The gift-giving season is approaching and new products -- chess computers and chess software -- are shipping. Here are a few recent announcements plus news about a pair of free chess software products.

• Saitek's Newly Launched Chess Games Now Shipping • 'Saitek Industries Ltd's newest chess line-up, which received rave reviews at their Toy Fair 2004 launch, will begin shipping immediately. The Maestro Travel Chess Computer, the Chess Explorer and the Micro Travel Chess Computer offer a wide range of options for chess masters and for the novice player who want to learn the game through interactive play.'
  
  

• Chessmaster 10th Edition • 'The 10th Edition of Chessmaster represents the largest upgrade and addition of new features that the franchise has ever experienced.' From Ubisoft.
  
  

• Chessmaster for the Xbox • 'Chessmaster for Xbox Live is designed to help players learn, improve and master the game of chess, while challenging a variety of AI-controlled opponents and meeting other chess players online.' From Ubisoft.
  
  
• IntelliChess and ChessCafe bundle • 'Intorine has released IntelliChess (chess program), 1000 Chess Problems and 1000 Chess Endgame Studies in one software bundle. IntelliChess is a chess program with a strong engine and ability to play over the Internet for Pocket PC.'
  
  
• 2004 Apple Design Awards Winners • Best Mac OS X Product • Winner: Big Bang Chess 1.0 by Freeverse Software.
  
  
• PRO DEO 1.0 • 'PRO DEO (version 1.0) is the first freeware version of the former commercial Rebel chess program series.'
  
  

Chess sells! We've all seen chess used as a prop for consumer advertisements. It also makes a good prop for selling mission critical high-tech gear.

• AMD Announces Performance Increases up to 57 Percent • 'AMD today announced that 64-bit versions of software applications Crafty and The Panorama Factory running on the beta version of the upcoming Microsoft® Windows® XP 64-bit Edition for 64-bit Extended Systems demonstrate significant increases in performance. Crafty is an open-source, high-performance chess program.'
  
  
• Navy getting supercomputer from IBM • 'The Defense Department has tapped IBM Corp. to build a supercomputing cluster at the Naval Oceanographic Office (Navoceano) Major Shared Resource Center in Mississippi, the company said today. [...] In 2000, IBM built a 2-teraflop system for Navoceano, which, at the time, was among the top 5 fastest in the world and 170 times more powerful than its technological predecessor, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer. Deep Blue gained fame for defeating chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.'
  
  

Previous report : Product News 25 June 2004.