Digital Arts Magazine, Digital Arts staff

The Literary Platform is a new website dedicated to showcasing projects experimenting with literature and technology, and brings together comment from industry figures and thinkers.

After a three-year absence, earlier this week saw the return of Ask Jeeves with the Jeeves butler returning as Ask.com's brand icon. The butler is again the face of popular search engine, which will be returning to its original name, Ask Jeeves, in the UK.

In keeping with the times, Jeeves has changed his appearance a little -- not least in becoming a fully 3D character. The ever-helpful butler's new look required a little shopping expedition. Top Savile Row tailors, Gieves & Hawkes, crafted a suit for him, while design and animation were made to measure by Framestore.

Asus has announced the F70 notebook, which it says is the first model available with a 17.3-inch display. This has LED backlighting, a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1,920-x-1,080 to precisely match that a HD video.

The company says that the laptop's design is reminiscent of the Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights), which sets it apart from conventional notebook designs. Not only is it designed to look beautiful -- it serves a highly practical purpose too by offering robustness against surface abrasions and maintaining the superb glossy appearance even after long periods of use.

Corel has released Painter 11, the newest edition of its digital painting and illustration software. The software boasts more than 40 new and enhanced features, according to Corel.

The company says that with Painter 11, artists can now expand their digital toolset with the most advanced painting and natural media tools available. The software features new pressure-sensitive brushes to allow hand and brush to fluidly work as one, producing brushstrokes that are unrivalled in texture and precision. Enhanced drawing tools and customisable media allow users to create distinct art every time.

It's been mooted for some time, and prototypes have been floating around for the last 18 months, but Polaroid has finally announced the launch of the Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera, the first portable digital camera and instant printer combination. With the push of a button, users can select from among the digital photos on the camera, crop or edit them and in less than 60 seconds, print full-colour, 2x3-inch prints -- all with a single device.

The Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera is the second product in the Polaroid PoGo family of products. Like the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer, whichwas released in July 2008, the Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera uses the same ZINK Paper and ZINK Zero Ink Printing Technology from Polaroid-offshoot ZINK Imaging. ZINK is an ink-free printing technology which replaces ink cartridges or ribbons with ZINK Paper -- a composite material that has embedded, heat-activated dye crystals. Before printing, ZINK Paper appears white like regular photo paper. Once the pictures are printed, they are immediately dry to the touch, durable and smudge and water resistant.

Canon announces a new addition to its HDV camcorder range: the Legria HV40. Recording HDV1080i images to tape, the Legria HV40 is the successor to the HV30.

The latest evolution of Canon's popular HV-series, the Legria HV40 offers users greater creative control over their movies. A new Custom Key allows a range of different functions to be assigned to the manual Control Dial, located at the front of the camcorder, including focus, exposure and audio level.

Adobe has released the first full version of Configurator, an open source utility that enables the easy creation of panels (palettes) for use in Photoshop CS4.

Specifically, Configurator is designed to make it easy to drag and drop tools, menu items, scripts, actions, and other objects into a panel design, then export the results for use inside Photoshop. These panels leverage the support for Adobe Flash built into Photoshop, making it possible to drag and drop audio, video, images, and even other SWF files into a panel design.

Olympus has added a mid-range single-lens reflect camera to its lineup.

The E-30 is equipped with an internal Digital Level Sensor that detects the camera's pitch and roll and indicates it in the optical viewfinder, on the control panel and during Live View operation. Olympus says that his Digital Leveler is a tremendous benefit for architectural photographers who must ensure that images they take of buildings are as centered and true as the walls of the buildings themselves.