Acorn
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Flying Meat releases Acorn image editor
Okay I admit it; I was fooled. Last week Gus Mueller posted an "interview" on his blog with a "fellow Pacific Northwest developer" about an exciting new app to be released today. While I had figured out it was probably an image editor, I did not figure out that Gus was talking to himself! In any case, Flying Meat software (of VoodooPad and FlySketch fame) today announced Acorn, an image editor "built for the 21st century." Much like Pixelmator (with which I expect Acorn to be compared once Pixelmator finally ships), Acorn takes advantage of your GPU to speed up its operation. It has the normal assortment of editing tools, including layers (with filters), vector tools, as well as a built-in Python and Objective-C plugin system. The latter is particularly exciting as it will allow third-party developers to extend Acorn in potentially interesting ways.I've long thought that there was an obvious hole in the market for a reasonably priced image editor that was powerful enough for most user but much cheaper than Photoshop. Since Adobe is taking its sweet time releasing a Universal version of Photoshop Elements, it's good to see smaller developers like Gus Mueller and the guys behind Pixelmator stepping up to the plate. It'll be interesting to see how each of them make out in the long run.Acorn is $39.95 (intro price) and a demo is available.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
UCSD's Squirrel puts pollution monitoring on your mobile
Giving an animal a phone to tote around and monitor pollution is one thing, but hooking up a critter to your cellphone sans wires sounds like a much more viable solution to keeping track of filthy surroundings. UC San Diego's Squirrel -- which sounds an awful lot like a project UC Berkeley was working on -- is a Bluetooth-enabled, palm-sized sensor that currently measures carbon monoxide and ozone, but eventually will be able to "sample nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide in the air, as well as temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity." After sampling, the device then utilizes a software application dubbed Acorn to allow the user to "see the current pollution alerts through a screensaver on the cellphone's display." Furthermore, the program can periodically upload the captured data to a public database operated by the "California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), which is funding Squirrel's development." Of course, cleaning up the mess that these monitors will inevitably find is an entirely different matter.[Via MedGadget]
Acorn Computers to be reborn as laptop maker
If you're a Brit of a certain age, the name Acorn probably has as much resonance for you as Commodore or Amiga does for us Yanks. No, it's not because you're a squirrelwatcher (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's because of Acorn Computers, the pioneering manufacturer of the late 70s and early 80s, which quit the computer business in the 90s. Now, according to reports, Acorn is set to be reborn as notebook vendor. The revived Acorn will launch next week with four laptops, ranging from a 12-incher to one with a 17-inch display. Rather than running Acorn's old RISC OS, however, the new boxes will be fairly convention Windows XP laptops, and will come bundled with Star Office.
