Markzware (http://www.markzware.com) -- a developer of pre-flighting, data extraction and conversion software -- has released an upgrade to its utility, MarkzTools v8 for QuarkXPress 8. MarkzTools is an XTension that is used to prevent corrupted QuarkXPress documents, along with several other features. MarkzTools allows users to automatically verify saved Quark documents, so users will immediately know the file is safe. What's more, with the MarkzTools special temp file, users can more easily recover documents that have become corrupted during a save operation. In the case of a badly corrupted file where the page layout data can'tbe salvaged, the Scavenge Text feature may be able to extract text stories from the damaged document. The Gray Previews feature allows users to convert your full color picture previews into gray-scale previews, reducing the file size of saved documents. MarkzTools 8 can also convert saved documents to Quark 6 or Quark 4 or allow Quark 8 to export open...

NetGear (http://www.netgear.com) has announced the addition of several new 4-bay storage appliances to its family of ReadyNAS (http://www.readynas.com) products for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The ReadyNAS NVX --which is designed for home offices, workgroups and small businesses, offers double the performance of previous NV+ units, support for file services (NAS) and application services (iSCSI SAN) for Mac OS X, Windows and UNIX/Linux systems, including support for Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5. It enables users to store, share and protect business-critical data across a LAN or WAN, guard against disk failures, and grow capacity as needed. NetGear's ReadyNAS devices continue to support the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), enabling native Mac files to be used without restrictions or limitations andApple's Bonjour software technology for auto-discovery of the device over a user's LAN; and dashboard widgets for status monitoring. Now Mac users can leverage Time Machine to back...

Oranged Software (http://www.oranged.net/") has released Accounted 2.0, an update to their accounting package for Mac OS X (10.3 or higher). The upgrade purportedly has over 50 new features. Two new report types have been added to the reports window. These reports are common accounting reports that have been requested by users. Profit & Loss reports allow you to view net income over a specific period of time. The new Cash Flow report shows cash activities and changes over a set period. This upgrade also adds multiple currency features. Just like in Studiometry, you can have Accounted automatically grab exchange rates from the internet and save exchange rates on a per-item basis. Another feature is the ability to import your currencies and exchange rates from Studiometry, giving the sync capabilities between the two programs more power. New Tax Accounts allow you to manage and track incoming and outgoing taxes via any standard account type in Accounted. You can create split...

GeoNova Publishing has announced a new iPhone/iPod touch travel application, Discovery Guide Map Washington, DC, the first in a series of guides that also includes Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Manhattan, New Orleans, Orlando, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The company's new city Discovery Guide Map applications are designed for intuitive reference by first-time visitors to major U.S. destinations, offering mobile access to interactive downtown maps. Each app features a "Locate Me" button that marks the user's exact location with a red pin on a city map. These maps also show the locations of all the attractions in town. Every attraction location is hot-linked to its web site, giving tourists quick access to online information from their mobile devices as they explore a new city. New Discovery Guide Map iPhone/iPod touch apps for U.S. cities sell for US$1.99 on the Apple App Store. More info about the new applications is available at http://GeoNovaGroup.com/ProdServ.aspx?catId...

Monotype Imaging (http://www.monotypeimaging.com), a provider of text imaging solutions, has added more than 100 fonts to its Monotype, Linotype and ITC typeface collections. The typeface collections range from an update of a classic industrial design to fonts that offer unique personalities, the company says. The fonts include the Azbuka typeface family that consists of 20 fonts that cover a wide range of "flavors," from extra light to extra dark, and the Bernard Philpot's ITC Bolthole typeface, which seems to exude a "grumpy" demeanor. All the fonts can be previewed and licensed from the company's e-commerce sites: Fonts.com, Linotype.com, ITCFonts.com and Faces.co.uk.

LightWork Design has released LightWorks 8.0 (http://www.lightworkdesign.com/features/lightworks_80), a update of the software for integrated rendering in advanced 3D graphics applications. The upgrade boasts progressive rendering, a "'view through walls" feature, tone mapping, complex reflectance shaders The aim in introducing the progressive rendering feature is to provide a more positive workflow experience within the rendering application, according to the folks at LightWork Design. Previously, using OpenGL to preview final renders had limitations in terms of lighting and materials, in that it limited the number of lights possible as well as the representation of the materials. This meant that setting up a scene to get the final image became a very iterative process. LightWorks progressive rendering provides a solution to this by giving immediate feedback of the final image with a fast preview of the lighting and materials within the scene. Users often need to have a complete...

ActiveState Software has released Komodo IDE 5.1 today. Komodo IDE 5.1 builds upon the award-winning integrated development environment with new and improved features for developers working in small teams. With the new release of Komodo IDE comes improved navigation. The introduction of the History feature lets users browse though the files and buffer locations they've been editing recently with just forward and back buttons and a drop list in the toolbar. Find Highlighting enables visual markers for find/search matches, independent of the syntax coloring information. Hyperlinks adds new code intelligence: Ctrl+mouse-hover will hyperlink interesting regions in the text--more than just "Go to Definition" links. And a new "fast open" dialog eases opening the files within a current working directory, files within the current project, recently opened/closed files as well as switching to a currently opened file. The release of Komodo IDE 5.1 also includes support for a new platform: Linux/...

NotePrinter is a new app for the Phone and iPod touch. It costs US$0.99 and is available at thr Appl eapp Stoe (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=306325...). NotePrinter enables iPhone and iPod touch users to write formatted notes with embedded images, file them in different category folders, add photos or contacts, format text and print your notes as well as email or transfer them to a Mac or PC. To copy text or a photo, users touch and drag horizontally to select text or images, and press the copy button, then paste.

TechPad Productions, a social media research and online publication company, says its first game, iNetMania (http://www.inetmaniagame.com/), is now ready for download for the iPhone and iPod touch! It is available for a limited-time promotional price of US$2.99 (regularly $4.99) from the Apple App Store: http://itunes.inetmaniagame.com/ iNetMania is based upon TechPad's board game, ServerMania, which features players competing to build a successful web hosting company and finish with the most money at the end of the game. iNetMania uses a similar format and rule set as the award-winning board game, but instead of a web hosting company, your goal is to create a successful web site. In iNetMania, you compete with up to three other players (either in hot-seat mode with human controlled opponents or an intelligent computer-controlled AI) all the way from the start-up phase to the finish line, with plenty of highs and lows (or "Spikes and "Slumps") along the way.

Concrete Software (http://www.concretesoftware.com) has released Nintaii, a mobile puzzle game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Originally published by Mobigloo, a top developer of mobile content, Concrete Software brings this game to the world of the iPhone and iPod touch. Here's how Nintaii is described: "Nintaii is a brain twisting puzzle game of rolling blocks and switches. Be ready to roll your block over the course of this 100 level challenge. Just like most of the greatest puzzle games, Nintaii has a simple concept and yet proves to be very challenging, electrifying and attractive. The Japanese term 'nintai' means patience, perseverance, or endurance. "The objective of the game is to tumble a rectangular block through each stage and deposit it into the square hole at the end. Switches, road blocks and arrows are located in many levels. Switches are activated by having the block stand on it."

Amidio (http://amidio.com/) has released Star Guitar, an US$3.99 iPhone/iPod touch application that enables the user to play automatic guitar rhythms, both strumming and picking types. It's based upon patented one-screen interface "StarChords," which allows immediate selection of 144 chords. Those chords can be strummed in a manual way (thanks to the "SmartStrumming" technology), or automatically. All sounds are generated in realtime with the new "SampleMagic" technology. Almost any song can be played on Star Guitar with just 10-20 screen taps, according to the folks at Amidio. There are 22 different guitar rhythm patterns (pop, reggae, jazz, ballad) in Star Guitar 1.0 and the library is extendable. There are three guitars by default: Acoustic Silver, Mellow Jazz, and Electro Chorused. Users can also use voice recorder and record guitar and voice simultaneously. Among the features are: .WAV export; a built-in Wi-Fi server; direct export to Intua Beatmaker; overdub recording; loading...

Pangea Software (http://www.pangeasoft.net/") has released Otto Matic: Alien Invasion is for the iPhone and iPod touch. Originally developed for the Mac, Otto Matic is one of Pangea's most recognized titles with over two million copies distributed worldwide. It's available at the Apple App Store for US$4.99,. Here's how the game is described: "The year is 1957 and a fleet of flying saucers from Planet X have come to Earth. These saucers are under the control of the evil Brain Aliens who are abducting helpless humans and taking them away to strange alien worlds to become slaves of The Giant Brain. "Otto Matic the robot is given the job of saving Earth from the attack of the Brain Aliens. His rocket ship will take you to each of the alien planets where you must save as many humans as you can before the Brain Aliens abduct them. Once The Giant Brain has been defeated and peace has been restored to the galaxy, you will return to Earth with your human cargo where they will be freed."

Quickoffice, Inc. (http://www.quickoffice.com), a provider of mobile office productivity software, will unveil what it says is the first complete Office suite to provide native Microsoft Word and Excel editing for the iPhone, Quickoffice for iPhone, at CTIA, April 1-3, 2009, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Quickoffice is the first iPhone application to include robust document and spreadsheet editors, along with file access and content management functionalities, according to Gregg Fiddes, vice president of sales and strategic partnerships at Quickoffice. It offers a range of functionality including font formatting, content selection, bullets and cut, copy and paste within Word documents, he adds. Users can also modify documents in landscape mode to leverage a wider keyboard. With mathematical and statistical functions, including advanced Excel formulas for spreadsheet processing, consumers can revise inputs and recalculate, insert and resize rows and columns within the application...

Maintain (http://www.maintain.se) has announced the release of Cocktail 4.3.3 (Leopard Edition). This version contains major improvements on the clear potentially harmful files procedure, adds clearing of the latest (F and G) variants of the RSPlug trojan horse and clearing of the Inqtana.C worm. The update is highly recommended for all users of Cocktail (Leopard Edition). Cocktail 4.3.3 (Leopard Edition) is distributed as a Universal Binary and runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. Cocktail 4.3.3 (Leopard Edition) requires Mac OS X / Mac OS X Server 10.5 or later and is tested for compatibility with Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server 10.5.7. Cocktail 4.3 (Tiger Edition) for Mac OS X 10.4.x and Cocktail 3.7 (Panther Edition) for Mac OS X 10.3.x are available for download from our website. Cocktail is an award winning general purpose utility for Mac OS X. It is a smooth and powerful digital toolset with a variety of practical features that simplifies the use of advanced UNIX...

DAZ 3D has unveiled a new version of its 3D figure, the Girl 4(http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/the-girl-4?cat=842&_m=d), complete with customizable body shaping, increased texture map resolution and improved joint rigging. Created from DAZ 3D's fourth-generation Unimesh, the Girl 4 is fully compatible with all Victoria 4, Victoria 4 Elite and Aiko 4 head and body shapes, textures and poses. Originally created by 3D graphics and games artist Kim Goossens, the Girl is used by hobbyist and professional artists as a muse for magazine and album covers, fan art and the like. In addition to her vast compatibility with all DAZ 3D models and hundreds of add-on products available in the DAZ 3D online store, the Girl 4 is fully ready to animate within DAZ Studio, Carrara and Poser. The Girl 4 base product is available for immediate download at the DAZ 3D online store for US$29.95. DAZ Platinum Club members may purchase the Girl 4 for $1.99. Corresponding product bundles range in price from...

Blue Lamp Software (http://bluelampsoftware.com/printsprint/) has released PrintSprint 1.0 for Mac OS X. It's a Mac OS X utility for users who want prints from their digital photos and is being offered at an introductory price of US$19.95. According to the folks at Blue Lamp Software, PrintSprint makes it simple to select photos, set the print size, quantity, and crop and then generate your order. It never modifies your originals and it works with your organizational system so it doesn't matter if you're using iPhoto, Aperture or have your photos on your hard drives or CDs. PrintSprint requires Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard"). A demo is available for download.

MacVector, Inc. (http://www.macvector.com) has just released MacVector 10.6. This release sees the introduction of a Vector NTI database import function that allows MacVector to directly read sequence data from databases created by Vector NTI Advance v10 or earlier, even if the database resides on a Windows machine accessible over a network. MacVector 10.6 reads all of the standard features and annotations associated with each sequence. Also, since MacVector follows the Genbank format for the features table and is always kept up to date with the latest Genbank release, it has the added benefit of migrating any old and deprecated feature information contained in the Vector NTI file into the current nomenclature. Also included in MacVector 10.6 are enhancements and optimizations to the Align To Reference and Assembler alignment tools. MacVector, Inc's President, Dr. Kevin Kendall said "Over the past few months we have had many customers asking us to import their Vector NTI files...

Toon Boom Animation (http://www.toonboom.com/main/) has announced two new products: Toon Boom Animate Pro and Toon Boom Manager. Animate Pro Toon Boom builds upon Animate's feature set and delivers also 2D-3D integration, as well as scanning options and full compositing capabilities with 50 built-in special effects. Toon Boom Manager provides full tracking capabilities to monitor the production progress in real time. They're parts of the new, modularized Harmony Solution, which is designed for creating traditional, paperless and cut-out animation, all integrated in a network environment. As a turn-key solution, the Harmony Solution also includes consultancy services for implementation, custom training, production assistance and custom development. Consultancy services play a critical role in maximizing the benefits of the Toon Boom pipeline from the beginning, and delivering projects of all sizes within budget and schedule, says Joan Vogelesang, president and CEO of Toon Boom. Toon...

Sorenson Media today announced that Sorenson Squeeze 5 is being shipped with the latest versions of Avid Technology's (http://www.avid.com) suite of video editing applications, including Avid Media Composer (version 3.5), Symphony (version 3.5) and NewsCutter (version 7.5) software. Sorenson Squeeze 5 enables independent editors, producers and filmmakers who use Avid video editing software to deliver video in all of the most popular video formats with advanced encoding options. Sorenson Squeeze 5 makes it possible for users to output content in a wide variety of formats, including Flash, QuickTime, RealMedia, Windows Media, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. The software can also encode in HD for MPEG-2, Flash, VC-1, and H.264 formats, says Peter Csathy, CEO of Sorenson Media. Through the Avid software interface, video editors are able to send their video files directly to Sorenson Squeeze 5 for encoding and compression without having to export intermediate files. The software allows users to...

Macworld Expo 2010 (http://www.macworldexpo.com) is scheduled to take place February 9 - 13, 2010, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, IDG World Expo announced today. Responding to feedback from the Mac community of exhibitors, attendees, media and fans of the show, IDG World Expo is ushering in a new era for the event by shifting the show dates away from their historical early January timing. The new dates will give exhibitors and attendees more breathing room between the busy holiday season and the world's largest event focused specifically on Apple products. "Macworld is the largest global Mac-centric event of the year, and we are focused on making 2010 the most productive, efficient and content-rich event possible for our community of exhibitors, attendees and media," said Mary Dolaher, chief executive officer of IDG World Expo, the owner of Macworld. "For 25 years, Macworld has been the pre-eminent event focused solely on the Apple products ecosystem, and, with the recent...

AKVIS Softwareannounces the release of AKVIS Sketch v.8.6 for Windows and Macintosh. The software converts photos to pencil drawings and watercolor paintings. Version 8.6 improves the way a photo is converted into a watercolor painting and fixes the compatibility bug that caused the Sketch plugin to crash on Macintosh computers+Photoshop CS3,CS4. It also improves plugin compatibility on Windows and adds support of 32 bit images to the plugin (earlier available only in the standalone version). Upgrade for registered users is free. AKVIS Sketch is an award-winning program for conversion of photos into pencil sketches and watercolor paintings. Make any photo look like a B&W or color drawing, imitate the technique of graphite or color pencil, charcoal or watercolor painting. The program works in an entertaining way. It allows observing the conversion of a photo into a drawing/watercolor in real time and even interrupting the process when the required result is achieved. Once you...

The MobileRiser (http://newpcgadgets.com/products/mobileriser/index.html) is a new, US$4.95 kickstand for an iPhone or iPod touch. It stands up your cell phone, iPhone, iPod or other mobile devices for viewing at a 75 degree viewing angle. It's designed to let you watch movies on your iPhone or iPod or just see who's calling faster. The MobileRiser is less than 1/16 of an inch thick, so doesn't interfere with carrying cases.

LightWork Design has released TurboCAD Pro v16 (http://www.turbocad.com), from IMSI/Design. It incorporates new updated LightWorks functionality. The new product release was announced earlier this week and rendering enhancements within the release include LightWorks global illumination, final gather and ambient occlusion - which facilitates a simpler and faster creation of more accurate and realistic renderings - as well as the addition of numerous new material shaders. David Forrester, Managing Director at LightWork Design commented, "We are pleased to see the addition of the latest LightWorks technology within TurboCAD Pro and to see the real advances that this makes to the product. We look forward to seeing more TurboCAD entries within our LightWorks image competition in the months to come as users take advantage of these improvements." Bob Mayer, Chief Operating Officer at IMSI/Design added, "LightWork Design's development and support staff were instrumental in providing advice...

Nemetschek North America has released its third service pack for the Vectorworks 2009 product line (http;//www.vectorworks2009.net). In addition to addressing several user origin shift problems, improvements were also made to stairs, framing member objects, IFC export, referenced and sheet layer viewports (including section viewports), interactive drawing operations, and many other areas of the application. Currently, Service Pack 3 is available only for professional licenses as a downloadable updater. To install the Service Pack, go to the About Vectorworks dialog box in the Vectorworks 2009 application and click Check for Updates. Vectorworks 2009 was released on Sept. 15, 2008. The Vectorworks 2009 product line includes Vectorworks Designer, Vectorworks Architect, Vectorworks Landmark, Vectorworks Spotlight, Vectorworks Machine Design, Vectorworks Fundamentals, and Renderworks.