The Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform, first unveiled in June, is an open, modular, standards-based offering for delivering engaging digital solutions across social, Web, mobile, and print channels. It provides enterprises a unified foundation to make, manage and deliver multi-channel digital experiences leveraging HTML5, Adobe AIR, Flash Player, and Adobe Reader.

The platform includes integration with the Adobe Online Marketing Suite to optimize digital marketing campaigns and personalize digital experiences across all marketing, sales and service delivery channels. In addition, integration with Adobe Flash Builder® 4.5 and Flex 4.5 helps enterprise IT organizations build highly expressive mobile applications for Android devices, BlackBerry PlayBook, iPhone and iPad.

Built on the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform, an initial set of the company’s Customer Experience Solutions are available now:

Integrated Content Review – Speeds time-to-market for new marketing campaigns and customer experiences. Improves workflow and processes required to create, review, store and rapidly adapt digital content through different target segments across the entire customer journey.
Web Experience Management – Attracts new customers by providing business and marketing professionals with a solution for creating, managing and publishing rich content across Web, social, mobile and email.
Customer Communications – Improves customer loyalty by centralizing and managing the creation, assembly and multi-channel delivery of secure, personalized, interactive correspondence and statements. The solution allows enterprises to generate new revenue sources, reduce costs, improve customer loyalty and meet compliance regulations.

Enterprise developers and architects can immediately access a free, 60-day trial of the platform. Trials are tailored for Web, mobile and application developers, allowing them to get up and running quickly and simply. For example, Web and mobile developers can evaluate the power of the Web Experience Management solution working in conjunction with dynamic experience services, enabling them to leverage content across rich applications that can span browsers, desktops and devices. And application developers can rapidly create rich interfaces that combine dynamic application and document services, while also integrating data stored in multiple back-end systems. Several resources and samples are available to developers to maximize the trial experience.

Key New Features in Autodesk Softimage 7.5

UV Unfolding Technology: Softimage now features UV unfolding technology that enables artists to unwrap polygon models with just a few clicks. This technology works well on complex organic models, which would be difficult to unwrap manually. Softimage 7.5 also provides UV editing tools that help artists quickly create and edit UV maps.

mental ray 3.7+: Version 3.7+ of the mental ray renderer is now integrated into Softimage 7.5. Highlights include improvements to binary space partitioning for faster render times, multiple final gathering refinement passes and new motion-based displacement. These enhancements help users create high-fidelity images faster than ever before.

Multithreaded Syflex Cloth Simulator: The production-proven cloth simulator in Softimage is now multithreaded, enabling artists to use the cores on their machine to iterate faster.

Scene Compatibility with Version 7.0: Scenes saved in Softimage 7.5 will load into Softimage 7.0.

Autodesk Softimage 7.5 download (30-day trial fully functional version)

The Autodesk suggested retail price for Softimage 7.5 (Windows) is US$2,995 and $4,695 for Softimage Advanced 7.5 (Windows).

Autodesk Subscription is available for purchase with the product license purchase or upgrade. The Autodesk suggested retail price for Autodesk Subscription is $795 per year for Softimage and $1,235 per year for Softimage Advanced.

Every content owner nowadays knows well the importance of protecting digital content from illegal copying and use. Software, eBooks, training material and virtually any other digital content published around the world is at risk of being pirated. Publishers of commercial content suffer from continued loss of revenues due to illegal copying and distribution of their valuable content.

Many people are still trapped in the false concept that copy protection is an expensive solution meant for large publishers. The combination of TrusCont copy protection and Acronova DupliQ is a highly cost effective solution for entry level publishing that could finally put an end to this myth. The DupliQ is the first and the smallest multi-purpose auto-loading solution for CD and DVD burning process. It connects to a PC or laptop via USB 2.0 and is weighing only 10 lbs. TrusCont DVD-R copy protection product is a comprehensive solution for protecting various content types such as software, documents, web pages & other multimedia contents. With TrusCont system a publisher pays just for the number of discs he chooses to protect. No need for buying expensive software or paying setup fees.

“Copy control nowadays is much more than a mean for fighting piracy,” says Eyal Cohen, Chief Executive of TrusCont. Cohen continues, “TrusCont security solutions enable new business models for distributing and selling content such as lease, rent and subscription. Some content owners even use TrusCont for ensuring the relevant and most up to date content is being used at all times by applying time limits that make outdated contents expire automatically.

“The addition of TrusCont copy protection gives our DupliQ customers a much higher value for their money,” says Calvin Liu, Sales Manager at Acronova Technology. “The TrusCont software utilizes the automation capabilities of the DupliQ allowing the users to automatically duplicate numerous discs with the files they wish to publish and the copy protection settings they wish to have” continues Liu.

With the release of the new copy protection solution Acronova and TrusCont have started a new time-limited offer for new DupliQ purchasers. Starting February 10, 2009 all DupliQ purchasers are entitled for 500 free copy protection licenses from TrusCont, where each license is useable for protecting one DVD-R disc. Purchasers need to register on TrusCont website in order to apply for the free licenses and download the software.

“Today marks a turning point for Microsoft and the development community,” Ozzie said. “We have introduced a game-changing set of technologies that will bring new opportunities to Web developers and business developers alike. The Azure Services Platform, built from the ground up to be consistent with Microsoft’s commitment to openness and interoperability, promises to transform the way businesses operate and how consumers access their information and experience the Web. Most important, it gives our customers the power of choice to deploy applications in cloud-based Internet services or through on-premises servers, or to combine them in any way that makes the most sense for the needs of their business.”

Empowering Cloud Development With the Azure Services Platform

Unlike many of today’s service-based solutions, the Azure Services Platform provides developers with the flexibility and ability to create applications while taking advantage of their existing skills, tools and technologies such as the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Developers also can choose from a broad range of commercial or open source development tools and technologies, and access the Azure Services Platform using a variety of common Internet standards including HTTP, representational state transfer (REST), WS-* and Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub).

Key components of the Azure Services Platform include the following:

– Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking

– Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting

– Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control

– Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites

– Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud

State-of-the-Art Datacenter Infrastructure

Microsoft also described the importance of building robust datacenters in delivering online services. Over the past year, Microsoft has opened major datacenters in Quincy, Wash., and San Antonio, with additional centers scheduled to open in Chicago and Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft is leading the way in services infrastructure with innovative use of shipping containers as flexible and portable housing for servers, providing 10 times the density and dramatic savings in power usage. Supporting the Microsoft software plus services strategy, Microsoft’s datacenters serve up e-mail accounts, Web pages, instant messages, photos, videos, software programs and search information to millions of Internet customers worldwide.

Cut Costs and Unlock Innovation

Services technologies, when employed alongside other core technology enablers such as virtualization and modeling, will result in dramatic benefits for customers’ IT departments. Specifically, these technologies will enable a new and more dynamic world, where IT departments can drive down operating costs, focus their spending on systems that differentiate the business, and ultimately enable IT to become a more strategic asset.

“Only a few companies in the world can bring the promise of cloud computing to reality, and we are excited about the strong capabilities of the Azure Services Platform,” said Paul Farrell, senior vice president of research and development for Epicor Software Corp. “We believe that Microsoft’s initiative and leadership in software plus services will be beneficial to Epicor customers as we architect our solutions to optimize for cloud and on-premises solutions.”

Providing Businesses Choice and Flexibility Through Software and Services

Microsoft’s service offerings also include Microsoft Online Services. These solutions deliver enterprise-class software as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft and sold through partners. Microsoft services applications, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting can be used as a complement to or in addition to on-premises software, enabling the power of choice depending on a customer’s IT strategy.

More information about the Azure Services Platform and Microsoft’s software plus services offering can be found at www.azure.com.

Scrapbookers, parents, teachers, arts and crafts enthusiasts and aspiring photographers can gather together in the Painter Essentials Café to share ideas and inspiration, exchange helpful tips and benefit from the resources, tutorials and added content available on the site. The site also provides members with the opportunity to showcase their work in the “Show Your Creations” area where they can inspire fellow artists with their unique designs.

“After launching The Painter Factory for Painter artists earlier this month, we are excited to offer the same type of forum for our Painter Essentials customers, most of whom are just getting started with digital art,” said Rob MacDonald, Product Manager, Corel Painter Essentials. “Whether they are turning photos into paintings or starting to paint from scratch, these artists will benefit from the support of a strong, global community that is eager to share their ideas, interests and sources of inspiration.”

“The Painter Essentials team at Corel continues to demonstrate leadership in how it engages and responds to the needs of artists who are new to the world of digital art,” said Karen Bonaker, Corel Painter Instructor. “The Painter Essentials Café provides these artists with a welcoming environment to exchange ideas, experiment, and learn more about this exciting new medium.”

Based on Corel Painter, the world’s most powerful painting and illustration software, Corel Painter Essentials 4 includes everything new users need to set up their own home art studio. Featuring a wide selection of paint brushes, pencils, paper textures and built-in tutorials, Painter Essentials 4 is the perfect program to help users get started with digital art and create stunning paintings – either from existing photos or from scratch.

For more information about Corel Painter Essentials 4 or to download the full-featured trial version, please visit www.corel.com/painteressentials.