Brand: MacNews

NCsoft Corporation has begun a public beta test ofthe Mac OS X version of Lineage: The Blood Pledge, its popular massivelymultiplayer online role-playing game. Interested participants need only MacOS X, at least 128MB of RAM and a connection to the Internet. During thebeta period, players will be able to play free of charge, and will becredited with an additional 30 days of free play at the conclusion of thebeta test. The beta Mac OS X client, which is over 400MB in size, can bedownloaded or ordered on CD for free.

Zend Technologies today announced Zend Studio2.0, an “all-in-one” client-server development package for coding,debugging and deploying advanced PHP e-commerce and business applications.Features include code completion for HTML and PHP constructs, integratedlocal and remote debugging and server administration via a Web browserinterface. Zend Studio 2.0 sells for US$149. A Mac OS X beta version isavailable now, with a final release expected in March.

Avid Technology today announced Avid Xpress DV v3, the latest version of its portable video editing solution featuring real-time effects and multiple simultaneous streams. New features in version 3 include more than 100 customizable real-time effects, a new user interface, a new keyframe model, a new Avid DV codec, five times faster MPEG encoding and more. Avid Xpress DV v3 will be available for Mac in mid-2002 for US$1,699.

Dantz Development Corporation has announced that the next release of its Retrospect Backup software forthe Mac will include support for DVD+RW drives. Dantz released an update version of Retrospect for Windows today with DVD+RW support.

Other World Computing today introduced what it bills as the world’s first 60GB portable FireWire drive. The Mercury On-The-Go drive features an Oxford 911 chipset and 5400RPM 60GB 2.5″ IBM drive, and sells for US$639.97. Other configurations are available with 20GB ($199.97), 30GB ($279.97), 40GB ($329.97), and 48GB ($439.95) drives.