Adobe Illustrator CS4

Multiple artboards
Create files containing up to 100 artboards of varying sizes and display them any way you want — overlapping, side by side, or stacked. Save, export, and print artboards independently or together. Save a selected range or all artboards as a multipage PDF file.

Transparency in gradients
Define the opacity of any individual color stop in a gradient. Reveal underlying objects and images, and create rich color and texture mixes using multiple layers, knockouts, and cover-up fades.

In-panel appearance editing
Edit object characteristics directly in the Appearance panel, eliminating the need to open fill, stroke, or effects panels. Work with shared attributes and control display for faster rendering.

Blob Brush tool
Sketch with a brush that generates a single clean vector shape, even when strokes overlap. Draw naturally, using the Blob Brush tool together with the Eraser and Smooth tools.

Refined graphic styles
Combine styles for unique effects and increased efficiency, and apply styles without disturbing an object's existing appearance. Enjoy new thumbnail previews and an expanded library of prebuilt styles.

Gradients exposed
Interact with gradients right on your object. Set gradient angle, position, and elliptical dimensions. Add and edit colors using sliders — all with immediate feedback where you work.

Clipping masks demystified
Work with masks more easily by viewing only the clipped area of your objects during editing. Take advantage of Isolation Mode, and use Edit Clipping Path for even more control.

Integration and delivery
Collaborate with your team, work across products, and deliver almost anywhere thanks to integrated tools and extensive format support. Confidently design for print, interactive experiences, motion effects, and more.

Separations Preview
Avoid color output surprises such as unexpected spot colors, unwanted overprinting, overprints that don't overprint, white overprinting, and CMYK blacks in text and placed files.

Enhanced user experience
Stay in the creative groove thanks to interface improvements that include on-object controls. Interact with tools smoothly, and increase your efficiency using new timesaving features and shortcuts.

Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/features/?view=topnew

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Adobe Photoshop CS4

Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation
Navigate to any area of an image with new, ultra-smooth zooming and panning. Maintain clarity as you zoom to individual pixels and easily edit at the highest magnification with the new Pixel Grid. And use the revolutionary new Rotate View tool to smoothly turn your canvas for distortion-free viewing at any angle.

Adjustments panel
Simplify image adjustment by easily accessing every tool you need to nondestructively adjust and enhance the color and tone of your images; on-image controls and a wide variety of presets are also included in the new live and dynamic Adjustments panel.

Auto-blending of images
Combine a range of images, each with a different exposure, color, and focal point — with options to preserve tones and colors — into a single color-corrected image.

Masks panel
Quickly create and edit masks from the new Masks panel. This panel offers all the tools you need to create editable pixel- and vector-based masks, adjust mask density and feathering, easily select noncontiguous objects, and more.

Improved Adobe Photoshop Lightroom workflow
Select multiple photos in Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® software (sold separately) and automatically open them in Adobe Photoshop CS4 to merge them into a panorama, a high dynamic range (HDR) photo, or a multilayered Photoshop document. And seamlessly roundtrip back to Lightroom.

Content-Aware Scaling
Use the new and revolutionary Content-Aware Scaling feature to automatically recompose an image as you resize it, smartly preserving vital areas as the image adapts to the new dimensions. Get the perfect image in one step without time-intensive cropping and retouching.

Better raw image processing
Enjoy superior conversion quality as you process raw images with the industry-leading Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 5 plug-in, which now offers localized corrections, post-crop vignetting, TIFF and JPEG processing, and support for more than 190 camera models.

Extended depth of field
Easily create a single image from a series of shots that have different focal points with the enhanced Auto-Blend Layers command, which smoothly blends color and shading and now extends your depth of field, automatically correcting vignettes and lens distortion.

Industry-leading color correction
Enjoy dramatically enhanced color correction with reengineered Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools that now intelligently preserve color and tone details.

Auto-alignment of layers
Create accurate composites with the enhanced Auto-Align Layers command. Move, rotate, or warp layers to align them more accurately than ever before. Or use spherical alignment to create breathtaking panoramas.

More powerful printing options
Get outstanding prints with superior color management, tighter integration with leading printer models, and the ability to preview out-of-gamut image areas. Support for 16-bit printing on Mac OS offers increased color depth and clarity.

Efficient file management with Adobe Bridge CS4
Get instant access to Adobe Bridge CS4 with faster start-up, use new workspaces to jump to the right display for every task, easily create web galleries and PDF contact sheets, and more.

File display options
Easily work with multiple open files by using tabbed document display or n-up views.

Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/features/?view=topnew

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Differences Between Dreamweaver CS4 and Dreamweaver CS3

New Workspace and User Interface:
Dreamweaver CS3 for Windows brought in the idea of different program layouts depending upon what type of Web designer or developer you were. Dreamweaver CS4 takes that to a new level. There are 8 default layouts including: App Developer, App Developer Plus, Classic, Coder, Coder Plus, Designer, Designer Compact, and Dual Screen. And if that's not enough, you can now define your own, or simply modify an existing one to match exactly what you need it to do. And it no longer matters if you're on a Mac or not - these features are in both Windows and Macintosh versions of Dreamweaver CS4.

Live View of Your Pages:
If you've ever tried to edit a dynamic or data-driven site in Dreamweaver, you know how frustrating that can be. Just hitting the preview button forces you to publish to your "testing server", which for many of us is our live site. But now, Dreamweaver CS4 can preview pages in "live mode" with interactivity and dynamic elements included. It can even load data sources so you can see how those will impact the page. Plus, you can move through JavaScript scripts and stop the script just where you need to work on a design element, giving you much more control over over the design and interactivity as a whole.

Improved CSS Support:
There is a CSS properties navigator as well as the HTML properties that we're used to. These give you greater control over the style properties including creating style rules for exactly the site section you're in. You can then dial back the specificity to however specific or general you need for your CSS document. You can evaluate what CSS styles are impacting areas of your pages. You simply highlight the area that you're not sure of, and alt- or option-click and Dreamweaver CS4 tells you which styles are affecting it. Then you can edit them by clicking on them and they'll open in another window in Dreamweaver.

Photoshop Smart Objects:
With Dreamweaver CS3 you could import images directly from Photoshop, but in CS4, they take that a step further. Now when you drag a Photoshop (PSD) image into Dreamweaver, it creates a "smart object". This generates an optimized Web image ready for you to use in your pages. If you resize the image in Dreamweaver, you can then get an optimized copy of the image at that size. Plus, if you make changes to the original image, they can be reflected into the Web document.

HTML Data Sets and Suggestions for Use:
In Dreamweaver CS3, you could load XML and database data sets into your documents, but once you had them loaded, you had to figure out what to do with them. Dreamweaver CS4 provides some of the more common uses as well as the ability to load HTML pages (with repeating elements) as your data sets.

Subversion Integration:
Dreamweaver CS4 has basic check-in and check-out functionality, like previous versions. But now it integrates with the third-party application Subversion to provide powerful version control and rollback functionality for your Dreamweaver websites.

Author Adobe AIR Applications:
Dreamweaver CS4 now comes with an extension to allow you to author Adobe AIR applications from right within Dreamweaver.

Deprecated Features:
The following features are no longer in Dreamweaver CS4:

* Timelines
* Web services
* Layout mode
* Site Map view
* Java Bean support
* Flash elements (Image Viewer)
* Flash text and Flash buttons
* ASP.NET and JSP server behaviors and recordsets

Source: http://webdesign.about.com/od/dreamweaver/p/diff_dw_cs4_cs3.htm

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Adobe Dreamweaver CS4

Live View
Design your web pages under real-world browser conditions with the new Live View in Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS4 — while still retaining direct access to the code. Changes to the code are instantly reflected in the rendered display.

Code hinting for Ajax and JavaScript frameworks
Write JavaScript more efficiently with improved support for JavaScript core objects and primitive data types. Put the extended coding functionality of Dreamweaver CS4 to work by incorporating popular JavaScript frameworks, including jQuery, Prototype, and Spry.
New user interface
Work faster and smarter across Adobe Creative Suite® 4 components with a shared user interface design. Toggle quickly from one work environment to the next with the workspace switcher.

Related Files and Code Navigator
Click any included file shown in the Related Files bar to see both its source in Code view and the parent page in Design view. The new Code Navigator feature shows you the CSS source code that affects your current selection and allows you to access it quickly.

HTML data sets
Integrate the power of dynamic data into your web pages without the learning curve of mastering databases or XML coding. Spry Data Sets recognize content in a simple HTML table as an interactive data source.

Adobe InContext Editing (Free preview)
Design your pages in Dreamweaver so end users can edit their web pages without help from you or additional software using the Adobe InContext Editing online service. As a Dreamweaver designer, you can limit changes to specific pages, distinct regions, and even custom formatting options.

Adobe Photoshop Smart Objects
Insert any Adobe Photoshop® PSD document in Dreamweaver to create an image Smart Object tightly linked to the source file. Make changes to the source image, and update your image in Dreamweaver without opening Photoshop.

CSS best practices
Implement CSS best practices without writing code. Create new CSS rules in the Properties panel, and get clear, simple explanations of where each property fits in the cascade of styles.

Subversion integration
Update your site and check in modifications directly from within Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver CS4 integrates with Subversion® software, an open source versioning control system, for a more robust check-in/check-out experience.

Adobe AIR authoring support
Create HTML and JavaScript based Adobe AIR™ applications directly within Dreamweaver. Preview AIR applications without leaving Dreamweaver. Get your Adobe AIR application ready to deploy with AIR packaging and code-signing features.

Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/features/?view=topnew

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Firefox Add-ons | Cooliris (formerly PicLens) 1.8.5.14751

Full-Screen, 3D -- Cooliris transforms your browser into a visually stunning experience for searching, viewing, and sharing online photos and videos. Our "3D Wall" lets you effortlessly search and zoom your way around thousands of images, videos, movies, news feeds, and even online retailers. To share stuff with friends, just drag and drop.

Download here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/40105/cooliris-1.8.5.14751-fx-win.xpi

Source: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579

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Cooliris for iPhone

Go beyond the limitations of mobile Internet search with the
lightning fast, expansive feel of the Cooliris 3D Wall.

YouTube 3D Search
Swipe through a 3D Wall of YouTube Videos, sit back and enjoy. Never miss a cool movie with Discover's Cool Videos Channel.

Wicked Wallpapers
With the wallpaper channel in Discover, rapidly find that perfect backdrop for your phone.

Cooliris saves
Some things are worth saving. Just tap the “Save to Camera Roll” icon to save the image to the Camera Roll.

Don’t stop the Rock
Watch hundreds of music videos all through the new Music Video’s channel in Discover.

All the latest news
Get the latest News, Sports and Entertainment news from places like CNN, ABC, AP, ESPN and many more right on your phone

Multi-Search
Search for Images across Google, Flickr, Picasa, DeviantArt, Yahoo, and SmugMug

Download here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=294479487

Source: http://www.cooliris.com/iphone/

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Cooliris for the Web

Cooliris provides a lighthing fast, cenematic way to discover the Web. Our plug-in takes you to an expansive "3D Wall" that lets you browse of images, videos, and more with ease and speed.

The Great 3D Wall
The Cooliris 3D Wall provides a visually stunning and easy way to search and view thousands of photos and videos. By displaying content on a single, ever-expansive wall, Cooliris helps you find what you're looking for faster than the traditional way of clicking the "next" button webpage by webpage.

SUPPORTED SITES
How to Use Cooliris on Supported Sites

1. Mouseover images and videos on supported sites and then click the Cooliris icon that appears.

2. Or simply click the Cooliris icon on your browser toolbar when visiting a supported site.

Cooliris works on hundreds of popular websites, including the small sample below. To enable your own website.

Bebo, deviantART, drop.io, Facebook, Ffffound, Flickr, Fotki, FotoTime, Freewebs, Friendster, Hi5, Ask Images, Google Images, Yahoo Images, Pollstar, MySpace, OBG Rocks, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums, LA Times (Tribute), AOL Images, Smugmug, TTG Galleries (Lightroom), Arkyves, Fidel, fotocommunity, Free Image Browser, Getty Images, Gift Impact, iPernity, Jaman, Kodak Gallery, Live Images, MeOwns, My Album, Phoca Gallery (Joomla), Portsmouth Football Club, Prem1on, Shutterpoint, Talent-Aid, Tim Fahlbusch, Tripwolf, Xbox Live Faces, YouTube

Download Link: http://www.cooliris.com/static/releases/cooliris-win-ff3-release-1.9.0.16396.xpi

Source: http://www.cooliris.com/product/

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BMW uses Microsoft Surface to customize cars

Buying a new BMW looks set to become a much more hands-on process, with the German car maker hoping to entice potential customers by using Microsoft’s Surface computer to configure the cars. Dubbed the BMW Product Navigator, the new system lets users customize their future car by placing small tiles onto the screen and then watch a computer-generated video of the vehicle in action.

Potential buyers can customize their new car’s interiors and exteriors in an interactive way and then take the results home via email, printed or saved to a USB drive. There’s nothing ground-breaking and it’s not surprising either to see BMW adopting new technologies, but it’s still incredibly cool. The company has not yet specified when the BMW Product Navigator kiosks will be widely available, though.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/32680-bmw-uses-microsoft-surface-to-customize-cars.html

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Google Chrome users rejoice, extensions support to be added soon

Browser extensions support is one of the biggest reasons Firefox has become so popular and is also the most requested feature by users of the Google Chrome browser. Thus it is not surprising the search giant would want to add support for them and in fact they have already laid out a plan for the feature.

Particularly Google claims user created extensions should solve three problems in Chrome: the addition of features that have specific or limited appeal, it would make life easier for users coming from other browsers that support extensions “they can’t live without,” and it will allow partners who want to create their own Chrome bundle to add specific features.

The company is not offering a timeline for the extension system but are making it a priority, to the point of specifically mentioning a bunch of popular Firefox extensions they would like to support: Stumble Upon, Delicious Toolbar, FlashGot, ForecastFox, the Skype extension and even AdBlock – despite of the fact Google relies heavily on advertising to generate the bulk of their revenues, they also seem to want this option to be available in their browser.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/32683-google-chrome-users-rejoice-extensions-support-to-be-added-soon.html

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Firefox on Your Cell Phone

With the iPhone, Apple showed how to surf the Web on the small screen. Now, it seems, a modern version of the browser wars of the 1990s could be shaping up, with the battleground being the mobile phone. And there's a new list of contenders: Safari on the iPhone, Internet Explorer Mobile for Windows Mobile, RIM's BlackBerry Web browser, and a version of Chrome for Google's Android phones. Within the next few months, there will be a new entry: a scaled-down, sped-up version of Firefox, called Fennec.

Last week, Mozilla, the nonprofit organization behind Firefox, released an "alpha" version of Fennec, just as the desktop version of its browser reached 20 percent of the market for the first time. This early release lets programmers play with the interface, catch bugs, and write add-on features, says Jay Sullivan, vice president of mobile at Mozilla. Fennec (named for a type of small fox) is hardly consumer ready: it currently operates only on the somewhat bulky Nokia N810 Internet tablet, and there are plenty of bugs and interface challenges to iron out, says Sullivan. But by the first part of 2009, Fennec could be ready to run on consumer phones.

So far, says Sullivan, the feedback from the developers toying with Fennec has been positive. Early tests of the browser show its JavaScript performance, a measure of speed, will be competitive with the Android and mobile Safari JavaScript performance, Sullivan says.

But Mozilla still faces the challenge of distributing Fennec. Apple, Microsoft, and Google all have direct channels for distribution--operating systems for Internet-enabled phones. But Mozilla's path will require securing deals with other manufacturers and operating-system makers to ensure compatibility. While it's easy to upload software on a desktop computer, handset makers and cellular providers tightly control the software that can run on their handsets. For instance, Apple has kept other third-party Web browsers off the iPhone App Store.

Despite these challenges, Sullivan hopes that the novel look and feel of Fennec will boost its popularity. In conjunction with user-interface designers at Mozilla Labs, the Fennec team built a mobile browser so that its controls can be easily accessed but disappear when users don't need them. One of the main goals, Sullivan says, was to "give over the entire screen of the device to the Web content, removing all user-interface controls entirely." Using a touch-screen interface, a user drags her finger to the right to reveal open tabs, and to the left to reveal controls such as the back button and the address bar.

In addition, Mozilla designers have incorporated what they call the Awesome Bar--the smart address bar from the desktop version of Firefox that guesses which page a user wants when she types a letter or two, based on her bookmarks and browsing history. This feature has enhanced Fennec, says Sullivan, because typing on the browser is especially awkward. So Fennec's Awesome Bar also infers when a person is typing keywords for a Web search.

Moreover, Fennec will be able to work with a Firefox research project called Weave that allows a person to remotely access his desktop Web-browsing history, bookmarks, and other preferences. "One of my goals with Fennec is to leverage the number of Firefox users we have on the desktop," Sullivan says.

Future versions of the phone might even include a haptic interface, Sullivan says, meaning that the phone would vibrate, for example, when a user touches a button on its screen. "In the future, I think there's some stuff there to make interactions feel more natural," he adds, "to provide a sense of confirmation when you've clicked a button or when you're doing a drag-and-drop function." Voice control might be further off into the future, however. "I don't know if the technology is quite there yet," Sullivan says. "And we also need to be sensitive to licensing issues, as the most popular speech engines aren't necessarily royalty-free."

"I think Fennec has a good chance," says Jeffrey Hammond, mobile analyst at Forrester Research. "The first question you have to ask is what platforms we expect to see in the mobile space, and from a smart-phone perspective, I think it's a reasonable assumption that RIM, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone OS, and Android all have a lot of momentum right now." However, Hammond suspects that Fennec could find a footing on the Symbian operating system, which powers Nokia devices.

Mozilla's Sullivan says that Fennec can't run on Android right now because the Android Marketplace, where phone software can be downloaded, only accepts programs written in Java. If Android were supportive of applications that could run directly on the operating system without needing to be written in Java, Sullivan says, "then it's interesting for us. We'll have to see which direction Google goes with that."

Hammond also believes that Fennec's performance could make it attractive for makers of mobile operating systems. The browser's combination of speed and small size could be crucial to its success, he says. "Speed is one reason why we've seen Firefox gain share in the enterprise, versus Internet Explorer," Hammond says. Because of that, he adds, "I think Fennec has a good chance of gaining share."

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/21647/?a=f

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Microsoft to ship Windows 7 by holiday season 2009

Microsoft has been very shy about pinpointing the Windows 7 release date in the past, but a recent presentation given at the company’s WinHEC conference pretty much confirmed the software giant plans to have the operating system ready by the middle of next year – and on store shelves for holiday season 2009.

The company is trying to avoid the PR damage that would come with missing a deadline; so officially, Windows 7 is still slated to ship within three years of the January 2007 consumer release of Windows Vista. However, proof of how the next major Windows release is on a fast-track schedule is that the company already handed out a pre-beta at PDC 2008 late last month, and said it will ship a beta version early next year followed by only one release candidate.

Granted, the OS still needs some polishing here and there, but Windows 7 is a straightforward update from a technical standpoint since it is essentially built on the foundation of Vista but with some important enhancements centered on speed, usability and memory use. Here’s hoping the company can avoid past mistakes and have the operating system ready to roll in time for the holiday season 2009.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/32380-microsoft-to-ship-windows-7-by-holiday-season-2009.html

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Adobe launches Flash Player 10

Adobe today officially released the tenth version of its ubiquitous Flash player plug-in, bringing new “expressive features” for developers and a performance boost for users. The new version offers a number of improvements such as native support for 3D, a new text rendering engine, and integration with Adobe's Pixel Bender technology.

The company has also included a system where the stream will automatically adapt to bandwidth conditions, allowing for smoother video and audio playback. Adobe Labs has assembled several demos showing off the new features on its website, which you can check out here. Flash Player 10 is available now on all platforms, including Linux.

Official Release: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/32057-adobe-launches-flash-player-10-.html

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Google Chrome - Google's next generation web browser

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.

This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself.

Download google chrome here: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-blog-ogb&utm_medium=blog&brand=CHMP

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html

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Microsoft Surface - The Possibilities

Microsoft Surface (Codename: Milan), is a Multi-touch product from Microsoft which is developed as a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user, or multiple users, to manipulate digital content by the use of natural motions, hand gestures, or physical objects. It was announced on May 29, 2007 at D5 conference. Initial customers will be in the hospitality businesses, such as restaurants, hotels, retail, public entertainment venues and the military for tactical overviews. The preliminary launch was on April 17, 2008, when Surface became available for customer use in AT&T stores.

Overview
Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a table, topped with a 30-inch reflective surface in a clear acrylic frame. A projector underneath the surface projects an image onto its underside, while five cameras in the machine's housing record reflections of infrared light from human fingertips. The camera can also recognize objects placed on the surface if those objects have specially-designed "tags" applied to them. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving tagged objects. Surface has been optimized to respond to 52 touches at a time. During a demonstration with a reporter, Mark Bolger, the Surface Computing group's marketing director, "dipped" his finger in an on-screen paint palette, then dragged it across the screen to draw a smiley face. Then he used all 10 fingers at once to give the face a full head of hair.

Using the specially-designed "tags" on objects, Microsoft Surface can automatically offer additional wine choices tailored to the dinner being eaten based on the type of wine set on the Surface.

Prices will reportedly be $5,000 to $10,000 per unit. However Microsoft said it expects prices to drop enough to make consumer versions feasible in 2010.

Partner companies plan to use the Surface in their hotels, restaurants, and retail stores. The Surface is to be used to choose meals at restaurants, plan vacations and spots to visit from the hotel room. Starwood Hotels plan to allow users to drop a credit card on the table to pay for music, books, and other amenities offered at the resort. In AT&T stores, use of the Surface include interactive presentations of plans, coverage, and phone features, in addition to dropping two different phones on the table and having the customer be able to view and compare prices, features, and plans.

Features
Microsoft notes four main components being important in Surface's interface: direct interaction, multi-touch contact, a multi-user experience, and object recognition.

Direct interaction refers to the user's ability to simply reach out and touch the interface of an application in order to interact with it, without the need for a mouse or keyboard. Multi-touch contact refers to the ability to have multiple contact points with an interface, unlike with a mouse, where there is only one cursor. Multi-user is a benefit of multi-touch -- several people can orient themselves on different sides of the surface to interact with an application simultaneously. Object recognition refers to the device's ability to recognize the presence and orientation of tagged objects placed on top of it.

The technology allows non-digital objects to be used as input devices. In one example, a normal paint brush was used to create a digital painting in the software. This is made possible by the fact that, in using cameras for input, the system does not rely on restrictive properties required of conventional touchscreen or touchpad devices such as the capacitance, electrical resistance, or temperature of the tool used (see Touchscreen).

The computer's "vision" is created by a near-infrared, 850-nanometer-wavelength LED light source aimed at the surface. When an object touches the tabletop, the light is reflected to multiple infrared cameras with a net resolution of 1280 x 960, allowing it to sense, and react to items touching the tabletop.

Surface will ship with basic applications, including photos, music, virtual concierge, and games, that can be customized for the customers.

Specifications
Surface is a 30-inch (76 cm) display in a table-like form factor, 22 inches (56 cm) high, 21 inches (53 cm) deep, and 42 inches (107 cm) wide.[14]. The Surface tabletop is acrylic, and its interior frame is powder-coated steel. The software platform runs on a custom version of Windows Vista and has wired Ethernet 10/100, wireless 802.11 b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity. Surface applications are written using either Windows Presentation Foundation or Microsoft XNA technology.

At Microsoft's MSDN Conference, Bill Gates told developers of "Maximum" setup the Microsoft Surface was going to have:

- Intel Core Quad Xeon "WoodCrest" @ 2.66GHz
- 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM
- 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive

It has a custom motherboard form factor about the size of two ATX motherboards.

Applications Development
Microsoft Surface applications can be written in Windows Presentation Foundation or XNA. The development process is much like normal Vista development, but custom WPF controls had to be created by the Surface team due to the unique interface of Surface. Developers already proficient in WPF can utilize the SDK to write Surface apps for deployments for the large hotels, casinos, and restaurants at which the machines will be next deployed.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface

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Adobe Demos "Thermo" RIA Design Tool

Adobe Thermo Sneak Peek Part1


Adobe Thermo Sneak Peek Part2


At this morning's keynote at the Adobe MAX event in Chicago, Mark Anders and Steven Heintz of Adobe gave a sneak peek of a new application being developed by the company code-named "Thermo." Thermo is what they're terming a "rich internet application design tool." Its goal is to allow designers to create Flex-based RIAs without the need to touch any code and to create a more seamless workflow between designers and developers.

With Thermo, designers can build a web app UI and the MXML code to control it is automatically rendered by the application. Developers can then access that code and tie the UI to the rest of the application. Some conference attendees were rightly reminded of Visual Basic, but Thermo seems much smarter -- and, of course, is aimed at web app developers.

The demo at the conference was very compelling and drew the loudest applause of anything presented. Thermo has basic drawing tools that can be used to wireframe an app, but what really makes Thermo special for designers is that it understands Photoshop images and uses layer data to capture information about various UI elements (the application also plays nice with images from Illustrator and Fireworks). In their demonstration, Anders and Heintz imported a user interface mockup for a music browsing app. Thermo recognized the layer data from the PSD, allowing the duo to easily edit various elements inside the UI.

The presenters really got the MAX crowd rocking by showing off Thermo's "Convert artwork to..." feature. In a matter of a couple of clicks, a text input box on the UI went from static image to actual form field with the MXML code rendered automatically. Thermo even preserved styling of the form element from the PSD mockup.

The code view for Thermo is actually the full Flex Builder application, which means that it is a powerful development tool for programmers, as well. The idea is that developers can write underlying business logic for a Flex application while designers work on look and feel all from inside the same environment, and the process is as painless as possible for both sides.

Thermo was quickly the most buzzed about thing at the conference, and it was easy to see why. Anders and Heintz turned a static image of a web app interface into a working mockup -- complete with dummy lorem ipsum data created by Thermo -- in about 15 minutes without touching any code. Thermo allows designers to create interactive Flex-based applications without coding, then hand those apps off to programmers who can complete the development process by adding business logic.

Adobe expects to release an early version of Thermo sometime next year. For now they've set up a vague info page on the Adobe Labs site. When it drops, Thermo really could be a game changer that drops the barrier for entry into the web app market just that much more.

Note: Josh Catone is at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago, September 30 - October 3, courtesy of Adobe.

Original Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_thermo_ria_design_tool.php

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