Was invited to a blogger event for the launch of ESET Endpoint Solutions at Screening Room. ESET Endpoint Solutions is essentially a rebrand of ESET NOD32 Business Edition. ESET has always been focusing on the consumer markets and now they are going into the enterprise markets.

ESET NOD32 Antivirus & ESET Smart Security will still be there and are targetted at consumers. For the business/enterprise version, it will now be known as ESET Endpoint Antivirus and ESET Endpoint Security respectively.

Of course being deployed in an enterprise environment, deployment of software solutions to many computers are the norm and this is where ESET Remote Administrator comes into play.

ESET Endpoint Solutions

ESET Endpoint Solutions will be launched globally in late May 2012. Right now it is in release candidate and you can give it a try for free.

Features of ESET Endpoint Antivirus

Features of ESET Antivirus

• Antivirus (Antimalware)
• Antispyware
• Antirootkit
• Cloud-based Whitelisting
• Device Control
• Host-based Intrusion Prevention System
• Low System Demands
• ESET SysRescue
• ESET SysInspector
• Centralized Management
• Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP) Support

ESET Endpoint Security

Features of ESET Endpoint Security

• All Features of ESET Endpoint Antivirus
• Bi-directional Firewall
• Client Antispam
• Web Control
• URL Blacklisting
• Trusted Network Detection
• Component-based Installation

Features of ESET Remote Administrator

• Real-time Web Dashboard
• Role-based Management
• Randomized Task Execution
• Improved Reporting
• Optimized Database Performance
• IPv6 Support
• Improved Configuration of Clients
• Rollback of Updates on Clients
• Support for new ESET business products

Price Plans (In SGD$, Inclusive of 7% GST, Per user)

Google Drive is finally here after years of waiting! Just in time to jump to cloud syncing/storage bandwagon. Microsoft has released their new SkyDrive 2 days ago.

Dropbox now faces some serious competition. I am a paying Dropbox user (Dropbox Pro 50 (50GB plan) – USD$99/year) for almost 2 years now and I have used up about 95% of my storage space and I didn’t want to go to the Pro 100 (100GB plan) because at USD$199/year it is pretty expensive. I hope this competition will drive down the prices for Dropbox, if not I would have to switch to Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive.

Google Drive Features

• Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
• Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
• Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

Google Drive Price Plans

• 5GB – Free
• 25GB – USD$2.49/month – USD$29.88/year
• 100GB – USD$4.99/month – USD$59.88/year
• 1TB – USD$49.99/month – USD$599.88/year
• When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.

Microsoft SkyDrive Price Plans

• 7GB – Free
• +20GB – USD$0.84/month – USD$10/year
• +50GB – USD$2.04/month – USD$25/year
• +100GB – USD$4.17/month – USD$50/year

Dropbox Price Plans

• 2GB – Free
• 50GB – USD$9.99/month – USD$99.99/year
• 100GB – USD$19.99/month – USD$199.99/year

If you are not too sure whether is Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive or even Dropbox is suitable for you, check out the following articles:

• The Verge: Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and others: a cloud sync storage face-off
• Engadget: Google Drive vs. the competition: pricing plans and perks, compared
• Gizmodo: Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and More Compared: What’s the Best Cloud Option?

Official Blog Post: Introducing Google Drive… yes, really

Attended Adobe Creative Suite 6 launch yesterday at The Luxe Art Museum. Adobe has joined in the “more focus” bandwagon by only having 4 suites instead of 5 (for CS5) and 6 (for CS4). Creative Suite 6 will consists of 4 suites ranging from 14 different products.

Theme For CS 6 Is: Create Now

What’s New In CS6?

If I have to pick my favourite thing in CS6, it got to be the Mercury Engine. It speeds everything up so much faster. Whenever you press “Save”, it does a background save, allowing you to continuing working on your PSD file.

For Mac, Adobe has dropped 32bit support for lots of product. Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere Pro and SpeedGrade are now available only on 64bit for Mac. For Windows, because most government agencies has a 5-8 years timeframe before they change their computers, Adobe still has support for 32bit version of their products on the Windows platform.

4 Suites, 14 Products

2 new products to the CS6 suite and they are SpeedGrade and Prelude. Technically SpeedGrade is not a new product, it was used to be sold separately for USD$30,000, but now it is being bundled as part of CS6.

Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 color grading software brings the Lumetri Deep Color Engine to your production workflow. Open the full dynamic range of your footage through a sleek new interface. A new component of Adobe Creative Suite software, SpeedGrade gives you the power to push your stories further.

Adobe Prelude CS6 software streamlines your production tasks. Ingest nearly any file-based format and begin logging immediately, creating searchable markers and other temporal metadata that flow through post-production, so you can work faster and stay organized.

4 Main Pillars Of CS6

Prices (Excluding Taxes)

• CS6 Master Collection: SGD$3,924
  • Photoshop CS6 Extended
  • Illustrator CS6
  • InDesign CS6
  • Acrobat X Pro
  • Flash Professional CS6
  • Flash Builder 4.6 Premium Edition
  • Dreamweaver CS6
  • Fireworks CS6
  • Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
  • After Effects CS6
  • Adobe Audition CS6
  • SpeedGrade CS6
  • Prelude CS6
  • Encore CS6
  • Bridge CS6
  • Story CS6
  • Media Encoder CS6
• CS6 Design & Web Premium: SGD$2,868
  • Photoshop CS6 Extended
  • Illustrator CS6
  • InDesign CS6
  • Dreamweaver CS6
  • Flash Professional CS6
  • Fireworks CS6
  • Acrobat X Pro
  • Bridge CS6
  • Media Encoder CS6
• CS6 Design Standard: SGD$1,962
  • Photoshop CS6
  • Illustrator CS6
  • InDesign CS6
  • Acrobat X Pro
  • Bridge CS6
  • Media Encoder CS6
• CS6 Production Premium: SGD$2,868
  • Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
  • After Effects CS6
  • Photoshop CS6 Extended
  • Adobe Audition CS6
  • SpeedGrade CS6
  • Prelude CS6
  • Illustrator CS6
  • Encore CS6
  • Flash Professional CS6
  • Media Encoder CS6
  • Story CS6
  • Bridge CS6

If you are confused with all the text and products in each suite, check out the more visually pleasant, Buying guide – Product comparison from Adobe.

As you might heard in the US and some other parts of the world, CS6 was launched with Adobe Creative Cloud, but unfortunately, Adobe Creative Cloud will not be available in Singapore yet as Adobe is still trying to figure out the business model.

Adobe Creative Cloud is the digital hub that lets you download and install every Adobe Creative Suite 6 application; access online services for file sharing, collaboration, and publishing; and benefit from new apps and features as soon as they’re released – giving you the freedom to create anything you can imagine.

Press Release

Major CS Upgrades and All-New Muse Anchor Landmark Launch for Designers
The performance and workflow enhancements in Adobe Photoshop CS6, InDesign CS6 and Illustrator CS6 will result in significant time savings for print, web and mobile projects.

• In Photoshop CS6, designers will experience incredible performance, powered by the Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, enabling near instant results from essential editing tools, including Liquify, Puppet Warp, Transform and Lighting Effects.
• Adobe has built on Photoshop’s breakthrough Content-Aware capabilities with advanced new Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move features.
• Illustrator CS6 debuts a revamped modern interface and features include a new Image Tracing Engine, Pattern Creation and Gradient Strokes. The Mercury performance system delivers speed and stability, including 64-bit support for Mac OS and Windows.
• InDesign CS6 continues to blaze a trail in publishing, streamlining the creation of multiple layouts from a single set of content with new Adaptive Design Tools – Alternate Layout, Liquid Layout, Content Collector Tools and Linked Content.
• A brand new application, Adobe Muse, a radical new tool that enables designers to create and publish HTML5 web sites without writing code, was also announced today.

Adobe Doubles-Down on HTML5 Tooling for Web Professionals
Innovative new workflows and capabilities across Adobe tools simplify the creative process for today’s web designers, developers and interactive professionals.

• Web pros can conveniently integrate HTML5 animations, created with Adobe Edge Preview, into their Dreamweaver projects, driving home Adobe’s leadership in tooling for the HTML5 web standard.
• Dreamweaver CS6 addresses the challenge of responsive web designs with the ability to build fluid grid layouts replacing the tedious manual process of creating and configuring separate CSS-based interfaces for phone, tablet and desktop.
• Through direct integration with Adobe’s recently announced PhoneGap Build service, Dreamweaver CS6 helps round out a Web professional’s skillset and enables them to produce native mobile applications for multiple platforms.
• Flash Professional CS6 users can easily translate and transition their skills to HTML5 using the Flash Professional Toolkit for CreateJS. Flash Professional CS6 also helps designers to create exciting and impactful gaming experiences and advancements include the ability to generate sprite sheets that improve workflows and performance.
• Pre-built native extensions and new packaging options, leveraging the latest Adobe Flash Player and AIR runtimes, help expand and ease app delivery to Android and iOS devices.

Production Premium CS6 Pushes Boundaries of Video Creativity
Redesigned by and for video editors, with major performance enhancements, the tools included in Adobe Creative Suite 6 Production Premium set a new standard in professional video.

• With dozens of new features, Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 is the hub of any professional video workflow, featuring a sleek new editing environment. The powerful Adobe Mercury Playback Engine now supports OpenCL on MacBook Pros.
• The most significant After Effects release in a decade, After Effects CS6 is faster and more responsive than ever. With Global Performance Cache, previews are saved and ready to go— cutting the time spent bouncing between projects.
• New to Production Premium are Adobe Prelude CS6, which streamlines logging and ingest workflows in post-production, and Adobe SpeedGrade, which contains powerful finishing tools for film finishing and colour grading.
• Adobe Audition CS6 accelerates audio post-production: real-time clip stretching makes it simple to stretch clips to fit an edit; and Automatic Speech Alignment introduces a powerful new engine for automated dialogue analysis.
• A new 3rd party API for hardware integration – Adobe Mercury Transmit – allows broadcast video monitoring to connect directly into the Mercury Playback Engine via third-party cards from AJA, Blackmagic Design, and Matrox.

Official Site: Adobe Creative Suite 6
Adobe Online Shop: South East Asia

Mom passed the Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 to me as she got it for free when she applied for the American Express Platinum Card. Otherwise the Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 is retailing for SGD$179.

Specifications

• 7.0″ WVGA Clear Photo LCD (800 x 480) (16:10)
• 2GB Internal Memory Stores Up to 4,000 Pictures
• Full HD Video and Music Playback
• Compatible with SD & Memory Stick (SD) memory cards
• Auto-Orientation Sensor
• Dimensions (W x H x D): 191 x 132.4 x 97.4mm
• Weight: 370g

Setting up the Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 is pretty straight forward. I just copied the photos to my SD card and place it inside the DPF-HD700 and I imported the photos to the internal 2GB memory so as not to waste 1 SD card on it.

You can also transfer the photos via USB or Mini USB as the DPF-HD700 supports them. When you plugged it to a Windows machine, it will be shown as a removal drive and you can transfer your photos and videos to it like a normal USB flash drive.

I placed the photo frame near my bed side (duh!) and it is pretty far away from my computer and hence having to remove the AC adapter whenever I want to transfer photos to the DPF-HD700 from my computer is cumbersome.

Hence my only complain is that the DPF-HD700 has to be plugged into an AC outlet in order for file transfer to take place. I wish it will make use of the USB power to at least allow file transfer.

For some reasons, it can’t be detected as a removal drive on my MacBook Air when I first tried it, I think I will try again tonight and update this blog post of the result.

Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 – Box Front

Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 – Box Opened

Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 – Box Contents

Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 – Landscape

Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 – Portrait

Sony S-Frame DPF-HD700 – Landscape Photo (The Fat Me)

The Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus was the 5th project I backed on Kickstarter, I backed it because I find the capacitive brush stylus interesting and I have not seen any stylus like that in the market before. The Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus consists of 2 tips, which is the brush tip and the rubber tip located at the opposite end of the stylus.

Backed the project on 22nd September 2011, it became officially funded on 21st October 2011 after raising USD$65,823 (the goal was only USD$7,500). The Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus was about 5 months in the making and I received the product on the 11th April 2012.

The price is pretty reasonable, paid USD$25 for it and an extra USD$5 for the shipping to Singapore which adds up to USD$30 (SGD$37.70) in total. The final retail price will be USD$34.95 (excluding shipping).

The build of the brush is pretty good, it is made of metal with classic chrome finish. The brush tip is pretty sensitive but I was kinda disappointed with the rubber tip because it is less sensitive than the Power Support Smart Pen that I bought. I have to press the rubber tip hard against my iPad screen for it to detect the input. Just to clarify, I have a screen protector pasted on my iPad but I don’t think that is the issue because I have no problem with the Power Support Smart Pen.

I got it from Kickstarter and hence it comes with the Kickstarter exclusive felt travel sleeve to hold the brush!

Here are some of the iPad apps (App Store link) that you can use the brush with as recommended by Sensu Brush:

• Procreate – Sketch, paint, create. (USD$4.99)
• SketchTime – Quick Sketch & Simple Note (USD$1.99)
• ArtRage (USD$4.99)
• Auryn Ink (USD$3.99)
• SketchBook Pro for iPad (USD$4.99)
• Brushes – iPad Edition (USD$7.99)
• Paper by FiftyThree (Free)

I totally recommend Paper by FiftyThree, it is free but it comes with only 1 type of brush, you can get the remaining 4 brushes in the Essentials Pack for USD$7.99 (via in-app purchase). It is worth it!

Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus – Kickstarter Exclusive Felt Travel Sleeve

Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus

Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus – Cover Removed

Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus – Cover Attached

Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus – Brush Tip

Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus – Rubber Tip

The Wife Drawing Banana On Paper by FiftyThree