I’m going to come right out and say it. The Oscars were boring last night! Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are two hilarious talents, but last night… I was not amused. Where did Neil Patrick Harris go the rest of the night? That made no sense at all. Just because Hugh Jackman did a successful number last year doesn’t mean you should repeat it — especially if the singer is not also going to be the host the rest of the night! What happened, Academy?!
Well, all is not lost I suppose. I’ve got a blog post out of it! While sort of paying attention to the Oscars last night, my friend Alex screamed out, “What?! They have a 3D TV now?!” Yep, it’s true. According to Gizmodo, Best Buy will be rolling out a couple Samsung LED 3D HDTVs on March 21st.
Just hit the “browse” (on FireFox or IE) or “choose file” (Chrome) button towards the bottom to add an image to your comment. Click on the image to your right for a bit more direction.
What can I say? It’s a Friday… the week has finally dragged on and there isn’t much longer until the weekend officially starts. Rather than writing on one topic, I thought I’d share the best of what was going on today, in the world of tech and software at least…
Chinese Schools Spurred Online Hacking Remember the series of cyber attacks not too long after Google first threatened to pull out of China? Although it was never proven at the time, China was highly suspected of launching those attacks. It’s recently been discovered that two schools in China may have been responsibly. According to the New York Times, “a series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military.”
Andrew, our graphic designer here at SoftwareMedia.com, put together an animation tutorial using Adobe Flash and Adobe Fireworks (after much pushing and nagging from me, I admit). Learn how to apply motion to objects in Flash by using the classic tween feature.
If Andrew starts to bug the crap out of you, click on the image above to get him to stop waving and bobbing. Don’t worry, I got annoyed too — so I made sure he built in that click to bring things to a halt. Just kidding, Andrew… you rock, for making this tutorial….
Powerhouse Adobe just installed 20 wind turbines at their San Jose headquarters! Pretty awesome… I love that giants like Adobe, Google, Dell and Intel are taking huge steps in the green movement. Green is good. Green is great. Green is also sexy. Okay, maybe I can’t pull off that last one without a giggle and smirk…
Blame it on the Monday but I’m just going to cut to the chase.
Congratulations Brian! Your design won over the SoftwareMedia.com office today. Check out Brian’s winning design and the three following runner-ups. Careful not to stare at it all too long — there’s a whole lot of animation going on all at once below here.
Brian
Daniel
Dave
What’s your verdict? Do you agree with the SoftwareMedia.com office? Hit “Comment” and tell us your thoughts!
Thanks to everyone who entered! We look forward to utilizing the above favorite designs to promote SoftwareNewsDaily.com and gain more readers. Keep tuned via RSS Feed, Twitter or Facebook to learn about upcoming contests. Perhaps we’ll be upping the ante even more!
Adobe Captivate was awarded “Best Simulation Tool” from the 5th Annual Best of eLearning! Awards. Winners were chosen by the magazine’s readers through an online ballot. Shameer Ayyappan from Adobe’s Captivate Blog tells us, “This award is especially valuable because these are based on end user nominations – our customers are voting for us.”
Captivate allows you to easily and quickly create simulations and software demonstrations. It allows someone without any programming or multimedia skills to make engaging content with audio and video. Dave Lukasik, chief learning officer for Professional Service Industries, an industry-leading engineering, consulting, and testing firm, attests, “With Adobe Captivate, we’ve achieved efficiency and effectiveness for both learners and training developers.” Captivate helped Lukasik train 2,500 employees at 125 offices across the United States with the new major overhaul of the company’s core operational system. Read more about his success story with Captivate.
In the same category that Adobe Captivate snagged a winning title, Atlantic Link Capture Point, Qarbon Viewlet Builder and TechSmith Camstasia were also given Awards of Excellence. And Adobe eLearning Suite (eLS), at less than a year old, won an Award of Excellence for “Best E-Learning Development Tool.” Congrats Adobe!
Trend Micro detected TROJ_PIDIEF.WIA, a trojan that arrives as a mass email attachment. This trojan may also be downloaded by visiting malicious Web sites. According to Trend Micro’s malware blog, it “uses the heap spray technique to execute shellcode in its stream.” This, in turn, infects your system with the malicious backdoor file, BKDR_POISON.UC, and allows a malicious user to “execute any command on the affected system.”
Adobe will release a patch for this vulnerability on January 12, 2010. In the meantime, protect yourself by disabling JavaScript in Adobe Acrobat.
Under the Edit menu, select Preferences (or use the shortcut key Ctrl+K)
SoftwareNewsDaily wants your help in spreading the word! In an effort to gain new SoftwareNewsDaily readers, we are hosting an animated GIF design contest. There is a $100 gift card to Bestbuy.com in it for the winner. Yep, you read that correctly, $100! We’re upping the ante from our last contest. Of course, this also means, we’re asking for a fancier graphic. It’s stays quite simple, though.
We’re in need of a few banners to help promote SoftwareNewsDaily. Think something similar to: http://www.softwaremedia.com/link-to-us.html, but animated to give it more pop! There are just a few guidelines:
Image must be 180 pixels in width and 60 pixels in height.
Promotes SoftwareNewsDaily.com.
GIF file size may not exceed 1MB (original PSD file may exceed 1MB).
Animated GIF file must be viewable in Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.
Original work only.
All entries must be received by January 10, 2010, a bit after the New Year (so not to cram your holiday partying, of course). Keep these things in mind when you enter:
Include your name in the email with your entry.
Also, please tell us how you found out about the contest along with your entry.
Submission of artwork automatically grants SoftwareNewsDaily permission for use. Author may retain rights to artwork, but SoftwareNewsDaily has any and all permissions to use the image for promotion.
I’m going to come right out and say it. The Oscars were boring last night! Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are two hilarious talents, but last night… I was not amused. Where did Neil Patrick Harris go the rest of the night? That made no sense at all. Just because Hugh Jackman did a successful number last year doesn’t mean you should repeat it — especially if the singer is not also going to be the host the rest of the night! What happened, Academy?!
Remember the series of cyber attacks not too long after 
Powerhouse 
Adobe Captivate
