Aquafadas Newsletter, April'09

Hello,

It's been a long time that we haven't sent some news to let you know what we are up to.
So here is the latest from Aquafadas : products, projects, team and more.

Don't hesitate to send us a mail if you need more info about one thing or another. We love to get feedback and respond to every single mail.

If you did receive this newsletter by error, please accept our apologies and use the link at the bottom to be removed from this mailing list.

Ave!Comics
Ave!Comics is the next big thing at Aquafadas. It is our biggest project to date and includes lots of developments in so many different areas, most of them 'new' for us.

Ave!Comics is a complete solution for comic book fans.
It includes:
- reader applications on every mobile platform (iPhone of course, but also Android, Blackberry, J2ME phones) as well as Mac/PC/Linux
- a new authoring tool named ComicComposer to create digital comics in a new format (AVE) that offers quite a number of new possibilities (automatic zoom, pan, sound, animations and effects)
- breakthrough web authoring tools to developp and deploy comic stores on virtually any web site
- a central web site to purchase comics (ave-comics.com)
- a complete backoffice solution to manage comic stores and sales.

The comics store ave-comics.com is scheduled to open soon. You can already register and receive two free comics when we will open. Subscribing to the Ave!Comics newsletter is also a great way to be informed.

If you are an author, publisher or are interested by digital comics, don't hesitate to get in touch using the avecomics [at] aquafadas.com address.

Aquafadas at the Paris Book fair
We had a great booth at the annual Paris book fair and demonstrated Ave!Comics and comic book reading on iPhone, Blackberry (Bold and Storm), Nokia N95 but also on big screen HDTVs. We had an overwhelming response from the public both for our mobile readers (comics in AVE format look stunning) and for our fullscreen TV reader.
Reading comics on a TV screen ? How weird is that ?
Well, prepare to be surprised by a totally new experience....More on that in a forthcoming issue.

myComics on the AppStore
Our flagship comic reader for the iPhone is myComics. Version 1.1.1 is out and we just updated Jivaro, our uploading tool. The new version sees the following changes:
- much improved image quality in the optimized comics, both on windows and MacOS
- fixed a problem on Windows that could cause the application to stop converting comics, or display lots of opening windows.

Get the latest version of Jivaro from http://mycomics.aquafadas.com

Sneak peak of myComics 1.2
myComics 1.2 is ready and will let you view comics in AVE format that were purchased on our store or on other comic stores supporting this format.
myComics 1.2 adds the following features:
- support for dynamic collections,
- better visual feedback to mark new items,
- support for an archive box where you can store purchased comics that you read in order to reclaim disk space.
- improved animations for AVE formats








BannerZest 1.4
We have just released BannerZest 1.4 (both PRO and Standard edition). This new version adds 2 very handy themes to further enhance your web site (see here: http://banners.aquafadas.com/official/fadingGrid/bzPreview.html and here http://banners.aquafadas.com/official/bouncy/bzPreview.html). It also features a long list of bug fixes and new features that were all the result of the excellent feedback we received on our forums and by email. We want to thank all our users for the tremendous success of BannerZest and their involvment in making that product better and better.
We know that there is also a long wishlist that many of you have contributed to, and we are working on some new stuff that we cannot really disclose yet and that will address a great deal of it. Stay Tuned.

BannerZest Theme SDK
A few months ago, we released the first private beta of the BannerZest SDK. This SDK lets anyone who has a little knowledge of Flash build themes for BannerZest.
We are currently reworking the documentation and simplying a number of things. Anyone who wants to help us and send feedback is welcome to download the SDK
here:http://www.aquafadas.eu/software/preview/BannerZestSDKBeta3.dmg

PulpMotion and PulpMotion Theme SDK
A new version of the PulpMotion application has also been released recently (2.1.1). It fixes a few export bugs and is recommanded to all our users.

In the past weeks, we have been very active on a new companion application to PulpMotion: the PulpMotion Theme SDK. As with BannerZest, this
application lets you build custom themes for PulpMotion. It comes with several great templates that can directly be modified.
The SDK only requires knowledge of QuartzComposer, Apple's free visual development tool bundled on every Mac.
The great thing about the SDK, is that you don't have to be a creative genius to build your own themes. You simply start with one of the templates and
add your own graphics/effects/... There is no code to write. Everything is done visually in Quartz Composer.
The templates support zones of interest out of the box...so you don't need to worry about that either.
The SDK is currently in beta and we provide a step by step guide (in english) to get you started. More ressoureces (including screencasts) will be available soon.
If you know QuartzComposer and want to try it out and help us in the beta testing phase, please end us an email at pulpmotion-sdk [at] aquafadas [dot] com.


Introducing SnapFlow 1.0
Our new product, SnapFlow, is in the final stages of beta testing and will be released soon.

SnapFlow is an image studio for your videos. It will let you do the following tasks in a snap:
1. select great shots from any video files (HD, SD, Quicktime, MPEG, AVCHD)
2. compare similar shots, enhance images, deinterlace in super high quality
3. select the best shots and collect them in albums including smart albums
4. apply pre-defined image enhancing workflows (image filters) or generate documents such as DVD covers
5. export the best shots in bulk, in any image format, with optional metadata

Please visit the SnapFlow web page (http://www.aquafadas.com/en/snapflow/, english only for now) to find out more about this new application. You can also grab the beta, try it for yourself and send us your feedback.

We will put video tutorials online in the coming week or so.

iDive 1.9
We are a few days away from releasing iDIve 1.9.
This is a maintenance release that fixes lots of small bugs, but it also greatly improves the capture process. We changed a number of options in the
capture dialog and we now use more recent Quicktime features that greatly improve reliability.

This will be our last 1.x release for iDive. The next one is 2.0 and is well advanced now. It will feature a better integration with VideoPier, greatly improved
performance, recapture and much more....


© 2009 Aquafadas SAS, Cap Oméga, Rond Point Benjamin Franklin, 34960 Montpellier FRANCE.