Adobe has announced the upcoming release of LiveCycle ES Update 1. While this is a very important and interesting release, its focus is on overall improvements while adding a few new features along the way.

Whats new?
There are two significant new features that have been added to the LiveCycle platform, 3D PDF Generation & Content Management. The LiveCycle PDF Generator 3D ES addition allows server side creation of PDF documents with full 3D objects inside.. nothing new for PDF, but great for organisations that wish to automate this. LiveCycle Content Services ES is the result of a partnership with open source content management leaders Alfresco. This means that now LiveCycle has a perfect combination of eForms, Process Management & Content Management that is preintegrated out of the box. Need to trigger a process on content? Easy.. just call the LiveCycle Process in the CM web UI! Need to add Livecycle Rights Management to a PDF? Easy, just select the option!

What’s improved?
Where do I start? Process Record and playback, Improved Dev / Stage & Prod migration workflows, Business Calendars, Out of Office, Acrobat 9 & Flex 3 support, lots of tweaks to LiveCycle Designer and more, more, more.

This new release has some great new functionality to offer and I can’t wait to share some of the samples I’ve been building with you all.. meanwhile read more in the press release.

Finally a festival without a long line for the toilets! Join the creative gurus from Adobe Pacific (that’s Australia & New Zealand) on July 1st for a day of online mayhem, excitement and fun during the Adobe Online Creative Festival. There will be multiple streams, all streaming live to your desktop, covering everything from Web & Print Design through to Video. There will be plenty of other activities on the day as well, including a Chill Out zone where you can talk with other people just like you!

Click here to register your space online!

Over the last 2 weeks I travelled around Australia & New Zealand with the team from BEA to meet up with a whole bunch of architects and developers. We covered Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Canberra & Melbourne (I missed Brisbane) and met quite a few people as BEA showed off their latest SOA capabilities and I showed how easy it is to extend existing backend systems out to the internet using Flash as the client.

In my demonstration I used Doug McCune’s CoverFlow component as example how Flex / Flash can be used to create any type of experience that your creative mind can imagine.

From a data integration perspective, I also gave a brief overview of how LiveCycle Data Services can be used by taking advantage of Flex Remoting, effectively bringing my methods defined in POJOs sitting on my app server all the way to my client, without wrapping in SOAP and unwrapping.

You can watch the Connect recording here;
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p12413445/

If you feel like having a play with Flex and/or LiveCycle, check out these links;
Flex.org - Great Flex info
Flex Builder product page
LiveCycle Data Services product page
Adobe Devnet

or check out another walkthrough on the BEA Dev2Dev site here: http://dev2dev.bea.com/pub/a/2008/04/enterprise-ria-flex-weblogic-server.html

I’m really pumped! Today Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, lead by Adobe and supported by technology leaders such as Cisco, Intel, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba etc and content providers like MTV, NBC, BBC and more.

We drag around our devices with us every day, and these little things (media players, mobile phones etc) come out partying with us, sit in airport terminals with us, even sit at a lonely dinner table with us when travelling. So why is the experience on these devices not as good as the heavy laptops we carry around?

The good news is that its about to change. Adobe is lifting the restrictions on the use of the SWF & FLV file formats. This means that device manufacturers can easily embed Flash content designed by designers, not just coded by developers into their new products, leading to a great user experience!

We’ve seen some great examples of whats possible already.. iRiver have used Flash as the UI for their media players for some time, Flash comes with both the Sony PSP & PS3, and some mobile manufacturers are building the entire phone UI in Flash!

This is really big and I’m sure we’ll be talking about this for some time!

Greg Wilson, Enterprise Evangelist for Adobe has recorded a quick 15 minute developer focused overview of LiveCycle ES, digging into the nuts and bolts without the marketing fluff. Greg shows how to modify an existing process using LiveCycle Workbench in minutes.

http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/livecycledevoverview1/

Quick note to say that Adobe is now accepting registrations for those who would like prerelease access to the next version of LiveCycle ES, Update 1.
Interested? Click here: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=prerelease_interest

Improvements, improvements, improvements!!

The upcoming update to LiveCycle ES is on its way and it is full of improvements that long term users and those new to LiveCycle will appreciate. More detail will come in the coming weeks / months, but for now here is a high level look at some of the changes and new things to get excited about.
Read more »

Do you create PDF documents? Forms? Are you automating processes with LiveCycle? How about sending documents out to review with comments and attachments? Do you want to see what Adobe is up to in the next release of Adobe Reader?

Adobe is taking requests for entry into the Adobe Reader Prerelease program, allowing you a chance to see whats coming up as well as providing valuable feedback to the product team.

You can sign up here;

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=reader_prerelease_interest

SmallWorlds beta was opened up today and I was lucky enough to get an invite.

Mitch Olson and the rest of the guys over in Auckland, NZ have been flat out creating what I believe to be the best online interactive experience currently on the web.

So what is SmallWorlds? The best i can do to describe it is to think of a cross between “The Sims” and FaceBook. You create an avatar, get some credits and start looking around. Second Life also comes to mind, but unlike Second Life, you can be logged in and interacting with people in seconds thanks to the fact that SmallWorlds only requires Adobe’s Flash Player.

Interacting is fun, you can play pool with others, listen to music, watch TV (YouTube clips), look at art hanging on the wall (Flicker) and more.

It’s currently in beta but still loads of fun. If you want an invite, send me an email.

Hilarious YouTube clip from Donnie Hoyle, who btw shares my opinion of cats!