Adobe Connect Blog

Ever found yourself wishing your online meetings and webinars were easier to use, more efficient, more effective, unique in some way, or just plain more fun?  What do you wish your web conferencing solution could do?  That’s the question we’re asking you!

Starting today, June 6^th and running through this Friday June 10^th, we’re kicking off a Twitter contest asking for your ideas on the best extras, extensions and enhancements that a web conference could use. Even if you’ve never run an online meeting, you’ve almost certainly participated in one or more in your time. So take a few moments to consider and let us know what you think…

What do you wish your web conferencing solution could do?

Share your answer with us via Twitter, by 1) following us @AdobeConnect and 2) including the #AdobeConnect hashtag!  Comments on this blog post will also be entered into our random drawing, but you’ll need to be an @AdobeConnect follower on Twitter, as well, to win. 

With those things in mind, respondents will be eligible to win our prize, a 4-month Adobe Connect subscription (or a $100 giftcard, if the winner is already an Adobe Connect user)!  The winner will be chosen by random drawing and will be announced on this blog June 13^th.

Looking for some inspiration? Then check out the Adobe Connect Exchange, where you’ll find some very cool and useful extensions to our own solution built with the Collaboration Builder SDK.

The contest opens 10 a.m. PT, Monday, June 6, 2011, and closes 5 p.m. PT, Friday, June 10, 2011. The prize drawing will occur on or before 5 p.m., June 13, 2011. The drawing is open to residents in North America only.

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

Wendy Shapiro, senior academic technology advisor at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), recently talked to us about how the leading research institution supports the 21^st century learning model with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection, as well as Adobe Connect campus-wide for eLearning and web conferencing.

To support its cutting-edge role in education, the university has been a technology leader for decades. The campus boasts a world-class, gigabit-to-the-desktop network. Its MediaVision team has a history of providing video-centric services such as videoconferencing, streaming media, and interactive digital television for content distribution to all areas of the university. In 2009, CWRU standardized on Adobe Connect for eLearning and web conferencing. Today, Adobe Connect is used for everything from administrative meetings and training to engaging with students remotely across a far-flung campus of eight different schools.

 On the administrative side, Case Western Reserve’s Board of Trustees uses Adobe Connect to conduct subcommittee meetings on a regular basis. Board members are located all over the world. The ability to come together for meetings remotely is not only saving money on travel costs, but the more frequent communication enabled by Adobe Connect helps bring issues and projects to a close faster than before.

 A number of research departments regularly use Adobe Connect to present or collaborate with colleagues from other universities around the world. Case Western Reserve’s Procurement and Distribution department uses Adobe Connect to present information to the campus. Prior to Adobe Connect, procurement information was distributed at brown bag lunches in various lecture halls. “With Adobe Connect, the university can distribute information electronically as well as archive it. Since launch of Adobe Connect in early 2009, the university has peaked at a high of 120,000 minutes of use per month and, on the low end, it has not gone below 50,000 minutes per month,” says Michael Kubit, director of ITS, customer service and support for CWRU.

 Adobe software is stimulating, revitalizing, and enhancing curricula at CWRU across disciplines. To learn more about how CWRU is using Creative Suite 5 Master Collection and Adobe Connect, check out the full story here.

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

Today, we’ve begun upgrading customers using the hosted version of our product to Adobe Connect 8 Service Pack 1 (SP1). For customers already on version 8, SP1 will provide new user experience enhancements based on valuable feedback since the release of Adobe Connect 8. If you have not yet been upgraded to Adobe Connect 8, you will be upgraded directly to Adobe Connect 8 SP1 per our migration schedule. For information on the timing of your upgrade, please visit our migration center here. On the right-hand side of the page, mid-way down you can enter your Adobe Connect meeting URL and learn more about when your server is expected to be migrated.

Adobe Connect 8 SP1 introduces enhanced web conferencing functionality, highlights of which include:

Enhanced Attendee List Pod
The attendee list pod now enables users to easily identify the number of attendees under various roles, such as hosts, presenters and participants, as the categories now show numbers next to the attendee groups. The default behavior is now to have the groups expanded and you can now easily identify mobile attendees (as displayed in the image below) by the phone icon next to their name. Also, all authenticated users are displayed with an attendee icon in a yellow shirt, while unauthenticated users (guests) will have icons with a blue shirt.

Layout Bar
A new layout bar (see image below) allows for a host to easily manage and switch between meeting layouts. The layout bar is now defaulted to be located on the right-hand side of the screen but can be docked on the left or right. At the bottom of the layout screen are simple icons a host can click to go into prepare mode or to add a layout. The layout bar shows up whether or not the Presenter Only Area is open but can be hidden if the host does not want to use the feature.

Q&A Pod
Presenters can now replicate the Q&A pod in the Presenter Only Area. In the top right of the Q&A pod, click on “pod options” and select “Move Presenter View to POA” (see image below). The Q&A pod will now show up in the Presenter Only Area with presenter view. This allows hosts and presenters to easily view the incoming questions and answer while the meeting is in session.

Application Blacklist Capability
The ability to control information being shared with participants is critical in a web collaboration environment. This new capability mitigates the risk of human error by allowing the administrator to pre-define a list of applications that can’t be shared with meeting participants. It provides the ability to:

• Select applications that are prevented from being shared
• Grey out/hide these applications during secure desktop sharing
• Prevent such applications from being part of any meeting recording

Breakout Rooms
New, increased capacity enables a maximum of 20 breakout rooms for up to 200 people and improved breakout notification for participants. Note: for meetings with an integrated audio provider, the number of breakout rooms is limited by the number supported by the respective audio providers.

H.264 Video
With SP1, Adobe Connect now supports the use of video formatted for H.264 via a share pod. The new functionality allows for larger video file playback and stunning-quality video.

Videos may use this format:

800×496
1:1 (1/2 for screen cap only)
H.264
Progressive
Square
Main
3.1
VBR, 2 pass (multipass if available)
536 kbps
650 kbps
(every 3 sec)

Audio
New functionality introduced in SP1 makes the use of audio even more simple. All conference audio is now managed from the Audio menu. If you are using integrated audio or a universal voice provider (telephone and VoIP), you will see the “Start Meeting Audio” option to initiate audio functionality within your Adobe Connect room (see image below). If there is no audio profile associated with the meeting, you will not see this option; you can still use VoIP for such meetings. As a host, you determine which audio features can be used during your session. Choose “Using Computers” to broadcast from your computer microphone or choose “Using Phone” to connect to your telephone audio conference. Select both if some of your presenters will be using their computer microphone and some will be on the telephone.

Additional Usability Enhancements:

• Persistent display of important notifications ensures that hosts and participants never miss out on an important event in the meeting
• Hosts can access a single info icon to see all pending notifications and take actions on them
• Revamped Presenter Only Area (POA) allows presenters to view the complete meeting room and its content even while using the POA
• Hosts can now provide the whiteboard as an additional advanced participant right for increased collaboration

We hope you’ll enjoy the enhancements of Adobe Connect 8 SP1. And, again, please check out our migration center for additional information and to look up the expected timing of your upgrade.

As always, we look forward to your thoughts in comments or on Twitter @AdobeConnect and @ConnectSupport.

Amy Brooks, Adobe Connect Event Producer

Update 4/13/11: Release notes for Adobe Connect 8 Service Pack 1 are now available on our web site. You’ll find them here.

Update 4/21/11: New resources about Service Pack 1 have been added to the connectusers.com site here. They include a feature overview document and two video tutorials.

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