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

Last week, Adobe announced the availability of a new release of Adobe Presenter 8. The release is specifically for customers on Adobe Software Assurance plans for Adobe Presenter and the eLearning Suite – though all of the features will eventually make it into the next major release of Adobe Presenter.

There are a significant number of new features included in the new release.

Windows 8 & Microsoft Office 2013 Support
The latest update adds official support for both Windows 8 as well as Microsoft Powerpoint 2013. Newer Powerpoint objects like SmartArt and animations are also supported.

A new audio workflow.
The team has worked to simplify and improve the experience around recording audio and synchronizing it to your Powerpoint slides. The new interface is looks much more modern and makes the functionality easier than ever to use.

Closed Captions
Captions can now be generated automatically for your audio track in the video creator tool. Adobe Presenter translates your narration into text using cloud based computing. Captions are delivered back to the user who can make further edits. It’s very impressive functionality – and you can see it in action below:

Improved Interactions Library
Adobe Presenter 8.0 launched with a new feature that enables customers to add interactive elements to their on-demand courses. In this update, additional interactions have been added – including games like Hangman and Jigsaw.

Improved mobile app for Adobe Presenter.
The team has updated Adobe Presenter Mobile for iOS to incorporate tracking via Adobe Connect.

If you’re not familiar with Adobe Presenter, I’ve embedded a quick overview video below. Note that this overview doens’t include the great new features added to Adobe Presenter 8.1.

As effective as Adobe Connect is with helping companies collaborate more efficiently and save costs in a variety of areas, what often gets overlooked is how various government agencies are benefitting from the use of Adobe Connect.

Recently, FedTech and StateTech Magazines, which focus on the government’s use of technology, spotlighted how the Department of Defense and the Bainbridge Island Police Department are using Adobe Connect Web conferencing in their everyday operations.

Those of you who follow this blog know that Adobe Connect has been used in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Connect Online (DCO) program for some time, but you may not know that the DoD expanded its use of Adobe Connect to support Adobe Connect Mobile in its new Defense Information System Agency’s (DISA) Mobile Project.  FedTech Magazine interviewed DISA enterprise collaboration services program manager, Karl Kurz, who talked about how the agency uses Adobe Connect. One of the more interesting uses Kurz talked about is how DCO allows deployed soldiers to keep in touch with family members back home. Kurz said with Adobe Connect, “The ability to respond to visual cues and to see dynamic content on another person’s computer makes this form of communication much more effective than other less media-rich methods.”

StateTech Magazine sat down with Detective Trevor Ziemba of the Bainbridge Island Police Department to discuss its unique use of Adobe Connect. For the last three years, the department has been using Adobe Connect along with Connect Mobile to assist in maritime response, allowing the department to quickly initiate video-conferencing sessions with county and state SWAT teams. Ziemba said, “I could shoot live feeds and still photos and feed it to others in the video conference, and we had the same capabilities as the original system — the ability to interact, share files and data, text and talk via [Voice over IP].”

You can get the full stories of these Adobe Connect applications at the magazines’ websites or by clicking the links above. And if you have any unique use cases for Adobe Connect, we’d love to hear them, so feel free to share in the comments below.

Following the significant recent updates to our Adobe Connect Mobile web conferencing apps for Android and the BlackBerry PlayBook, we’re excited to announce Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 for Apple iOS is now available!

Featuring new rich hosting capabilities, improved video quality, and an updated UI and improved navigation for greater flexibility and ease of use—Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 lets users host and participate in mobile conferences anytime, anywhere.

Control meeting access, permissions and activities from your mobile device

• Meeting hosts 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:

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 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 and 4^th generation with iOS 4 or higher
• iPad and iPad 2 with iOS 4 or higher

For more information on Adobe Connect Mobile visit our Adobe Connect Mobile User Forum on connectusers.com.

We look forward to your thoughts—in comments, on Twitter @AdobeConnect, and on our mobile user forum.

Cheers,

Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

Update: Thanks for your interest in our Twitterview originally planned for 11/10. We’re rescheduling to Thursday 11/17 at 11:00am PT. We look forward to the conversation then.

It’s time for the latest in our Adobe Connect web conferencing Twitterview series!  If you have questions about Adobe Connect in the world of mobile, including our latest Adobe Connect Mobile apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry PlayBook, our own Principal Product Manager, Randah McKinnie, will be joining us for an exclusive Q & A session.  As our resident expert on mobile (as well as eLearning), Randah is a knowledge source you won’t want to miss.

Our previous Twitter-based interviews with Peter Ryce and Alistair Lee offered a fun chance to learn more about the inner workings of Adobe Connect.  We’re happy to keep up that tradition, so please join us on November 17th at 11AM Pacific time.

If you’re new to Adobe Connect or our Twitterviews, the process is simple: On 11/17, contact us via Twitter: @reply our AdobeConnect account and include the hashtag #AdobeConnect.  Randah will jump in on any questions, comments, or thoughts you might have regarding Adobe Connect.

Again, join us on Twitter, Thursday 11/17 from 11 – 11:30 a.m. PST and be sure to include the #AdobeConnect hashtag when you tweet @AdobeConnect.  If you can’t make it, please leave your question in the comments section of this post or send us a message on Twitter in advance and Randah will be sure to answer. Thanks for tuning in!

Hot on the heels of our post earlier this week about the latest version of our app for Android, we’re pleased to share that Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 is now available for BlackBerry PlayBook! You might recall we launched the initial version of this web conferencing app earlier this year and discussed it here.

Similar to our Android app, Adobe Connect Mobile for BlackBerry PlayBook now includes for the first time rich hosting capabilities, as well as enhanced video quality, an update to the user interface and improved navigation for added flexibility and ease of use.

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 provides users more complete confidence to host and participate in mobile conferencing anytime, anywhere:

Control meeting access 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 ease of use, 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

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 is available here in BlackBerry App World. Adobe AIR 2.7 or later is required.

Remember, we also have an Adobe Connect Mobile application for Apple iOS devices. You can find version 1.5 on iTunes Preview here. It will be updated soon to version 1.7, so stay tuned to our blog and @AdobeConnect.

For more information, visit our Adobe Connect Mobile User Forum on connectusers.com.

Please stay in touch with us in comments and on Twitter, and enjoy the app!

-Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

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.

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

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