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Software Licensing Guide
Adobe TLP Licensing Guide
Audio Software Guide

New Releases This Month
Mac OS X Leopard
Quickbooks 2008
Quicken 2008
Symantec Endpoint Protection 11
Norton Systemworks 2008

News in Brief

• Symantec and Microsoft to join the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SafeCode).
  
• The U.S. is the world’s largest spammer, responsible for 28.4% of all spam in the world.
• Newly released Nuance OmniPage Pro 16 offers tools for converting documents into PDF and making them editable.
• VMware, leading maker of virtualization software, saw its third quarter profit triple to 64.7 million.
• Adobe and Microsoft have announced intentions to increase development of Web-based software.
  

It’s been nearly two and a half years since Apple released it’s last operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. Only time will tell whether it was worth the wait, but the new release – Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” – promises to be a substantial advance for the Mac OS. Apple lists more than 300 changes on its website, but here are the big ones:
Time Machine: In what Apple calls a “giant leap backward”, this new feature allows a user to see how their system looked on any given day in the past, including deleted files, etc.
Finder: The enhanced Apple search tool still allows search through files and data, but now has a more context sensitive user interface.
Dock: The new dock allows files and folders to be “docked” and “stacked”, hence de-cluttering the desktop.
QuickLook: See the contents of a document in the form of a small pop-up image or hover text by mousing over it before clicking.
Spaces: Users can organize their application into groups or categories so that common or related categories can be configured to launch at the touch of a key.
Other Enhancements have been made to iChat, Parental Controls, Boot Camp, iCal, Mail, Photo Booth, and much more.

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See all the new Features of Mac OS X Leopard

Emails containing malicious PDF files have been putting computers at risk this month, but a Security Update for Acrobat Reader is available. The e-mails appear to be credit card statements, and the PDF attachments are called ‘REPORT.PDF, INVOICE.PDF or YOUR_BILL.PDF. If opened without the new Adobe security update, it starts downloading software from servers in Malaysia or Sweden. Many Reader users have yet to install the update, although Adobe is encouraging everyone to do so.

Microsoft plans to hold a Project Conference this month, which will focus on the latest Project release – Project 2007 – as well as Microsoft’s 2005 acquisition of project and portfolio management company UMT. Microsoft’s general manager for Microsoft Office Project will discuss how it has applied the technology and expertise from UMT to change Project to be “able to handle all work across an organization.” In the past people have been hesitant to use Project software because it was oriented towards very structured projects. Anguilo will address how Project 2007 has changed all that, as well as give a preview of the next version of the program, already in development.

Members of the OSx86 user community have proclaimed that they hacked Mac OS X Leopard and the software is running on what would be a Windows-based PC. They have posted instructions on how to create a bootable Leopard installation disk to run on a PC. All this came before the new OS was even officially released. The process is very technical, and they say that the OS is partialy crippled without the Mac hardware it was meant to run on. Most notably, the Wi-Fi support is nonexistent. Leopard is already set up for Macs to support a Windows partition through included software Boot Camp.