Macnification

Over the past few months, we have been working on Macnification 2.
While this major upgrade will sport many new features and improvements, the most important addition to Macnification is its ability to capture images directly from virtually any camera.

Capturing works with Firewire video cameras (allowing Macnification to perform live imaging), as well as with any traditional photo camera, generally connected through USB.

In order to test the capturing functionality, we are currently looking for beta testers. If you are interested in testing and you have a Mac with a Firewire video camera or USB photo camera connected to your microscope, please contact us.

We plan to release Macnification during the first half of 2010. Keep an eye on this weblog for more information.

Some of our users experienced crashes when migrating their Macnification 1.6 database to version 1.6.1. The latest update, Macnification 1.6.2., now fixes this issue. Use the built-in system to update your copy, or grab it from our download page.

We teamed up with CoLocalization Research Software to offer a bundle of CoLocalizer and Macnification. In case you don't know CoLocalizer yet: the application is designed to characterize colocalization objectively. Based on calculation of specialized coefficients, the software performs quantitative determination of the degree of overlap. CoLocalizer helps to obtain crucial information about precise location of the molecules of interest as well as to follow their changes in dynamics. CoLocalizer works seamlessly with Macnification: simply set CoLocalizer as the default analysis app in Macnification's preferences.

The bundle costs only 199 euro (about $295 at the time of this writing) and offers both CoLocalizer Express and an academic single user license of Macnification. It's available from our online store.

We just released Macnification 1.6.1, with support for Leica Image Files (.lif). In addition, we fixed a bug that sometimes prevented image searches and we improved performance throughout the application. For more information please see the release notes on the download page.

Please note: the automatic update feature can not be used to update from 1.6 (or earlier) to 1.6.1. In order to upgrade to 1.6.1, please download the dmg file from our download page.
Starting from 1.6.1, the automatic update feature will work as expected again.

Today we released Macnification 1.6., the first 64-bit version of the app. As a result, Macnification is not only faster on the same hardware, it is also ready for the future.

In addition, Macnification uses Grand Central Dispatch, Apple's new technology to fully leverage multiple cores. As far as we are aware, Macnification is one of the first scientific apps (if not the first) to combine support for both 64-bit and GCD.
When using Macnification for image analysis, you will notice its revamped full-screen analysis view. Finally, this update fixes numerous bugs and issues.

The update is free for all registered users. Existing Macnification users may choose 'Check for Updates' from the Macnification menu. Alternatively, you may download version 1.6 from our download page. A complete list of changes is available on the same page. We hope you will enjoy the new Macnification.

As a Macnification user, you might be interested in performing Colocalization. On Mac OS X, the best solution is CoLocalizer Pro: the application is designed to characterize colocalization objectively. Based on calculation of specialized coefficients, the software performs quantitative determination of the degree of overlap. CoLocalizer Pro helps to obtain crucial information about precise location of the molecules of interest as well as to follow their changes in dynamics.

CoLocalizer integrates nicely with Macnification: with a single click you can send a Macnification image to CoLocalizer (simply set CoLocalizer as the external image analysis app in Macnification's preferences).

Now that Snow Leopard has been released, we can confirm that the current version of Macnification (1.5.3) works just fine on Mac OS X 10.6.
In addition, we have been working on a new update that will offer many Snow Leopard enhancements, including 64-bit support. This 1.6 update will be released by the end of October and it will be free for all registered users.