VIEWPOINT: Following our post on Adobe’s announcements from yesterday’s MAX 2009 developers conference, we’ve made a video highlighting some of the things we saw during the keynote and around the showfloor and developer sessions over the past two days.

Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch showing musician John Mayer's augmented reality music video single by putting a key-card against a Webcam.

We even interviewed some attendees on what they thought about MAX 2009 and their wishlists for MAX 2010.

Earlier today in the General Session, Kevin Lynch, Chief Technology Officer of Adobe, showed several augmented reality applications, such as one by the US Postal Service.

He then showed an augmented reality music video for the single “Heartbreak Warfare” by Grammy Award-winning musician John Mayer for his upcoming album “Battle Studies”.

Another impressive demo we saw included a real-time delivery tracking and management app for Federal Express’ Custom Critical service based on Adobe’s LiveCycle enterprise-based solutions. Here’s the video:

This video comes with English captions. To change caption language, click on Translate in the bottom corner option of the video.
For keynote videos on Adobe’s Flash 10.1 support for smartphones and portable devices, and compiling Flash for the iPhone, check out our previous post here.

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Mr. Michiharu Uematsu (left), Manager, Advanced Planning for Panasonic Corporation and Mr. Motoki Nakahara (right), GM for Panasonic Marketing Asia Pacific.

VIEWPOINT: The HardwareMAG.com team met up with marketing and product specialists from the Overseas Marketing Team for Panasonic Corporation to have a closer look at the company’s latest range of digital cameras for the Autumn season.

Organized by Panasonic Asia Pacific, the team was able to get a hands-on session with Panasonic’s Lumix compact cameras as well as hear about the company’s Micro Four Thirds system cameras.

The hands-on session was led primarily by Mr. Dai Mukai from the Optical Marketing Team, Overseas Sales and Marketing Group from Panasonic Corporation, with additional delivery by Mr. Michiharu Uematsu, Manager, Advanced Planning, Products Planning Group from Panasonic Corporation and Mr. Motoki Nakahara, General Manager, Panasonic Marketing Asia Pacific (PMA) from Panasonic Asia Pacific.

Among the cameras shown were the Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FP8, DMC-FX65, DMC-ZR1 and the DMC-FZ35. (Editor opinions: 3)

Here’s our ViewPoint video from the session.

This video comes with English captions. To change caption language, click on Translate in the bottom corner option of the video.

HWM Indonesia

HWM Indonesia: I think it’s time that Panasonic arranges more product launches in the region, especially outside Singapore.

Though the brand is well known in Singapore, it isn’t in the rest of the region, such as Indonesia.

A lot of branding exercises need to be done to bring itself on par with the competition. The Lumix line is a good opportunity.

Vijay Anand, Editor, HardwareZone.com

Vijay (HardwareZone.com): The Power O.I.S. looked really convincing and I certainly can’t wait for our personal review assessment on how it translates in our standard usage tests.

Also, this is a good example of a media presentation where the company actually takes the effort to setup the necessary equipment to highlight what new features differentiate them from their previous models and that of the competition.

I hope more companies would take note of this and not just rely on marketing slides to deliver their messages.

Paolo Manzano, Managing Editor, HWM Philippines

Paolo (HWM Philippines): Panasonic has always had an interesting line-up of cameras. It’s too bad that it takes the local subsidiary some time to release them into the market.

The ZR-1 is especially interesting as a newcomer to the Lumix line-up and the imaging world in general, with its unconventional compact body with a slightly longer zoom range. Perhaps this is a new category for compacts, extending the zoom range from the standard 3x - 5x to 8x.

The product demo is especially interesting, in particular the shaker machine. Panasonic Philippines has done all sorts of demos including crashing a steel ball on a PDP, but this is something I haven’t seen yet. Very cool and very illustrative. In this vein, Power O.I.S seems especially powerful, though one has to wonder how it affects battery life.

VIEWPOINT: For our third HWM ViewPoint video program series, the HardwareMAG.com team met up with Mr. Chris Chin, Developer Marketing Director for the Asia Pacific and Greater China region for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business division.

Here, Chris answers some questions related to the developer programs which have been put in place for communities interested in creating apps for the Windows Mobile Marketplace ecosystem. Marketplace, by the way, is Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s App Store, BlackBerry’s AppWorld or Nokia’s Ovi Store.

Here’s some additional info on what it would take for developers to create apps for Marketplace.

Here’s the exclusive ViewPoint video. Enjoy.

This video comes with English captions. To change caption language, click on Translate in the bottom corner option of the video.

The Alpha 330 shoots 10.2-megapixel images and features Quick Live View AF mode.

Mr. Toru Katsumoto, Senior GM for Sony Alpha Mount Camera Division, during the interview session.

VIEWPOINT: For our second HWM ViewPoint video program series, the HardwareMAG.com team met up with Mr. Toru Katsumoto, Senior General Manager from the Alpha Mount Camera (AMC) Division, who was kind enough to demo the newly released Alpha 330 DSLR camera to us.

The A330 comes hot on the heels of two other recently launched Alpha models — the A380 and the A230. The former is similar to the A330 except that it shoots up to 14.2 Megapixels, while the A230 shoots 10.2 Megapixels but boasts a lighter 420g body.

On price: The A330 costs US$850 with 2 lenses (the SAL-1855 standard zoom lens and the SAL-55200 telephoto zoom lens).

Anyway, here’s the exclusive ViewPoint video. Enjoy.

This video comes with English captions. To change caption language, click on Translate in the bottom corner option of the video.

From right: Mr. Yoshimoto Nagashima, GM for Olympus SLR Marketing; Mr. Masaomi Tomizawa, Section Manager, Electronic Device Dept.; and Mr. Antonio Lei, Marketing Director, Olympus Imaging Singapore.

VIEWPOINT: The team behind HardwareMAG.com will put up videos related to trends, technologies and companies with a focus on the South-east Asian region regularly.

Here, in our very first episode from the HWM ViewPoint series, we bring you a 5-minute segment where we met up with senior executives from Olympus and  had them demo to us the new PEN E-P1 Micro Four Thirds camera.

In a written interview which will appear in an upcoming issue of HWM magazine, Tomizawa-san said that the priority is to make the body of the E-P1 smaller. To compensate for the lack of flash, the company also developed a new engine called TruePic 5, which can take photos up to ISO 6400. Of course, the E-P1 also comes with a flash attachment as an option.

“We believe we have a new concept here; the E-P1 is neither a DSLR nor a compact. It’s a new generation kind of camera,” said Nagashima-san, during the interview.

On price:

The Olympus PEN E-P1 pancake lens kit (M. ZUIKO DIGITAL 17mm f2.8) will cost S$1,448 (US$994); the standard lens kit (14-42mm f3.5-5.6) costs S$1,298 (US$891) while the twin lens kit (14-42mm f3.5-5.6 and 17mm f2.8) costs S$1,598 (US$1097). The camera comes in either Black or White.

Anyway, here’s the exclusive ViewPoint video. Enjoy.

This video comes with English captions. To change caption language, click on Translate in the bottom corner option of the video.