Adobe Connect Blog

I’m excited to announce the availability of our Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 web conferencing app for Android tablets and smartphones! This new version extends the capabilities of our previous release (see this post) in a number of ways.  We’ve added rich hosting capabilities, improved video quality, updated the user interface and enhanced navigation for greater functionality, flexibility and ease of use. We encourage you to download the free Adobe Connect Mobile app from the Android Market today (more on that later).

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 gives the user complete confidence to host and participate in mobile conferencing anytime, anywhere. This release provides new features and an updated interface for tablets and smartphones, including the following capabilities and views:

Control meeting access, permissions and activities from your mobile device

• The host can:
  • Start and end meetings
  • Accept or deny guests from entering meetings
  • Enable or disable participant’s ability to broadcast their cameras and audio (VoIP)
  • Promote or demote user roles to and from Host, Presenter, and Participant
  • Remove users from meetings
  • Control all active pods
  • Start and stop content and screen sharing
  • Create and edit content in the Notes pod
  • Advance slides and animations (capability available to both Presenters and Hosts)

Enhanced user interface for even greater ease of use and control

• New layout and controls allow meeting attendees to more easily:
  • View all activity happening in the meeting at once
  • Focus on an activity to enter input in Public Chat, Private Chat, and Polls

Check out this demo to see some of the new features, including those I’ve described above:

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 is available here in the Android Market for users whose devices meet the minimum system prerequisites. Adobe AIR 2.7 for Android (or later) is required, as is Android 2.2/FroYo (or later). A list of mobile devices that meet the AIR system requirements can be found here.

Remember, we also have Adobe Connect Mobile applications for Apple iOS devices and BlackBerry PlayBook. You can find version 1.5 for iOS on iTunes Preview here and for BlackBerry PlayBook on BlackBerry App World here. The apps will be updated to version 1.7 soon, so please stay tuned to us on this blog and Twitter.

For more information on the Adobe Connect Mobile client, as well as user commentary, visit our Adobe Connect Mobile User Forum on connectusers.com.

As always, we’re interested in hearing from you—in comments, on our mobile user forum, and on Twitter @AdobeConnect.

Cheers,
Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

Update 10/4/11: We discussed in comments below that Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 for Android would support both the front- and back-facing cameras of devices after the next update to Adobe AIR, on which the app is built. AIR 3 is now available, it can be downloaded here. Now, Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 for Android users can leverage both cameras on devices running Android 2.3 (or later). After you download AIR 3 on the device, you will notice the camera control dialog in Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 will have a new button. Tapping the button with the camera and arrow will allow you to switch between cameras.

In today’s global business environment, it is critical for enterprises to quickly and continuously train a broadly dispersed sales force to remain competitive. This is often challenging, especially with the speed at which products are released, markets change, new partnerships evolve, and sales teams expand around the globe.  Leveraging eLearning software for virtual and on-demand training is certainly a necessity in meeting these challenges, but it is important to choose the right eLearning solution as well.  A highly effective eLearning solution needs to provide easy and reliable access, keep learners engaged, and present complex ideas in the most efficient manner possible so that sales teams can quickly glean insights and get back to the field to apply them, without impacting sales schedules. 

With these requirements in mind, we’ve created a video that shows how Adobe Connect enables rapid creation, deployment, and management of sales training courses and content, provides easy access for learners, and keeps learners interested with rich and interactive content.  You will also see how Xerox uses Adobe Connect to deliver rapid training to thousands of employees and customers worldwide.

Check out the video below and, as always, let us know if you have thoughts or questions – either in comments below or via Twitter @AdobeConnect.

In late March, we posted the new real-time caption pod extension for Adobe Connect 8 to the Adobe Exchange (you can find it here). Andrew Kirkpatrick, who looks after accessibility across Adobe, has a nice post on the subject on his team’s blog.

As part of my responsibility on our product management team, I worked with the external developer of the pod (they did a great job; more on them later) and wanted to share a few thoughts on the intent of the extension and, at a high level, how it can be used.

With the new Adobe Connect closed caption pod, real-time captioning of audio content can be easily integrated into meetings and events delivered via Adobe Connect. This extension ensures that participants who are deaf or hard of hearing can fully participate in online meetings and events.

The closed caption pod appears as a new pod to your Adobe Connect meeting environment. Meeting organizers hire professional captioning services from providers such as the Media Access Group at WGBH, Caption Colorado, and Caption First. Professional stenographers attend the Adobe Connect meeting or teleconference to listen to the audio and transcribe the information using specialized stenographer’s keyboards. This information is then transmitted to a captioning server.

The captions are transmitted to the Adobe Connect meeting and viewed by end users. Meeting participants have the ability to customize the caption font size and color settings to enhance readability. Participants can even skip back to re-read previous captions and then fast forward to the current captions. Participants can individually choose to display or not display captions on their individual screen. And participants can optionally save the captions as a transcript and download them at the conclusion of a meeting.

The extension is a great example of what can be done by any Flex developer using the Adobe Connect Collaboration Builder SDK available for free from the Adobe Developer Connection. Again, the developer of this pod, eSyncTraining, did a great job leveraging their Flex development expertise – adding robust new functionality to any Adobe Connect meeting to perfectly address a specific need.

If you haven’t, I encourage you to read more about and download the pod on the Adobe Exchange. And let us know your thoughts in comments or on Twitter @AdobeConnect.

Cheers,
Peter Ryce, Adobe Connect Evangelist