International Geosciences and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2008)

The IEEE GRSS sponsored International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium is one of the premier symposium on this theme. It is held annually with alternate years in North America and international venues. This conference has become an international focus of remote sensing programs and activities. Each year it draws thousands of scientists and engineers from around the world to make them familiar with current research and technology. It offers an unique opportunity to discuss instruments, techniques, models and programs of global interest.

Official Website: http://www.igarss08.org/

Who Should Participate?

• Software Developers & Analysis Firms

• Instrument Developers

• Remote Sensing Equipment Suppliers

• Universities and Colleges

• Publishers

• Mission Managers

• Government Agencies

• Research & Development Corporations

Exhibitor Benefits

• Direct contact with over 1,000 industry professionals

• Sponsorship and promotional opportunities to enhance your marketing plan

• Dedicated customer service from the IGARSS staff to assist you in making your exhibit experience both positive and successful

• Company listing and 40 word description on the official symposium web site

• Comprehensive exhibitor service manual including offi cial supplier contacts and order forms for furnishings, customs broker, electrical, etc.

Virtualization come to mobiles

Most of the mobiles generally used are not compatible for more than one or two multimedia or web applications. Features found in one handset might be good for one application and not for other applications. In such cases you can't experience the best applications in one single handset. But virtualization can sort out this problem. Virtualization can be used by the handset makers to easily replicate the features used in other devices. It could help cell-phone makers provide a large number of features at a lower price.

The current scenario is that for each different operating system, Symbian, Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Mobile, or Google's (GOOG) Android, the programmers have to rewrite each and every application be it a game or a social networking feature. It takes a lot of time. Let's see how virtualization would help sort out these issues.

Accelerate phone design process

Virtualization software would enable the mobile-phone makers to add several features regardless of the operating system. In such a way, any hand-set manufacturer could use an e-mail application written for one system, calling features designed for another, and a web-browsing application written for a third OS. With the help of virtualization all these features could be integrated in one phone. It would definitely accelerate the phone-design process.

Lesser number of chips

Virtualization could also reduce the number of chips needed to run a phone. Typically a mobile phone require three processors. One baseband processor to communicate, an applications processor required for running applications like e-mail and a multimedia chip, which handles graphics, audio, and video. But a virtualized phone can achieve all of the above with just one or two processors instead of three. It would help the manufacturers to save $5 to $10 per phone.

Needs a boost

However the mobile-virtualization market is still in nascent stage and require sudden boost to flourish. In a recent survey it has been found that less than 5% of some 200 engineer respondents used virtualization in phones or other consumer appliances. Almost 30% of the respondents were not even familiar with this technology and half of them didn't know of its benefits. But the scenario may change in near future as some of the big names like Motorola, Intel, Texas Instruments, Cisco systems are investing in the projects related to virtualization.

10 years for Paypal

10 years ago fewer people dreamed of sending and receiving money all around the world through a single click of a mouse button. It was June 23, 1998 when Paypal was borne to make it possible. The idea of Paypal founders, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Luke Nosek, was to allow the shoppers to buy an item online without sharing financial information, and at the same time, enable retailers, small-business owners and individuals a guaranteed quick and sure payment for a small fee.

Since the takeover by eBay, an online auction house, in 2002 Paypal made more than 60 million active accounts in 190 countries and 17 currencies around the world. The company has carved a niche for itself in the online payments market and is now the most popular alternative to long-established leaders Visa and MasterCard.

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary Paypal officially launched a micro-site, https://www.paypal-10.com/, featuring a series of video interviews with PayPal's founders and others key officials who played important roles in the company's history.

Future lies ahead

With the rapidly increasing use of online purchasing worldwide the use of PayPal service is slated to grow even more in the future. According to a study released by Javelin Research & Strategy in September 2007, the alternative payment methods like PayPal will increase to gain 30% of all online transaction volume by 2012.

A survey conducted by PayPal shows that 84% percent of US respondents have been shopping online for five or more years and 87% report that they shop via the Web at least once a month. It is the most popular online payment service in Britain, with more than 20 million registered users. At present PayPal has 7,000 employees worldwide. In the first quarter of 2008 Paypal posted revenue of $582 million, a 32 % rise from last year.

Some Paypal Facts

• Paypal processes around US $2,000 every second in payments.
• PayPal payments represent about 9 percent of e-commerce globally and 12 percent in the U.S.
• It operates in 190 countries and transfer money in 17 currencies.
• It operates more than 60 million active accounts through which it transacted $47 billion in 2007.
• More than 100,000 websites accepts the service of Paypal.

Citysense: Socializing the network

Suppose you have set your mobile alarm at 7:30 a.m., but it starts ringing at 7:00 a.m. in order to let you know that the city is busier than normal. This is not my speculation but a reality that you will soon get in your own city. You can use many other such real time like getting traffic updates on a specific route, crowd gathering in restaurants or pubs.

A New York based company Sense Networks is ready to index the real world with its recently launched services, CitySense and MacroSense. The services use a combination of cell phone data, WiFi activity and vehicle GPS locations to measure where crowds are -- and then put the information to use in a number of ways.

You can use this program on your Blackberry and soon on your i Phone -- to locate a city's hotspots at no cost. Once you sign up to this program, it will remember what kind of locations you visit and then compares your movements to other users with similar patterns. According to Skibiski, Sense Networks CEO and cofounder, it opens up an entirely new kind of social networking.

Social Privileges

Using the citysense service, people can look at real time maps to track crowd activity and decide the least congested routes. If you are planning to go for an outing or a nightclub, this service can guide you to discover the busiest places at the moment. Both the services can prove revolutionary from the social perspective. They can easily rectify a lot of our day to day problems. At the moment this program is only available in San Francisco.

Business Applications

Another application of this program is MacroSense, the business application of Sense Networks. All the electronic data currently just floating around can be harnessed by all the companies that want to utilize this service. The giant retail stores can use this service to track the traffic patterns and that will help them to put their stores at the most suitable places.

MacroSense provides the companies a wide range of information ranging from where else its customers shop to how far people travel to get to its stores. It can also determine where customers were exactly before entering the business.

Securing Privacy

A lot of questions arose about people's privacy but Sense Networks has its answers. All the data collected is anonymous that means no specific users can be identified and users will be able to remove their information at any time. They have the choice to delete either their data from the past 24 hours or all their data while connected to the CitySense service.

e-book readers push the EPD technology

It is not very far away that instead of searching for newspapers in the morning you will have to just switch on your e-book reader. The new gadgets, Amazon's Kindle $ Sony Reader 505, have revived the long under performing e-book readers. These devices has encouraged the use of electronic paper display (EPD) technology.

The EPD displays currently being used are based on electronic "ink" developed by E Ink Corp. The ink used is bi-stable and is very energy efficient. The advantages of EPD displays over LCD displays include the lower requirement of energy and that the reflective surface of the EPD displays makes them readable even in daylight. In future the e-paper displays will be flexible as the EPD technology will use plastic substrates instead of the glass substrates.


EPD screens resolution is rapidly improving. The current generation of e-book readers use active-matrix displays and can offer relatively high resolutions. The Kindle screen displays 167 ppi or pixels per inch, while Seiko Epson Corp. recently showed off a 13.4 inch displaying about 385 ppi, that uses E Ink's electrophoretic ink on a silicon thin-film transistor glass substrate.

A number of consumer products, such as watch dials, cell phones, credit cards, security cards, etc are coming up using the EPD technology. The technology is also being used in instrumentation applications, like the capacity meter on Lexar JumpDrive USB drives, and in signage.

However redrawing an image on an EDP takes longer than it does on an LCD screen. It makes this technology unfeasible for animation. Because EPDs are reflective, signage needs to be illuminated in dark areas. And screen contrast is much lower than it is with backlit LCD screens.

Roadrunner tops fastest computer's race

Only the name has changed. IBM retained the title of world's fastest computer makers. Instead of the perennial winner Blue Gene/L, this time it is Roadrunner, housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. This supercomputer from IBM attains the speed of petaflops, first ever attained by any computer.

The ranking was announced this Wednesday during the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany, a biannual event that ranks the 500 most powerful computers around the world. According to the TOP500 ranking, it achieved a peak performance of 1.026 petaFLOPS (floating point operations per second) to take the top spot. One petaflop is equal to a quadrillion, or one thousand trillion, calculations per second. The No. 2 BlueGene/L, also made by IBM Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, attained the speed of 478.2 teraflops.

IBM's Roadrunner is powered by 12,240 IBM PowerXCell 8i Cell chips similar to those found in the gaming console. The basic computing functions are handled by 6,562 AMD Opteron dual-core processors, leaving the Cell chips available to deal with the heavy lifting necessary for the math-intensive calculations in which the processors specialize. It takes the space of 278 refrigerator-size server racks.

IBM, continuing its dominance in supercomputing, makes 210 of the 500 supercomputers. 5 out of the top 10 supercomputers comes from IBM. Just behind them is HP (Hewlett-Packard ), making 183 of the fastest computers.

The Top 10 Fastest Supercomputers

Take a look

• The fastest supercomputer in the world is also one of the most energy efficient.

• The No. 1, 2, 3, and 5 are located in U.S. Department of Energy labs.

• U.S. continues to be the hub of supercomputers in the world having more than half of the systems (257) located in the U.S.

• U.S. is followed by U.K. with 53, Germany with 46, France with 34, Japan with 22, and China with 12. More than half of the systems used Quad-core processors.

• Majority of the systems (208 of the 500) contain between 2,049 and 4,096 processors. It is more than double the systems that used that amount just six months ago.

• Intel dominates the high-end processor market with 75 percent of all systems on the list and 90 percent of the quad-core based systems that were ranked.

Yahoo introduces new e-mail domains

If you have created a new account on yahoo mail and couldn't find a proper user ID then you shouldn't worry. Even if you have been a long time user of yahoo mail, you would not have found a user ID matching your name or personality. Yahoo mail, the most popular web based e-mail in the world, introduced two new e-mail domains as ymail.com and rocketmail.com. It allowed the users to select new and simpler e-mail addresses ending in ymail.com and rocketmail.com. The e-mail accounts on ymail.com and rocketmail.com will have the same features as yahoo.com.

Currently Yahoo is the e-mail market leader with more than 260 million users worldwide. Yahoo Vice President John Kremer said in a statement "People want an e-mail address that reflects who they are, whether they are signing up for an e-mail address for the first time, or simply updating their e-mail pseudonym to reflect the stage they are at in life,".

By adding two new domains Yahoo is tripling the size of its globally-popular free online email service. The prime intention is to let users, who have outgrown or never really liked their yahoo.com email addresses, to have chances at better choices.

Firefox 3 takes on Internet Explorer

Firefox has proved to be a truly amazing browsing experience. When launched in 2004, it was fast and secure. It had all the things that Internet explorer had not. Due to the monopoly of Internet Explorer in the web browsing area, it was felt like a breath of fresh air in the web browsing environment. Since the demise of Netscape back in 2003, it seemed that with the only true competitor reaching the verge, IE will be the sole player here.

But Mozilla helped transform the browser from a mere utility to the heart of the modern-day computing experience. Due to its skyrocketing popularity, Microsoft was forced to improve Internet Explorer and it finally came with IE 7. For a certain period of time, Firefox went into a decline. But with Firefox 3.0, Firefox is back on track.

What’s New in Firefox 3

So what makes the Firefox 3.0 version better? The very first thing I observed that it is fast in all aspects. The downloading package comes quite easy and fast. The browser opens up fast, pages and tabs open fast, shut down process is fast. And the user interface has been improved dramatically. It is far better, brighter, clearer, and easier to access. Page zooming is brilliant. Things like bookmarking, saving passwords, and finding words and phrases in the text of a web page are now simple.

In simple words, Mozilla have gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users - security, speed and ease of use.

User Experience: The new Firefox 3 smart location bar, affectionately known as the “Awesome Bar,” learns as people use it, adapting to user preferences and offering better fitting matches over time.

Performance: Firefox 3 is built on top of the new and powerful Gecko 1.9 platform, which makes it a safer, easier to use and more personal product. Now it uses less memory while it’s running. Users can see the Web pages two to three times faster than Firefox 2.

Security: With the new malware and phishing protection, Firefox 3.0 helps protect from viruses, worms, Trojans and spy ware to keep your computer safe on the Web.

Customization: It allows everyone customize their browser with more than 5,000 add-ons. The new Add-ons Manager helps to find and install add-ons directly from the browser.

LG is the strongest bidder for GE

GE has decided to exit from its appliances business. As soon as this news spread in the air, the other electronics giant all around the world started calculating their permutations and combinations. And the foremost bidder is LG, a South Korea based electronics items manufacturing company and currently the world no. 3 manufacturers of white goods.

GE's appliance division is one of its oldest division founded in 1907, currently having 13,000 employees. Due to the intense price competition from the Asian manufacturers, GE is left with no option other than to sell it. GE's appliance division suffered from low growth rates and contributed 'only' $7 billion to GE's revenue last year, out of $173 billion total. GE has seen a high rate of growth in other businesses like in transport, medical imaging and energy. In this case selling its appliance business makes sense in some calculations.

LG is currently just behind Whirlpool and Electrolux in the race of manufacturing white goods. LG is a reputed name in mobile phones and plasma television. However the battle to own GE appliances is going to be fierce and it isn't easy to get. The other prominent bidders on the list are China's Haier Group, Mexico's Controladora Mabe, Turkey's Arcelik and Stockholm-based Electrolux.

But the chances of LG are quite strong and LG Electronics has been on everybody's short list as a potential buyer. GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt further fueled the speculation by praising the LG. During his recent visit to South Korea, he called LG "a great company," and "clearly one of the leading candidates,".

Whoever wins GE Appliances, lies in the future but one thing is sure that LG is poised to challenge Whirlpool for the top spot in the global households business in coming years.

Chumby is an amazing device

You have never seen a device like this. Call it a toy, a clock, a picutre frame or a web appliance, it is a combination of all of these.

Chumby is a compact device, an integration of several facilities, that displays useful and entertaining information from the web, such as news, music, weather, photos, celebrity gossip, webcams, sports scores. You can choose from a number of widgets offered in different categories. Interactive widgets can be used to take benefits of its touchscreen or motion sensor.

Chumby will connect to your wireless Internet router using Wi-Fi and fetch all types of content from the Web. Chumby is neither designed for web surfing nor for two-way communication like e-mail and instant messaging. It is all about an overblown Web 2.0 fascination with software widgets, open-source idealism, and building a new community around them.

Chumby is soft all around except for its touchscreen and a rear panel with a power button and ports for USB connections and the power cord. On top, there's a button hidden under the soft leather that you squeeze to control certain functions.

Features of Chumby

• Personalized alarm clock: Life is better when chumby wakes you up. You can enjoy wake up listening to your favorite alarm tone, news headlines, internet radio station, podcast, weather, sports or any audio or visual info you choose.
• Music & podcasts: You can tune into thousands of free online radios or internet radios from around the world. Get podcasts from The New York Times, CBS, etc on a lot of topics like news, sports, comedy, etc.
• Free chumby network: The best thing about the chumby network is that it is free. No subscriptions to pay, no plans to sign up for. Chumby industries and sponsor companies, who will be sending you widgets such as music, games, movie previews, will pay for you.
• Photo viewing & sharing: If you have an account on Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, or MySpace, you can use chumby as a digital photo frame to show off your favorite photos. Using tags you can view public or private photos. You can share your photos with chumby friends.
• Social networking: Stay connected with the recent activities on your social network accounts. Get in touch without being a slave to your computer.
• News & entertainment: You can also have access to varieities of information like sports, auctions & classifieds.
• Videos, Video Games, Messaging.

Microsoft gives OLPC plan new life

The OLPC plan, one laptop per child, once again came up to live when Microsoft announced to join hands with them. The breakup with the tech behemoth Intel, just four months ago, was a setback for OLPC. The agreement will make Microsoft's Windows XP operating system available on OLPC's XO laptop.

This tieup has come at a critical time for OLPC. The departure of Intel and sudden resignations by many high-profile employees have questioned the viability of the nonprofit organization.


The collaboration will allow multitude of educational software applications designed to run on Windows to be also used on the XO laptops. It will make the laptops more useful in schools and acceptable to government ministries. According to Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC's founder and chairman, "It will have a huge impact on the psychology of OLPC. It brings us more into the mainstream of people's minds." The Windows version of the XO could make it more palatable for the governments of developing-world to push the vast investment required to buy large numbers of XOs for their children. "It's a very big deal," said Negroponte in an interview.


After three unsuccessful years attempting to bid governments to buy the laptop in lots of a million, this agreement can infuse new life to this plan. The largest numbers of users are in Peru, followed by Uruguay, Mexico, with fewer in Rwanda, Cambodia, Mongolia and Haiti, among other countries.

The sale of Windows version of the XO will start by this september. Microsoft has made some changes in the Windows XP for the XO laptop. Some softwares have been added to support some of the features of the XO, such as its electronic books, a writing pad, camera, display screen, etc. Windows XP will be loaded on the laptop via a 2-gigabyte flash card. Microsoft will include the Student Innovation Suite, the super-cheap $3 version of Windows and Office, with the Windows XO that will make it a full-fledged Windows NT computer. OLPC plans to launch a version in the future that will be preloaded with both Windows and Linux.

International Microwave Symposium (IMS2008)

IEEE’s International Microwave Symposium 2008 is being held in Atlanta, June 15-20. The show is sponsored by the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S).

Official Website: http://www.ims2008.org/

IMS2008 will provide all the recent updates, such as the latest microwave components, technologies, and test equipment. The show has been expanding and is more relevant than ever. When you talk about microwave (anything greater than 1 GHz), most wireless today including cellular service, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, UWB, WiMAX, etc come under this category. You can catch here hundreds of sessions, panels, keynotes, and workshops where you will get to know the latest beamforming antennas, multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems, and millimeter wave developments. Almost 400 to 500 exhibitors will make their presence to show you what’s new in this field.

For more information on coming tradeshows related to the electronics and electrical industry, click here.

Graphene is the next material for electronics

Researchers have made world's smallest transistor by using the world's thinnest material. Graphene, the best prospect for electronics devices, just one atom thick and ten atoms wide has made it possible.

Graphene was discovered in 2004 by Professor Andre Geim and Dr Kostya Novoselov at The University of Manchester. This one-atom-thick gauze of carbon atoms has become one of the hottest discussed matters in physics and materials science.

The most advanatgeous fact about graphene is its thickness. The other properties like optical transparency, chemically inertness, and magnificent conductivity make graphene highly appropriate for applications in various electro-optical devices that require conducting but transparent thin films. Reasearchers believe that graphene should improve the durability and simplify the technology of potential electronic devices that interact with light.

Graphene can be carved into small electronic circuits with individual transistors having a size equal to that of a molecule. As much the size of transistors will be smaller, better they will perform. Due to its unusual properties graphene is a promising material for nanoelectronics.

Scientists consider graphene as a potential substitute for replacing silicon in future electronic devices. It can play a major role in technological revolution. Some researches have been done on graphene as a material for future spintronic devices, possible components of future computers. Spintronic devices are those devices which make use of electron spin. In current electronic devices, the charge of electrons is used to operate information. Instead of the charge the intrinsic spin of electrons can also be used for this purpose. A number of such devices like non-volatile magnetic random access memory (MRAM) have already found their market-place in high-capacity hard drives.

Apple announced 3G iphone

With the announcement of Apples's 3G iphone on June 9, finally all the rumors and speculations came to an end. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, confirmed the iPhone 3G will hit the stores in the US and over 70 other countries on July 11th. It will costs $199 for the 8GB version and $299 for the 16GB one.

Let's take a look at the design, GPS and the new features like MobileMe.

Design

The 3G iPhone is slightly thinner at the edges than its predecessor. It weighs just the slightest bit less. All other measurements are almost same. The removal of irritating recessed headphone jack, as in the earlier version, is pleasing so that you'll be able to use any 3.5mm headphones you like. The back portion has seen some significant changes. Instead of the current silver-aluminum, it is replaced by a black plastic skin. It helped reducing the cost but its long term durability can be worrying.

The 3G

The new iphone is aimed at providing twice as fast speed as the previous one. The 3G technology uses a protocol called HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) to download data faster over UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) networks. It seamlessly switches between EDGE, faster 3G, and even faster Wi-Fi, so you will always get the best speeds possible. 3G networks enable simultaneous voice and data service, you can talk on the mobile phone while surfing the web, checking email, or using Maps.

You can surf the web and make calls from anywhere on the planet since the iPhone 3G complies with the worldwide standards for cellular communications. In the vaccum 3G network areas, iPhone connects you via GSM for calls and EDGE for data.

GPS

The 3G iphone presents the best mobile map application ever produced. Maps combine GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower location technology along with the Multi-Touch interface. You can find your location, get directions, and see traffic. It finds your location via GPS or by triangulating your position using Wi-Fi and cellular towers. It can also search places of your interest by keyword. When you search for “coffee” it will show you every cafe nearby.

In the same way as google maps our computer, maps on iPhone lets you switch between map view, satellite view, and a hybrid view of both. You can get live traffic information, showing traffic speed along your route in easy-to-read green, red, and yellow highlights.

MobileMe

MobileMe is a new feature that will keep your computer at home, at work, and an iPhone or iPod in sync. With the help of a suite of elegant new web applications, you can access your data from anywhere. MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars on a secure online server — or “cloud” — and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. Changes done on one device would be automatically be updated on others.

Gmail Labs: An innovation from google labs

If you are a Gmail user, soon you will find a tab on your gmail page to access a new part of the service called “Gmail Labs”.

Gmail Labs, a product from Google Labs, will initially provide 13 features to the Gmail users to add to their service. It is a part of the nifty development model followed by google. Any engineer having a new idea for a Gmail feature can publish it on the Gmail Labs site, and users can test it out and provide feedback directly to the engineer who wrote it.

Let's take a tour to the new features of Gmail Labs.

Here are the features that looks most beneficial to me:

• Superstars: It provides additional star icons as in standard Gmail. You will be able to mark your messages with different colored stars and other icons like a check mark or exclamation point.

• Quick Links: It is a way of bookmarking any page within Gmail. You can do a search and bookmark that search. Go back to it again and the link will display any new messages that fit the search criteria.

• Signature Tweaks: This feature enables you to put your automated signature above the quoted text while responding to a message, inspite of displaying at the bottom of what somebody else wrote.

• Email Addict: It is like a break time that will lock you out of gmail for 15 minutes. You can get back in to your account anytime you want, just by clicking a button.

• Random Signature: It will append a random famous quote to the end of your email.

• Mouse Gestures: You can navigate your mouse with gestures. Hold right click and move the mouse left to go to a previous conversation, move right to go to the next conversation, and move up to go back to the inbox view.

Other features in gmail labs:

• Pictures in Gmail chat

• Custom keyboard shortcuts

• Hide unread count

• Fixed width font

• Custom date format

• Muzzle (hide the status of your contacts in Gmail chat)

• Play Snake inside Gmail

What if you face probs ?

All the gmail users would have to just click on a button to enable these features. In case if any user don’t like them or they don’t work well, another button is provided to disable them. They’ll be available through the settings tab at the top of the page. While using the new features, if one of the labs feature breaks and you are facing trouble getting into your account, then there’s an escape hatch. Simply go to http://www.mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0 and Labs with be temporarily disabled.

InfoComm International 2008

InfoComm 08 is the largest tradeshow of the professional audiovisual industry. The AV industry is expanding from traditional markets such as government, education and business into retail, entertainment, healthcare, museums, sports and sophisticated residential market. The Show is supported by the U.S. Department of Commerce International Buyers Program (IBP). This year's show will organized incorporating NSCA and co-locating with NXTcomm. InfoComm is attended by visitors from over 90 countries.

Exhibition: June 18-20, 2008, North and Central Halls, Las Vegas Convention Center

Official Website: http://www.infocommshow.org/infocomm2008/public/enter.aspx

Venue & Format

• InfoComm Exhibition

  June 18-20, North and Central Halls, Las Vegas Convention Center

• NSCA Expo

  June 18-20, on the InfoComm Show Floor

• NXTcomm Exhibition

  June 17-19, South Hall, Las Vegas Convention Center

Facts From 2007 Show

• In 2007, more than 31,000 professionals from over 80 countries visited in Anaheim to explore new products, learn the latest trends and techniques and interact with peers.

• The number of exhibitors went to a record 855, showing an 11 percent increase over the previous record of 770 in 2006.

• The space occupied by the exhibitors for exhibit and special events was 465,000 net square feet, larger compared to 432,602 net square feet in 2006.

• 180 new exhibitors participated in last year's show.

Attendees at InfoComm

This year almost 32,000 professionals are expected to visit from more than 80 countries at InfoComm 08. InfoComm provides the best opportunity for building business contacts, getting with the latest trends and comparing solutions to common issues.

• Technology managers in education, government, business/IT, healthcare and worship

• Architects and specifying engineers

• Independent representatives

• Sales and marketing professionals

• IT managers and CIOs

• Independent design consultants

• Dealers and distributors

• Programmers

Exhibitors at InfoComm

• Around 31,000 AV professionals attended InfoComm 07, which includes more than 14,500 service providers and 7,000 institutional and corporate technology buyers.

• The integration of NSCA Expo and InfoComm is supposed to draw thousands of new attendees in 2008.

• NXTcomm08 targets premier information and communications technology suppliers. They will be provided FREE ACCESS to the InfoComm Show Floor.

• InfoComm has seen a steady growth in the last 6 years, with 18% increase in 2007 over 2006 .

• InfoComm is declared no.1 in attendee decision making/buying authority, by exhibit surveys, among leading U.S. technology tradeshows.

Adobe unveils new community site & Acrobat new version

It isn't only Google that is challenging the Microsoft's on-premise Office and SharePoint productivity and collaboration suites with hosted, online versions of similar applications. Adobe has made a move into on-line document sharing sector. Acrobat announced its community site at the same time when the newer version of Adobe's Acrobat software with flash player is launched.

Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended

Adobe Acrobat is considered the almighty force in PDF software. The beta version of Acrobat 9, a smarter and more flexible version, proves its credentials further. The new version of Adobe reader, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, has come up with the biggest and best enhancements that Acrobat has seen in a long time.

The Acrobat 9 comprises of three big new features.

• Ability to build PDF portfolios: Users can now combine multiple types of files, video, audio and even 3-D objects, in a single PDF document. They can select from different layouts or create their own to integrate content. Options are provided to define navigation.

• Easy view of video files: Now the video files can be stored in PDF files that can be viewed by all of those who uses Adobe Reader 9, whether or not they have specific video codecs installed on their system.

• Document-comparison feature: This feature eases out the worries of collaborative work on complex PDF files.

The new advanced collaboration features along with other miscellaneous improvements add to the appeal of this major release. Above all, this enhanced version doesn't need learning an entirely new application, as Acrobat 9 largely sticks to the user interface familiar since version 8.

Acrobat Community Site

Adobe announced the launch of the Acrobat.com community site, a move into online document sharing. It helps the users create, store and share documents online. Users can also hold web conferences to discuss changes. At the time, the Acrobat.com service can be used only in trial, or beta, form, but any user can easily sign up.

Acrobat community site includes the following online tools:

• Adobe Buzzword: Buzzword word processor lets you create basic text documents. These files are stored on the net and invite others to collaborate, read or comment. Such a type of collaboration allows the creation of web conferences, where co-authors can join on and discuss a topic or document in real time.

• Adobe ConnectNow: It is a personal web conferencing service, which includes desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing and integrated chat.

• Centralized online file-sharing with access controls, online PDF conversion for up to five documents, and support for Web-embeddable documents;

• Developer APIs for real-time collaboration, file sharing and conversion.

The trial version permits one user to convert up to five documents per month to the PDF format free of charge. You can easily embed these documents on a website or a blog. Adobe also announced that it would make the programming interfaces for the site available so others can plug it into their own services. The services of Acrobat.com can be used without buying any other Adobe products.

Most of the advancements in Acrobat 9 provide ways for the users of PDF, Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR technologies to take the advantages of the tools offered in Acrobat.com.

In comaprison to Google and Microsoft, Adobe is entering relatively late to the market for business document and file sharing on the web. Microsoft set up a trial version of Office Live Workspace in October 2007 that lets people get at and share Word, Excel and Powerpoint files via the web. Google also runs a similar system through its online documents service. The service pits Adobe squarely against Microsoft, Google and others keen to bridge the online and offline worlds.