Smith Micro acquires Allume Systems

I was finally getting used to calling them Allume instead of Aladdin, and now Smith Micro (of FaxSTF fame) has gone and scooped them up, leaving me dizzy and confused again.

I'm not quite sure what to think about this yet, but according to their press release, the "company combination will offer wireless carriers and handset manufacturers industry leading compression technology in an offering to be known as Stuffit Wireless."  It goes on to talk about the new JPEG compression technology that Allume had recently announced, which reduces the size of JPEG images up to 30% in size without any reduction of image quality. Smith Micro plans to expand that technology to provide similar compression for audio and video files. This greatly helps Smith Micro with their strategy of "broadening its wireless product offerings and provides for the first time to carriers and handset manufacturers enhanced compression technology that could reside directly in the handset." The Stuffit Deluxe, Expander and Drop Stuff products we all know and love will also continue.

I'm just going to kick back, relax and see how this plays out. There was a time that I really hated Smith Micro for foisting FaxSTF on unsuspecting Mac users, but these days it's mostly a moot point. Hopefully they won't do anything to make Stuffit suck in any significant way.