The LiveCycle Collaboration Service (nee Cocomo) team have been hard at work and have just announced their latest set of capabilities including screensharing, record & playback and a new javascript sdk. If you are new to LCCS, its a great service that is part of the LiveCycle family and allows Flash, Flex and now HTML developers to build collaborative features such as text chat, audio / video and application control sharing right into their own applications.

This release extends the goal of the LiveCycle Enterprise Suite to enhance intuitive application experiences with the backend integration and collaboration features needed for enterprise apps to come to life and actually enrich rather than hinder the users ability to get their task done.

Screensharing is cool and has so many uses. We already have customers deploying this into customer care environments. Imagine being able to log a support call and after granting permission to the customer service rep start a screen sharing session right in the application. Much more engaging, faster issue resolution time, and far more convenient than having the user navigate to seperate screensharing technology. I can en

ge Record & Playback being used for tutorial work, archiving interactive sessions for compliance reasons among others.

Developers can try the service free of charge, and due to the fact that this is a hosted service, you can begin adding collaborative features to your apps minutes after downloading the SDK. Adobe also has various pricing options for the production use of the service.

Want to read more? Check out the Collaborative Methods blog

Want to get started? Download the SDK at http://collaboration.adobelivecycle.com/

Attending Flash Platform Code Camp in New Zealand? Join my session and learn how to get started!

For the last week two weeks, Brian Chau, Andrew Spaulding and I have been traveling around Australia giving the web designer & developer community a “Refresh” on what’s happening with Adobe technology that is relevant in the web space.

For the keynote we covered a wide range of topics, starting with an overview of all the major releases that the Adobe Engineers have come up with in the last 12 months, including Flex 3, AIR, Acrobat 9, Acrobat.com, LiveCycle ES Update 1 as well as Creative Suite 4.

Demos shown include;
David Gilmour PDF – Flash Video recording inside a PDF.
Acrobat.com – Many things including free web conferencing!
FIAT ecoDrive – AIR application that talks with your car and tells you how you drive.
Telstra Business – Flex application used to choose a mobile phone.

After some quick demos showcasing the latest shipping technologies, we went on to discuss & demo the latest advances in Flash and how the complete Flash Platform is coming together as a collection of devices (desktops, laptops, mobile devices, set top boxes etc). Those in Melbourne & Brisbane were able to see the Sony PlayStation 3 display flash video content thanks to the built in Flash Player (Sydney had internet troubles!).

Andrew showcased some of the latest Flash examples;

Hobnox – A great audio tool.
“The Cloth Demo” – showing the performance of Flash 10
Flash Player 10 feature demos – Several more demos

We then covered the latest from the Open Screen Project before moving on to a very important topic, the Designer / Developer workflow. The most exciting part of this was Andrew’s demonstration of Flash Catalyst (previously known as Thermo). Andrew will be posting a recording of his demo soon.

Below are the slides from the keynote, which include plenty of information and links where you can find out more information.

Adobe Refresh 2009 was a great event for us, and I especially enjoyed the conversations with so many of you during the breaks. We still have the Auckland Refresh event coming up on March 5th, so if you can make it please register at http://events.adobe.co.uk/cgi-bin/event.cgi?country=pa&eventid=7651

This wont be the last web designer / developer activity from the Adobe Australia / New Zealand team this year. We’re in planning mode right now for some rather fun and informative activities that will be announced rather soon…