Digital 1 DJ/ PCDJ (PCDJ) has released PCDJ DEX (http://pcdj.com/index.php/products/dj-software/pcdj-dex-for-mac/) for the Mac. PCDJ stands for personal computer disc jockey, and the software is designed for both mobile and club DJs. It supports the latest DJ controllers including American Audio VMS4, the Numark MIXDECK, and Denon DN-HC4500. It also includes full XML MIDI mapping support for most popular controllers. PCDJ DEX sports an upgraded audio engine for Mac and has enhanced support of Apple’s CORE Audio. DEX for Mac has a track library, which enables browsing, searching and sorting for a variety of audio files including MP3, AIFF, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, WAV’s, and unprotected AAC (MP4) files. Skinning and Waveform display have been optimized to minimize system resources. PCDJ DEX for Mac requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher and costs $199. A demo is available for download.

Aquafadas (http://www.aquafadas.com) has released a new version of its free Facebook application BannerZest Fun Pics. This application dedicated to the social network Facebook allows users to create and share animated slideshows on their wall and their friends' wall in a few clicks. In this new version users can edit their slideshows and choose new themes with no need to create a new slideshow. What's more, it's possible to add, delete and rename images. Finally, BannerZest Fun Pics users can now classify their slideshows by date of creation. And, minor bugs in Internet Explorer have been fixed too.

A2Z Keywording has launched Keyword Perfect 2.0, a update of the Mac OS X and Windows sales tool that enables photographers, stock photo agencies, archivists and other imaging professionals to tag their photo libraries using a dictionary of searchable keywords, ensuring that their images are as accessible as possible to potential buyers.  First developed as the in-house engine around A2Z Keywording’s keywording service, Keyword Perfect is now available to pro photographers as a means to input relevant tags and, with a minimum of keystrokes, generate dozens of associated keywords that make their work more likely to be identified by image buyers and stock agencies.   Attendees of the PhotoPlus Expo (Oct. 28-30, 2010, New York) are invited to visit the A2K Keywording booth (#177) to view demonstrations of Keyword Perfect and obtain trial versions of the software.   Starting today, Keyword Perfect is available for purchase at http://www.keywordperfect.com at a list price of US$249. A...

Apple sold 4.19 million iPads in the fiscal 2010 fourth quarter that ended Sept. 25. And Apple CEO doesn't see any serious competitors anytime soon. The iPad is now distributed in 26 countries. iPad sales in the fourth quarter brought in US$2.7 million in revenue ($2.8 million when accessories are figured in). Over 65% of Fortune 500 companies are piloting or implementing the Apple tablet, says Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer. iOS device sales passed 125 million in September, and there are now over 30,000 apps designed specifically for the iPad and over 200,000 registered iOS developers. In a conference call with analysts and the press, Jobs said he only saw "a handful of credible entrants on the tablet scene, not an avalanche." He said most only offer 7-inch screen, which is only 45% as large as iPad's 9.7-inch screen. Jobs said that size isn't sufficient for "great tablet apps" and that the iPad's size was the minimum size for great apps -- which would seem to...

In a conference call with financial analysts and the press, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the company is happy with the way that the new Apple TV is selling -- and shaping up. Jobs said the device has already sold over 250,000 units "in a short time" and "we're thrilled with that." He said the new Apple TV is a great product and the US$99 price point is very enticing. "When we get the AirPlay features into play, it will offer another big reason for people to buy the Apple TV," said Jobs. AirPlay is a system that streams audio, either wirelessly or over Ethernet, to third-party speaker docks, A/V receivers, speakers and more.

Apple retail store revenue was $3.57 billion for the the fiscal 2010 fourth quarter. That compares to $2.04 billion in the previous quarter, an increase of 75%. Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said that the retail stores sold 874,000 Macs in the quarter compared to 670,000 the previous quarter. That's up 30%. And -- you guessed it -- he said that half of these Macs were sold to new users. That's the stat mentioned during every quarterly report. Apple opened 24 stores in the fourth fiscal quarter, including 16 international stores. There are now 317 stores worldwide and 84 outside the US. An average of 301 stores were opened during the September quarter with an average revenue of $11.8 million. 
The stores saw a record 75 million visitors compared to 45 million in year-ago quarter. Apple will open 40-50 stores in fiscal 2011; half of those will be outside the US.

"Newsweek" has released its list of "green" U.S. companies (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/18/green-rankings-us-companies.html) and, strangely, Apple isn't in the top 20. The top five on the list are Dell, HP, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Intel and Sprint Nextel. The environmental ranking of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in America is measured by revenue, market capitalization, and number of employees. "NewsWeek" ranked the biggest publicly traded companies in developed and emerging world markets. The absence of Apple on the list seems a bit strange. The International Data Corporation (IDC), says Apple recycles in 95% of the countries where its products are sold. And last October Greenpeace praised Apple as the first PC maker to completely eliminate hazardous brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride plastic in its new iMac and MacBook.

If you count the iPad as a personal computer -- as I've long claimed should be done -- Apple is now the number one computer maker in the US, notes Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore. He told clients in a note Monday -- as reported by "Fortune" (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/18/what-if-the-ipad-were-a-pc/?secti...) -- the Apple tablet is "driving a rapid, unprecedented shift in the structure of the computing industry." To illustrate that point, Whitmore has taken a chart of domestic PC market shares over the past seven quarters as measured by IDC, which doesn't consider tablets to be personal computers, and recalculated it with the iPad figured in. According to Whitmore, ° The U.S. PC market grew 4% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2010 without the iPad, according to IDC. Include the iPad, as Whitmore feels one ought to, and that growth jumps to 24%. ° Exclude the iPad, and Apple's computer sales grew 24% year-over-year. Include them, and Apple's unit sales soared...

Qantas Airways will offer an iPad to passengers on its Jetstar flights as it competes for a growing share of the competitive market for low-cost travel in Australia and Asia, reports "MarketWatch" (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/qantas-unit-to-offer-inflight-ipads-201...). "We're in the final stages of putting in place what would be a broader roll out across the network," a Jetstar spokesman said. "We're in ongoing discussion with the manufacturer around a more integrated network proposition." The iPad will be made available to passengers on domestic and long-haul Jetstar flights following a successful trial period at Qantas, says "MarketWatch."

Apple is set to open a new retail store in Chicago, Illinois, on Saturday, Oct. 23. Apple Store Lincoln Park is located at 801 W. North Avenue. The grand opening will be held at 10 am. Apple Store Lincoln Park will be the company's 306th retail store. Apple plans to open another 15 or so during this fiscal year, with about half of those outside the U.S. Additional info about Apple’s retail stores is available at http://www.apple.com/retail .

ExactCode has updated its ExactScan Pro (http://www.exactcode.de/site/products/exactscan/) scanning software for Mac OS X (10.4 and higher) to version 2.12. The upgrade features a new option to smooth uniform colors, as well as improving OCR recognition, accuracy, stability and device support. ExactScan includes built-in drivers for over 180 document scanners, including devices from Avision, Kodak, Oki, Visioneer and Xerox. Together with the Spotlight indexing services built into Mac OS X since 10.5 ("Leopard") this features form a document management solution suitable for small-office and home-office (SOHO) environments. What's more it has image enhancement algorithms that can recognize automatically how the images and documents have to be cropped and de-skewed. ExactScan comes with support for many languages (English, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Simplified-Chinese, Traditional-Chinese) and works with Mac OS X 10.4 and higher. The pro version of the...

Zevrix Solutions (http://www.zevrix.com) has released LinkOptimizer 4.4.8, an update of its workflow automation solution for Adobe InDesign. It's a maintenance update with some bug fixes. LinkOptimizer lets you reduce InDesign job size and speed up processing by eliminating excess image data and performing essential image adjustments. LinkOptimizer Light 4.4.8 can be purchased from the Zevrix Solutions web site for US$259.95 , as well as from authorized resellers. LinkOptimizer works with Mac OS X 10.4.2-10.5 and InDesign CS-CS4. Version 4.4.8 is free for LinkOptimizer 4.x users and a $98.98 to upgrade from previous versions. A demo is available for download. For new users the costs is $259.95.

Zykloid Software has updated Posterino (http://zykloid.com/posterino), its "life poster" composing application, to version 2.0. The new version sports an interface that allows for customization of templates, layouts and filters with a single click. There are also new themed templates. You can integrate Posterino 2.0 with the latest versions of iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom. Also, you can export to disk, as an e-mail, to iPhoto, to Flickr and as your desktop background. Posterino lets you create life posters, postcards, greeting cards and contact sheets from your digital pictures. The software supports auto-placement of photos, export of posters or postcards, custom template creation, and various image manipulation routines such as cropping and rotation. You can import images from file system folders. A life poster is a collection of dozens of images of your life onto one single poster. Posterino is made for Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") or later. Posterino costs US$24.95. Upgrades from a...

Apple has launched a tweaked the MobileMe Calendar Web app. MobileMe is the company's US$99-per-year suite of Internet tools. It sports a new web interface with calendar sharing and event invitations, as well as new features designed to make it easier to use. Features include the ability to: share calendars with family and friends (though they must be MobileMe members in the beta); publish calendars for groups or teams; and offer event invitations with RSVPs. The app works with the calendar applications on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac.

AT&T and Apple say that all three iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available at more than 2,200 AT&T Stores starting Thursday, Oct, 28. AT&T will offer customers 3G pre-paid data plans for iPad, complete with Apple’s easy on-device activation and management. All iPad data plans are available without a term contract and include unlimited access to AT&T’s 23,000+ domestic Wi-Fi Hot Spots. All iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in AT&T Stores across the US for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB. Domestic data plans for iPad are priced at $14.99 per month for 250MB and $25 per month for 2GB with no term contract. Both plans include unlimited access to AT&T’s 23,000+ domestic Wi-Fi Hot Spots.

Tunepresto (http://www.tunepresto.com) has announced its new online platform that creates original, royalty-free music composition. Designed for videos, slideshow presentations and more, it analyzes video content to create an original background soundtrack based on individual musical style preferences. Content can be shared across social media networks (Facebook, Twitter) and published to various video and slideshow platforms (YouTube, SlideShare). A soundtrack can be exported in a variety of audio formats, or published as audio and video combined. For further customization, files can easily be imported into Garageband, Final Cut Pro, and Windows MovieMaker. Tunepresto also offers a more advanced downloadable desktop product -- Abaltat Muse 2.0. Unlike Tunepresto, Abaltat Muse 2.0 users have the added capability of adjusting the genre of music, tempo and changing instruments. Abaltat Muse 2.0 can be purchased via the Tunepresto web site for US$99. A seven-day demo is available for...

In the third quarter of 2010, Apple is estimated to have sold approximately two million Macs (I predict it's more), and the IDC research group says that puts Apple in third place among US personal computer vendors, passing Acer. Apple grew more than twice as fast as any other US vendor. According to IDC, it now has 10.6% of the US market compared to 8.9% a year ago. Mac sales were up 24.1% year-over-year. Ahead of Apple in the US market is Dell with 23.1% and HP with 24.3%. Globally, the computer market grew 11% in the third quarter of 2010 (3Q10), nearly 3% below expectations, says IDC. The research group says constrained consumer spending resulted in a tepid back-to-school season but a commercial refresh remained largely on schedule and the overall market improved in September compared to the earlier part of the quarter. 
What's more, the market still exhibited positive sequential growth over the second quarter which is the hallmark of third quarter activity, says IDC. Shipments...

Absoft Corp. (http://www.absoft.com) has announced general availability of the new Absoft Pro Fortran 11.1 for Mac OS X. The new version advances parallel code development, analysis and performance on the Mac and is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6.x ("Snow Leopard") and Xcode 3.2. Absoft considers version 11.1 a major release as it includes several new features that simplify development of extremely fast code for parallel systems, says President Wood Lotz. The new version expands the Fortran suite with additional performance tools for multi-cores.  In addition to Absoft’s proprietary Dynamic AP technology, new features in Pro Fortran 11.1 for Mac OS include: a graphical SMP code and vector analyzer to assist in code tuning, OpenMP 3.0 support in the compiler, debugger and IDE, CUDA GPU support, IDE improvements (Apple C/C++ is supported as a plug-in), Fortran 2003 ISO C bindings, and upgraded documentation. Absoft states Pro Fortran v11.1 binaries are fully compatible with Pro Fortran...

Zevrix Solutions has updated BatchOutput Server (http://zevrix.com/BatchOutputServer.php), an output workflow automation solution for Adobe InDesign, to version 4.6. The new version can automatically write logs to a text file along with InDesign documents and addresses some performance and stability issues. Under BatchOutput Server workflow, production artists and prepress operators simply submit files to hotfolders that reside on the network. BatchOutput Server automatically outputs the files from its dedicated station using hotfolder settings, and will auto-activate document fonts as well. BatchOutput 4.6 can be purchased from the Zevrix Solutions web site for US$699.95, as well as from authorized resellers. A demo is available for download. BatchOutput 4.5 is available for Mac OS X 10.4.2 and higher, a Universal Binary, and works with Adobe InDesign CS-CS4.

Apple shares climbed above the US$300 mark for the first time in the company's history as trading began Wednesday, notes "MarketWatch" (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-shares-rise-above-300-for-first-t...). Apple rose $2.15 to $300.65 a share as the market opened, continuing the stock's rise this year that has lifted the stock by more than 42%. Apple is scheduled to report its fiscal fourth quarter results on Monday, Oct. 18.

Apple has been summoned by South Korean lawmakers to answer questions about the company’s iPhone- service policy amid complaints from local users, parliamentary officials said. According to "Bloomberg Businessweek" (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-13/apple-summoned-by-korea-lawm...), Farrel Farhoudi, senior director for Apple’s iPhone service, will appear in parliament on Oct. 21 at the request of lawmakers led by You Won Il. South Korean buyers of the iPhone have complained that Apple mostly gives refurbished used phones to customers with faulty devices, instead of providing new handsets, free repairs or refunds, says "Bloomberg." Apple’s local service warranty gives buyers the four options when they have trouble within 14 days of purchase, he said. Sales of the iPhone passed one million within about nine months of its debut in South Korea. KT Corp., the local carrier for the iPhone, said that 1.02 million iPhones were activated as of Aug. 16. Furthermore, KT says it expects...

Quest Software (http://www.quest.com) has announced expanded device support for Quest vWorkspace with the introduction of vWorkspace connector software for the iPad and “Zero PCs.” By expanding device support and deployment options for vWorkspace, Quest gives businesses more ways to embrace the benefits of deploying virtual desktops with lower cost and greater mobility, says Simon Pearce, vice president and general manager, Quest Desktop Virtualization Group. The vWorkspace Connector for Zero PCs extends the concept of a “zero client” to PC hardware, effectively enabling computers to be used as single-purpose client devices that require zero administration and updates, he adds. The vWorkspace Connector for iPads expands the benefits of vWorkspace to a broader set of users by providing support for the most popular dual work and personal mobile device in today’s workplace, according to Pearce. Enabling desktop virtualization on the iPad also improves mobile user productivity by...

Ricoh Americas Corp. (http://www.ricoh-usa.com) has released its G700Se digital camera. The ruggedized, water and dust proof camera is an improvement on the G500SE, continuing in the tradition of Ricoh SE products, the company says. Complete with wireless data communication capabilities (Wi-Fi) and Bluetooth, the G700SE uses Global Positioning System (GPS) functions and laser barcode readers. The camera also features a Scandisk card (SD-1), which provides a higher level of security with password-enabled access. By sliding the card into the camera, a user can only read information by entering the correct password. Yuki Uchida, vice president of New Business Development, says among the improvements found in the G700SE is a more robust and advanced GPS option, with an increased accuracy from six to three meters. This provides more reliable position and direction information, he adds. The camera has the ability to migrate information online to various mapping applications such as Google...

Akvis has released NatureArt 1.0 (http://akvis.com/en/natureart-tutorial/effects/index.php) for Mac OS X and Windows. It's a tool for imitating the magnificence of natural phenomena on your digital photos. You can choose from six nature effects: Rain, Sun, Water, Lightning, Clouds, and Fire. In the future the program will learn new natural phenomena. NatureArt also lets you create nature scenes from scratch, such as converting a blank background into a sea view or a night sky with scattered, glistening stars. Akvis NatureArt is available in two versions: as an independent program (standalone) and as a plug-in to a photo editor. Each is US$72. The plug-in version is compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, etc. A demo is available for download. Also, Akvis NatureArt can be purchased as a part of the Alchemy bundle.