Software Everywhere : adobe

Inside the Mind of Adobe Muse

'Net Features : wm-software — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:21:00 GMT

Two days ago, Adobe released a new version of its Muse software, part of the Creative Cloud suite that allows designers to create entire websites without having to write any code. This update adds a slew of features to the Muse platform, most notably...(read more)

Adobe Search&Promote Arrives in Style

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:30:00 GMT

This week the site search market got a new player as Adobe has introduced Adobe Search&Promote. The site search and merchandising application aims to help marketers anticipate visitor search intent and promote the most relevant products and content across desktop and mobile website searches.

The application, which is powered by Omniture technology, seems to provide marketers with a lot of control, including metrics-based relevance and personalization. Adobe is touting the application’s ability to handle millions of pages and products and high search traffic volume, removing concerns of hardware procurement and provisioning, and offers real-time indexing to ensure visitors have access to the most up-to-date content.

The solution also features built-in analytics provided by Adobe SiteCatalyst, (again powered by Omniture) which will enable marketers to automate and tune search and ranking results based on key metrics such as conversion rate, page views and customer ratings. This also enables businesses to monitor conversion rates from search terms and the paths visitors take to understand what visitors are finding and not finding in order to improve their site experience.

Perhaps most exciting about the solution is its ability to integrate with other applications within the Adobe marketing suite. For example, Search&Promote user can test various “search experiences” with Adobe Test&Target, provide product or content recommendations using Adobe recommendations (the “people who searched for this, bought that” algorithm, and what I find most interesting is the connection with Adobe Scene 7 which automates the delivery of “richer” product results through interactive zoom, 360-degree spin, alternative image sizes and more.

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 - Beta Available

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:24:00 GMT

Adobe has announced a beta release of Flash Player 10.2 for Windows, Mac, and Linux is now available for download. This beta version introduces several enhancements, namely Stage Video, a new API that deliver cross platform video playback.

Stage Video will help web sites deliver video across devices and browsers by enabling access to hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline with shockingly little processing power. Adobe has worked with hardware vendors to take advantage of the GPU to offload not only H.264 hardware decoding (introduced in Flash Player 10.1) but the rest of the video rendering pipeline, including color conversion, scaling, and blitting. Adobe, using Stage Video, has seen laptops play smooth 1080p HD video with just over 0% CPU usage. That is pretty amazing and it has not gone unnoticed. Google TV already takes advantage of Stage Video in Flash Player to deliver 1080p HD video playback on TVs.

For content providers, Stage Video will work with all of the existing video viewed in Flash Player once they utilize the new API in their video player SWFs, with no changes to their encoded videos or infrastructure required.

Additional enhancments included in Flash Player 10.2 include Internet Explorer 9 hardware acceleration support, enhanced text rendering, a native custom mouse cursors API and support for full screen playback with multiple monitors.

Adobe Goes to School; Children Are Our Future

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:41:00 GMT

Adobe is investing in the future, announcing the Adobe Digital School Collection for K-12 students and educators this week. The software bundle includes the recently announced Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 9 and Adobe Premiere® Elements 9 software, as well as Adobe Acrobat® X. It does not stop there - Adobe Contribute® CS5 and Adobe Soundbooth® CS5 software are also included in the collection.

This new cross-platform solution is essentially a multimedia toolkit which provides students and teachers the ability to create multimedia projects with photos, videos and audio; publish websites, blogs and podcasts; and create ePortfolios – that's right, all those 21st century digital literacy skills needed for academic and professional success.

“When teachers incorporate images, sound and video into their lessons, students get more engaged. The Digital School Collection helps them create a project-based learning environment so students can deepen their understanding of the subject matter,” said Bob Regan, director of worldwide K-12, Adobe. “Plus, students can create their own multimedia projects and easily encapsulate them in an ePortfolio to showcase their work to prospective colleges or employers.”

The solution is available for the first time for both Windows® and Macintosh.