablet sales to exceed 68 million by 2015. The research group forecasts more than 68 million of the 126 million tablets sold worldwide in 2015 will have 3G or greater technology. The research firm's latest report shows 29% of the 16.5 million tablets sold in 2010 featured embedded 3G technology, while tablets with 3G/4G technology will account for over one-half of all tablets sold in 2015. "We are seeing strong consumer engagement in data-intensive services and activities, such as social networking, uploading photos to the Internet, and watching online video, on mobile phones," says Jennifer Kent, a Parks Associates' mobile research analyst. "By offering the same mobile Internet capabilities as a smartphone, but with better visual and computing experiences, tablets will also benefit from these consumer behaviors." Consumer demand for mobile data will increase further...

Zevrix Solutions (http://www.zevrix.com) has updated Deliver Express, an automated solution to send and share files across the Internet and local networks, to version 2.1.1. The new version improves the reliability of file transfer to certain FTP sites, and addresses some issues related to email communication on international systems. Deliver Express processes files automatically from watched hot folders and offers variable e-mail notifications, delivery to multiple destinations, encryption and more. It supports FTP, Amazon S3, MobileMe and other major services. Deliver Express can run unattended and is suitable as a company-wide server solution as well as for single users. As a company-wide server solution, Deliver Express can be installed on a dedicated station and run unattended. Users only need to copy files to network based hot folders, and the files will be sent automatically with customizable email confirmation issued upon delivery. Recipients can download the file using a...

D-Link has announced the availability of the latest additions to its DWA USB adapter product line, the Wireless N 150 Pico Adapter (DWA-121) and the Wireless N Nano USB Adapter (DWA-131). Equipped with Wireless N technology, both the Pico and Nano connect a laptop or desktop computer to a Wi-Fi network at up to six times the speed and three times the coverage of a wireless G connection, enabling users to transfer files, download media and browse the Internet faster and more efficiently, says Daniel Kelley, associate vice president of consumer marketing, D-Link North America. With small, compact form-factors, both adapters easily fit into a computer’s USB port, making them ideal for use when traveling or in a crowded workspace, he adds. The DWA-121 connects to a desktop or notebook, creating an instant 802.11n wireless network. The included Quick Setup Wizard guides users through the setup, while the Wireless Manager tracks recently accessed networks. Featuring Wi-Fi Protected Setup (...

Apple will delay the launch of the iPad 2 in Japan, in the wake of last week's earthquake and tsunami, reports "Reuters" (http://macte.ch/t6itQ). The company had planned to start selling the device in Japan on March 25. The company didn't provide a rescheduled launch date. "We are delaying the launch of the iPad 2 in Japan while the country and our teams focus on recovering from the recent disaster," said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. "Computerworld" (http://macte.ch/T5KIL) reports that "it's a a credit to Apple, Google and others that when disaster struck they immediately moved to do what they could." Google launched a people-finding service via its Crisis Response pages, while Apple launched an American Red Cross appeal via iTunes. Apple also made its own relief effort for its staff in Japan (http://macte.ch/2eScK). It supplied food, water and blankets for its retail and corporate staff, allowed them to stay overnight in its shops (with their families if they were in the area)...

Sixty million tablets will be sold in 2011, and most of them will be iPads, according to a new study by the DisplaySearch research group (http://www.displaysearch.com). Apple will likely continue to account for the majority of tablet touch screens in 2011 and 2012, yet other brands could catch up in 2012 and beyond, the study says. DisplaySearch forecasts total touch panels for tablets to reach 260 million units in 2016, up 333% from 2011. “Tablet PCs are the fastest growing application for touch screens,” says Jennifer Colegrove, vice president of Emerging Display Technologies for DisplaySearch. “Most tablet PC products will leverage multi-touch projected capacitive technology, following Apple’s lead. At the same time, a small amount of tablet PCs are using resistive touch, since it is less expense and enables handwriting recognition. There are also some tablet PCs that use digitizers for handwriting recognition and drawing.” The touch screen supply chain is evolving differently in...

Apple says you can buy an iPad 2, donate your old iPad at an Apple Retail Store, and Teach For America (http://www.teachforamerica.org/) will give it to a teacher in a low-income community. Teach for America is a non-profit organization dedicated to "eliminating educational inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort." Members commit to teach for two years in low-income communities, then go on as alumni to lead efforts to change the face of public education.

A company called Ten's Complement plans to bring ZFS to Mac OS X. The file system is now in beta testing. In 2007, it was rumored that Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") would support ZFS (Zettabyte File System). ZFS was originally developed by Sun. It protects all files with 64-bit checksums to detect and fix data corruption and, as a 128-bit file system, can handle many orders of magnitude more space than current versions of Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. According to Sun, ZFS meets the needs of a file system for everything from desktops to data centers. And according to a 2007 patent (number 20070112891) filed by Apple engineers, you can convert millions of computers to a new file system via a handy file system converter that changes the file system without touching the files. The patent could have theoretically made HFS to ZFS conversions fast and painless. A note at the Ten's Complement site (http://info.tenscomplement.com/) says: "We're not quite there yet — but we have some exciting...

Nuclear Nova Software has introduced Barnyard Blaster (http://nuclearnova.com/barnyardblaster/), its sixth game for Mac OS X (10.5 and higher). Here's how the game is described: "Barnyard Blaster is a unique shooter with one goal, prevent all animals from escaping. Use six unique weapons, from flame throwers to rocket launchers, to stop ten species of animals from crossing the environment. The game features rich 3D graphics in eight different environments, a great soundtrack, as well as online achievements and high scores. The replay value will keep you occupied for countless hours." The Barnyard Blaster demo is feature limited and free to try. The full version of Barnyard Blaster costs US$14.95 (USD) and may be purchased through Nuclear Nova Software's website. The paid version includes all levels, no shareware delay, and free updates.

An Ohio middle school teacher has won an international award from the Apple Corp. Kelly Croy, who teaches seventh-grade English at Oak Harbor Middle School, was named an Apple Distinguished Educator and will travel to Arizona in July for training, reports "The News-Messenger" (http://macte.ch/42pZC). Croy is one of 1,700 educational professionals worldwide, and 300 in the country, who have received the honor since the program was started in 1994. He is one of 76 educators chosen this year. Croy has been in education for 20 years, and has used technology in the classroom in a variety of ways, says "The News-Messenger." "We have a program called Project Based Learning where the students collaborate together and solve real-world problems," Croy said.

Sorenson Media (http://www.sorensonmedia.com) has announced a series of new features within the Sorenson 360 online video platform (OVP), which provide customers with increased flexibility and customizability to improve delivery of dynamic video content across the Web, says Eric Quanstrom, chief operating officer of Sorenson Media. He says the key new features include: ° Full video player compatibility: Users can now choose from all major video players, such as Flash, Quicktime, HTML5 and Silverlight, to publish video in the most popular formats, including Flash (Spark and VP6), MPEG-4 (H.264), WebM and Windows Media (VC1). ° WebM support: Like all Sorenson Media products and services, Sorenson 360 supports WebM encoding and playback for users interested in creating Web environments using HTML5. ° Facebook Integration: With an integrated button on the video player, users are able to post their video along with comments directly to their Facebook accounts. ° Automated video sitemaps...

At Digital Innovators’ Summit, Adobe announced it expects to integrate the Medialets mobile advertising platform software developer kit (SDK) with Adobe Content Viewer software in the Enterprise Edition of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, enabling publishers to "manage and deliver high value, targeted brand advertising inventory in digital publications on tablet devices." By implementing Medialets’ full service ad serving platform, Adobe will deliver a complete advertising workflow to help publishers monetize digital publications. Iinitial ad asset creation is authored using Adobe’s industry standard Creative Suite 5 software, advertising inventory management and delivery via Medialets, with final publication delivery and optimization using Digital Publishing Suite. Publishers will be able to insert a Medialets ad overlay as a placeholder for advertising creative directly within an Adobe InDesign layout using Digital Publishing Suite authoring tools. Publishers and ad agencies who...

Raidon (http://www.RAIDON.com.tw) has introduced the GearTANK GT7280-8S-U5 rackmount storage solution for SMB [small to medium sized businesses] and department of enterprises. According to the folks at Raidon, the GT7280-8S-U5 features simple installation, high data transfer rate and large amount of data storage capacity. It can be used in various workgroups of enterprise with expansion capability and it is designed for engineering application, artistic design, audio and video editing and website servers that needed multiplex operation.   The Raidon GT7280 is a standard 1U rackmount JBOD storage enclosure; it expands the data storage capacity limit and with two individual embedded SAS interface to provide up to 300MB/s data transfer rate. The GT7280 is scalable up to 4TB from eight of 2.5-inch 500G HDD. Contact Raidon for pricing options.

Seagate Technology (http://www.seagate.com) has announced its latest enterprise solutions designed to deliver storage for the widest range of application environments. These solutions include: two new members of the Pulsar Solid State Drive (SSD) family; two next-generation Savvio 15K and 10K hard disk drives (HDD) optimized for a balance of high performance and capacity; and the latest Constellation ES.2 3TB HDD (pictured) for pure capacity-optimized mass storage needs, says Kurt Richarz, Seagate EVP of Product Line Management. He says the Pulsar.2 SSD is the first MLC-enabled, (up to 800GB) SSD from an enterprise HDD vendor. Unlike other MLC SSDs that have been designed for consumer applications and lack the robust data integrity and endurance feature set required for enterprise applications, the Pulsar.2 SSD has been designed from the ground up for the enterprise, Richarz says. It reportedlly has the intelligence to automatically detect and correct a multitude of data errors than...

KiDSafe Technologies has released KiDSBrowse 1.1 for Mac OS X (10.4 and higher), an update to their web browser application specially designed to provide a safe experience for kids and teens on the Internet. KiDSBrowse features parental controls, malware resistance from viruses and spyware, and a colorful interface. It opens with 13 kid-safe websites already included, and the ability for parents, teachers, and caretakers to add any number of additional sites, with advanced filtering options for each. Because it is an integrated application, rather than an add-on to an all-purpose web browser, it is easy and uncomplicated for the adult to control access to content, and equally easy for the young person to visit and explore kid-safe websites, according to the folks at KiDSafe Technologies. The browser has two modes of operation: Adult Mode and Kid Mode. In Adult Mode, the browser's operation is the same as any other. Search engines are available and there is unrestricted access to...

In an interview (http://macte.ch/kVxkw) with "The Sunday Times Magazine" blames Apple, CEO Steve Jobs and iTunes for killing the music business. "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it," he says. He also adds that "in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?.' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."

Microsoft is pulling the plug on its "iPod killer," the Zune, "because of tepid demand, letting the company shift its focus to other devices, says "Bloomberg Businessweek" (http://macte.ch/em7PX), citing "a person familiar with the decision." Microsoft will concentrate on putting Zune software onto mobile phones, such as those running its Windows operating system, the article says. Zune software lets customers buy songs and movies, as well as pay a monthly fee to stream unlimited music. The Zune, introduced in 2006, never managed to offer any serious competition to the iPod. Apple's media device led the market with 77% of unit sales last year, while the Zune failed to crack the top five, according to the NPD Group (http://www.npd.com). By adding the Zune features to the Windows Phone software, Microsoft aims to gain ground in another challenging area -- mobile phones -- where it’s lost market share to Google and Apple, says "Bloomberg Businessweek."

Some analysts think Apple sold close to a million units of the iPad 2 during its debut weekend, reports "Reuters" (http://macte.ch/3XQb5). By comparison, the original version of the iPad, which launched in April of 2010, crossed the one-million mark 28 days after its launch. Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White told "Reuters" it was difficult to find an iPad 2 over the weekend. "Our field checks over the weekend indicate that the iPad 2 sold out at every Apple and non-Apple store we contacted," White wrote in a research note. "In fact, all the stores had worked through iPad 2 inventory by Saturday afternoon, and there were no new iPad 2 deliveries on Sunday." Wedbush Securities analyst Scott Sutherland thinks Apple sold close to one million iPad 2's in the opening weekend. Best Buy on Friday said some of its outlets ran out of the tablet and its accessories within 10 minutes. Apple shares rose 0.6% to US$354.20 in morning trade on the Nasdaq, even as shares of many other...

Sweeter Rhythm has released Harmony 2.0. It's an update of the worship presentation application for Mac OS X 10.6.5 and higher; version 2.0 has over 20 new features and improvements. Harmony 2.0's Themes feature addresses the number one feature requested by customers: more control over text. In addition to Harmony 1.0's LyricDance motion-lyric and Quartz Composition features, Harmony 2.0 supports Concord. Concord is an app that runs on a Mac or iOS device. It's a text display driven by Harmony. When Harmony projects lyrics, Concord gets those lyrics over a WiFi network and displays them. It can be used, for example, as a confidence monitor for a band member or to provide large and close-up lyrics to a partially-sighted person. Harmony 2.0 also offers new language support for French and German readers. Upgrades for existing customers are free. Harmony is normally priced at US$149. Until Easter, it's on sale for $99, available directly from Sweeter Rhythm (http://sweeterrhythm.com) or...

Apple has added a page to the iTunes Store, allowing you to donate money to the Red Cross to aid the victims of Japan’s tsunami and earthquake. Youo can donate amounts ranging from US$5 to $200. A note on the page says: "Your gift to the American Red Cross will support our disaster relief efforts to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific. Your support will enable the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, emotional support and other assistance to victims of all disasters. On those rare occasions when donations exceed American Red Cross expenses for a certain disaster, contributions are used to prepare for and serve victims of other disasters." -- Dennis Sellers

Eternal Storms Software has introduced ScreenFloat 1.0 for Mac OS X (10.6.6 and higher). It's available at the Mac App Store for US$7.99. The app is designed to simplify the users' workflow by letting them create screenshots that float above all other windows, eliminating the need to resize or move windows around just to keep it visible on the display. ScreenFloat includes customizable keyboard shortcuts, as well as a Shots Browser to categorize and organize screenshots taken with the application. In the Shots Browser, closed shots are collected, tagged, titled, and organized in collections or smart collections. Collections are basically folders that users manually add created shots to. Smart Collections contain shots based on criteria the user specifies. To make creation of floating shots for text easier, ScreenFloat implements a system service that works with all Cocoa applications' selected text. For the user's convenience, there is a screencast available on the website, says...