Adobe Systems will beef up its digital video software through the acquisition of technology and employees from Iridas, the company announced Thursday.

The company's video software--Premiere Pro and After Effects--are geared for higher-end users, and the company is investing heavily in them at the same time that videography is democratizing. The arrival of video SLRs, most notably Canon's 5D Mark II, has brought relatively affordable gear into the hands of a much larger audience.

The Iridas Speedgrade software offers the ability to refine video in a number of ways, notably what's called color grading, which can shift a video's color tones to give a particular look. Think of the greenish cast of the Matrix movies, for example. Color grading is popular as a way to impart mood and emotion to video.

In its news release, Adobe also said the acquisition will help with perhaps the most obvious trend in video these days, 3D.

"With the addition of Iridas, Production Premium [a suite including Premiere Pro and After Effects] is expected to gain a comprehensive set of tools so video editors can manipulate color and light for any type of content, including professional film and television," said Jim Guerard, Adobe's general manager for professional video, in a ... [Read more]

Alibaba Cloud Computing President Wang Jian unveiling Aliyun OS in July.

China-based Alibaba Group is planning to launch an English version of its Aliyun mobile operating system, Reuters reports.

The English version of Aliyun will be available later this month, according to the news service, which was on-hand during an Alibaba press conference earlier today in Hangzhou, China. The company also told reporters that it's currently in negotiations with hardware vendors to bundle its operating system with their devices.

Alibaba launched its mobile operating system in China in July. The platform, which was developed by the company's Alibaba Cloud Computing group, relies heavily upon the cloud, offering cloud-based e-mail, Web search, weather updates, and GPS navigation tools. The operating system also synchronizes data, including text messages, call records, and photos in the cloud that can be accessed from other devices, including PCs.

So far, the operating system is only available in China. However, Alibaba has high hopes for its operating system elsewhere around the world, which is ostensibly prompting the firm to offer an English option.

Related st... [Read more]

We've all been there at one time or another. You're looking at a beautiful landscape and you want to capture it, but the view is simply too wide to capture it all with your iPhone camera. Or maybe you're selling something on the Web, but taking a flat photograph of the object just doesn't seem to do it justice.

Fortunately, with the enormous abundance of photography apps in the iTunes App Store, there are apps for these specific purposes. These apps go beyond retro images and sketch-drawn re-creations and attempt to offer three dimensions.

This week's collection of iOS apps make 360-degree images. The first creates step-by-step panoramas; the second lets you make panoramas and 360-degree views in one fluid motion; and the third helps you make 360-degree animations.

Pano ($1.99 for a limited time) was originally launched in the iTunes App Store in 2008, but recent updates continue to make it one of the best apps for taking great-looking panoramic photos using your iPhone. The interface is sparse, but that only makes it easier: simply point your iPhone at the scene and take up to 16 shots (a full 360 degrees) to make the perfect panoramic image.

Pano does an excellent job of making an almost seamless panorama, but you'll need to take each shot.

[Read more]

Machinarium, a Flash game repackaged for iOS, topped the iPad top-sales charts.

Some folks must be happy that exactly one year ago, Apple reversed its ban on Flash-derived iOS apps.

I'm not talking about Adobe Systems--maker of Flash, its close cousin AIR, and the Flash Pro developer tools that let programmers turn AIR apps into native iOS apps--though of course Adobe is happy. I'm talking about the programmers at Amanita Design, whose Flash-derived game Machinarium just ascended the popularity charts at Apple's App Store.

Machinarium, a $5 game for the iPad 2, rose to No. 1 on the paid iPad apps chart. It's a Flash game recompiled for iOS, according to Andrew Trice, an Adobe evangelist.

In Machinarium, released yesterday, the player guides a robot through a variety of brain-teasing puzzles in an pleasantly grungy junkyard world. I confess I just squandered an hour playing it instead of writing this story.

Machinarium has a lavishly rendered world full of ducts, rust, plants that look like they got lost on the way to the bottom of the sea, and buffoo... [Read more]

This graphic shows how recycling earlier system state can speed up Windows 8 restart times.

Microsoft, addressing a painful part of using the company's operating system, says Windows 8 starts up 30 percent to 70 percent faster than the same machines running Windows 7.

That's music to my ears.

Alas, I've heard Microsoft say it's speeding up Windows startup so many times over the years that I'm skeptical it'll ever really happen, especially given that part of the responsibility lies with third-party software out of Microsoft's direct control. This time, though, Microsoft is tackling the problem with a more dramatic approach that preserves some of the computer's state from before the restart.

Specifically, Windows 8 uses a hybrid technique intermediate between a full-on restart and the low-power hibernation state. In addition, Microsoft is speeding how fast a system will come out of hibernation by spreading the work across multiple processor cores.

"As in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it," Gabe Aul, a Windows program management director, said in a blog post yesterday. "It's faster because resuming the hibernated system session is comparatively less work than doing a full system init... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Sharon Vaknin/CNET.)

If you are experiencing symptoms of or related to extremely slow applications, perpetual spinning beach balls, issues burning CDs, problems installing software, and random freezing, you're most likely dealing with a case of low storage space.

Head to your hard drive and check your storage capacity. If you're inching toward a full disk, it's time to take out the trash.

Doing so isn't always a simple task, though. Identifying exactly what's taking up space can be annoying and time-consuming, possibly ending with you in an upset fit, hands thrown in the air, and hollering "I should've purchased the bigger hard drive!"

Worry no more, because below is a free Mac OS X program, Disk Inventory X, to help you analyze and evaluate your disk space, and determine exactly what should be deleted. Follow the instructions to get started.

Disk Inventory X.

Disk Inventory X

This free program scans your hard drive and creates a graphical and textual summary of your disk space use, organizing your data by location and file type.

<... [Read more]