The PC Enthusiast

This has been a great week for computing news. These announcements and innovations will have an impact on the entire internet ecosystem.

• iPhone OS 4
  On April 8, Apple unveiled plans for the biggest and most exciting iPhone software update yet. iPhone OS 4 will include over 100 new user features for iPhone and iPod touch owners to enjoy. And for developers, a new software development kit (SDK) offers over 1500 new APIs to create apps that are even more powerful, innovative, and amazing.
• Google to open source VP8 for HTML5 video
  Let me see if I can break down why this is so big. Essentially all the videos we watch online right now have been created using a codec that is privately owned. A codec just encodes and decodes the video so we can watch it streaming beautifully online. Since it is privately owned, everyone was worried the company that owns it (even though they have provided a free license through 2016) might start charging to use it. So Google, having acquired another company with another nice video codec that could work on the web, decided to release it for free forever. This is big.
• Oscar-winning video editor goes open source
  This is equally amazing. Look at this list of movies produced with this software. Academy® and Emmy® award-winning Lightworks was introduced in 1989 as the first and most advanced non-linear editing system on the market. Used by editors such as Chris Gill and multi Oscar-winning Thelma Schoonmaker, Lightworks offers intuitive controls, advanced real time effects, 2K native support with DPX or RED, and multi-camera editing features that remain unmatched. With wide support for codecs, including EditShare’s Universal Media Files, Lightworks achieves a level of unsurpassed interoperability by offering seamless media sharing with Avid and Final Cut Pro. This new workflow enables Lightworks artists to collaboratively edit projects with a much wider group of editors.