| Adobe releases Moviestar beta for Flash Player 9
Adobe Systems's upgrade for its Flash Player, released on Tuesday, adds support for one of the latest video encoding standards as well as new audio support. The upgrade, called Moviestar, applies to Adobe's latest Flash Player, version 9. A beta of the upgrade will be available for download later in the day, with a final version to be ready in the third quarter, Adobe said. Moviestar supports the playback of video encoded using the H.264 standard, which allows for greater compression of video files than previous standards while maintaining quality. Adobe already supports H.264 encoding in products such as Premiere Pro and the After Effects video editing software. Moviestar also includes High-Efficiency AAC support, an improved audio compression technology. Although the complete specifications of the upgrade are complicated, Adobe has tried to stick to industry standards as users sort through a range of available video technologies, wrote Tinic Uro, an Adobe engineer who works on the Flash Player, on his blog.
Forget the Meluas ... Adele's the real thing
Suspicions were raised when it slipped out that, like Katie Melua, Kate Nash and Amy Winehouse (all of whom she intermittently resembled), she is a former pupil of Croydon luvvy factory, The BRIT School For The Performing Arts And Technology. Those suspicions were partly dispersed when it transpired that she is not, by any yardstick, a stick-thin glamourpuss and she still lives with her masseuse mother. If her unashamedly estuary tones, her mangled introductions ("It hasn't got a chorus or nothing," she explained of First Love) and her decision to dress for an afternoon in front of the television suggested one of Catherine Tate's more lazily observed characters, only the flintiest of hearts could fail to respond to Adele's wideeyed, boundless enthusiasm as, to celebrate its release this week, she performed her debut album 19 from beginning to end.
Britney Spears
Sam Lutfi was finally served the restraining order yesterday that effectively requires him to stay 250 feet from Britney Spears and have no contact with her whatsoever. The restraining order was set to expire today, but the judge in the case extended it to March 17, according to the AP: In court papers, Jeffrey Wexler, an attorney for her father, James Spears, wrote that "after three weeks of apparently evading service," Lutfi was served at 11 a.m. outside his Los Angeles apartment.
The order, which requires Lutfi to stay 250 yards away from Spears and her home, was set to expire Friday. Wexler had asked for the order to be extended. Poor Sam Lutfi. He must miss Britney Spears. I bet he walks in on random pap smears just to remember the good times. Surprisingly none of the women really cared until Sam started throwing Cheetos at them and screaming "Where's the checkbook?! I'll feed you to Satan!" Then it got a little weird.
All the King's Women
But first-time director Gilroy (who scripted the first two Bourne movies and collaborated on the third) has a knack for tunneling deep into cliché and coming out the other side. The title character, elegantly embodied by George Clooney, is something of a spiritual brother to Matt Damon's tormented amnesiac spy. Michael Clayton is a Jason Bourne who, unlucky for him, actually does remember all the terrible things he's done. Michael is the fixer for a top-drawer New York legal firm, a former public prosecutor who resides somewhere in the shadowy space between attorney and bagman. In essence, he's paid to protect wealthy fuckups from publicity, and from their own consciences. As the movie opens—the first 20 minutes are slow but dense, packed with details that become important later—Clayton is heading upstate to provide counsel to a well-heeled hit-and-run driver.
iMovie '08 Library Compressor 1.2
Like it or not, iMovie '08 is the future of iMovie. And, truth be told, I actually like it. Not in comparison to iMovie HD, but as an easy-to-use movie-making program, iMovie '08 is actually pretty good. One useful feature of iMovie '08 is that, like iPhoto, it keeps a library of all your DV clips handy and available, regardless of which project you're currently editing, so you have to import each clip only once to make it available to any project. The downside of this approach is that your iMovie Events folder, which contains all your imported DV footage, can quickly grow to ginormous proportions—DV files are big . One solution to this dilemma is Nik Friedman's iMovie '08 Library Compressor 1.2 ( ; free). This AppleScript-based utility uses the H.264 codec to compress the DV files in your iMovie Events folder; since iMovie '08 supports H.264 video, you can still use these smaller files in your projects.
Zakaridicule: Newsweek Editor Compares Huckabee to Ahmadinejad
He wants constitutional amendments, just to be precise, that would ban abortion and same-sex marriage. JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, yes. And that is not a particularly out-of-the-mainstream view. I mean, there are a lot of Republicans who want to amend the Constitution in that way, though, there is not a great deal of support outside the right wing of the Republican Party on that. But the way Huckabee expressed himself is really in conflict with about 225 years, that is all of American constitutional history. The Constitution is a document that is supposed to allow all religions to flourish, or people who don't believe in religion to flourish. And, you know, he later backed off that expression. But I mean, it's just an indication. He's a very conservative candidate. FAREED ZAKARIA: It frankly made him sound more like Ahmadinejad of Iran.
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