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On Tuesday, AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Co. announced a broad restructuring plan that centers on the creation of a new entity, temporarily titled The Foundry Company, that will take over the manufacture of processors for AMD. Early word of the restructuring came Monday night.

ATIC, which is based in Adu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, was formed this year. According to its Web site, ATIC is a tech investment company “wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi.”

• Have an exclusive supply agreement with The Foundry Company, with limited exceptions, to manufacture AMD processors and to manufacture, where competitive, certain percentages of other AMD semiconductor products.

• Have an exclusive supply agreement with limited exceptions to manufacture AMD processors and to manufacture, where competitive, certain percentages of other AMD semiconductor products.

• Have equal voting rights with AMD in The Foundry Company.

• After the upgrade and expansion in Dresden and the build-out of the New York facility, The Foundry Company envisions expanding its global manufacturing footprint over time, if commercially justified, to also include new fabrication facilities in Abu Dhabi.

• Have a board of directors whose membership is equally divided between representatives of AMD and ATIC.

• Own 55.6 percent of The Foundry Company on a fully converted to common basis.

• Be consolidated with AMD for purposes of financial reporting.

• Tightly focus on the design and development of the next generation of innovation based on the fusion of computing and graphics processing.

• Expect to increase capacity through completing the 300mm conversion of a second state-of-the-art facility in Dresden in 2009.

• Have its principal headquarters in Silicon Valley, and its research and development and manufacturing leadership teams and ecosystems in New York, Dresden, and Austin, Texas;

• Have a total enterprise value of $5 billion, consisting of AMD’s contribution of manufacturing assets and intellectual property (including its fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany), intellectual capital and employees valued together at $2.4 billion; ATIC’s contribution of $1.4 billion in new capital; and $1.2 billion of debt assumed by The Foundry Company from AMD.

• Improve its liquidity through The Foundry Company’s assumption of approximately $1.2 billion of AMD’s debt, ATIC’s $700 million payment to AMD for ownership interests in The Foundry Company, and Mubadala’s purchase for $314 million of 58 million newly issued AMD shares and warrants for 30 million additional shares.

Upon closing, ATIC will:

• Be owned 44.4 percent by AMD and 55.6 percent by ATIC on a fully converted to common basis. ATIC’s economic ownership will increase over time based on the differences in securities held by AMD and ATIC, and depending on whether AMD elects to invest proportionately with ATIC in future capital infusions to support The Foundry Company’s growth.

• Announce its permanent corporate name and identity.

Upon closing, Mubadala will:

Here are the full details of Tuesday’s announcement, as listed in the press release from AMD and ATIC:

Upon closing, The Foundry Company will:

• Purchase for an aggregate of $314 million 58 million newly issued AMD shares and warrants for 30 million additional shares, giving it a total stake in AMD of 19.3 percent on a fully diluted basis.

The overall deal is expected to close at the beginning of 2009, the companies said.

Advanced Micro Devices is shedding its cost-intensive chip-manufacturing operations in a bid to stay afloat financially.

• Have the option, but not any requirement, to provide additional capital funding to The Foundry Company in response to future capital calls.

Upon closing, AMD will:

(Credit:
AMD)

• Join the IBM technology development alliance for both SOI (silicon on insulator) and bulk silicon technology, greatly expanding the addressable market of The Foundry Company.

• Begin construction of the Fab 4X manufacturing facility in New York in the middle of 2009, directly employing more than 1,400 workers in upstate New York when the facility is in full operation.

In addition, Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Development will increase its current investment in AMD to 19.3 percent. According to its site, six-year-old Mubadala’s “sole shareholder is the government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.”

• Excluding its consolidation of The Foundry Company for financial reporting purposes, improve its net cash position by $2.1 billion, through The Foundry Company’s assumption of approximately $1.1 billion in debt (net of approximately $100 million cash transferred by AMD to The Foundry Company) and cash payments from ATIC and Mubadala aggregating $1 billion.

• Invest an initial $2.1 billion, of which $1.4 billion will be invested directly in the new company and $700 million will be paid directly to AMD.

• Have a right to designate a representative for election as a member of the board of directors of AMD.

• Elect a Mubadala designee as a member of its board of directors.

• Commit a minimum of $3.6 billion and up to $6 billion in additional funds over the next five years for the upgrade and expansion of fabrication facilities in Dresden and construction of a new facility in upstate New York.

Artist's rendering of the planned Fab 4X in New York.

• Own 44.4 percent of The Foundry Company on a fully converted to common basis.

AMD's Fab 36 in Dresden, Germany.

• Have equal voting rights with ATIC in The Foundry Company.

• Have only AMD and ATIC as stockholders, each of which at the closing will have equal voting rights.

(Credit:
AMD)

While Mozilla may not have innovated everything in the browser wars (e.g., tabbed browsing, which arguably came from Opera), it is responsible for driving these innovations onto more than 150 million desktops worldwide.

Chris Blizzard of Mozilla gives a great interview to der Standard in which he highlights how
Firefox is increasingly pushing the envelope on browser innovation. If you’ve taken a look at Mozilla Labs lately, you’ll understand what he means.

commentary

The most salient point for me is that Firefox is gaining market share because it is better, not because it’s open source. Firefox, then, is a classic example (as with Linux on the server) where it is rising because of its quality, not because of its cost, code access, etc.

In a similar manner, Mark Shuttleworth isn’t resting on his Linux laurels and expecting people to use it because it’s free. He wants to make the Linux desktop better than the Mac desktop. He’s setting his standards high. Knowing Mark, he’ll likely achieve them.

This is the future of open source: not code that just happens to be free, but code that just so happens to be better.

I had breakfast this morning with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, and while John isn’t prone to self-aggrandizement and was quick to point to the Mozilla community as the source for much of Firefox’s success and innovation, he indicated a range of new projects under way at Mozilla that are setting standards for usability and functionality in the browser. You can see a glimpse at the Labs site mentioned above, or simply by typing into the address bar (”the awesome bar”).

“For too long at Dell,” Cuomo was quoted as saying, “the promise of customer service was a bait and switch that left thousands of people paying for essentially no service at all.”

Repeatedly failing to provide timely on-site repair to consumers who purchased service contracts promising “on-site” and expedited service;
Pressuring consumers, including those who purchased service contracts promising “on-site” repair, to remove the external cover of their computer and remove, reinstall, and manipulate hardware components;
Discouraging consumers from seeking technical support; those who called Dell’s toll-free number were subjected to long wait times, repeated transfers, and frequent disconnections; and
Failing to provide rebates that were promised to consumers.

The response from Dell, besides disagreeing with the ruling, was that not many people complained. The same AP story quotes a Dell representative, who says, “We are confident that when the proceedings are finally completed, the court will determine that only a relatively small number of customers have been affected,” and it reports earlier statements by Dell that the company “had 6 million transactions in New York between 2003 and 2006, with alleged complaints representing only a tiny fraction.”

To help draw your own conclusion, read the original decision and order (PDF).

On the financial side, Justice Teresi concluded that “Dell lured consumers to purchase its products with advertisements that offered attractive “no interest” and/or “no payment” financing promotions. In practice, however, the vast majority of consumers, even those with very good credit scores, were denied these deals. In a classic ‘bait and switch’ scheme, DFS instead offered consumers financing at high interest rates, which often exceeded 20 percent. Dell and DFS frequently failed to clearly inform these consumers that they had not qualified for the promotional terms, leaving many to unwittingly finance their purchase at high interest rates.”

Now these Dell gripes are official.

In December of 2002, I started a page on my Computer Gripes site devoted to Dell.

Accumulating gripes about Dell was like taking candy from a baby; there was no sport in it. Eventually, I gave up maintaining the page, but despite a total lack of advertising or promotion, people kept finding the page and adding their own gripes.

The Office of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo won a lawsuit on Tuesday against Dell and affiliate company Dell Financial Services (DFS). The illegal activity involved both computers and finance. According to a government statement, “Dell and DFS engaged in fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices, and abusive debt collection practices.” Wow.

State Supreme Court Justice Joseph C. Teresi, who made the ruling, said, “Dell has engaged in repeated misleading, deceptive, and unlawful business conduct, including false and deceptive advertising of financing promotions and the terms of warranties, fraudulent, misleading, and deceptive practices in credit financing, and failure to provide warranty service and rebates.”

The Associated Press reports that the attorney general’s office had 700 complaints when the lawsuit was filed and has received more than 1,000 since. And that’s just in New York.

On the computer side, the decision says (the bullet points below are taken directly from the official statement) that customers were deprived of warranty tech support by Dell:

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

“For quite a while, CNBC has been asked when will it enter professional networking,” Mark Hoffman, CNBC president, said in a statement. “This question has been clearly answered today….”

Business news channel CNBC and professional networking site LinkedIn have formed a strategic alliance.

The changes on the sites are set to launch in the fourth quarter.

Under the deal announced late Wednesday, the CNBC will provide articles, blogs, financial data, and video across the LinkedIn network. The news channel also will integrate LinkedIn functionality into CNBC.com. That functionality will allow LinkedIn’s members to share comments about the news within their network of friends and business contacts. In addition, the two companies will jointly create content, including community-generated content such as surveys, from LinkedIn members for broadcast.

Software maker GraphOn has filed suit against search giant Google, alleging that Google’s Base, AdWords, Blogger, Sites, and YouTube services violate GraphOn’s patents

GraphOn is seeking permanent injunctive relief along with unspecified damages.

GraphOn, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., acquired the patents through its acquisition of Network Engineering Software, a privately held network software company, in 2005. The suit was filed in United States District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

A spokesman for Google said the company has not received the complaint yet, and therefore had no comment.

According to GraphOn, the Google suit follows similar claims against AutoTrader.com, Classified Ventures, IAC/InterActiveCorp, Match.com, Yahoo, eHarmony.com, and CareerBuilder.

The suit involves patents 6,324,538; 6,850,940; 7,028,034; and 7,269,591, which involve a method of maintaining an automated and network-accessible database.

Updated 10:35 a.m. PDT:Google’s decline to comment has been added.

I guess Ozzie can’t count Benioff among the Web 2.0 developers that will add-in Live Mesh support into their applications.

“Microsoft’s answer to platform-as-a-service is just more .Net software in a world where cloud computing negates their monopolistic control of the Windows desktop,” Benioff said. “Microsoft has let us all down through their lack of innovation; fortunately, the SaaS and PaaS movements will finally release us all from their old software models and outdated business practices.”

(Credit:
CNET News.com)

But Microsoft is not alone in trying to be the platform of the Web. There are consumer efforts like Facebook and OpenSocial, and business ones, such as Amazon and Salesforce’s Force.com.

In an e-mail interview, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that Microsoft was forced to respond to these other Web platforms.

Microsoft is trying to woo developers by letting them write their code in any number of different ways, from RSS to Atom to Javascript.

Even assuming it finds developers more willing than Benioff to bet on Microsoft, there’s also the question of business model.

Microsoft has said it is exploring several models, including paid subscriptions and advertising, though it vowed to always offer a free service with at least 5GB of cloud storage. At the moment, though, it is just a free service and a consumer-focused one at that. Microsoft said it would have more to say on the business possibilities later in the year.

You can also check out Webware editor Rafe Needleman’s hands-on review here.

At its core, Live Mesh is vintage Ozzie, touching on themes that go back to his Lotus Notes days such as a focus on collaboration and synchronization. The core notion is deliciously appealing. All of your data should live in the places you need it and stay up-to-date automatically.

In the coming months, Microsoft hopes to bring Live Mesh closer to the product it envisions: a way for users to connect all of their key devices and keep them up to date with important data, and to further blur the line between online and desktop applications. If things are on track, we will see Microsoft add support for more devices and testers in short order.

Also, Microsoft faces significant competition in both what it is offering initially and with what it eventually envisions for Live Mesh. It will need to convince consumers and developers alike that its way is the best one.

The Live Mesh widget tells you what's happening with your shares and syncs. Click the image for more early screenshots.

We’ll have much more to say about Live Mesh in the coming days and I invite you to share your take below.

See also Techmeme for more coverage of Live Mesh

The Live Mesh service that Microsoft unveiled Tuesday night is a peek of what Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie has been working on all these months.

Obviously Microsoft hopes to go further, looking to make Mesh a place where developers can write applications that can live on all manner of devices with data and settings stored in the cloud and changes on one device automatically synchronized with other devices and the cloud.

But Microsoft’s approach holds the possibility of peril, in addition to its considerable promise. Microsoft has outlined broad visions before only to be thwarted by either technical challenges (Longhorn and Cairo) or customer concerns (Hailstorm and Smart Tags). One potential sticking point with Mesh–it requires users to use Microsoft’s Live ID for authentication, though the company said it is exploring whether it can support OpenID in the future.

“This time the centricity is the Internet which puts Microsoft on an even playing field as their desktop monopoly is negated through the network and new devices,” he said. “After a decade of using their monopoly to stop (software-as-a-service) innovation through false prophecy and rhetoric; Microsoft has relented by delivering a service that is still too little too late without the platform as a service customers are demanding to succeed.”

News.com’s Mike Ricciuti contributed to this report.

As previously noted, the version that launches Tuesday is limited considerably from the broad service Microsoft envisions. (See Ozzie’s recent memo to Microsoft employees for the big vision.) Although pitched as a way to seamlessly connect various devices, for now the only devices it is synching are Windows PCs (though Macs and Windows Mobile phones are just around the corner, we’re told). For now, it’s limited to a closed beta of about 10,000 testers, though Microsoft says it plans to bring on more people over time and have a broad beta around the time of this fall’s Professional Developer Conference.

In its initial incarnation, Live Mesh is mostly a file-sharing and folder-synchronization service, as well as a nice, easy way to access a PC remotely. Down the road though, it’s Microsoft’s latest attempt to find preeminence in a world in which Microsoft-based devices are just part of the mix.

As for the current stuff, there are lots of Web services that offer remote desktop or file-sharing capabilities–Box.net, LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, SugarSync and Microsoft’s own FolderShare–to name a few.

Yahoo's new architecture, called YOS (Yahoo Open Strategy) proves that the Internet is made of tubes.

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

Y!Open is an ambitious revitalization of Yahoo and way to inject a viral and sticky social dimension into the core of the service. If Yahoo’s earnings don’t inspire Microsoft to raise its bid, perhaps this vision for transforming the Web icon will.

Balogh discussed the technical architecture–known as YOS, or Yahoo Open Strategy–including an application platform that will allow developers to create apps for consumers to keep their data protected and to chose what data to share and with whom. In addition, Yahoo will unify all profiles for users and developers, which will allow the company to leverage the 10 billion relations and 500 million users to create the social graph of relationships and to manage the event stream (what Facebook calls the Newsfeed).

“Tremendous creativity will released…It’s all about the consumer. We want to enable developers to do all kinds of things with the assets. We need to have a consistent view, and to take a single application that can end up in multiple places and put it exactly where they want it and to choose how and where to share data,” Balogh said.

SAN FRANCISCO–Speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday, Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh revealed how the company is transforming itself into an open and social platform from the ground up.

The front page of Yahoo, mail and other properties will be transformed–for example, the mail welcome page will surface messages more relevant to users and the experience will be contextualized.

(Credit:
Yahoo)

“We are not creating another social network. We will rewire the entire experience to make it social. We don’t think of social as a destination but as a dimension,” Balogh said. Along with Google and MySpace, Yahoo is a member of the OpenSocial Foundation, which is developing a specification for building social applications.

Yahoo has 10 billion latent connections across its properties, such as mail, messenger and fantasy sports, Balogh said.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Balogh proclaimed. The front page of Yahoo, mail and other properties will be transformed. For example, the mail welcome page will surface messages more relevant to users and the experience will be contextualized to drive the relevant user experience, he said. Users will be able to add applications from Yahoo and third parties on various Yahoo sites and pages, including the home page of Yahoo. “We are rewiring the properties and opening up properties in a consistent way,” Balogh said. “It won’t be 25 or 30 different experiences.”

The first example of Yahoo’s new openness is SearchMonkey, which was first announced in February. SearchMonkey lets developers build data services for modifying the presentation of search results. Developers create mini applications, using structured data from Yahoo search or from other sources. The goal is get users from to “do” to “done” much more quickly, Balogh said. “We are making the search engine result richer and fundamentally more relevant.”

“We are taking open to a whole other place,” Balogh said. “We are rewiring Yahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assets of Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience social throughout and provide hooks to developers.” He noted that Yahoo has 10 billion latent connections across its properties, such as mail, messenger and fantasy sports. (See video of Balogh on stage at Web 2.0 Expo, at the bottom of this story.)

(Credit:
Yahoo)

Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh is leading Yahoo's open social transformation.

(Credit:
Yahoo)

Balogh said that the major transformation of the Yahoo experience will begin later this year, with the first version of what he called Y!Open, including the social graph and tools for developers, as well as event stream feeds (which he called “Vitality”).

Quattrone was figured to be a goner after his May 2004 conviction for criminal obstruction, another former Silicon Valley high-flyer-turned-jailbird queuing up for the prison chow line with WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers and Qwest’s Joe Nacchio. And who knows? Maybe it won’t be long before Nacchio will be able to peddle his business advice as well. Last month a federal appeals court ordered a new trial because the original trial judge had kept out expert testimony needed for Nacchio’s defense against insider trading charges.

After then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer uncovered his shenanigans during the go-go days, none other than Henry Blodget is back holding a very public court with a video gig at Yahoo in addition to his day job as reigning tech pundit at his Silicon Alley Insider blog.

And now he’s back in a very public spotlight. Life moves on and it’s time to turn the page.

America loves second acts.

I’ve read some outraged comments on the Internet this evening, but look, the guy’s rap sheet is clean. OK, it’s technically clean because he caught a break on an earlier obstruction-of-justice conviction. But that’s the U.S. justice system in action. You either accept the rules or you don’t. It’s not an a la carte menu.

So somehow I can’t really summon any moral indignation upon learning that Frank Quattrone is back in business. Say what you like about him but at least he’s not a creep.

Luckily for Quattrone, the presiding judge in his trial, Judge Richard W. Owen, was so one-sided that the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice all supported Quattrone’s appeal. The conviction subsequently got tossed out by a federal appeals court, which found that Owen had improperly instructed the jury on how to interpret the law.

Did that also mean Quattrone never got his hands dirty as prosecutors originally charged? We’ll never know the answer. A first trial in 2003 ended in a mistrial and the government had no more stomach to bring Quattrone to trial a third time. The Securities and Exchange Commission followed up by overturning a NASD life ban against working in the securities industry after the conviction.

Earlier Thursday, The New York Times
was first to report that the one-time Silicon Valley rainmaker is advising Google on how to play its hand in the faceoff between Microsoft and Yahoo.

The company’s first plant in Oregon will produce 60 megawatts worth of cells. There will be a ground-breaking in about two months. Wilson said that the company has already secured customers and a supply of polysilicon, which is now in short supply worldwide.

(Credit:
SpectraWatt)

“Almost every company in the electronics and semiconductor industry is going to try to figure out how to get into solar–it’s going to be that big of an industry,” he said.

In addition to solar, Intel is investing in energy-efficiency processors and data center gear. Intel Capital, meanwhile, has invested in smart-grid company Grid Net, which is using WiMax wireless networks to broker communications between electricity utilities and customers.

The venture expects to start breaking ground on a facility in the middle of this year in Oregon and start shipping cells made from silicon to solar panel makers by the middle of next year. Andrew Wilson, the former general manager in the Intel New Business Initiatives group, will be SpectraWatt’s CEO.

In an interview, Wilson declined to provide specific technical information because the company is still in the process of seeking intellectual property protections.

Its investment arm, Intel Capital, is leading a $50 million round in SpectraWatt. Other investors include Goldman Sachs subsidiary Cogentrix Energy, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and German solar company Solon.

He did say that the company will focus on improving solar cell efficiency–how well a panel converts light to electricity–as well as cutting the overall cost per watt.

“The solar industry is akin to where the microprocessor industry was in the late 1970s. There is a lot to be figured out and improved,” he said.

Intel made a big leap into the burgeoning clean-tech sector on Monday by creating SpectraWatt, a spinoff company that will manufacture solar cells.

Like IBM and HP, Intel has expertise in semiconductor materials and capital-intensive, high-volume manufacturing. Those same skills are required in the solar photovoltaics business, which is growing rapidly–on the order of 40 percent to 50 percent–from soaring demand.

Hewlett-Packard earlier this month licensed transparent electronics to a solar concentrator start-up, Xtreme Energetics.

IBM on Monday announced plans to enter the CIGS solar cell arena by forming a partnership with a Japanese semiconductor equipment maker. It’s one of four solar efforts at IBM, which has a companywide green technology initiative.

The SpectraWatt logo.

Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said in a statement that the chipmaker is eyeing different business opportunities in clean tech. “This is an important investment for Intel Capital in the growing clean-tech sector, and we look forward to working with the company to support its expansion,” he said.

Looking for a solar play
The Intel-SpectraWatt deal highlights the deepening cross-over between IT companies and the clean-technology sector.

“It sure looks like solar will be consuming a lot of silicon so it’s another thing that we need to understand,” he said. “We (also) see a lot of overlap with respect to the research directions of the technology.”

SpectraWatt’s Wilson said that Intel’s silicon expertise translates in the solar cell industry, even though there are significant differences in the end product.

Solar expert Travis Bradford, who is president of the Prometheus Institute, said that Intel’s move into solar is not surprising, given the rapid growth of solar energy.

“Compared to the stuff Intel makes, the (solar cell) stuff is pretty dumb,” Bradford said. “To be successful long term, you need downstream partners to work on different (solar panel) form factors for different types of installations. Intel doesn’t do downstream stuff–they do brains.”

On the other hand, Intel’s processors–the brains of computers–are more sophisticated than solar cells. And in solar, packaging the final goods is very important.

Updated at 1:15 p.m. PDT with comments from Bradford and SpectraWatt.

The company intends to support the feature in the next major release of its video work-flow software. There was a two-year gap between the releases of Creative Suite 3 and 2, so the next major version is likely to come some time in 2009.

Adobe will show a preview of technology that will create a text transcription of the audio within a video clip at editing time.

For example, a person could search a CNET video review for a product name and a specific feature, such as camera zoom.

“We keep saying that metadata is the most important thing happening in our industry and we want to prove it,” said Hayhurst.

The transcription information will be stored in XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform), another format developed by Adobe.

And it is adding support for H.264 standard, high-definition video format on its Flash encoding software. It added support for H.264 for Flash video playback last year.

“You want enough space to innovate but have commonality so that you are implementing technology when there is a genuine need for it to be different,” Hayhurst said.

In other announcements, Adobe will announce that it is now natively supporting Sony’s XDCAM EX tapeless video file format in its
Creative Suite 3 video-editing tools.

As a result, viewers of a Web video will be able to search on terms to find a specific location within a video.

For editors, this will allow them to more quickly find passages within a clip based on a text read-out of the audio. The output of the video-editing software will also include that transcribed information.

Initially, the specification will only affect “high-end Hollywood and top-end indie” filmmakers because equipment that supports this format would be the most sophisticated and expensive available. But eventually, this format could be used more broadly.

Adobe will demonstrate the feature on a version of its Soundbooth audio-editing product under development and on Premiere Pro.

The group’s hope is to have a specification ready sometime this year and to submit it to a standards body to encourage broader industry adoption, he said.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Video to text
Separately, Adobe will give a preview at NAB 2008 of technology that automatically transcribes the audio track of a video file.

Adobe intends to support the format in future versions of its video work-flow products, like After Effects and Premiere Pro.

“It lays the foundation for the correct way that you want to do cinema in the future,” said Hayhurst.

Adobe Systems thinks we can do better with the quality of digital video images. It is also developing a way to search on the audio within video clips.

The effort is called CinemaDNG, named after the DNG (Digital Negative) raw digital still image format designed by Adobe. The company is working with others in the industry including camera makers and software developers, said Simon Hayhurst, senior product manager for dynamic media at Adobe.

At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show 2008 in Las Vegas this week, Adobe will announce a joint initiative to develop a specification that it hopes will eventually lead to a file format for higher image quality.

The advantage of the specification will not only be better resolution, but it will also give more image control to cinematographers and editors. The format can be useful for archiving films which could be reissued with a different look as well.

Creating a common standard will help accelerate adoption of higher quality imaging, he said.