Brand: MacNews

Adam Iser has posted Adium 1.5b7, the latest beta release of the popular alternative AOL Instant Messenger client. The new version adds support for formatted links and countless bug fixes.

Aspyr Media has released version 1.2.1 of Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force Holomatch, the multiplayer component of the Quake III engine-based first-person shooter. Version 1.2.1 improves the speed of listing servers under Mac OS X. New versions are available for both the original game and the expansion pack.

Apple has released QuickTime Streaming Server 4, a new version of its open-source, standards-based streaming server for Mac OS X Server 10.1 or later with MPEG-4 and MP3 streaming capabilities. The software does not require an MPEG-4 license and therefore is available immediately.

Today at QuickTime Live!, Apple previewed QuickTime 6, the next major version of its multimedia technology. Among the features of QuickTime 6 is full support for MPEG-4, a streaming media format for high quality content. While Apple noted that QuickTime 6 is complete and ready for release, it is delaying the product due to the currently proposed licensing fees covering MPEG-4. The current license agreement requires royalty payments from both those who ship codecs and from content providers who use MPEG-4 to stream video.

Apple today also previewed QuickTime Broadcaster, a new product for live Internet broadcasting. QuickTime Broadcaster will support both capturing and encoding of content with support for all QuickTime codecs, including MPEG-4. As with QuickTime 6, however, the software’s release has been delayed pending changes to the MPEG-4 licensing agreement. QuickTime Broadcaster will be available as a free download.