Adobe's head will be in the clouds from here on out. The maker of Photoshop, Illustrator, and other digital creation software pushed major updates today to Creative Cloud, a new controversial subscription-based model for its most popular products. At the Adobe MAX conference in May, the company announced that it was taking its entire suite to the cloud to prevent software piracy and provide updates over the air.
The new model also establishes a more stable revenue stream for the company because as it turns out, convincing users to pay for expensive upgrades every few years is difficult. Traditional desktop versions of Adobe programs, like Photoshop, can run upwards of $700 a piece. Will the digital artist community be willing to fork over $20 or $50 per month, instead of a one-time fee, for the same tools in a new web-ready format?
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, and a host of other Adobe Creative Suite tools are all getting the cloud treatment. Creative Cloud offers automatic software updates, along with additional perks like 20GB of cloud storage, workspace syncing between devices, the Adobe Kuler app, and integration with the design showcase network, Behance, which Adobe acquired in December.
But are all the bells and whistles included with Adobe CC worth it? Or is it time to switch to an alternative like Final Cut Pro or Acorn? We weigh the pros and cons after the break.
On this day 30 years ago — June 18, 1983 — Sally Ride became the first American women in space, as part of the space shuttle Challenger mission. She was one of six women selected to NASA's 1978 astronaut class of 35 total people, a hugely different female to male ratio than we saw this week with NASA's 2013 group of astronaut candidates, which was half women. After traveling to space during the Challenger mission in 1983 and again in 1984, Sally became the inspiration for a generation of girls to follow their science dreams, an area that had been long deemed "boys only."
Though she retired from NASA in 1987, Sally — who held a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford — continued to work in the sciences. She founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, whose purpose was to motivate young students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math. She was an honoree in the National Women's Hall of Fame, the Astronaut Hall of Fame, and was given the National Space Grant Distinguished Service Award by President Obama before her death in 2012 at the age of 61.
The notoriously press-shy former astronaut chose to let her work speak for itself, rather than in publicity, but after reading a rare interview from 1999 with the Los Angeles Times, we can't help but be charmed by the following six excerpts from the interview, adding to the reasons she's one of our heroes.
In the wake of the NSA PRISM Internet surveillance scandal, and despite tech companies' protests that they knew nothing about the program, we're adding extra security to our Internet use. Disconnect 2 is an update to the popular Disconnect Chrome browser extension, created by a former Google engineer to keep personal data transmitted online private, and not tracked by the companies whose sites you visit.
Currently available as extensions for Chrome and Firefox (the company is working on Safari and Opera versions), Disconnect 2 stops over 2,000 third-party sites from tracking the personal information you input online. Once downloaded, a toolbar on the browser gives a real-time view of the websites that would be grabbing information about your search habits or recent location check-ins were you not using the tool.
Not only does it block the transmission of browsing history, but also, Disconnect encrypts data you choose to share on sites, just in case it one day falls into the hands of a separate company or person. The software is pay-what-you-can, with the option to allot some of the money to Disconnect, and some to Internet nonprofits like ProPublica, Center For Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Tor Project. So you can help the digital good while protecting your digital life.
If there's one time in the day to get out of the house on a photo walk, it's golden hour. Instagram user faundez_alex, shares this picture of a lighthouse on Geneva Lake, taken with the VSCO app.
Have you been testing out your photography skills and snapped a shot you want to share? Submit your pics to our Cool Capture group or to Instagram with the #coolcapture hashtag, and your pic might be featured on the POPSUGAR Tech homepage. And don't forget to follow @popsugartech on Instagram!
If you're addicted to Cartoon Network's hit coming-of-age show, relive the postapocalyptic exploits of Adventure Time with Finn-launching, rock-smashing, Fionna-fighting apps.
The adventures of a hat-wearing boy hero and his talking dog continue on mobile, with iOS and Android games that bring all the goodness of Ooo to phones and tablets.
Have you not been bit by the Adventure Time bug yet? Give the hilarious, fantastical series by Pendleton Ward a try — even top critics herald the show as a highly intellectual animated series that's not just for kids!
Over a year after posting a call for astronaut applications, NASA introduced the 2013 astronaut candidate class on Monday, half of which are female, the highest percentage ever selected in one group by NASA. Over 6,300 people applied for the eight available positions, which begin training Aug.1 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of the astronaut corps and Mission Control.
This marks the 21st class of NASA astronaut candidates, all of whom had to undergo a rigorous interview process that included medical, language aptitude, and mobility tests. The eight individuals will join the current 49 active NASA astronauts in the organization's future pursuit of the first manned mission to an asteroid in the 2020 decade, with the goal of one day putting humans on Mars. Currently, the US astronauts' main mission is supporting the global efforts of the International Space Station.
As a NASA representative said during a Google+ Hangout to introduce the eight candidates, the four women chosen were not deliberately selected to represent an equal gender pool, rather they were the most qualified group of people, and a "tribute to women today." Here, an introduction to the impressive women of the 2013 astronaut class.
Christina M. Hammock
Nicole Aunapu Mann
Keep reading to meet the national women's rugby player and the Harvard medical professor that may one day man space missions.
Google's beloved RSS feed aggregator, Google Reader, is heading to the cyber graveyard on July 1. But there's no need to lament, since Digg, the up-vote, down-vote social news site that was forced to shutdown in 2010, is returning to the web with a reader of its own!
The Digg engineering team posted the first screenshots of its Google Reader replacement, which launches publicly on June 26.
When Digg announced their reader in March, they hoped to "identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader's features" and anticipated a late 2013 release date. Apparently, production was sped up to roll out Digg Reader ahead of Google Reader's July end date to make migration as seamless as possible.
What can you expect from the new RSS feed aggregator? A site that's simple, fast, optimized for any screen size, free (with premium paid options later in the year), and as socially conscious as Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.
Sign up to be notified when the new Digg Reader has arrived, or if you need an alternative right this second, turn to one of these RSS aggregators fit for headline grazers.
Be sure to export your Google Reader data (subscriptions, bookmarked items, notes and all) before July 1 at dataliberation.org.
On June 6, The Washington Post published documents revealing a data collection program that allegedly retrieved private user information from the servers of the world's top tech companies.
Facebook, Microsoft, and Google denied any knowledge of the top-secret PRISM program but, in the interest of transparency, released the number of national security-related requests they have received soon after the news broke. This week, Apple shed some light on what type of data from personal computers and iOS devices the top-secret NSA program can and can't see.
According to the company's disclosure, Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from the US government (federal, state, and local) and information from between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts were specifically asked for. Robbery, missing person, and suicide prevention investigations are the most common reasons for request. The specific data needed for these investigations were not disclosed, but the most interesting revelation was the user information Apple can't retrieve for authorities, which include:
While the company did not reveal the exact user information it can hand over to the authorities, Apple's own privacy policy may provide a clue as to how our personal and nonpersonal data is collected from iOS devices.
Personal Information
This type of data is affiliated to you, your name, and your username. Children under the age of 13 (as denoted by Apple ID) are exempt from personal data collection. Data is largely gathered in two ways:
Nonpersonal Information
This type of data is generally aggregated with other users, making it anonymous. It is not typically affiliated with any specific individual.
Government surveillance is still largely a mystery, but details on information requests are being revealed slowly. While much remains to be seen, we do know that there is an emphasis on collecting metadeta (information about communication transactions), as unveiled in the original Guardian article, rather than data of the actual content of conversations. After all of these NSA request disclosures from tech companies, do you feel any better about your digital privacy?
