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Once again - Valentina is not only the fastest developer database but also the first-to-market to support the new, Universal Binary version of Adobe Director 11 - with Valentina for Director 3.5.2. Adobe Director 11 was recently announced at Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. You can’t buy Director 11 yet, but you can pre-order the upgrade.

For Mac OS X developers, Valentina for Director 3.5.2 offers both a Carbon and Universal Binary version, with the former - and the Windows version - supporting back to Director 8.

I sometimes get asked what the difference is between Adobe Director and Mirye Runtime Revolution. They are different in so many ways - except that they both offer cross-platform solutions for building rich media applications. Director does fall short, in that Revolution also supports Linux and Solaris. But Director has Shockwave on its side, for playback through the Shockwave browser plugin. Good thing that there is a Valentina solution for both platforms.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to talk with Bill Atkinson, the creator of HyperCard.

Bill Atkinson wrote many of the first applications that were available on the Macintosh computer, including the very popular HyperCard development environment. I took some lightweight notes of that conversation - not word for word notes but just jotted down a few things we talked about. We quickly found common interests in the Northwest, Japan, fractal based art and artificial intelligence.

Bill was a pleasure to talk with - his warmth and intelligence shine without any of the egocentricism you find in many executives in the software industry.

Bill was in the process of getting his PhD when he joined Apple. At the time, there were about 30 employees in the company. I didn’t get the impression that Bill completed his PhD, but he apparently continued with some graduate studies at the University of Washington.

Since leaving Apple, Bill Atkinson has pursued a number of interests, including his great love of natural photography - which you can see in Bill Atkinson Photography. We talked at length about the beauty of the Northwest and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, a place where Bill has spent much time with his camera.

Bill has published some photography books, however he was very dissatisfied with the state of color display and printing in the United States. In order to go beyond the limitations of color available from US publishers, Bill had to go beyond the borders - to Japan.

In Japan, Bill found publishers not only willing to learn and put into practice the techniques he desired in printing, but a willingness to share that information, even with competitors.

So I had to ask - do you still use HyperCard? Bill still has some stacks that run his photography business - running on a G5 and maintained by his wife. But his involvement in programming revolves around Numenta, a business focused on developing software that simulates the neocortex. Numenta was started by Jeff Hawkins, the man behind both Palm and Handspring.

Numenta had caught my attention about a year prior and Paradigma was accepted into their then closed developer program. Bill was surprised that I knew about Numenta.

Bill believes Numenta represents more than the next step in computing - it has historical significance. Neurons in the human brain fire at the a maximum of 200 per second - and we cannot get around that limitation. Not only can human brain functionality be emulated by a computer, they can go far, far beyond these limits. Numenta is forward looking towards a kind of progeny of humans that will go beyond humans.

So will Bill hop back into programming tools and deliver HyperCard 3? It seems very unlikely. He was very happy to hear that the golden descendant of HyperCard - Runtime Revolution - is prospering and delivered the many modern features that never found their way into HyperCard.

If you are interested in natural photography - stop by Bill Atkinson Photography and pick up his book or prints.

08.05.25 Related: Wired Magazine: What HyperCard Could Have Been

Paradigma Software and Mirye Software Publishing are celebrating 10 years of Valentina by giving away developer licenses to Valentina 2.5.8 ADK Standard Edition - between February 14 - February 18, 2008. It is our Valentine’s Day gift to cross-platform developers who need to deploy database applications on all three major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

You can get your free license by visiting the registration gift site.

It wasn’t very long after Valentina 1.0 that I first met Ruslan Zasukhin, founder, co-investor and VP of Engineering at Paradigma Software. Valentina 1.0 was strictly a C++ development kit at the time. Proactive International approached Ruslan to create a version of Valentina for REAL Software’s REALbasic development environment. Valentina has progressed - with server versions - including Valentina Office Server and Valentina Embedded Server, and support for many more development systems and two web languages: PHP and Ruby/Ruby on Rails.

While I have to remain candid about forthcoming developments, there are new products on their way in 2008 that will enable developers greater freedom to interact with, organize and display their millions of records. Watch for it!

Roman Ormandy, CEO of Caligari has announced that Caligari Corporation has been acquired by Microsoft. Caligari TrueSpace is a Windows only 3D modeling and rendering product. According to Roman, the reason for this is to enhance Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

I would also estimate that a portion of this will get rolled into Microsoft’s XNA game strategy for creating Xbox 360 and PC games.

The 3D graphics market has been in a constant state of vigorous consolidation following the early price wars between Alias Maya and Lightwave and the subsequent acquisition of Alias by AutoDesk - owners of Discreet and 3D Studio MAX.

In the 3D mid-market, recent years has seen the collapse of Eovia and the acquisition of its products by DAZ Productions and e-frontier. The majority of e-frontier America’s products were then acquired by Smith Micro.

This bloodbath will continue.

I was asked by chikako on the Meshbox NING about the controversy over the ArtZone terms of Service. ArtZone is a community site run by Daz Productions, Inc, a provider of high quality Poser compatible content and software vendor. The broad rights granted under the ArtZone Terms of Service to DAZ have outraged hundreds of artists who typically assume that ArtZone was governed by the same TOS as DAZ other sites. Let’s look at the section that is outraging people and why DAZ might require these rights. (more…)

There is a growing number of Macintosh oriented software reseller sites that offer extreme discounts for short periods of time. MacZot is one of them and one I’m most familiar with and I have worked with vendors who have had excellent results in building their user bases.

I clicked through a promo to MacUpdate Promo today on an offer for Pixelmator, an image editing product. An offer on the page concerns me if anyone at MacUpdate perceives ethical issues with bribing for comments. (more…)