In its rather successful attempts to keep up with the video-hungry masses, RealNetworks started adding some attention-grabbing improvements to its RealPlayer multimedia app last year. First, the software slapped on the ability to quickly and easily download videos from the Web and transcode them to various devices.Then, earlier this year, the company threw in a user-friendly video editing and sharing tool.

Today, RealNetworks announced another update to the software aimed at making it even simpler to manage, share, and transfer your media. Details in the release are scarce as to the actual changes that accomplish this, but company Vice President Peter Kellogg-Smith asserts that the new RealPlayer "provides a simple solution for streamlining and centralizing these videos, photos, and music, making it easier than ever to move, manage, and preserve all your media between screens." It appears that a new drag-and-drop functionality is key to providing this experience for people. In addition, the latest version will support an expanded array of music, photo, and video formats.

The update, which is free and currently available in beta, will also carry over all of the useful features from the previous version. Some highlights include one-click video downloading, the ability to transcode videos directly to dozens of devices, video trimming, and playlist syncing.

There are plenty of options--from iTunes to DoubleTwist to Windows Media Player--that will keep the average consumer satisfied in terms of basic multimedia organization and playback. However, if you count yourself among those creative or persnickety enough to delve into the realm of audio and video editing, you may want to consider some more fully featured media tools.

That's where Nero's latest products come into play. Today, the company announced Nero Multimedia Suite 10 Platinum HD and Video Premium HD, two solutions for "creative enthusiasts" that will be available October 15 for $129.99 and $69.99, respectively. Unsurprisingly, the focus in these updates is HD video, a feature that continues to become increasingly popular with the availability of user-friendly recording devices such as the Flip Video MiniHD and the iPhone 4.

Let's start with the standalone video-editing tool, Nero Video Premium HD. This program is essentially a more feature-packed version of Nero Vision Xtra, which has also enjoyed some upgrades (namely improved background rendering and the ability for users to export movies to Flash Video). In addition to including all of the video-editing tools found in Xtra, Video Premium HD offers Blu-ray disc authoring and playback as well as the Nero Creative CollectionPack, which consists of a picture-in-picture effects generator, transitions effects, and movie theme packs.

For even more functionality, you can turn to Nero Multimedia Suite 10 Platinum HD, which encompasses Video Premium HD and adds backup and burning capability. Further, this collection builds upon the multimedia management tools introduced earlier this year in Nero Multimedia Suite 10, tacking on Blu-ray playback capabilities and new tools to help create, edit, burn, back up, and share HD content. More specifically, the newest suite will offer BD-Live 2.0 Blu-ray disc playback and the Move It plug-in, which allows for simpler media transfer and conversion between mobile devices and the PC.

The new Nero multimedia tools seem to incorporate all the necessary features and functionality to compete in the consumer enthusiast space. I'm particularly curious to see how Video Premium HD stacks up against the slightly pricier Sony Vegas. Stay tuned for a full review in the coming weeks.

Despite the hopes of many, Mozilla made it official today that it will not develop a standalone Firefox browser for the iPhone.

Instead, the browser-maker will continue to pour resources into Firefox Home for iPhone, its browser companion app. Mozilla said in a blog post:

"People have asked about adding more browserlike features to Firefox Home, but there are technical and logistical restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to build the full Firefox browser for the iPhone. We are focused on building Firefox Home as a rich, cloud-based application and making it a valuable product that people will continue to love and use."

In fact, Mozilla's announcement that it will expand Firefox Home to BlackBerry and Symbian could be an indication that the company is moving away from mobile browsers entirely. As with the iPhone app, Firefox Home for these mobile platforms would tie into the Firefox Sync service to deliver the browsing history, open browser tabs, and notes that you generated on your desktop computer to your mobile phone. While there's no hard timeline yet, Mozilla anticipated that these apps will arrive in "the coming months," the company mentioned in a blog post.

Mozilla also says it will investigate creating a version of Firefox Home for iPad, based on users' requests.

Although Mozilla has long been experimenting with a dedicated Firefox app, the Fennec browser is only in its early phase on Android and the first Firefox mobile browser was limited to only two Nokia devices. In addition, Mozilla halted work on a Fennec browser for Windows Mobile.

Firefox Sync, on the other hand, offers convenient cloud-based storage and is comparatively simpler to build than a standalone browser. One of the first implementations of Firefox Sync appeared as an add-on in Firefox for Nokia's Maemo/Meego platform.

New features for Firefox Home

In addition to pushing the syncing-and-storage service to other mobile platforms, Mozilla has also committed to adding features to its iPhone version of Firefox Home. The forthcoming features include being able to synchronize passwords, customize your search engine preference, and share links and updates to Facebook and Twitter directly from the app. Mozilla also aspires to more seamless integrate with Apple's iOS 4 applications, including YouTube, Google Maps, and Safari, the latter of which Firefox Home currently uses as an option for viewing a Web site.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

A group of programmers has forked OpenOffice.org, the open-source rival to Microsoft Office that Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems.

The group, called the Document Foundation, published beta versions of its software, called LibreOffice for download on Tuesday. And although the group invited Oracle to offer its OpenOffice trademark, they made it clear they're willing to proceed without the software and now hardware company.

"Developers are invited to join the project and contribute to the code in the new friendly and open environment, to shape the future of office productivity suites alongside contributors who translate, test, document, support, and promote the software," the group said in a statement.

Wait--what about Oracle, the company that inherited the core OpenOffice programmers and still owns the project's copyrights? Well, they're welcome to come along if they want.

"The OpenOffice.org trademark is owned by Oracle Corporation. Our hope is that Oracle will donate this to to the foundation, along with the other assets it holds in trust for the community, in due course, once legal etc. issues are resolved. However, we need to continue work in the meantime," the group said in an FAQ.

Niceties aside, the move is another vote of no confidence from open-source advocates in Oracle's handling of assets it acquired from Sun. The OpenSolaris Governing Board disbanded after Oracle disengaged from open-source work involving the Unix operating system. What will happen with the open-source Java and MySQL projects remains somewhat unclear at this stage.

Oracle didn't respond to a request for comment.

Other organizations, though, were willing to endorse the foundation.

Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Novell will include LibreOffice in their versions of Linux, according to the foundation's announcement. Linux hasn't had too much influence beyond programmers and the technically advanced, but the endorsements do carry weight and ensure LibreOffice will get at least some traction.

The foundation also secured endorsements from Google, which said it would participate. And Richard Stallman, who as president of the Free Software Foundation laid many of the intellectual and practical foundations for the free and open-source software movements, said he hopes "the LibreOffice developers and the Oracle-employed developers of OpenOffice will be able to cooperate on development of the body of the code."

With open-source software, the source code that underlies a software project can be seen, changed, and shared by anyone. However, in this case, Oracle owns the copyright to the software.

OpenOffice.org, formerly called Star Office before Sun acquired it and released it as open-source software, has attained a measure of popularity as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Although it helped catalyze a movement to help liberate customer data from proprietary file formats, OpenOffice.org has largely languished.

Today, the bigger competitive challenge to Office is Google Docs, part of the Google Apps suite that Google lets customers use in premium form for a subscription cost of $50 per user per year. Its Web-based editing abilities are somewhat primitive, but Google Apps includes a stronger draw in the form of the Gmail e-mail service tailored to a customer's domain. Microsoft is answering Google Docs with an online version of Office.

Document Foundation members include a number of individuals involved in OpenOffice.org, many of them helping to adapt it with support for various languages.

Andy Updegrove, an attorney who was involved in the effort to foster OpenOffice's file formats as the OpenDocument Format standard, lauded the new foundation and said the software project failed to meet its potential under Sun stewardship.

"The OpenOffice suite could have become so much more. As with other single-company controlled efforts in the past...other companies that could have, and would have, made significant contributions of personnel, funding, and promotion stood aside," Updegrove said in a blog post.

The lesson is clear, Updegrove added: "Corporations that wish to encourage wide participation by the development community must spin their projects out as independent legal entities. Only by doing so can they guarantee to those they encourage to participate that their efforts will not later be subverted or financially abandoned."

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Microsoft announced today it will be taking preorders for Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Microsoft says this major update will bring the Mac version of its office suite almost on par with the Windows version of the product. With significantly better cross-platform compatibility, several added new features, and some impressive interface elements exclusive to the Mac version, Office 2011 for Mac might be the best in its class.

Over the past couple of weeks, we had the chance to check out the entire suite--including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook--and we think there's plenty to be excited about. New and notable features in this latest iteration of Office for Mac include handy image-editing tools, a new media browser, enormous template galleries, and several feature upgrades and interface enhancements across the suite. If you're still not sure if you should preorder Office 2011 for Mac, read our review for more info.

Though the venerable suite won't be available until October 26, you can read up-to-date news and details from Microsoft's Mac development team over at the Mac Mojo blog.

Two million users with 5 million computers storing 100 million bookmarks doth not a business make.

That's what Xmarks, a company that for a time ruled the technical specialty of synchronizing bookmarks among different computers and browsers, concluded. After four years' effort, it's closing up shop in about 90 days after finding no good way to convert its popularity into profit.

The company got its start as Foxmarks, a Firefox extension, but eventually spread to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome. It let people synchronize not only their bookmarks but also passwords and open tabs, but those features are now arriving in both Firefox and Chrome.

"For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service. With that investment thesis thwarted, there is no way to pay expenses, primarily salary and hosting costs," said Xmarks co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Todd Agulnick in a blog post Monday. "Without the resources to keep the service going, we must shut it down."

The company tried various ways to make a profit out of its business, including a "smarter search" idea based on data gleaned from its anonymized collection of 100 million bookmarks. "If you were looking for the Web sites in a particular category, the results were shockingly complete and entirely spam-free," Agulnick said.

Interest in the service fizzled, though, and efforts in the spring of 2010 to sell the company failed. The idea of a hybrid free-premium model seemed doomed by the fact that bookmark sync is a feature being built into browsers. Thus, the company will switch its servers off after January 10.

The company also launched a 99-cent iPhone app to extend sync to Apple's devices and had begun work on an equivalent for phones using Google's Android OS. The former will continue to work with bookmarks cached on the phone, but the latter won't be released.

"Although we made great progress on our Android app, we were regrettably unable to complete it in time," according to an Xmarks shutdown FAQ.

Those who've used Xmarks should check Xmarks' guide to alternatives for advice on the best way to preserve data and plan their next steps.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

The never-ending mantra chanted by security suite vendors sounds a lot like "faster scans, easier to use, better performance," and AVG has released a new version that it says accomplishes all three. AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011, available today exclusively from CNET Download.com, looks and feels like an overall better program.

The new AVG Free has a faster installation process. It's not as zippy as the minute-long installations that some of AVG's competitors offer. I found that the program can go from completed download to ready to use in about 5 minutes. A big contributing factor to that is that AVG has cut down the number of install screens users see, from 13 in the previous version to 5 in the 2011 version.

AVG Free has some new protective features this year, too. The program offers what it calls "smart scanning," which leverages AVG's behavioral detection network to scan known safe files once, and only rescan them if it detects changes. As with its competitors, AVG's network is made up of its user base anonymously contributing data up to the cloud. You can choose to opt out of contributing your data when you install, or from the options menu. AVG says opting out won't negatively affect your security.

The smart scanning tech also gives you a built-in system resource manager that prioritizes scans. If a scan is scheduled to begin while the computer is in use, it will automatically restrict the scan so that it runs slower but doesn't interfere with the computer's other tasks. When it detects the computer idling, it will then allocate more power to the scan. The feature comes with a slider so you can customize how sensitive it is.

Benchmarks from CNET Labs are not yet available, but AVG claims the scans in the new version of AVG Free are three times faster than last year's.

Another big improvement has been to AVG LinkScanner. LinkScanner, which comes with AVG Free but is also available as a separate download, now scans links posted on Facebook and MySpace. It adds a green check next to safe links, a red X next to unsafe ones, and adds a notice below the link stating that it's been evaluated by AVG.

Concurrent with this new release, AVG has opened a new Web site called Threat Labs. The site is designed as a click-through landing page for people who want to learn more about the LinkScanner's ratings, but it's also available directly so that non-LinkScanner users can evaluate links on the fly.

Several one-click buttons to run primary features from the main window have been introduced this year. These include a Scan button and an Update button on the left side of the interface, as well as a Fix button that appears at the top whenever AVG judges your system to not be safe. If the system gets a clean bill of health, the Fix button will disappear. There's also a new desktop widget for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users that lets them initiate scans and updates without having to open the full interface. It also contains links to AVG's Twitter and Facebook pages, which the company uses to bolster its support for the free version.

It's potentially big news that AVG Free has made the threat detection engines in the free version identical to its premium-upgrade siblings. This means that AVG Free users won't have to worry about getting a lesser standard of basic security, if it winds up improving the level of security. Independent benchmarks of last year's AVG versions were strong but mixed, scoring highly but not always consistently.

The PC Analyzer option is new this year, and scans your system for Registry and disk errors. It includes a disk defragmenter and a broken-shortcut cleaner, as well. Although the feature is restricted in full to paid users, if you have the free version, the PC Analyzer comes with a onetime offer to clean all errors it finds. This is an interesting twist on the idea of letting users detect but not repair errors, and it provides more functionality while not affecting the basic security of your computer.

AVG Anti-Virus 2011 and AVG Internet Security 2011, the paid upgrades from AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011, will be available Wednesday. This year, AVG Internet Security distinguishes itself from the free version by including a firewall, a download scan for files sent via instant message that looks at all ports, not just port 80, and its spam filter. The PC Analyzer option mentioned earlier is also included, and comes without restrictions. Telephone support is offered 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A one-year, one-computer license for AVG Anti-Virus 2011 retails for $34.99, while AVG Internet Security 2011 retails for $54.99.

Besides the feature limitations of AVG Anti-Virus Free when compared with AVG's paid upgrades, the suite continues to offer an excellent level of security as it faces more intense competition from other free and paid security suite makers. Fans of AVG will definitely want to upgrade, while new users should consider it if they're looking for an effective freeware solution with solid link-evaluating features.