Software

Adobe To Buy Macromedia: US$3.4Bn
Digital document software giants Adobe have announced that it will be buying up rivals Macromedia for about US$3.4 billion (£1.7bn/€2.6) in stock.
Adobe, best known for its market-leading document distribution Acrobat PDF software and Photoshop graphics suite, said the deal would help the company meet customer demands for wider-ranging applications, including audio and video capabilities.
The deal, announced early today, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005, subject to shareholder approval.
Bruce Chizen will continue as Adobe’s chief executive and Shantanu Narayen will remain president and chief operating officer. Macromedia chief executive Stephen Elop will join Adobe as president of worldwide field operations.
Here’s the PR spin on the deal:
“The combination of Adobe and Macromedia strengthens our mission of helping people and organizations communicate better. Through the combination of our powerful development, authoring and collaboration tools – and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash – we have the opportunity to drive an industry-defining technology platform that delivers compelling, rich content and applications across a wide range of devices and operating systems.
By combining the passion and creativity of two leading-edge companies, we will continue driving innovations that are changing the ways people everywhere are experiencing and interacting with information.”
The combined company would have annual sales of just over US$2bn (£1.05bn/€1.5bn), based on the most recent fiscal and calendar year figures from both.
The two companies have been battling it out for the hearts of creatives for several years – Adobe’s killer app Photoshop has long ruled the roost for designers, although Macromedia’s innovative rival product Fireworks was constantly nipping at its ankles.
Macromedia is best known for its hugely-popular HTML authoring package, Dreamweaver, and its animation software ‘Flash’, which enables Web designers to deliver fast downloading, interactive multimedia content.
Adobe’s late-to-the-party Flash riposte, ‘Live Motion’ never really got anyone excited, and its capable HTML authoring package, GoLive, failed to seriously trouble Dreamweaver’s dominance.
There has been no announcement about the future of individual products, and bulletin boards on the Web are already speculating as to the future of competing products, such the high-end illustration packages, ‘Freehand’ and ‘Illustrator’ (Macromedia and Adobe, respectively).
Both products have large, loyal user bases and there may be some concern that – in the words of Sparks – “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us”.
There are also fears that with Adobe now free of any real competition in this lucrative sector, a damaging monopoly could emerge.
Adobe
Macromedia
18 April, 2005
Advertising in Games Forum predicts $1Bn in revenue 2010
Last week, 250 executives from advertising agencies, game developers and publishers swarmed into the first annual Advertising in Games Forum on 14 April 2005 in New York City.
The audience, primarily made up of sharp-suited, silver tongued advertising agency executives, were there to discover more about market opportunities and expectations within the game industry.
According to the organisers, The Game Initiative, attendees were treated to a feast of ‘key facts, figures and estimates’ spun out by leading industry experts at the forum.
In a bullet point-laden onslaught of PowerPoint presentations, these key facts emerged:
According to the Yankee Group, advertising in games is expected to rise to US$800 million in 2009 from nearly US$120 million in 2004.
Around US$266 million – that’s more than one-third of advertising in games in 2009 – will come from (wait for it) “advergaming.”
For the benefit of buzzword-deficient execs, Yankee Group senior analyst Mike Goodman explained that this hideous word describes what you get when advertisers create a game around a product rather than place their brands within a well-known title.
Mitch Davis, chief executive of video game ad network Massive Inc., whipped the watching execs into a frenzy of monetary expectation when he revealed that the audience video game advertising would top US$1 billion in the United States by 2010, and approach US$2.5 billion worldwide.
Anita Frazier, Entertainment Industry Analyst, NPD Group opened up her big book marked ‘Facts’ and informed the Advertising In Games Forum audience that there are 100 million game capable cell phones currently in the Marketplace – with 65% of the population owning a cell phone.
The sound of keenly rubbing palms grew to a crescendo as Frazier announced that within 16 months all cell phones in the marketplace should be game capable and thus brimming with cash-raking, game-downloading potential.
Fact-bloated attendees also learned that the top selling 2004 game titles (according to the NPD Group) were:
1. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas – 5.5 million sold since launch
2. Halo 2 on X box – 4.5 million units sold since launch
3. Madden NFL 2004 on PS 2 – 3.5 million units sold since launch
4. ESPN NFL 2K5 -1.6 million units sold since launch
5. Need for Speed Underground 2 -1.7 million units since launch
The top selling PC title of 2004 was Sims 2 with 750,000 units sold.
The ‘best selling game title of all time’ title goes to Grand Theft Auto Vice City with a massive 6.5 million units shifted, with Super Mario 64 on the N64 coming in second with an impressive 6.0 million units.
Game Initiative
18 April, 2005
Napster Faces DRM Crack As WMA Files Compromised
Napster may have a new headache on its hands, with a DRM hack recently surfacing.
A team of programmers led by Cody Brocious are rumoured to be very near an implementation of a utility that will allow people to turn songs acquired through Napster Light and Premium into unencrypted files.
Users will still have to pay for the initial download of the file (to acquire the key from Napster) with the tool then stripping the WMA files of their underlying DRM protections.
Previously, users keen to distribute encrypted DRM-protect files have had to resort to unwieldy workarounds such as recording from the sound card.
Once stripped of its DRM, songs downloaded from Napster can be re-encoded and played back across a number of different systems – undermining the entire business model of the Napster service.
The tool is reported to be unable to circumvent Napster To Go songs using Janus DRM (WMA DRM v10) which is different from the DRM applied to Light and Premium songs.
The latest hack seems to be driven by a desire to make the Napster service functional on both Linux and Mac platforms, instead of just Windows, with Cody seeing his actions as “ethical,” irrespective of legality, and he is willing to “fight the DMCA.”
He wants to be able to play his lawfully acquired Napster music on Linux.
The Cracking of Napster WMA DRM
Cody Brocious
15 April, 2005
FireFox Browser Gains Popularity
The open source Web browser FireFox, has experienced a humongous surge in popularity over the last year according to a report by Nielsen//NetRatings.
In March last year, the Internet research firm reported that Mozilla.org had a unique audience of 1.1 million home and work Internet users in the US – and that number has now soared 284% to 4.1 million unique users last month.
Similarly, the Firefox home page has been given a right royal battering, with figures from Nielsen/NetRatings recording a unique audience of 2.7 million, up 237% from the 795,000 it drew in June 2004.
(It seems that someone must be telling porky pies here, because the SpreadFirefox community marketing site has claimed that Firefox has been downloaded approximately 44.7 million times thus far.)
“The search for an alternative browser has grown in recent years, as the Internet’s early adopters have begun to think of the browser as something other than a commodity,” says Ken Cassar, director of strategic analytics for Nielsen/NetRatings.
“FireFox gives Web surfers a simple tool that blocks unsolicited windows, is less susceptible to virus attacks and offers a unique means of navigating multiple sites within a single browser”, Cassar added.
For reasons best known to themselves, Nielsen/NetRatings also broke down the Mozilla.org audience by sex and – not surprisingly – discovered that gadget-tastic, tech-loving blokes accounted for 71% – or nearly 1.9 million site visitors – compared to the lay-deees who comprised just 29% of traffic.
FireFox was created by a group of former Netscape programmers under the banner of the Mozilla Foundation, and its extra security features – such as the ability to block all pop-up ads and protect against spyware – has led to a steady exodus from Microsoft’s all-conquering Internet Explorer browser.
The browser is also supported by an enthusiastic coding community who offer a raft of free add ons, browser themes and extensions.
Although Microsoft is expected to adopt many of FireFox’s features in its new Internet Explorer version 7.0 (expected this summer), the browser’s exponential growth may force lazy coders to ensure that their sites are also compatible with the upstart browser.
Moreover, FireFox’s growth may have a significant impact on online marketing, with its cookie blocking measures wreaking havoc with companies tracking the results of third party ad campaigns.
What a shame!
Firefox (mozilla.org)
14 April, 2005
Apple Tiger OSX Launch Date Announced
Apple Computer has announced that the latest major update of its Mac OS X operating system, code-named Tiger, will be available on 29 April.
Modestly described as “The World’s Most Advanced Operating System,” Apple’s highly anticipated update to Mac OS X (now at version 10.4) will be available to mobs of grasping Mac huggers on Friday, 29 April.
With over 200 new features on offer, Apple aficionados should find the upgrade worth the price, with one of the most eagerly awaited new features being a sophisticated new search facility called ‘Spotlight’.
This powerful core application lets users search just about everything on their system – files, emails, contacts, images, movies, calendars and applications – with the results appearing “instantly”.
Stealing a march on their Microsoft rivals, Spotlight can also rummage around inside the metadata of files and organise search results by criteria, such as the kind of content, author, edit history, format, size etc.
The new OS will also feature Dashboard, an accessory desktop application letting users display a variety of real-time information from the Internet, including stocks, weather forecasts, track flights and currency rates and other third party apps.
Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs was clearly excited by the new OSX upgrade: “Tiger’s groundbreaking new features, like Spotlight and Dashboard, will change the way people use their computers, and drive our competitors nuts, trying to copy them.”
Other updates include an updated Safari browser offering built-in RSS support, improved connectivity with other desktop operating systems and support for the next-generation video-compression standard H.264 (allowing multiple users on the video-conferencing program iChat).
Mac OS X version 10.4 “Tiger” will be available on 29 April from 6:00 pm at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorised Resellers for a suggested retail price of £89 (US$129, €129)
Apple will also be offering a “family pack” version of the software, for £139 (US$199 €199), serving up to five computers in a single residence.
Apple OSX
13 April, 2005
Mobile Games Industry Attracts £183m Of Venture Capital Funding In 2004
New figures by media researchers, Screen Digest, has shown that the mobile games market has scooped up £327m worth of funding since September 1999, 56% of which was raised during 2004.
A hefty chunk part of this investment has been driven by private equity houses as the mobile games market begins to realise its lucrative potential.
Between 2002 and 2004 mobile game company fund-raising soared from £23m (US$43.5m/€33.5m), with investors scrambling to secure an interest in the market.
UK companies attracting investment included Digital Bridges and Atatio, with Jamdat and MFORMA leading the way in the US.
The growth of multimedia/web-enabled phones has supercharged consumer spending on downloadable mobile games, with sales growing from £380m (US$719m/€554m)in 2003 to £778m (US$1.4bnm/€1,134m) in 2004.
What people in expensive suits call “merger and acquisition activity” has also shown a dramatic increase over the past 12 months, with Screen Digest’s research highlighting the exponential growth in game developer transactions – from just two transactions in 2002, to four in 2003, rising massively to 19 in 2004.
Screen Digest’s Chief Analyst, Ben Keen explains, “Once the top developers have been acquired, there is likely to be a trend towards consolidation at the publishing/aggregation level to achieve greater ‘scale’ in the marketplace. We believe that once again it will be the private equity houses that will emerge as the driving force behind any sector ‘roll-ups’.”
Evidence of the mobile games market’s strength is highlighted by growing activity in the financial community and the increased involvement of the traditional games publishers.
The recent creation of dedicated mobile publishing divisions by a number of computer and video games companies (most notably Electronic Arts) provides further evidence that the mobile games market has finally come of age.
Screen Digest
12 April, 2005
Men Spend More Money on Video Games Than Music: Nielsen Report
A study by Nielsen Entertainment has revealed that men spend more money on video games than they do on music, adding weight to a growing belief that video games are displacing other forms of media for the notoriously fickle attentions of young men.
And it’s not just the kids fragging and gibbing away – the study also reveals that old ‘uns are getting down with da yoot on the consoles, with nearly a quarter of all gamers being over 40.
The random survey of 1,500 people was conducted by the interactive unit of Nielsen Entertainment earlier this year and revealed that games now rank only behind DVDs as a purchase category, ahead of CDs, digital MP3 files and other ways of buying music.
We’ve no idea why this is relevant, but Nielsen also wanted to know how gaming split along lines of race, discovering that African-Americans and Hispanics spend more money on games each month than Caucasians. So now we know.
Naturally, advertisers are keen to cash in on the rising popularity of games, and are looking at ever more persuasive ways to bombard bedroom-bound, bunglesome boys with beguiling adverts (branded billboards in race games are already commonplace, as we’ve reported previously).
Never one to miss an opportunity, Nielsen has announced that they are working on a method to measure audience response to the in-game ads.
The study also discovered that 40% of US households have some kind of system dedicated to game play – whether a gaming PC, a console or a handheld device – with 23% mad-for-it gamers owning all three types of systems.
Like masturbation, older gamers prefer to do it alone, with 79% of men and 79% of women over the age of 45 spending most of their time playing alone.
Teenage girls tended to play more socially, while women aged 25-54 spent equal time playing alone and with others.
Overall, Nielsen reported that active gamers tend to spend just over 5 hours a week playing alone and 3 hours a week playing with people or online.
The US video game industry now rakes in US$10 billion (€7.7b/£5.3b) in annual revenue, roughly as much as US box office sales.
Nielsen Entertainment
11 April, 2005
Digital Hotspotter Wi-Fi Signal Finder From Canary Wireless
Canary Wireless have released their Digital Hotspotter device, which, as the name suggests, is a WiFi detection and analysis tool.
Unlike rival products that only detect signal availability and strength, this pocket sized marvel features a handy LCD display offering network ID, encryption status and channel data for multiple networks.
Using the Hotspotter is simple enough: whip it out of your pocket, hit the little grey button and watch as the scanner starts sniffing about for local wireless networks.
If it locates one, the screen will display a sequence starting with the network name, followed by the signal-strength readout (one to four bars), an indication of whether the signal is “Secure” or “Open” and the channel number of the detected signal. The whole process takes about ten seconds.
To scan for more networks, bash the button again.
The manufacturers claim that Hotspotter should work up to about 200 feet outside (with a clear line of site) and user reports have confirmed this range.
Benjamin Kern, founder of Canary Wireless, put on his ‘enthusiastic’ hat and explained what’s great about his product: “Canary Wireless’ Digital Hotspotter device offers the only convenient solution that lets a user know exactly what networks are available and allows the user to determine whether it’s a good time to boot-up.
With its ability to detect encryption status, signal strength and channel information, the device also provides the easiest way for tech professionals to detect rogue access points, perform site surveys and troubleshoot interference.”
And while we can’t disagree with Ben’s summary, we wonder how long it will be before laptop makers start fitting WiFi sniffers into machine cases to let users seek out accessible networks without going through all the palaver of booting up.
And if the next generation of VoIP phones doesn’t include built in sniffers, heck, we’ll eat Ben’s enthusiastic hat.
The Digital Hotspotter device is available at www.canarywireless.com and costs US$49.95 (£27/€39)
Canarywireless.com/
8 April, 2005
Cyberphone K USB Skype Handset Review
Skype is a Voice over IP (VoIP) service that allows you to make phone calls via a broadband connection to other users for free. And we like it.
Being able to ring chums up all over the world for jack diddly squat, frees up more money for beer, and its productivity-boosting features (like instant messaging and conference calling) rewards us with more pub time. Great!
But not everyone likes having to bellow into a computer microphone to make phone calls, or – even worse – sharing their intimate conversations with chuckling workmates eavesdropping on the conversation blasting out of PC speakers.
The only way you can hope to get a bit of privacy with VoIP calls is to don a headset that makes you look like a cross between a call centre dork and a fitness instructor. Not cool.
Despite all the benefits of VoIP telephony, the perceived ‘fiddlyness’ of the technology makes it look like an uber-geeky toy for weird, gadget-loving, parameter tweaking folks (cough!).
And here’s where the VoIP Cyberphone Skype phone comes in.
Although it looks like the kind of phone you could pick up at Brick Lane market for the price of a cup of tea, it’s actually a smarty-pants USB-powered device that makes using VoIP a breeze.
Installing the device is simple: slap in the CD, install the software and then go to Skype.com and set up an account. Job done!
Once installed, picking up the Cyberphone causes the Skype interface to immediately pop up on your PC’s desktop (sadly, this amused us for some time) and you can then scroll through your contacts via the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ buttons on the phone’s keypad.
Once you’ve selected the Skype user you want to talk to, simply hit the ‘call’ icon on the handset and you’ll hear a familiar ring tone, until the end user picks up. And then you can chat for as long as you like. For free.
Phone clarity was as good as any landline (although we did have to delve into the computer’s control panel to ‘up’ the volume) and the whole experience was as easy as, well, using a phone.
Naturally, fellow Skype users can ring you for free too, and you can elect to use your PC’s ring tones or use the one built into the phone.
You can also use the phone to ring up lesser mortals not connected to the web courtesy of Skypeout. Shell out for a €10 (US$13/£7) voucher and you can then enjoy greatly reduced calls to regular phones all over the world, saving up to 85% off standard BT rates.
Ringing up non-Skype users is simple enough, although you’ll have to include full international codes every time, which is a bit of pain if you’re only calling someone in the same area.
Mac users will be more irritated to learn that the phone won’t work fully with their OS, even though the Skype software does.
VERDICT
These minor quibbles aside, Cyberphone is a trailblazing product that will soon repay the modest investment.
The handset may not be challenging Apple for design awards, but it’s a solid, basic, no fuss device that opens up the world of free VoIP telephony to everyone.
It’s simple, straightforward and saves you a bomb.
Highly recommended
FIVE STARS. Cost: €54.99 (US$71/£37), Skype Cyberphone
Available from Firebox (UK) for £29.95 (US$56/€43).
7 April, 2005
Space Invaders Revolution Coming To Nintendo DS
Everyone’s heard of Space Invaders haven’t they? Those who haven’t, will surely have been sitting in a very dark room with their fingers in their ears, singing “La, la, la, la” very loudly to themselves since 1978.
It’s a game with fantastical legends surrounding it, like the one about the Bank of Japan having to increase the circulation of 100-yen coins to cope with them sitting in Invader machines.
Since the original release, it’s been remade a quite a few times with varying success. Until now, the most recent release was the 25th Anniversary edition in 2003, where they went hell-for-leather releasing all sorts of branded goods as diverse as watches, bags, shoes and even cushions.
Not wanting to let a good thing go by, Nintendo has announced the latest version of Invaders – Space Invaders Revolution for the Nintendo DS.
The games original creator, Mr Tomohiro Nishikado, oversaw the development of the DS version at his development company, Dreams – how times have changed, he was originally responsible for creating the whole of the game.
It’s not just a copy of the original, Nishikado describes it accordingly, “With Space Invaders Revolution, I wanted the team to take the game back to its roots – whilst at the same time adding features which would appeal to modern gamers.”
The new version sounds like it has some of those interesting features, such as rules that change as you pass between levels.
Of course, for fans of the original, there’s an exact duplicate, rewritten for the DS, not a version running the original code in an emulator as we assumed.
We’re pleased to report that some of the scoring strategies from the first version, work in Classic mode. The Nagoya-uchi (the “Nagoya attack”), or “death row” technique works perfectly (this is when the invaders have reached the very last row, just before the ground, the player’s base is immune to bullets from the bottom row of invaders). We can’t report the same for the 22 shots = 300 points from the UFO technique, as each attempt to date has lead to a loss of counting.
In normal play, the DS version doesn’t make a great use of the dual screens. You can use the lower, touch screen as a controller, tapping the on-screen buttons, in some of the games and sometimes graphics do pass between the two.
New Era Mode has plenty of challenges in it, as you fight your way through 60 levels, bringing in puzzle elements to the tried and tested formula.
It’s published by Rising Star Games with a license from Taito (the original developers) and will be available in the shops during Q2 this year.
Nintendo DS
Taito
Space Invaders, 25th Anniversary edition
1 April, 2005