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Big Brother is SMS savvy in some countries
It's no secret that China is rockin' some serious server power dedicated to filtering its SMS airwaves of unthinkable topics like Taiwan, democracy, and pornography, but other countries are getting in on the action, too. Belarus and Iran have both been called out in recent months for listening to its citizens' texts, and in Belarus' case, sending them as well. Although the technology for real-time filtering by keyword is largely homegrown (or so we hope), predictive text manufacturers like Tegic (disclaimer: Tegic is owned by Engadget's parent company's parent company, AOL) are receiving pressure from handset manufacturers to double- and triple-check their dictionaries for words that could be considered distasteful in countries with more oppressive governments than our own. Personally, discovering a word missing from T9 has never prevented us from typing it manually, but nonetheless -- between this and M-Track, we're about ready to head down into the Engadget bunker with a year's supply of Spam and just ride this whole thing out.[Via textually.org]
ChatFX - video effects within iChat
ChatFX can bring some fun to your iChat video conferences by adding quirky video effects; basically it's like Apple's Photo Booth for iChat. Using the power of Quartz Composer (built into Mac OS X 10.4), ChatFX can apply eight different effects to your video conference in real time, including a green-screen effect for that perfect "sure, I'm still at school/the office" cover story. Using the green screen, you can even place a movie in the background - the sky's the limit with that feature.ChatFX offers a demo download and sells for $20.
Polaroid DRM-2001G DVR with DVD burner and editing software
We know the DRM-2001G DVR isn't a real Polaroid product, and that the brand once synonymous with instant photography is now routinely slapped on everything from CRTs to portable DVD players. Still, we'd like to assume the Polaroid name means we're getting something a little different from the standard me-too offerings of other brands, and in this case, that does indeed seem to be so. The DRM-2001G may look like any other DVR with an 80GB hard drive and DVD burner, but the $299 unit actually has a few tricks up its sleeve, thanks to its built-in YesDVD and TVGuardian software. The former apparently allows easy editing of videos before burning , including creation of chapters and even disc-label templates. The latter is a subscription-based "foul-language filtering" tool. We can't imagine wanting to watch anything once it's been through the filter, but we can think of at least a few other uses for the technology -- like maybe a filter to, say, strip Paul Shaffer out of the Letterman show, or one to strip product placements out of sitcoms. Give us that, Polaroid, and you've got a winner on your hands.
ChocoFlop - powerful image editing
Even as an alpha image editor, I think it's safe to dub ChocoFlop a true "poor man's Photoshop." It offers layers, real-time preview of filters and effects (of which there are many), a slew of selection tools, blending modes, masks, color adjusting and a whole bunch of file formats it can save to and even more it can read from - including many versions of RAW. For the full details, check out the longest image editor feature list I've seen in a long time.As an alpha it's free, and the author has stated on his blog that, once it goes official and commercial, ChocoFlop won't cost more than $50 USD. I haven't cracked this open yet myself, but if you've been looking for a powerful image editor that offers quite a bit more than the standard CoreImage-based options out there, ChocoFlop should be right up your alley.
Image Tricks 2.0
I'm beginning to think that today is some kind of image editing holiday, as Image Tricks, the freeware image editor that leverages Mac OS X Tiger's Core Image features, has been updated to version 2. New features include 'generators' - the ability to "randomly and manually generate images with mathematical algorithms," a fit-to-size option, PDF export, file size adjustment when exporting to JPEG, and other minor fixes and improvements.Image Tricks has also been divided into Free and Pro versions. For a mere $9.95 the Pro version will give you six more generators than the free version, and BeLight software has stated they have more generators they can add from their todo list if enough customers show interest.Check out BeLight Software's Image Tricks product page for more details on its abilities, and the downloads page for a copy of the upgradable Free version.
