Adobe Connect Blog

We’re excited to announce the release of Adobe Connect Mobile 2.1, now available for iOS and Android.  The new release delivers significant enhancements for mobile learning in virtual classrooms, as well as several other feature updates and optimized support for iPad Mini and iPhone 5.

Over the past year, we have continued to see tremendous demand from our users for the ability to offer mobile access to training, whether in live or on-demand formats.  Mobile learning is becoming a necessity for more and more organizations and institutions, with learners demanding access to training when a laptop or desktop isn’t handy, and trainers needing to deliver training outside of the classroom.

Last year, Adobe Connect delivered a complete mobile learning solution through Adobe Connect 9 and our Mobile 2.0 client, supporting virtual classroom access, rich learner interactions, and tracking of on-demand training including Adobe Captivate and Presenter content.  In addition, complete hosting capability was delivered to trainers to fully host virtual classes directly from their mobile device.

With Adobe Connect Mobile 2.1, we’ve continued to innovate around mobile learning, enabling trainers to deploy training in Adobe Presenter format, and learners to conveniently access courses and content directly through the Adobe Connect mobile client when participating in a virtual class.  Learner progress and interactions can be tracked within the Adobe Connect Learning Management System or another integrated system of record, as they interact with training from anywhere, on virtually any device.

New features include:

• Deliver, interact with, and track Adobe Presenter training content in virtual classrooms, supporting multiple choice, true/false, and matching questions
• Viewing of meeting background imagery for personalization and branding
• Two live webcams (user and another attendee), and unlimited paused webcams, can be viewed simultaneously
• More information on features and updates can be found in the release notes here

Adobe Connect Mobile 2.1 is now available for free download on iTunes Preview here, and the Google Play Store here.

The app supports the following devices and operating systems:

Apple:

• Devices: iPad2, iPad3, iPad with Retina display, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (4^th and 5^th generations)
• Supported OS versions: iOS 5 or higher

Android:

• Devices: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (10.1 and 7.0), Samsung Galaxy Tab (10.1), Nexus 7, HTC EVO 4G, Motorola Atrix, Motorola Xoom, Motorola Xoom 2, Samsung Galaxy SII/SIII
• Supported OS versions:  2.3.4 and higher

As we kick off an exciting new year, we are pleased to announce the limited public beta for the next version of Adobe Connect for Webinars solution (codename Maple). We have been working on the release for months with the focus on helping our customers deliver compelling, immersive webinars, maximize event attendance, and measure results to optimize workflows – and ultimately improve the ROI of campaigns and events.

We will be accepting 100 beta participants on a first come first serve basis. If you are interested in joining the beta, please fill out the beta interest form.

From the Maple beta you will also be able to try out the beta version of Adobe Connect Mobile for Android. This beta version significantly expands the amount of controls and rich capabilities available for Adobe Connect users on mobile phones and tablets.  Note that we currently have leading mobile applications for Android, iOS, and Blackberry Playbook now available as well – you can check them out here.

This is certainly an exciting time for Adobe Connect and we are thrilled to share with you the latest beta versions of our solutions for your feedback. Stay tuned for more news from us and don’t forget to follow us on @AdobeConnect for the latest updates.

We wish you all a terrific 2012.

-Paresh Kharya (@pareshkharya), Senior Product Manager, Adobe Connect

In a post on our blog earlier this week, we asked what you wish your web conferencing solution could do. Not surprisingly, you had a lot of great (and in some cases quite funny) suggestions, which we appreciate and take to heart. Thanks again to all who participated. We’ve gathered a set of our favorite responses to the contest question in the Storify post further below. Please do check it out.

As we mentioned in that earlier post, respondents who followed @AdobeConnect and included the #AdobeConnect hashtag with their “wish” were entered into a random drawing for a 4-month Adobe Connect subscription. And we’d like to congratulate our winner, @kalarson, whom we’ve reached out to directly on Twitter.

Finally, keep in mind that although no web conferencing solution on the market can currently do everything we heard from you…and in some cases may never – like automatically ordering donuts for attendees …Adobe Connect is the most extensible product on the market. By that we mean developers can create just about any type of custom functionality that integrates into our solution to extend its capabilities. If you weren’t aware of that, we invite you to check out the cool and useful extensions (such as the TwitterConnect pod) from Adobe and our partners on the Adobe Connect Exchange. Extensions are built leveraging our Collaboration Builder SDK.



In Adobe Connect 8, we introduced a new aspect ratio that allows for optimum viewing. The Adobe Connect meeting interface rescales intelligently to provide optimum viewing experiences for any screen size or resolution.

We’ve received great feedback on this change that enables the product to scale but maintain aspect ratio. At the same time, users who created customized wallpapers for Adobe Connect 7.5 or earlier may have noticed them stretching the original branded appearance. With that in mind, I wanted to share some tips for those who like the ability to customize and brand their Adobe Connect meetings (and also point you to some of our own backgrounds…but more on that later):

-          Background file types supported are: JPG, PNG, GIF and SWF.

-          The name of the background file should be 50 characters or less.

-          The background scales with the size of the meeting client window. Different client views are determined by screen resolution.

-          Aspect ratio is always honored, which means the largest dimension dominates so there is never a blank space. Keep in mind, this is what can cause an image to truncate.

-          You can use Adobe Illustrator to create a vector-based wallpaper image that scales beautifully at any size. You should save for web and choose SWF as the format. SWF backgrounds are very lightweight but the trick is getting the aspect ratio correct – again, Adobe Connect 8 meetings are no longer of a fixed ratio and, as a result, it may take some tweaking as you go.

-          Use a higher resolution when creating pixel-based wallpaper images in Photoshop. You’ll typically achieve better results scaling down than scaling up. We recommend using 1920×1200, which works well – note this means it will scale down on monitors with lower resolutions and scale up on 27″+ monitors.  (Bear in mind bitmaps are not supported).

-          It’s best to keep the background file size small. The size of the background file impacts required bandwidth and attendees will download this file as part of joining the meeting.

-          As a best practice, in large meetings of over 300 participants, hosts should consider removing backgrounds, which saves bandwidth usage and results in a better participant experience for those on slower connections or older computers.

-          Adobe Connect 8 offers a larger viewing area so it’s also quite simple to add an additional share pod where you can upload a simple .PPTX with your preferred branding. This looks great, for example, in the upper right-hand corner of an Adobe Connect meeting room. (See image below)

As I alluded earlier, we’ve created some nice Adobe Connect backgrounds ourselves that you can download from the ConnectUsers.com site here and place in your Adobe Connect room (to download, click on the gallery thumbnail image of interest, then right-click on the large image and choose “Save Image As…” from your browser). Backgrounds in Adobe Connect are associated with a particular room only to allow multiple users within an account to brand as they wish.

To change the default background in an Adobe Connect meeting, as a host, go to the top menu.

1. Choose Meeting > Preferences.
2. Click upload, then navigate to the desired image. If you haven’t previously added the file to Adobe Connect, click Browse My Computer.

It is important when creating a background to note there is a way to anchor your background to one of the four corners.  The default anchor point is the bottom left corner.

For example, if you want to fit a square image in a 4:3 Adobe Connect meeting room window like the sample below, choose a background where you place the logo in the bottom left corner.

Since the anchor default is the bottom left corner, you can see the image fits nicely.

If you find your image is being cropped on the top or side, you can change the anchor point to the corner that best suits your background image. To change the anchor point, in your Adobe Connect Meeting room, go to Meeting > Preferences and you will see a box that looks like the image below. Double click on the preview image (see red rectangle in image below). This will change the anchor point. Watch your image closely after double clicking and you will see the adjustments to the background in the window.  Please note anchor points can be similarly changed for SWF files used as background images, however note the preview image is not updated in the preview window.

I hope you’ll find this post helpful and of interest, and that you’ll check out and enjoy the backgrounds I discussed. As always, let us know your thoughts in comments and on Twitter @AdobeConnect and @ConnectSupport.

Amy Brooks, Adobe Connect Event Producer

Peter Ryce, our Adobe Connect evangelist (@peterryce), joined us for our first Twitterview Thursday morning, along with many of you…which we greatly appreciated. The questions were plentiful and certainly demonstrated – as expected – your very strong grasp of Adobe Connect, several of the things on your mind about the product, as well as what you’d like to see moving forward.

If you missed it, or are just interested in a great source of Adobe Connect knowledge, please take a look at our recap below. It covers each question Peter addressed during the Twitterview. Ultimately, we had more questions than time allowed Peter to answer, so we hope you’ll take us up on the offer to share another Twitterview soon.

And we didn’t forget: each participant who asked a question during the Twitterview was entered in a random drawing to win a $50 gift card to Amazon (North America residents only). Congratulations to the winner, JillianLillian! We’ll be contacting you shortly to deliver your prize.

Thanks again to Peter Ryce and all of you who made this Twitterview such a great conversation. We look forward to the next one! In the meantime, keep in touch with us via this blog and follow @AdobeConnect for the latest Adobe Connect updates and activities.

Over the past several months, we’ve had a lot of great conversations with many of you via social channels discussing all aspects of Adobe Connect. We’re excited to continue that ad hoc conversation, of course, but also thought it would be a great time to set up our first Twitterview so we have a focused set of time you can ask and we can answer any and all questions about the product. For those unfamiliar with a Twitterview, it gives you a chance (in real time and over Twitter) to be the interviewer and us to be the interviewee. Join in and you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift certificate (North America residents only)! You simply need a Twitter account…and some creativity to point your best questions, including the #AdobeConnect hashtag, @AdobeConnect in 140 characters or less.

You’re officially invited to join us on Twitter Thursday, May 12, from 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. PST, when our Adobe Connect evangelist and resident expert, Peter Ryce, will host the session. Peter is responsible for Adobe Connect customer education and outreach.  He’s a true expert on the product with a background in several areas like product management, channel support, sales training, and product marketing. He also works to ensure that our own employees best incorporate Adobe Connect into their day-to-day work lives.

So, have you been up at night wondering how to incorporate a Twitter feed into you next Adobe Connect webinar, if it’s possible to attend a web meeting on-the-go from your favorite smartphone or tablet, whether it’s best for you to deploy the product on premise or as a hosted or managed service, or why Peter claims Adobe Connect is the most extensible web conferencing solution and why exactly that’s important? Now’s your chance.

Again, join us on Twitter Thursday 5/12 from 10 – 10:30 a.m. PST and be sure to include the #AdobeConnect hashtag when you tweet @AdobeConnect to get our attention. Also, feel free to ask questions right now in comments to this post or at our Twitter handle with the aforementioned hashtag; we’ll line up answers to them and include as part of the Twitterview.  Again, all Twitterview participants who ask a question and include the hashtag will be entered into a random drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card (North America residents only). So, if you’ve ever had an Adobe Connect question to ask, send it our way!

Our only other request: if you know of others at your company, agency or institution who may want to ask something burning or just follow the Twitter stream to catch a new idea, please feel free to extend our very open invitation.

Cheers!

If you’ve been following us here and on Twitter, you know we’ve recently pushed out significant updates of our Adobe Connect Mobile web conferencing app for Android and the BlackBerry PlayBook. We’ve mentioned in the posts introducing them that a new version of our app for Apple iOS devices was coming, as well—and based on feedback we’ve received via our social channels, we know many of you have been waiting. With that in mind, we’re excited to announce Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 for Apple iOS is now available!

This is the first version of the app to be optimized for iPad, something in particular we know has been anticipated. With this version, which also includes enhancements you’ll appreciate on the iPhone and iPod Touch, we’re providing users a far more complete mobile conferencing experience. With an entirely updated user interface, you’ll feel more like a full meeting participant and can interact in many of the same ways as someone on a desktop system, with the added benefit and convenience of a touch screen.

Some of the cool features of the app include:

Two-way Video

• Participate in multi-point video conferencing and add your own upstream video broadcast to the conversation.
  • Adobe Connect Mobile for iOS supports the rear- and forward-facing cameras of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4. The app detects that the device has two cameras and provides the option to use one or the other, and also to switch cameras at any time while broadcasting.

Meeting Overview and Focus View Options

• In Meeting Overview, watch all the activities happening in the meeting at once.
• Tap or navigate to focus in on any one meeting activity like the slide presentation or screen share.
• Focus on an activity to enter your input in Chat, Private Chat, and Polls.
• While in Focus View, instant notifications help you stay current with off-screen activities that may need your attention, like new or private chat messages. Tap to focus on new activities directly from these notifications.

Check out this video to see the app in action, including several of the features I’ve described.

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 is now available for free download; check it out on iTunes Preview here. The app supports:

• iPhone 3GS with iOS 4 or higher*
• iPhone 4 with iOS 4 or higher*
• iPod Touch 3^rd generation with iOS 4 or higher*
• iPad and iPad 2 with iOS 4 or higher*

(*Applies to later versions released as of the date of this posting)

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

Let us know what you think—in comments, on Twitter @AdobeConnect, and on our mobile user forum.

Cheers,

Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

On the heels of my recent post about the latest version of our app for Android, I’m excited to introduce Adobe Connect Mobile for the new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 is one of a series of Adobe AIR applications coming to the BlackBerry PlayBook at launch and in the months that follow.

Similar to our latest app for Android, Adobe Connect Mobile for BlackBerry PlayBook gives the tablet user complete confidence to participate in mobile conferencing from anywhere. Tablet users will feel like full meeting participants, and can interact in many of the same ways as someone on a desktop system with the added benefit and convenience of a touch screen.

Some of the key, cool features of the web conferencing app include:

Two-way Video

• Participate in multi-point video conferencing and add your own upstream video broadcast to the conversation.
• Adobe Connect Mobile for BlackBerry PlayBook supports the tablet’s rear- and forward-facing cameras. The app detects that the device has two cameras and provides the option to use one or the other, and also to switch cameras at any time while broadcasting.

Meeting Overview and Focus View Options

• In Meeting Overview, watch all the activities happening in the meeting at once.
• Tap or navigate to focus in on any one meeting activity like the slide presentation or screen share.
• Focus on an activity to enter your input in Chat, Private Chat, and Polls.
• While in Focus View, instant notifications help you stay current with off-screen activities that may need your attention, like new or private chat messages. Tap to focus on new activities directly from these notifications.

Check out this video to see me demo Adobe Connect Mobile for BlackBerry PlayBook, including several of the features I’ve described.

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 is available for download via BlackBerry App World. Adobe AIR 2.6 (or later) is required.

Remember that in addition to apps for BlackBerry PlayBook and Android we also have an Adobe Connect Mobile application for Apple iOS devices. You can find version 1.0.5 on iTunes Preview here. The app will be updated to version 1.5, 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.

We’re always interested to hear from you, so let us know your thoughts in comments, on Twitter @AdobeConnect, and on our mobile user forum.

Cheers,
Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

What an amazing time last week in Orlando for both the Adobe Learning Summit 2011 (#ALS2011) and the Learning Solutions Conference & Expo 2011 (#LS2011). I had the great opportunity during my time at both to show off the new version of Adobe Connect Mobile for Android on the Motorola XOOM tablet! While not everyone got to see the application in action, between myself and my Adobe colleague, RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez), who also had a XOOM and was showing conference attendees Adobe Captivate content, we cast a fairly wide net of how Adobe is trending in the mobile learning (mLearning) space.

One of the biggest themes across both conferences was, in fact, mLearning. There were more questions than answers and even fewer examples (with exception of the awesome mLearning work that Josh Cavalier (@JoshCav) is doing over at http://www.lodestone.com/). That said, it’s clear learning practitioners are very interested in mLearning and eager to get their hands on technologies that will give them an instant mobile learning solution. Enter the latest version of Adobe Connect Mobile.

At ALS2011, I attended Adobe Connect team member Peter Ryce’s session, Extensibility = Learner Engagement, where between the two of us, we demoed Adobe Connect from his laptop, his Android smartphone and from the XOOM I had with me! With the new mobile app, I participated in polls, the chat pod and even broadcast video from the XOOM’s camera live to the audience, in excellent quality, and over hotel WiFi. The Adobe Connect experience on the tablet is superior! I could sense the excitement from attendees and its implications for mLearning by those who witnessed it. Adobe Connect Mobile on the XOOM, and other tablets, represents an entirely new opportunity for mLearning – the mobile virtual learning environment or classroom. The virtual classroom has never been this accessible on a mobile device.

Over at LS2011, I attended How to Produce Consistently Engaging Virtual Online Sessions with Chris Benz (@chris_benz) and Karen Hyder (@karenhyder), both of the eLearningGuild – a practitioner’s network using Adobe Connect for their own virtual learning. I had a chance to show Chris the new Adobe Connect Mobile app and discuss its potential for mLearning.

One other note, day two keynote Nancy Duarte also showed screenshots of Adobe Connect during her keynote presentation, Resonate – Visual Stories That Transform Learners and Audiences. I was very happy to tweet about that!

Were you at ALS2011 or LS2011? Did we cross paths and, if so, did you see me cruising with or demoing on the XOOM? What was most memorable for you about the shows? Please let us know in comments or send me a message on Twitter.

Justin Mass, Senior Learning Technologist, Adobe (@jmass)

I’m excited to announce the availability of Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 for Android smartphones and tablets. This follows the original version of our application for Android, which we made available in October 2010 and discussed in this post. We appreciated all the feedback to version 1.0 and have worked to extend and improve the application further in this latest version. We encourage you to download the free Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 app from the Android Market today (more on that later).

With this version, the first optimized for Android tablets and with enhancements to be enjoyed on Android smartphones as well, Adobe Connect Mobile gives the mobile user complete confidence to attend meetings from anywhere. With an updated user interface, mobile users will feel more like full meeting participants, and can interact in many of the same ways as someone on a desktop system.

The new release provides an entirely updated interface, which in part includes the following new views and features:

Two-way Video
• Participate in multi-point video conferencing and add your own upstream video broadcast to the conversation.

Meeting Overview and Focus View Options

• In Meeting Overview, watch all the activities happening in the meeting at once.
• Tap or navigate to focus in on any one meeting activity like the slide presentation or screen share.
• Focus on an activity to enter your input in Chat, Private Chat, and Polls.
• While in Focus View, instant notifications help you stay current with off-screen activities that may need your attention, like new or private chat messages. Tap to focus on new activities directly from these notifications.

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

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.5 is available here in the Android Market for users whose devices meet the minimum system prerequisites. Adobe AIR 2.6 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 an Adobe Connect Mobile application for Apple iOS devices; you can find version 1.0.5 on iTunes Preview here. The app will be updated to version 1.5 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