BenQ Debuts $999 Digital Projector with PB2120

New Micro Series Projector by BenQ Offers Ideal Digital Presentation Solution for SOHO Market

BenQ America unveiled its entry into the sub-$1,000 digital projector category with the PB2120. This projector offers a variety of key features and functions, in a lightweight and small package that makes it an ideal, personal presentation solution for those in the small office/home office market.

"The BenQ PB2120 is the perfect presentation tool for those in the small office/home office industry or business professionals always on-the-go," said Stephanie Wang, product manager of Digital Media at BenQ. "It delivers the power and functionality needed to operate in a streamlined environment. The size, weight and features of the PB2120 make it a true personalized projector that you can take anywhere you need a quality video or presentation tool."

The BenQ PB2120
The BenQ PB2120 has a high 2000:1 contrast ratio at 1,200 ANSI lumens. As an SVGA digital projector, the BenQ PB2120 has a native resolution of 800 x 600 and can support resolutions from 640 x 350 up to 1280 x 1024. It can also support 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios for presentations and personalized movie/DVD viewing.

Utilizing proprietary BenQ video-processing technology to support the latest DLP™ chip set from Texas Instruments, the PB2120 is HDTV-compatible (480p, 720p and 1080i) with direct YPbPr/component (through VGA port), S-Video and composite video inputs. The new DDR DLP chipsets produce flawless pictures that won't fade or degrade over time, and the optical engine lifetime exceeds 100,000 hours while maintaining the images' original clarity.

Aladdin Systems, sponsor avery interesting site about Spam

Read about it and get all the resource information you need on the spam controversy at http://www.spamcontroversy.com sponsored by Aladdin Systems, inc.

Very informative.

Flash MX 2004 Get New up-date

From Macromedia: When we released Macromedia Flash MX 2004 in September of this year, it was an aggressive release. We really did push it hard. Consequently, there were still some issues to resolve. And we definitely heard about it from our community. Too many bugs. Too little documentation. And not enough migration support. So we took it to heart—and we fixed it. Here’s what we did:

Bug Fixes
This update addresses the most important bugs. Specifically for developers, we've addressed bugs in the connectivity area and made code editing much faster. For designers, we've put the 'scale and rotate' feature back into the menu. And for everyone, stability has been enhanced. Read the release notes for details on all of the fixes.
 
Help and Resources
The update includes three more megabytes of help text. I don’t know how many pages that translates to, but that's a lot of help text. Really a big advancement. We also reorganized and structured the Development Center based on the key areas of difficulty we heard about from the community.

Compatibility and Migration
We've looked at a number of areas and made sure your old content can be migrated to MX 2004. We're reissuing Flash MX components from the previous release to work with MX 2004. The same with DRK components (note: you must register your DRK before you can download the updated DRK components). Flash Communication Server components will be available at the end of this month, and we'll be announcing more updates for Flash Remoting components.

Keyspan updates drivers for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther compatibility

Keyspan, America's #1 brand of USB connectivity products, announced that Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther"
compatible drivers for its products are now available.

Updated drivers for Keyspan's award winning USB adapters, SX Pro Serial
Card, Digital Media Remote and Presentation Remote were posted on the
Keyspan web site (http://www.keyspan.com) in recent weeks. They may be
downloaded at no charge.

HELIOS announces EtherShare support for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) 3.1

HELIOS Software GmbH, a leading provider of file, print and prepress server solutions, announced that
HELIOS EtherShare now supports the latest version of Apple Computer's Apple Filing Protocol (AFP 3.1). When used with HELIOS EtherShare, AFP 3.1 is the easiest, best performing, and most reliable protocol for connecting multiple Mac OS X clients to a server for sharing files easily and
efficiently over a network.

HELIOS EtherShare support for AFP 3.1 includes:

- File names up to 255 characters in length
- Unicode/UTF-8 file names and volumes
(cross-platform compatible with Mac and Windows clients via PCShare)
- Very large file support, no 4 GB limit any longer, for archive, prepress
and video data
- Full Mac OS X compatibility (Mac OS X 10.3 recommended)
- Mac OS 8/9 backward compatibility via existing AFP 2.2 protocol
- Client/Server reconnect support, and Mac OS X client sleep support
- 2-3 times faster performance than NFS or SMB/CIFS file sharing

Using a 1 GHz G4 Mac OS X 10.2 client connected via Gigabit Ethernet to a
fast EtherShare AFP 3.1 server, LanTest™ shows read/write performance up to
60 MBytes per second when using a single OS X client. Server based FindFile
using AFP volumes is done in seconds versus hours using NFS or SMB/CIFS
volumes.

"We are delighted to deliver the best performing AFP 3.1 file and print
server for all major UNIX server platforms, demonstrating the technology
leadership role that HELIOS plays in the networking field", says Helmut
Tschemernjak, Founder and President of HELIOS.

Digital Photography Pocket Guide, Second Edition" Released by O'Reilly

Who's Really in Charge--Your Digital Camera or You?

The nature of your relationship with your digital camera
is determined early on in your association, and it all comes down to a
question of which of the two of you is going to be in charge. According
to Derrick Story, author of the newly released second edition of the
"Digital Photography Pocket Guide", you'll soon
reach a crossroads with two paths before you. Along the first path, you
take what you've learned about your camera in the first few minutes and
use that knowledge to take the best pictures you can. Here, the camera is
merely an acquaintance: it'll suffice to take snapshots on vacation or at
birthday parties. But it's clearly the camera that is in charge.

The "Digital Photography Pocket Guide" is a friendly guide for those who
want to take the second path. Now in full color, the new edition expands
on the basic photography techniques introduced in the bestselling first
edition to help photographers take the kind of pictures they've always
wanted to. The book covers everything from image resolution, shooting
sports action, close-ups and night shots, to memory cards, transferring
images, archiving, making QuickTime movies, and much more.

This handy pocket guide will prove useful to anyone who uses a digital
camera. Even advanced amateurs forget whether to overexpose or
underexpose in certain lighting conditions, and novices will appreciate
the clear explanations of the various camera functions.

Further reviews of the first edition can be found at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/digphotopg/reviews.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents, index,
author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/digphotopg2/

Digital Photography Pocket Guide, Second Edition
Derrick Story
ISBN 0-596-00627-6, 113 pages

Stone Design Updates Stone Studio Suite With Panther Enhancements

Stone Design has released an update for the Stone Studio suite of apps. Stone Studio is a seven app bundle package designed to fully utilize aspects of Mac OS X. The updates bring improved Panther compatibility to the line of applications. Get Yours at: www.stone.com/

iPod in the News

There is a lot of "Brouhaha" this month about the iPod.
Before you rush to get one for x-mass, you may want to read the following;

Everything is not all "Peachy" in the world of iPod!

The Neistat brothers followed through after the batteries in an iPod died and Apple told them it would cost US$250 to replace them. The tech rep told the guys they might as well buy a new iPod. The brothers thought differently and made a movie showing how they got the word out in a large metro area. Of course it was made on a Mac with iMovie." Their statement is a bit misleading: many people have iPods that have lasted a lot longer than 18 months (the iPod was released over two years ago). But the batteries don't last forever. What is their life expectancy? Does Apple notify consumers of a life expectancy ? view the Movie at: www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/

iPod Users Get Official Battery Replacement

After much complaining from iPod owners, Apple has finally started an official Official iPod Battery replacement(requires a free Apple ID). Although battery replacements have been available for older iPods for some time now, Apple has finally taken heed to their user requests and are now offering the service. From the Support page: 'If your iPod fails to hold a charge and it's more than a year old, you may need a new battery. Click Continue to order iPod battery service for $99 USD.' Although the service is $99, they state in the article 'iPod equipment that is sent in for battery service or service requiring other repairs will be replaced with functionally equivalent new, used, or refurbished iPod equipment. You will not receive the same iPod that was sent in for service.' So make sure you back up that music before shipping it off!"

ALADDIN SYSTEMS SHIPS INTERNET CLEANUP 1.1

Aladdin Systems, Inc., announced Internet Cleanup(tm) 1.1, an update to provide Panther support, new spyware tracking, an improved Help tool and an iSupport menu in NetBlockade for quick help and access to updates. Internet Cleanup is a privacy tool that blocks banner Ads, pop-ups, and detects the presence of spyware on the computer. Internet Cleanup resolves privacy concerns by removing cookies, history files and Internet clutter that can be traced and allow for the permanent deletion of any file or folder. Internet Cleanup works with all the popular Macintosh browsers including Safari and Internet Explorer.

A new trial of Internet Cleanup is available on Aladdin's Website: http://www.aladdinsys.com/mac/cleanup/index.html for consumers wishing to try the software before they buy it.