Smith Micro Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMSI) Consumer Group today announced the immediate availability of Poser 7.04, the latest update to its popular 3D character and animation solution. Poser enables creative professionals, graphic artists and hobbyists to create art, video and animation optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional forms. The update offers performance and feature enhancements including improvements in rendering, the ability to better manage characters’ speech and walking characteristics, and enhanced artistic control in creating hair, faces, material and much more.

“This latest Poser service release stands as a firm commitment to Smith Micro’s confidence in the Poser product line and underscores the fact that we take end-user satisfaction and ongoing support very seriously,” said Steve Cooper, Product Marketing Manager, Graphics Solutions for Smith Micro Software. “Poser 7 already provides the easiest way to design human forms in 3D for users of any experience level. Moving forward we will continue to offer our customers timely and cutting-edge advancements in the latest 3D design technology including many additions to our comprehensive library of content which delivers fast, simple and nearly limitless possibilities in character and scene development.”
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CUT&PASTE Presents

The Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) “See What’s Possible” Challenge

Adobe and Cut&Paste challenge designers to “See What’s Possible” by entering a visually pioneering 15-second or less animation or motion graphic video. Grand Prize – $20,000, Adobe CS3 Master Collection, and inclusion in Adobe Photoshop marketing materials

February 5, 2008: Cut&Paste(R), the producers of the international live design tournament, announces the first Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) “See What’s Possible” Challenge, to be administered on http://swp.cutandpaste.com.  Cut&Paste teamed up with Adobe Systems
Incorporated to put the call out to its joint community of graphic designers, animators, and motion graphics wizards worldwide to create a promotional animation or motion graphics work that best illustrates the theme of “See What’s Possible.” The twist: this isn’t just a
competition, but for the winner, an opportunity for their winning work to be used in Adobe’s marketing campaign of Photoshop in addition to the Grand Prize of $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3(R) Master Collection.

“As the Cut&Paste community and designers across the globe appreciate, Adobe Photoshop is the professional industry standard in digital imaging software, so we’re thrilled to team with Adobe to provide more exposure to aspiring and experienced designers and animators alike,”
says John Fiorelli, executive director of Cut&Paste. “But this challenge isn’t just about winning – all submissions will be publicly showcased on CutandPaste.com where contestants can share their skills with not only fellow designers, but fans, recruiters, and potential clients.”

To judge the competition, Cut&Paste has assembled an all-star team of judges including Alexei Tylevich (Logan), Jonathan Notaro (Brand New School), Nando Costa (Nervo) José Gomez (Shilo), Adina Sales (Blacklist) and Victor Newman (Freestyle Collective). Judges will be looking for work that breaks new ground and has a “wow” factor.  Submissions should not exceed 15 seconds in duration, should incorporate and close with the Photoshop “See What’s Possible” brand logo and tagline, and should use Adobe Flash(R) or After Effects(R) in its creation (see Rules at http://swp.cutandpaste.com for more details).  “It’s always inspiring for us to see how our users push the creative boundaries of what’s possible with Photoshop,” said Kevin Connor, senior director of product management for Professional Digital Imaging at Adobe. “By teaming up with Cut&Paste, we are excited to offer graphic designers, animators, motion graphics designers, web pros, and photographers a unique opportunity to display their work for the entire community.”  Five submissions will be chosen by the judges as Finalists, and Adobe will award one of those five finalists the Grand Prize of $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. In addition to the Grand Prize, the winning submission will be featured in Adobe’s marketing campaign of Photoshop. All finalists receive Adobe Creative
Suite 3 Master Collection. The Challenge also offers a People’s Choice Prize: All eligible submissions will be available for voting on the Cut&Paste Web site. Anyone may view the submissions and any registered users may add comments to any work or vote for their favorite submissions for the People’s Choice Prize, which is Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. Supporting the promotion of the challenge to its subscribers are media sponsors, Stash DVD Magazine and the motion graphics blog, Motionographer.

How It Works :

Grand Prize Selection
Cut&Paste will screen all eligible entries to a final 30 selections that will then be provided to judges for evaluation. The top 5 scoring finalists will then go to Adobe who will choose the Grand Prize Winner.

People’s Choice Prize
Commenting and voting on all submissions are open to all registered users Popular online vote by registered users will determine winner.

Prizes

· Grand Prize - $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection (retailed at $2,499) and inclusion in Adobe marketing including:

o Featured on adobe.com

o Available as a screensaver for community download

o Showcased at Adobe(R) tradeshows, seminars and demos

o Intro to Keynote speeches, etc

o HTML email, banners

Five Finalists – Adobe(R) Creative Suite 3 Master Collection(R)
People’s Choice Prize – Adobe(R) Creative Suite 3 Master Collection(R)

Timing
Contestants may submit entries on http://swp.cutandpaste.com beginning
February 15, 2008, and ending on March 15, 2008
People’s Choice Prize voting open from February 15, 2008 to March 31, 2008
Prizes announced at Photoshop World – April 4, 2008

How to Enter
Contestants post submissions to a video-sharing Web site such as YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, or Revver.
Starting February 15, entrants may register with the Cut&Paste Web site and complete a Web application form at http://swp.cutandpaste.com

For Immediate Release (Feb 13, 2008)

DVDVideoSoft updatd Free Video to Flash Converter. Make flash video for your site or blog.

DVDVideoSoft an internet resource dedicated to free software,
multimedia software guides and tutorials has just updated Free Video to Flash Converter. The new version features 30+ player skins and new easy-to-use web integration, just copy and paste html code to the site or blog.

Nowadays everybody wants to make their own YouTube. We must disappoint you. It is hardly possible to make one more YouTube with Free Video to Flash Converter, but it is very easy to enrich a corporate web site or a personal blog with good looking video. Convert video files to flash (SWF and FLV). Convert the whole movie or just a partition. Apply 30+ player skins. Free Video to Flash Converter available at
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-Video-to-Flash-Converter.htm for immediate free download. The program contains no spyware or adware. It’s clearly free. No activation or registration is required.
Just download and use it. Free Video to Flash Converter is already the 15th free program developed by DVDVideoSoft. DVDVideoSoft has created a line of free tools: Free Video Dun, Free YouTube to iPod Converter, Free YouTube to MP3 Converter, Free YouTube to iPhone Converter, Free Video to iPod
Converter, Free Video to iPhone Converter, Free Video to MP3 Converter, Free YouTube Uploader, Free Audio Dub, Free YouTube to MP3 Converter, Free 3GP Video Converter, Free Video Flip and Rotate, Free Video to JPG Converter and finally Free YouTube Download
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-YouTube-Download.htm).

All these titles are available at
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm for immediate download. Also here you can always find lots of guides and tutorials related to different video tasks like, burning and ripping DVDs, making DVD copies, converting between all video formats and more.

All our programs are absolutely free and run under all Windows,
including Vista. We respect our users’ privacy. There are not any
spyware or adware. It is safe to install and run!

Creating Icons is No Longer A Baffling Ordeal With New Perfect Toolbar Icons

Aha-Soft today announces the immediate availability of Perfect Toolbar Icons, a set of stock icons to trim the interface of any desktop or web application.

No doubt any e-company wants to add some color to the means of its representation: programs, websites or even documents in order to make them distinctive and eye-catching. The simplest way to do so is to decorate the front-end of a product - in this case we start with icons. Creating professional and stylish icons is no easy task and requires talent, skills in design and days and sometimes even weeks of work. Fortunately, with the set of newest icons from Aha-Soft, creating a nice interface for desktop and web applications will no longer be a headache.

Perfect Toolbar Icons delivers the newest eye-catching and most distinctive icons that provide designers with the cost-effective “specimens” for their work, relieving them of the burdensome task of creating icons. All the icons are available for viewing and downloading and can be purchased either individually or in sets. It is possible to order custom icons of your individual design. The icons are available in the following sizes: 16*16, 20*20, 24*24, 32*32, 48*48 and formats: PNG, BMP, GIF and ICO. They also come in two variants: for websites and the old Windows versions and in 32-bit True Color format for Windows XP and Vista.

Aha-Soft offers a flexible purchasing policy. When purchased individually, each icon costs $4 (USD). You are welcome to contact Aha-Soft with the names of the icons you would like to purchase, and the order will be processed immediately. Moreover, a collection of icons with only some of the available sizes can be ordered. In this case you will get a discount off the usual price. Minimum purchase is 2 icons. More information on the icon set can be found at http://perfecticon.com/stock-icons/perfect-toolbar-icons.htm.

About Aha-Soft
Founded in 2000, Aha-Soft is an Information Technology company specializing in professional icon and cursor design and management software. Aha-Soft is the author of such popular tools as AhaView, Any to Icon, Icon to Any, ArtCursors, ArtIcons, ArtIcons Pro, IconLover, IconUtils and IconXP. If you would like to get a comment, request a reviewer copy, have a businesses proposal, want to become an authorized reseller or have any other inquiry, please visit the company’s web site at www.aha-soft.com.

The Nielsen Norman Group is conducting a design competition to identify the world’s ten best application user experiences. The top ten winners will be announced in September 2008.
Did you design a vertical-market application that’s great for, say, dentists, but you’re tired of never having anybody but dentists see your work? Or did you design a mission-critical enterprise app that’s making your company big bucks, but nobody outside the firm ever heard of it? It’s time for the people who design great practical applications to share the limelight. Enter your work for the award. Winners will get substantial publicity and recognition from being honored in the Application Design Annual.

Eligible designs: Applications are defined as providing features, commands, and functionality, especially to the extent that they allow users to access or manipulate complex or mission-critical data. (Thus, we exclude pure-information websites and intranets where the only user commands are to navigate. We also don’t consider games for this award.)

For more info, please visit the site.

Welcome back to the Webware 100!

It worked before, so we’re doing it again: Today Webware is launching its second Webware 100 Awards, honoring the people’s choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services.

In our 2007 awards, more than half a million votes were cast to determine the most the popular Web apps. This time, with more apps available and even people using Web 2.0 apps, the contest should be even more intense.

There are 10 categories for awards in the Webware 100. Each category will have 10 winners in it. We’ve freshened the category lineup for this year:

Audio: Music, podcasts, audiobooks.
Browsing: Browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, runtime engines.
Commerce and events: Retail, auctions, travel, real estate, concerts, conferences.
Communications: E-mail, chat, voice.
Productivity: App suites, to-do lists, groupware.
Publishing and photography: Blogging, content management, photo sites.
Search and Reference: Search engines, encyclopedias, mapping.
Social: Social networking, family sites, recommendations, online worlds, contests.
Utility and Security: Infrastructure providers, storage, online protection.
Video: Video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation.

Nominations are open

Today we are opening up the awards with the nomination phase. If there’s a site that you want people to vote on, nominate it now using this form on www.webware.com/100. Nominations will close on January 25, 2008.

When you browse the Web and stumble upon an interesting image you’d like to have in your collection you have to first right-click the image, select “Save Image As..” option from the popup menu, browse to the folder where you want to save the image, type in its name and finally click the “Save” button. But most people don’t want to mess around with these “click-click-click” operations. They just want the images to be saved in one click or without having to click at all! So wouldn’t it be nice if there was some background utility that would just let you drop an image into a tray basket and go about browsing again? Well, there is now!
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I created this blog for one reason - to stay abreast of the design contest scene across a variety of disciplines and to learn more about how to use my software to the max. Since I’ve used Photoshop since 1990 (version 1.0!), I’m always interested in tutorials from other Adobe Photoshop CS2 users. Here’s a recent list of a few tutorials that I access once in a while to learn more. Mind you, some of these tutorials may date back as far as Photoshop 5.5 (I don’t think any of them are any earlier), but they are as relevant today as they were five years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe has announced its Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium tour, a seminar series event for creative professionals, print service providers, and graphic and Web designers. Industry experts will demonstrate how to work with Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium, the award-winning unified design environment that now includes the all-new Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional software and Dreamweaver 8, the industry-leading Web development tool. The tour covers Chicago, Toronto, Irvine, San Francisco, and New York. Attend this free seminar in a city near you and learn from industry experts how to: Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe Photoshop CS2 Upgrade from Photoshop Version 5.5+: I have the Photoshop Upgrade installed on my desktop, and the older version of the same software on my laptop. Granted, a laptop isn’t the best environment to produce graphic images, but I’ve been so spoiled by the upgrade that the laptop’s been neglected. The Filter Gallery alone is enough to convert a die-hard Photoshop 7 fan, but the other toys - like the Advanced Noise Reduction, the Revolutionary Vanishing Point, and the Image Warp - will push that die-hard over the edge. And, the price is right up Santa’s alley…

NOTE: This is the UPGRADE ONLY. Previous installation required.