Avanquest Ships Line Of iPod Software Titles
By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 2/27/2006
New York — Riding the hot iPod market, software publisher Avanquest has started rolling out the first of what will be eight titles tied to the portable music device.
The first two titles to hit retail are the PodMediaCreator and the DVD2POD. These started shipping in late February with suggested retail prices of $29.95.
The PodMediaCreator enables users to compose, edit and personalize home videos and then download the final product onto an iPod for viewing, in the case of the video-capable iPod, or for transferring the file to another computer. The DVD2POD software enables end users to convert AVI files and homemade DVDs for storage and viewing on an iPod.
Avanquest CEO Christina Seelye said her company has made special arrangements with retailers to position the software near the other iPod accessories and not just in the software rack. Avanquest has developed special POP displays to house and help sell the titles, she said.
In the coming months additional titles will ship, including iPDA, which allows personal information to be synced to an iPod; iPresentIt creates a slideshow of a PowerPoint or PDF presentation and allows the slideshow to run directly from the iPod to a projector. A step-up program called PodPresenter is also coming online. This allows a PowerPoint presentation to play directly from an iPod through a projector and gives the user some amount of editing capability, eliminating then need to carry a notebook.
The remaining titles are WebPodStudio, a Podcast creator; iPocketBible, for reading or listening to the New Living Translation of the Bible on an iPod; and iExtend, which turns an iPod into a portable PC backup and storage system.
The titles will carry suggested retail prices between $29 and $49.
