SourceCrowd.com

Let’s admit it: from day one that Apple introduced Leopard’s Time Machine, finding an adequate hard disk to fit the tedious task of backing up our data has been quite a problem.
More problems for a multi-user home (more and more out there).

Meet Apple Time Capsule, right from the same MacWorld Expo where MacBook Air was born!

What’s inside Time Capsule?
- an Airport Extreme 802.11N base station, well known and quite proven,
- three Gigabit ethernet ports,
- one USB port for printer sharing,
- a 500GB or 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA server-grade hard disk drive
- same sleek form factor of Apple TV.

The hard disk is available to all connected Leopard users as the preferred Time Machine default storage device.

(By the way, Tiger and Windows users are allowed to access the disk too…)

Available for pre-order in 500 GB an 1 TB flavors, the Time Capsule retails US$299.99 and US$ 499.99 respectively.

Entering 2008? Think about making a backup of 2007-related data! Think about a Maxtor OneTouch 4 500 GB External Hard Drive.

This PC- and Mac-friendly drive spins at 7200rpm and features a 16MB buffer.

Backup your files with a push of a button or set up the software to perform convenient automatic backups.
With 7200 RPM and 16 MB cache buffer, you get fast drive performance, seamless data exchange, and instant access to your files.
Simple setup: just connect the USB 2.0 cable, and your Maxtor OneTouch 4 500 GB External Hard Drive automatically appears on your desktop.
For all those precious pictures, videos, music and data files, external hard drive is a must have.

Features:

Square Group Ltd in association with Adobe, Apple and a slew of other partners organized an Adobe Creative Suite CS3 seminar at BFI Southbank in London last Tuesday, May 15, 2007. The seminar featured presentations from both Adobe and Apple about the new features of the many applications that make up Adobe’s new crown jewel, CS3, alongside demonstrations of related products from the likes of Eizo, Wacom, Extensis, HP and G-Tech. SourceCrowd was in attendance and can bring you an exclusive report from the event.
Before the seminar, attendees were able to peruse stands with a few interesting products on show. Eizo wowed the crowd with its stunning professional quality displays like the ColorEdge CE240W sporting hardware colour calibration, 14-bit color processing and easy profiling. Extensis was showcasing two of its software products for asset management: Suitcase Fusion, a font manager to organize, categorize and activate/deactivate fonts on the fly, and Portfolio, a complete multimedia files management tool. HP was showcasing the HP B9180 Photosmart Pro Printer, an eight-tanks pigment ink powerhouse which demonstrated stunning results on some of HP’s custom papers (especially impressive were the results on canvas-textured paper). Wacom had both the A4 Intuos3 graphic tablet and the Cintiq 21UX display available for hands-on demonstrations, making precise editing of pictures a breeze. Last but not least, G-Tech had the whole range of its external high speed hard drives solution on display. The elegant silver enclosures sport the latest in eSata and Firewire connections on the G-Raid2, G-Drive 250GB External FW400/USB2, G-Mini and G-Safe, with high-end fibre-channel RAID solutions also available in the G-Speed models.

Then it was finally time to immerse into the presentation!

The first speaker was Richard West, Apple Business Development Manager for the UK and Ireland. He started by stressing how important it is, in a multimedia communicational landscape, to put to good use the plethora of different ways that businesses have to reach clients, by customizing communications to target and focus on different markets. Adobe Creative Suite CS3, he argued, is the tool of choice to do so, allowing the use of a single creative process for multiple disciplines through its multiplicity of applications. Since output is so important to the designers and developers who use CS3, he then went on to demonstrate how colour calibration devices (in this case, the Pantone Huey Pro MEU113) can work in tandem with OS X ColorSync Utility (found in the Applications>Utilities folder) to prevent disparity between screen output versus print/web output. In particular he showed how it is possible to compare colour spaces graphically, and onscreen proofing of different colour spaces just by dragging and dropping images on the application. Microsoft’s Windows has “borrowed” the same functionality for its latest OS, implemented in Vista under the name Windows Colour System (located in the Control Panel).

Stay tuned for the second part of our report - coming soon!

LG.Philips LCD announced it has developed the world’s first 14.1″ flexible color E-paper display, equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper and less than 300 micrometers(㎛) thick. The images displayed are said to be comparable in quality to printed pages. This new device is a further enhancement after the company’s black and white flexible E-paper display announced in May 2006. According to the LG.Philips website, the E-paper uses electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. to produce a maximum of 4,096 colors. It has a viewing angle of 180 degrees, allowing images to be viewed even when the display is bent.
This new colour version uses a substrate that arranges Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on metal foil rather than glass, allowing it to recover its original shape after being bent.

Apple has updated its consumer line of MacBook laptops adding faster processors (Intel’s Core 2 Duo), bumping up the RAM to 1GB and offering larger hard drives. The popular 13.3″ laptops still come in the familiar three configurations, with two white models and a high end black one, built-in iSight, 802.11n wireless networking and OS X Tiger and iLife suite preloaded. The lineup with the new processors is as follows:

• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 80GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1099
• 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 120GB hard drive, 1GB RAM. Intel Graphics 950, RRP$1299
• 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ Black MacBook, 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1499

The new MacBooks are available for purchase now from the Apple Store
and other selected retailers.

Best price for Apple MacBook MA700LL/A 13.3″ Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) - White

AMD has today launched its ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphic card. They feature, according to the company’s website, a series of “firsts” in the graphics market: second-generation Unified Shader Architecture (USA), a 512-bit memory bus designed for full performance high dynamic range (HDR) rendering, and new Unified Video Decoder (UVD) technology for high-fidelity HD media playback. The HD 2000 series also takes full advantage of DirectX 10 and Windows Vista’s features, as well as the latest OpenGL programs. The new chips have built-in Crossfire capability, allowing users to pair up 2 cards in PCI Express slots without the need of any additional hardware or cables. AMD’s guide design can include HDMI-out with audio, thus completing the process of transforming PCs into real media hubs in the modern home.

This HD revolution involves notebooks as well as desktops: the Mobility Radeon HD series features the same architecture in a package that uses smaller 65 nm process technology in order to achieve passive cooling and promises lower power consumption. At the same time, these powerful chips should relieve the main CPU from the more taxing graphic tasks, allowing next-gen HD content to be enjoyed on even the smaller, thin portable computers.

The Radeon HD 2000 series for desktops will be available in the next few days, with the first Mobility models set to launch in new laptops by the end of the month.

Low prices on nVidia and ATi graphics cards with next day delivery!

Microsoft is today set to launch the Elite version of its Xbox 360 console, a substantial upgrade which clearly targets competing next gen gamestations like Sony’s Playstation 3. The new console comes with reworked looks (sleek black surfaces with metallic detailing) a bigger storage space of 120GB and HDMI port to drive High Definition TV sets. Included in the package are HDMI and component cables, Xbox Live headset, and a wireless game controller.

The white clad Premium and Core packages of the console remain available alongside this new beefed up version, which is set to retail at $749.99.

Crucial has introduced a new ultra-slim line to its Gizmo! USB flash storage products. The Gizmo! Jr. is half the size of a standard USB flash drive (measuring a mere 12.4 mm (w) by 34.3 mm (l) by 2.2mm (t)) and weighs only 1.62 g. The diminutive drive comes in three flavors, offering 1GB, 2GB and 4GB of storage space on the go. A key chain, a lanyard and a protective sleeve come bundled with every Gizmo!.

Crucial is also planning a special introductory price offer in the UK set to last for 3 days until April 29, 2007. Special discount prices (with savings ranging from 10-16% depending on density) can be found here.

TIPA (Technical Image Press Association), a consortium of Europe’s leading photography magazines, has today announced its annual awards, dubbed as the European ‘Oscars’ of the Photo Imaging Industry. The prestigious recognitions are given to products excelling in a number of categories, from consumer point&shoot cameras to DSLRs, plus related software, printers and accessories.

Nikon has once again picked up the Best Entry Level DSLR award, with the Nikon D40x 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera following last year’s winner D50. SourceCrowd had reported about the introduction of the new Nikon here.

A great recognition in the Best Photo Software category goes to Apple Aperture 1.5, especially since a lot of criticism had been leveled at the 1.0 version of the pro application. Aperture is a complete workflow and image management app with Apple’s trademark cool design and ease of use, and has now reached full maturity with the update to 1.5. It follows in the path of past winners like Adobe’s Photoshop.

The George Foreman iGrill (!) is the ultimate barbeque cooking machine for the iPod generation… or something like that. We don’t know what the launch campaign slogans will sound like, but we have just heard about this “gem” and couldn’t pass up the occasion to relay it to our readers. The iGrill is an indoor/outdoor electric barbeque grill with an impressive 200 sq. inches of nonstick coated cooking surface, adjustable temperature control probe and… is iPod ready with an integrated 10 watts speaker. So invite your friends around… no barbeque party will ever be the same again!

The The George Foreman iGrill is available now for a street price of $149.99.

Wacom has announced the introduction of the new 15″ DTF-521 LCD tablet, adding a little brother to its DTF line of business and education oriented writing instruments (which had debuted with the 17″ DTF-720 and the 21″ DTF-2100). The new product sports an XGA resolution screen with 1024 x 768 pixels and 16.2 million colours. The tablet/screen hybrid comes with an adjustable stand (140 degrees horizontal to 130 degrees vertical), and the standard cordless battery-free pen with 512 pressure levels. According to Wacom, the DTF-521 offers “a natural tool for freehand writing, annotating and navigating directly with the pen on the screen”, allowing huge amounts of freedom during a presentation or lesson. A VGA-out port assures easy connection with external screens and projectors.
The tablet has a RRP of $1624 (£699 excluding VAT in the UK, where it is known as the PL-521), and is compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows PCs (including Vista support).