Briefs

Managing those fonts: Adobe may be playing coy with Apple but it’s still wheeling out improvements to its Mac applications, this time Type Manager Deluxe version 4.0 and version 2.0 of Reunion Deluxe. Both these are used to organise and manage fonts including TrueType fonts. Ask your local store or ring Adobe Direct on 0131-458 6842.

Shopping and surfing: You’ve seen the catalogue, then the unlockable CD and now the on-line digital catalogue. Image Resource is now offering a turnkey service which puts image databases on the Internet at a flat fee of around 9000. The URL is www.imageres.com and so far National Tramway Museum, Disney/Warner and PR Pictures have signed up for their own sites. You may have a database, mug shots of clients who pay late, for example, which you’d like to put on the Net. Or your client may be getting into the Net shopping thing. Talk to Donna Marshall on 01246 299000.

Indistinguishable from real: No, no. Not an incitement to illegality but the Signature from Fargo, a nifty printer which lays down coloured images directly on to your CD-ROM disks, using ink. You can of course use sticky labels or marker pens to label home-grown CD-ROMS and you can print circular labels and then put them on with a special applicator – which obviates the flutter that allegedly occurs with unsymmetrically placed labels in today’s very high speed CD-ROM players. But for short-run serious stuff for clients this is the job if you’ve got 1000 spare. You put your unannotated disk in the tray, it glides closed and, hey presto, out it comes with your stunning design printed on the non-operational side. Distributor Bannerbridge on 01268 419 101 will also flog you packs of blank CD disks.

Calling product designers: XCAD has brought out version 4 of its 2D/3D app XCAD Professional with lots of new goodies and a major redesign. It uses Boolean operations, advanced NURBS surfacing, photo-realistic rendering, lofting and Coon’s patch operations and that kind of thing. It also integrates into other CAD systems via DXF and IGES file formats. Price is 1500 – modest, they argue, for Pro-Engineer functionality. There’s also an STL interface, a 3-axis Object Orientated milling module, advanced turning and lathing module, a 4-axis wire erosion module and a punching module – all for extra wonga. Try out a 30-day fully functional CD-ROM from Richard Nolan on 0181-893 2345 or e-mail him at richard@xcad.demon.co.uk.

Snip: Radius will soon be releasing its new broadcast-quality VideoVision SP editing system at a tad under 9000. It’s a rack-mounted system involving two PCI JPEG connector cards and distributor Computers Unlimited couldn’t explain how it all works except to say there will be an “upgrade path available for existing users of Radius video products”. And that there’s software, analogue and digital in and out with two balanced in-channels and four balanced analogue output channels, SMPTE timecodes for audio and video and genlock capability.