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.