If you are interested in learning more about the technology under the hood of LiveCycle Collaboration Service, I’d suggest reviewing this presentation by Ryan Stewart from Adobe:
http://max.adobe.com/online/session/272
Archive for the 'Adobe Systems' Category
Adobe Systems announced some big news today with its planned acquisition of Omniture. In the short time since, I’ve been asked by customers and a few analysts about our perspectives on it. I don’t have any information other than what’s out on the various PR announcements and blogs. That said, I do have an opinion 
In discussing the acquisition, Adobe’s Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen stated:
“This is a game changer for both Adobe and our customers,” Narayen said in a statement. “We will enable advertisers, media companies and e-tailers to realize the full value of their digital assets.”
The rich internet application (RIA) proponents have long since stood by the concept of rich, engaging experiences driving more revenue, customer satisfaction, eyeballs, etc… While we all may agree that great experiences build great businesses (Zappos, Amazon, and others come to mind), many RIA projects lack the hardened metrics to back up this intuition. Given this gap in metrics, this acquisition is strategic in turning the RIA-defense from intuition to fact.
However, I suspect this acquisition was driven by an even more strategic imperative: transitioning Adobe from one of the world’s greatest boxed product vendors to that of a true services-based powerhouse. While the wonderful tracking and metrics analysis from Omniture will be useful for Adobe and its customers, I have to imagine the “hidden gem” in this purchase is that of the Omniture services architecture and operations. Omniture is currently supporting more than 1 Trillion transactions per quarter. The embedded domain expertise to make that happen inside Omniture has to be of great value for Adobe in this transition. The transfusion of Omniture’s massive services know-how into Adobe’s foray into services-based products that mirror their rich heritage in desktop products, has definitely got me excited about the potential.
What are your thoughts?
Adobe has just released a new program contributing money to school programs going green, and all you need to do to assist is sign-up for a free-trial.
Now your meetings are more meaningful than ever before. Because every time someone signs up for a free trial of Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ Pro, we’ll donate twenty-five dollars to help a school go green.
To learn more about the program, Acrobat Connect Pro, and how to sign-up for a free-trial, go here
I was recently speaking with one of our customers and the simplest of concepts came up in our conversation, looping. Either the entire presentation or just having some looping audio that serves as a background audio track whether its a standalone Presenter file from the Adobe Connect server or a Presenter file loaded into a meeting room.
Now looping the entire presentation is simple enough. You can go into Adobe Presenter, choose Presentation Settings, Playback and select “Loop presentation” (see image #1 below). This will cause the presentation to play in its entirety at the timing and settings you have established and when the final slide is reached it will automatically jump back to the beginning of the presentation.
Now setting up looping audio can be a bit more complicated but not impossible. The first thing to remember is that Adobe Presenter only supports one stereo audio track in the audio settings (see image #2 below).
What we have in image #2 is a small bit of audio on Slide 1 of our presentation. If you wanted that audio clip too effectively loop and play on every slide you could manually copy and paste the audio clip across each slide in the “Edit Audio” dialog (see image #3 below). Very tedious but it works.
Now do not go in there and drop an audio-only .swf file on the slides that will not work as you might expect. Each slide with the .swf file on it will treat that .swf file as a separate instance of the audio file and you will end up will a sort of infinite-loop. I think we called it singing in the “round” when we were camping and sitting around the camp fire where one person would start to sing and then a few seconds later the next person would start and so forth. This is not the type of audio playback you want to achieve in your presentation. Perhaps in future versions of Presenter Adobe will make this easier or more intuitive but for now this is what we have to do.
If you have the time and want to do the work open up an audio editor like Adobe Soundbooth CS4, which supports multiple audio tracks and do some audio mixing or editing there. You could have one track that is your background audio and another that is a voice-over, narration or other audio clip. From Soundbooth, save or export the entire file as an .mp3 audio track and import that file into Presenter using the “import audio” setting. I suggest importing to slide #1 and click ok. Then go into the “edit audio” setting and adjust the slide markers (those little gray boxes with red lines that show you where one slide finishes and another begins) by selecting them and moving them left or right to overlap the audio waveform displayed in the dialog. Ideally you keep the audio as brief as possible or use a very short background audio clip when doing this mixing in Soundbooth so that you do not run out of background audio before you run out of narration audio.
Also, Adobe has just released Presenter 7.0.5. You can use the ‘Updates…’ option in Presenter to get the latest version or click here
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There’s a helpful discussion on managing secure web conferencing with Acrobat Connect Pro available on the connectusers.com site available here:
From the site: “With an ever growing list of security standards and compliance initiatives that IT applications must adhere to, deciding exactly how to set up your Connect Pro account can be a confusing. Similarly, as your implementation grows so do the demands on providing a platform that is going to scale with increased usage. This month we’ve decided to focus on helping Connect Pro administrators configure your deployments to best meet these increasing demands and provide tips and tricks for end users on managing meeting security.”
I’m excited to announce the immediate availability of a new service from ConnectSolutions that enables a customer-collaboration solution designed to maximize sales initiatives, improve customer satisfaction, and deliver incremental contribution to the bottom line. connectyou.me provides a real-time channel for customers, partners, and employees to reach the right people within your organization, and is based on the award-winning Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro.
The solution supports a variety of use-cases for online web communication, and provides a significantly differentiated service. Prospects visiting your website or responding to an email campaign can collaborate in real-time with available sales representatives over the web to close business more efficiently. Customers requiring assistance can be connected to your support representatives for real-time incident resolution. Employees requiring assistance can be connected to internal help-desk resources for quick resolution to their questions or issues. connectyou.me provides a real-time communication channel to empower organizations to reach more people while making employees more productive at lower costs.
connectyou.me works with all deployments of Acrobat Connect Pro, including Adobe-Hosted, ConnectSolutions, and on-premise deployments. The service integrates with existing CRM systems such as salesforce.com and Siebel to provide an integrated, multi-channel view of your customers, employees, or partners.
If you are interested in seeing the service in action, please feel free to view a demonstration, or visit connectyou.me for additional information.
We have two upcoming seminars this week based on a solution we’ve developed with Adobe technology (Acrobat Connect Pro, Flex, AIR, AFCS) that you may find interesting. Information on how to register is below:
Adobe in Healthcare: Better Communication for Better Results Webinar
How to increase sales with online training and communication.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. PT
Register at http://www2.eventsvc.com/adobe/event/086a7ef4ad8c417b9098153ea0f3cd56?trk=4
Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. PT
Register at http://www2.eventsvc.com/adobe/event/3808a088fd9347c4a62d000d9464e801?trk=4
Life Sciences organizations are being forced to rapidly change the way they engage with healthcare professionals in order to stay competitive in today’s economic environment. Healthcare providers no longer have the time or resources to accommodate traditional on-site visits, as they represent time spent away from patients and associated revenue loss. Life Sciences organizations are also under pressure to reduce the cost of detailing products and to increase productivity without compromising their brands and service differentiation. In addition, it is becoming more critical to train sales representatives quickly and cost effectively.
In this webinar, Adobe® and ConnectSolutions will show you how to empower your organization to reach healthcare professionals through rich, engaging online meeting and eDetailing experiences. You will learn how:
• eDetailing can strengthen the pharmaceutical-physician relationship by offering a flexible and engaging way to communicate. It can save physicians time while cutting the cost of service for pharmaceutical companies.
• Pharmaceutical companies can use eRepresentatives to extend the reach of brand experts, allowing physicians more interaction, in real time, on specific product information.
• Sales representatives can receive training using a virtual classroom, which will save money and allow them to spend more time in the field.
• Adobe’s web conferencing solution Adobe Acrobat® Connect™ Pro with ConnectSolutions can help your organization reach healthcare providers at lower costs while increasing sales and service differentiation.
We have been working with Adobe Systems and the Acrobat Connect Pro software to deliver the industry’s first FISMA-compliant web conferencing solution, as we discussed earlier here. Based on the interest we’ve received from various organizations, we’ve developed a datasheet providing an overview of this solution, which you can download here.
ConnectSolutions is excited to announce the industry’s first FISMA-compliant managed services platform designed specifically for Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. The combination of a purpose-built data center with ConnectSolutions dedication to customer success with Adobe products ensures that government organizations will obtain their maximum return on their investments.
With ConnectSolutions, your Adobe Connect Pro investments are deployed in secure data center facilities to meet or exceed FISMA requirements. For federal agencies this can mean savings of countless budget dollars, specialized resources and staff hours to develop the necessary infrastructure, processes, controls and documentation.
If you are a government agency considering web conferencing and training investments, this environment provides with you a rapid deployment, while also meeting your C&A requirements much faster.
Just a quick update to let our customers and others know that members of ConnectSolutions will be attending next week’s event in San Francisco.† If you are attending and want to meet up, please drop a line so we can coordinate!
