Now I got time to do blog about the Adobe MAX and my personal reviews on that.

This was my first ever MAX event till now. Actually I attended one mini MAX event in India but I don’t consider at all against this event. This event was very helpful to me in various ways and very lucky for me Lucky how? want to know? keep reading and you will find it soon.

Through this event, I planned my first trip to USA. I tried to get here in USA before before few months ago to attend Adobe Community Summit which was invited only event for UGMs and Adobe Community Experts or Leaders. But at that time unfortunately my VISA application was rejected and I couldn’t make it happen. I re-applied again and this time I was lucky enough to get my multiple entry Business VISA for 10 years. So this was the first luck I got through this event.

Event held at McCormick Place in Chicago in Illunois, USA and the city was so good. City is having Sears Towers the tallest building in the world when it was build. I will write my detailed impression and experiences about chicago in another post. The McCormick Place have few buildings and the event held at West building. Event held at 3 levels and so many sessions were going on in the event and it had also one big hall for General Sessions for MAX where almost all people coming to attend that session. At sometimes, they were full of people so need to seat in other rooms and they can see the video through projectors live from the big hall. But according to me, the event place were so nice and lot many people were there to guide you there all the time for food, sessions and other general help. All the staff were so helpful to guide you for anything including your local travel.

Event also had paid pre-event training sessions on sunday. Unfortunately I was in waiting list and not able to confirm till last moment. On that day I met lot many community experts and other people whom I was just knowing by names, nick names, books, threads and various projects. I met them personally and it was so nice to meet all of them. We had community expert special party at afternoon at Hotel Hilton. It was snacks, beer and wine (I am not sure ;)) party. I met many people over there too. It was bit odd for me as I don’t take beer because of some relegious reasons but otherwise it was nice experience to meet people over there. People were really enjoying the time over there by meeting each other and discussion about cool projects, concepts and features of Adobe Products. At the evening it was 5 minutes presentation competitons where people need to have 20 slides and each slide will automatically rollout at every 15 seconds. It was really great concept.

After that event, we had another party! at the event place. Yeah it was MAX welcome party. Enjoyed a lot over there too. Wherever I mention enjoyed, for me it must be meeting people and learning something new

Next day, it was general session and Cavin Lynch was the host for the event. Other Adobe Engineering team gave brief idea about current and upcoming technologies from Adobe and partners. After that event, we had all the training sessions, hands on from the morning to evening. I was able to get into all interested sessions. Actually my list was big and good amount of conflict in terms of time. Still I managed to attend all the sessions I wish to attend with higher priority. They were so nice sessions and most of all speakers have great knowledge about the subject and lot much new to learn. At the evening the Bird of Feather session was there but unfortunately I missed it as I not saw the schedule properly.

Next day, it was full of all the learning sessions and at the end of the day, we had sneak pick session in evening. Where they introduced breath taking new features for flash player 10 and other adobe technologies. Last presentation in that session was just awsome. It was given by new adobe employee and he was just simply image processing genious! No words to say and all community welcomed him with more than 80% votes for the hottest sneak pick of the day. After that it was a surprise Party! yeah one grand party again. There I found that Adobe can do anything to have a great event! Adobe also arranged for community pavilion where all developers can meet about various adobe technologies and some partner booths.

Finally on last day all regular learning sessions were there and event closed at 4pm. I really enjoyed all the days and during one of my sessions called “Development with FlashLite 3″ I got prize of cool Nokia N95 phone which was sponsored by the Nokia as event sponsor. I don’t know on which basis speaker Bill Perry gave me the prize it I really thank you bill for the cool phone.

Things I like most:

• PDF Kiosks
• Event Schedular
• Event Management of MAX
• Sneak Picks
• Developer Meetings
• Parties!
• Prizes

I will surely be there in SF for MAX 2008.

I just noticed that Macromedia changed a new homepage which confirms completion of acquisition on 3rd December.

New Top navigation with Adobe logo and the page style is now completely according to the Adobe Homepage. I am waiting to hear how the community related issues come up with this acquisition.

Congratulations to Macromedia and Adobe.

I was using Norton Internet Security 2005 but after windows xp sp2 update and windows installer update, Norton was forcing me to reinstall the product because of its conflicts with windows installer’s new update. So I thought lets give chance to other and try other spam filters.

So I tried McAfee SpamKiller and Wooho! it was a big NightMare for me…. Its -100% Smart … Yeah I mean it … It not mark any mail as spam but even If i tell it to block this mail, It says rudely like This Mail Cannot be Blocked like the spammer given him much $$$ to not blocking his mail. So McAfee itself is not a smart but After guiding it, still it not work as we wish so its -100% smart.

So now I am back with my Norton … and Hope It wont push me in situation to reinstall it again and again.

So much disappointed with McAfee SpamKiller. This product can even down the impression of McAfee Virus Scanner. Does anybody else faced same problem?

As this bug is now patched so not to worry much about that but still it matters to IT pros.

Skype acknowledged Tuesday that all its VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) clients suffer from bugs that leave machines susceptible to crashes and/or open them to attacks that could take control of the computers. But even as it patched the software, one analyst questioned how the popular service carried out the fix.
The flaws, which were reported by Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia and judged a “Highly critical” problem, involve the Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Pocket PC versions of the Skype client.

But even as Skype released patches for all but the bug in Pocket PC, Lawrence Orans, a research director at Gartner and an expert on VoIP security, questioned the company’s ability to deliver a secure network.

“Earlier this year, when Microsoft’s instant messenger client was vulnerable, Microsoft shut down [MSN] and then when users tried to connect, required them to update to a patched client. Microsoft essentially did our vulnerability management for us,” said Orans.

Not so with Skype. When TechWeb launched a vulnerable version of the Windows client Tuesday, Skype did not require an update to connect to its network. Nor did it offer the fixed version when the client’s “Check for Update” feature was selected, but instead presented another vulnerable edition.

One of the Skype bugs — found by a pair of researchers from U.K.-based security firm Pentest, Limited — affects Skype for Windows 1.1.0.0 through - 1.4.0.83, and can be used by attackers to first generate a buffer overflow on the PC, then use that to drop additional code on the computer. All the attacker needs to do is convince a user to click on a malicious Skype-style URL.

“In addition, Skype can be made to execute arbitrary code during importation of a VCARD that is in a specific non-standard format,” wrote the Pentest researchers, Mark Rowe and Joe Moore, in their advisory.

Quoted from Information Week

I just noticed that today is Google’s 7th birthday

Congratulations to Google and Its team and have a more and more nice future