Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Another learning experience Here's yet another learning opportunity. WINA, the Wireless Industrial Networking Alliance, is launching a free Web seminar series. The first one is tomorrow morning. "Introduction to Wireless for Industry" will focus on the wireless landscape. The seminar starts at 11 am EDT / 8 am PDT on March 28. Presenters are Hesh Kagen, Peter Fuhr and Rob Conant. This inaugural session will cover the basics of wireless technology. I know the speakers and expect it to be an informative and balanced presentation. Login: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/ips_invensys/join Meeting ID: WGX8BP Audio Dial In Numbers: US/Canada: 888.488.6285 International/Local: 706.634.1704 4:56:03 PM    comment []

Learning Experience Here's an early plug for the WBF Forum. Held April 30 through May 3 in Baltimore, the program looks quite educational--especially a panel discussion on Tuesday May 1 that I'm participating on  ;-) There will be a lot of people who actually do the work presenting at sessions, a lot of information about standards--especially ISA-88, ISA-95 and B2MML. Hope to see you there. 4:48:32 PM    comment []

Another Adobe Release Adobe is really going all out with new products. The common emphasis for releases over the past few months have been collaboration and increased 3D support. Therefore, this new release of Photoshop. The tools available in "Vanishing Point" remind me of the tools I used in vision systems. Here's the release: Adobe Delivers Two Editions of Photoshop CS3 Adobe Systems Inc. announced Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended, two new editions of the professional digital imaging application. Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended will be available as stand-alone applications or key components of Adobe's expanded Creative Suite 3 family. The software will be available as a universal application for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs and will support both Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. "This is the year in which Photoshop reinvents itself," said Deborah Whitman, vice president of product management for Digital Imaging at Adobe. "We're delivering Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended to a new breed of cross-media creative professional and stretching the limits of what can be done by architects, scientists and doctors." Advanced Tools With new features for advanced compositing, designers can automatically align multiple Photoshop layers or images based on similar content. The Auto-align Layers command quickly analyzes details and moves, rotates or warps layers to align them perfectly, and the Auto-blend Layers command blends the color and the shading to create a smooth, editable result. With the latest version of Camera Raw, photographers can process raw images with increased speed and superior conversion quality, with its support for over 150 raw formats, JPEG and TIFF files, compatibility with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and new tools such as Fill Light and Dust Busting. Photoshop CS3 Extended software includes everything in Photoshop CS3 plus additional specialized features such as support for 3-D and video workflows, animation and in-depth image analysis. With support for popular 3-D formats, creatives can render and incorporate rich 3-D content into their 2-D compositions, including texture editing on 3-D models. Using the Enhanced Vanishing Point, designers can measure in perspective and also export from Enhanced Vanishing Point to a 3-D model. For video post-production, Photoshop CS3 Extended now includes video-format and layer support to edit video files frame by frame. The resulting video can then be exported to a variety of formats including Flash. Pioneering new uses in areas such as manufacturing and medicine, the Measurement Log palette calculates a range of values within an image, the Scale Marker easily adds a scale graphic to any image, and the new Count tool tallies features in an image simply by clicking on them. Users can even import Photoshop from MatLab. Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended will begin shipping in April 2007 to customers in the United States and Canada. 4:42:56 PM    comment []